Too wonky?

Maybe Superbowl hangovers...

>>Too wonky?

NEVER!!! Had to go to the coal mines this morning. I found it fascinating that St. Ron created the EITC. I actually used that today during a history debate of LIBERALISM. With your help Mr. Bob, I am unstoppable in political debates. However, I am debating the political equivalent of an embryo.

>

He has to look out for his employers after all, you know the liberal media types we always hear about.

Oops,

I was referring to what Bob said Pat Buchanan said to Podesta about why couldn't the $80 mil go to corporations.

Note to self...don't use the less/greater than signs in comments.

"Why do they only cover the conservative (really the corporatist) side of the story?"

"Why was this important story never covered?"

The answers to these questions are simple.

Corporations control 'our' government and 'our' media. 'Our' media controls what we are told and prevents us from being told about many things that we should be told about. Our opinions are shaped by an intentional lack of information on point of views contrary to what the corporations want. This has been going on for my entire life. It started as censorship of opposition views, and over time this was supplemented by intentional disinformation and misinformation. You all have seen this. Look at how the egg pelting of W's inauguration parade was handled. Likewise, last August's RNC protests.

('our' is quoted, because none of these are ours.)

The movie "Network" was on TCM at 0:00 this morning. Near the end, Ned Beatty's character, the Chairman of the company that owned the Network, tells Peter Finch's character that he must modify his message to reinforce reality, which is that there are no nations, there is no democracy, there is only the corporations. Paddy Chayefsky extrapolated the then current trends in the media that he was a part of and wrote a screenplay about the future if the trends continued.

In 1988 a book was published called "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" which was coauthored by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. From Wikipedia:

According to the book, the pressure to create a stable, profitable business invariably distorts the kinds of news items reported, as well as the manner and emphasis in which they are reported. This occurs not as a result of conscious design but simply as a consequence of market selection: those businesses who happen to favor profits over news quality survive, while those that present a more accurate picture of the world tend to become marginalized.

The propaganda is not necessarily intentional, it is an expected result of the information 'free market'. A documentary film "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" was released in 1992. From Wikipedia:

The film presents and illustrates Chomsky's and Herman's propaganda model, the thesis that corporate media, as profit-driven institutions, tend to serve and further the agendas of the interests of dominant, elite groups in the society. A centerpiece of the film is a long examination into the history of The New York Times' coverage of Indonesia's invasion and occupation of East Timor, which Chomsky claims exemplifies the media's unwillingness to criticize an ally.

I think that there can be little doubt that these analyses are accurate dissections of our current reality.

Another example: This is the story on 28 year old Lori Klausutis being found dead in Joe Scarborough's Florida offices. It asks many questions about how this story was covered by the media (it was ignored).

Television Journalism is not journalism at all. It is Entertainment and Propaganda with a capital P. Until you understand this, you will continue to ask silly questions like "Why do they only cover the conservative (really the corporatist) side of the story?" and "Why was this important story never covered?"

If you fail to recognize that the 'Corporations' only tell us what *they* want us to know, not what *we need* to know, you will continue to be one of the compliant sheeple that *they* lead by the nose to wherever *they* want. It's *their* media and it's *their* government. If you want the government and media to be yours, you'll have to steal them back. Good luck with that.

You can at least recognize the problem and keep speaking out about it. The more people that know about it, the less power they will have. The internet has broken their information monopoly. Watch for their attempts to shut down 'dissent'. (The definition of dissent will be any coverage of stories that they want buried.)

The corporatists have relied on there being a small number of centralized information sources. This is no longer the case. Network neutrality must be preserved at all costs.