There’s Nothing Mainstream About the Corporate Media
As we stumble toward another presidential election, it’s never been more clear that our political process is being warped by a corporate stranglehold on the free flow of information. Amidst a virtual blackout of coverage of a horrific war, a global ecological crisis and an advancing economic collapse, what passes for the mass media is itself in collapse. What’s left of our democracy teeters on the brink.
The culprit, in the parlance of the day, has been the “Mainstream Media,” or MSM.
But that’s wrong name for it. Today’s mass media is Corporate, not Mainstream, and the distinction is critical.
Calling the Corporate Media (CM) “mainstream” implies that it speaks for mid-road opinion, and it absolutely does not.
There is, in fact, a discernable, tangible mainstream of opinion in this country. As brilliant analysts such as Jeff Cohen, Norman Solomon and the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) organization have shown, the “MSM” is very far to the right of it.
The mainstream of American opinion wants this country out of Iraq. The Corporate Media does not. It refuses to give serious coverage to the devastating human, spiritual and economic costs of the war, and it marginalizes those demanding it end.
The mainstream of American opinion wants national health care. The CM does not.
The mainstream of American opinion is deeply distrustful and in many ways hostile to the power of large corporations. Obviously, the CM is not.
The mainstream of American opinion strongly questions whether our elections are being manipulated and stolen. The CM treats with contempt those who dare report on the issue.
The Corporate Media takes partisan stands (often in favor of the Republican Party, but always in defense of corporate interests) by sabotaging political candidacies, especially those of candidates who challenge corporate power. This year it blacklisted the populist candidacy of John Edwards, suffocating his ability to compete for the Democratic nomination.
Mainstream American opinion is no fan of George W. Bush and does not take him seriously as a credible leader. A very substantial percentage has long wanted him and Dick Cheney impeached and removed from office. The CM does not tolerate such a discussion, and utterly marginalizes Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the veteran Congressman who has dared to seriously raise the possibility.
Mainstream American opinion is committed to protecting what’s left of the natural environment. The Corporate Media makes an occasional show of sharing that concern, but stops where Corporate interests might be impinged. On the other hand, it promotes failed technologies, such as nuke power, where centralized, corporate profits are huge.
Never in our history has the control of the nation’s sources of information been more centralized, or more at odds with what the country as a whole believes.
This divergence is not limited to the attack pack fringe of far-right bloviators who dominate the Corporate opinion print columns and talk shows. Virtually all “personal” opinion expressed on the corporate airwaves and in the syndicated big newspaper columns is significantly to the pro-corporate right of moderate American opinion.
The “news” pushed by the major radio/TV networks and newspapers slants unerringly toward the interests of the five major corporations that own the bulk of them. They bury stories of vital importance while spewing endless hours and column inches at the mind-deadening likes of Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears.
Their excuse is that they “give the public what it wants” and are “in business to make a profit.”
But the real profit centers of the corporations that own the CM are not in providing news and information. General Electric, Westinghouse, Disney and the other media-financial-industrial behemoths have too much to lose from an accurate reporting of the true news of the world. To protect their core interests, they are bread-and-circus PR/diversion machines, not real news organizations. They resemble the old Soviet official mouthpieces Izvestia and Pravda far more than the news providers envisioned in the First Amendment, by Founders who saw balanced, aggressive reporting as the lifeblood of democracy.Nor does the corporate right never hesitate to attack. Since Vice President Spiro Agnew assaulted those who dared report the truth about the Vietnam War, the absurd myth of a “Liberal Media” has been used to intimidate and silence mainstream opinion.
In fact, the term is used to apply to any outlet that harbors even the slightest expression of dissent. Even conservative newspapers or broadcasts that may be overwhelmingly pro-corporate, but which occasionally tolerate a whiff of dissent, are branded as subversive, ungodly and “out of the mainstream.”
There are indeed liberal publications and radio shows in this country. But it’s no accident that they struggle financially, and for access to the airwaves.
Thankfully, just as the CM solidifies its power over our mass media outlets, the internet has burst forth as an open, wildly diverse medium for mainstream opinion and actual truth. Its preservation will require what Thomas Jefferson called “eternal vigilance.”
That includes restoring the Fairness Doctrine, enacted by a Republican Congress in the 1920s to guarantee balanced opinion on the emerging electronic medium of radio. It means a ban on unified corporate ownership of large fleets of radio, TV and print outlets. It means busting up the monopolies that warp public access to information and opinion.
The word “mainstream” has nothing to do with the massively monopolized machine that has a chokehold on our democracy. It’s the “Corporate Media,” and there’s nothing mainstream about it.
Harvey Wasserman’s History of the United States is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior editor of www.freepress.org.
This take is long overdue. The corporate media is nowhere near the “mainstream” as it has become the propaganda arm of the Corporatocracy that runs the USA. The sooner the public realizes this basic unchangeable fact and takes what it says with the necessary grains of salt, the better.
I am a psychologist.
I believe that what the corporate media does is nothing short of brainwashing.
The capacity to even hold different frames of reference is threatened by the constant repetition of frames chosen by the corporate media.
People need to realize that we are in a propaganda state, and they need to form, and hold on to their own points of view.
Thank you for this article.
1. Despite the propaganda and brainwashing, the people are ultimately responsible. They repeatedly look the other way when serious crimes are uncovered, and by their apathy, condone the killing of millions.
2. Mr. Wasserman points to role of greed and MIC interests in the suppression of peoples voices. He ignores that, in addition, ideological forces are also at play, such as the John Hajees, and the neocons.
Shut up - your just jealous you couldn’t get that job at Fox. haha I’m only joking. Great article. To bad there’s not a single major newspaper in the country that would print this.
speakthetruth,
I agree, we the citizens of America are ultimately responsible, but when our education is teaching our young children nothing, and then they grow up and can’t understand the basic connections between things like oil and the war in Iraq, you can’t blame it all on the people. We have indeed been brainwashed, and I’m predicting we will stay on this course of failure until something truly horrible happens (ex. a great depression, a monster terrorist attack, nuclear bomb, or something of that nature). It’s a very sad reality.
Idea # 1207 -
Call it ‘Murdoch Media’. Personalizing the enemy provides a focus that ‘Corporate Media’ lacks, IMHO.
Great article, and great responses. Especially the observations of Oscar and speakthetruth. I have long noticed that the American people don’t want to look at what they don’t want to face. But the chickens are coming home to roost. Bush has driven our economy off a cliff, and the normal rise and fall of good times and bad times this time will be off the chart. The outrageous boom will end up being an outrageous bust.
For some time now I have been referring to the corporate media as the Propaganda Ministry - not as am arm of the Bush administration, but of the corporate dictatorship we haven’t noticed we live in.
Harvey Wasserman, everything you say is always important to be said. Thank you.
kathyodat
Spin me some truth
Spin me some truth
I can’t look at the mirror no more.
Spin me something fair
Spin me something balanced
I can’t look at the mirror no more.
Sign me some spin
Dumb ee up our win
Spin up some fear
Clown code me safe
Clown code my home
Spin me some serum
and I’ll perform as long
as the rattler on the hood of America
takes us all for a spin
Lets lock all that awe
in the memory hole of shock
Spin me some truth
I can’t look at the mirror no more.
The fact that the media is a CORPORATE MEDIA is not the problem. Corporations being run in a Democratic fashion would be OK. The problem is, the corporations are trusts. We have stopped enforcing anti-trust laws and we now have a virtual Feudalism instead. We have an Oligarchy, not corporations operating in a Democracy. And the reason we have this mess is because we fight amongst ourselves. We wrote the “book” on how to have a successful democratically run market economy. Now we don’t even read our own “book”. We allow our industrial rivals to kick our ass because we don’t do what brought us success in the first place.
I agree with the premise of the article wholeheartedly. However, Mr. Wasserman engages in some marginalizing himself when he fails to mention Rep. Kucinich’s Presidential campaign and the way he was marginalized in that effort every bit as much as he was/is for his impeachment efforts.
So what do we do about it? I don’t see any really workable solution in the near-term. Obviously, the FCC intends to push through the change to allow more consolidation before the Bush administration ends. This does nothing to remedy the situation.
My fantasy would be for a George Soros or other wealthy liberal to buy a major radio station or newspaper and turn it into a real voice for the people, just to get the ball rolling (I don’t consider Air America or “The Nation” to be truly leftist). It’s going to have to be some type of ownership that would be immune from a corporate takeover. We need to acquire something like this and take it non-profit to be an independent voice in a large city or region. We need a leftist version of the Moonie owned Washington Times - a persistently leftist voice that keeps getting subsidized and becomes an influential organ.
I would seriously doubt that the propaganda of the media in the 1930’s in Nazi Germany, was any worse than what our whore, media has become,but just like in Nazi Germany,a lot of Americans are good people but politically, completely brainwashed; want to keep believing a lie as it is too painful to accept the truth, or have a vested interest. Now for the good news: we have the net and I believe it is helping to wake up a vast number of Americans to the truth of the devastation of our Constitution and Bill of Rights Lets hope they wake up before it is too late!
Great point, Mr. Wasserman. From here on out, I will no longer use the term Mainstram Media (MSM). I will replace that with the more correct Corporate-Controlled Media (CCM).
“… Adbusters also attempted to buy time on ABC, NBC, and CBS for a spot declaring the day after Thanksgiving, ‘Buy Nothing Day.’ None of the major networks would run the ad. Richard Gitter, NBC’s vice president of advertising standards and program compliance, says that NBC doesn’t air controversial ads. Gitter continued with more candor, ‘this action was taken in self-interest. It was a spot telling people, in effect, to ignore our advertisers’ …”
Whole article: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~faigley/work/material_literacy/literacy.html
I sure appreciate Harvey Wasserman’s contributions to public awareness. CJR has a handy table at http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php?c=timewarner (though a bit outdated–2003) listing ownership of corporate media outlets. If we were to post samples of such lists randomly and frequently in public places–laundromats, public bulletin boards, university kiosks–more people would become aware of the corporate ownership ties. The harder part is to make clear the similar interests of, say, HMOs and GE.
Thank you for the excellent article and the thought-provoking comments.
Despite all the awareness and insights, it seems the repressive, right wing mentality continues to grow stronger, and it seems to me a big reason is public ignorance of the propaganda and other brainwashing techniques used.
The more progressives argue back and denigrate in return, however, the more legitimacy is given. Just as in dealing with abusive verbal aggression, a comment like “why are you so angry?” throws the focus appropriately back on the abuser and exposes their illegitimacy.
A clearly examined exposure of the distortion of facts behind the issues will serve truth and justice, but to get there the mental fog intentionally created to cloud the issues by corporate media and others with self-serving, vested interests must be dissolved.
I do understand that this is easier said than done, but I feel to argue the individual battles without addressing this overarching concept is to limit and ultimately nullify the effectiveness of real change agents.
Fine article. And for chrissake, once and for all, the word MEDIA is PLURAL. Medium is—Media ARE.
We need to recognize that the corporate media is simply a business, dedicated to selling insulting advertising via even-more-insulting entertainment. So long as the FCC uses the capitalist business model to regulate media access and antitrust, this situation will not change. I’ve been ignoring it for years, and suggest to everyone I know that they do the same.
I also recommend to everyone I know that they pay attention to history, not to “news,” no matter what the source. I agree with the earlier comment about The Nation and Air America, which are simply mouthpieces for the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. The left keeps making the same mistakes because it continues to credit the same self-serving pundits.
The most influential piece of political writing in American history was Thomas Paine’s self-published pamphlet “Common Sense.” Had he not written it, our Revolution might very well have fizzled. If Paine were alive today, he’d be a blogger, not a corporate journalist.
News = Corporations
Corporations = Profits
Profits = Advertising
Advertising = Consumerism
Consumerism = Selfishness
Selfishness = Most Humans
Most Humans = 5 Billion +
5 Billion + = Too many to sustain the population living as is
The question is merely how much each person can take before violence swells.
On behalf of all Australians I offer an apology to the American people. We (well not me in particular) are responsible for the creation of Rupert Murdoch!
He left our shores because the pond here was too small for a man-eating shark and became an American citizen. He brought to the Brave New World the idea that Media Empires were all the go, that controlling print, radio and television was a sure way to ensure that people all thought the same thing: that greed was good and corporations were next to godliness!
Using America as his base, his tentacles are still spreading across the world. Other Media Moguls are following his example. Only people in isolated, primitive places are safe from the ‘Big Brother’ message.
Who will save us?
www.dangerouscreation.com
“This year it [the corporate media] blacklisted the populist candidacy of John Edwards, suffocating his ability to compete for the Democratic nomination.”
Harvey Wasserman needs to given examples here, cite studies, *something*!
I lived abroad and worked in the print press, including in China, for a number of years, and can say with certainty that the US public is the most heavily propagandized on earth.
No matter what the mechanism being abused, it is the domination tendency that has to be suppressed. Liberals resist suppression of any human tendency, but the liberal trend is toward total planetary destruction. The negative side of human nature has to be suppressed to save the planet.
Excellent article. It doesn’t really tell my anything I didn’t already know, but to crystallize what I had always suspected is an art in itself (though the anal former editorial assistant in me feels duty-bound to point out that Ms. Spears’ first name is Britney, not Brittany).
I have long thought that the citizens of the former USSR were better off in a way than us, because they at least knew that Pravda and Isvestia were not to be trusted, and learned to read between the lines. Most people in the USA are under the delusion that they have free media, and so have never developed that ability.
I think most of us know the basic story, here. CM is the symptom of the problem. What are some viable solutions? I read all about how we are stifled and the information is suppressed; what do you suggest, besides simplification and cessation of consumption?
I’d love to hear some suggestions.
peace,
st john
One suggestion: Big Corporate Media, BCM, instead of Corporate Media.
Because, big or small, all media companies are “incorporated.” There’s no reason to lump in the “mom and pops” with the giant anti-American propagandists.
Mean Scheme Media
Two points:
1. Infiltration and Sabotage
The big money infiltrates any media outlet (print, electronic, website) that commands any type of following, to disrupt and discredit the left opposition.
One tack is to de-fang public discourse to make it less effective while still giving people the feeling that their voices are being heard. For example on a website, a small number of postings that raise strong points that could move discussion in a new constructive direction will be deleted, while other postings that are childish and spurious (emotional name-calling) will be left up. This is similar to the operation of the letters page in a newspaper where the editors decide what letters are fit to print”. In other words the discussion will be steered with maximum subtlety in a direction that poses no threat to the corporate powers that be.
2. Internet communication because it occurs over a communications infrastructure that is owned and controlled by the big money/government allows for an unprecedented level of monitoring and control of the public discourse.
st john: Re suggestions. At my caucus last Tuesday, we passed a resolution urging the state Dem party to ask the national Dems to return control of presidential candidate debates from the commercial media to the League of Women Voters.
The League always ran unbiased, nonpartisan, fair debates in which every declared candidate was treated with respect and given equal time in every debate. The media owned by Murdoch, Disney et al, however, ignored Kucinich, blocked him and Gravel from a debate altogether for a made-up reason (no campaign offices in Nevada), cut short the answers of Edwards and candidates not among the top 2 or 3, and in one case made a young questioner change her serious question about an issue to a stupid one about jewelry or some such thing.
This is one way we could take at least some of the power to influence elections away from those who want to prevent certain people from being elected at all by preventing their voices from being heard by the voting public.
What’s in it for me?? our educational system teachs us a job.. how about teaching ‘citizenship’… to be a good citizen of our wonderfully advanced culture.. to much ‘money’ (self) to support a mantra of ’service’… saw it coming in the late 80’s with the s&l bail-out that so many made so much off of……. the ‘lasse faire’ attitude twords corporate ‘indulgence’….
Thanks to Mr. Wasserman for this article.
It’s sobering to recognize that corporate “communications” don’t stop with so-called news, either. Large media conglomerates have been buying publishing houses as well. Rupert Murdoch owns Harper Collins, Bertelsmann owns Random House, Holtzberinck owns Macmillan… (see www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/28/1335236)
In my view, it’s important that many, many more citizens are aware of a personal-interest fingerprint or manipulation in so-called news and other public communications.
The honesty, clarity and non-violence of personal and public communications are vital to wholesome relationships and civil society. In my view, the entire subject of communications is a vital one.
My preliminary suggestion would be to email this Wasserman article to as many people as we can, and to include with it Columbia Journalism’s website to research media ownership –http://www.cjr.org/resources/ — so that a recipient can do his/her own fact checking as desired.
On a related subject, the people at Free Press have been doing tireless, visionary work to take back the media and are again hosting a National Conference for Media Reform. See details at http://www.freepress.net/conference/
Wasserman is absolutely right — it shouldn’t be called the MSM but the CM.
I wrote this comment complaining about the entertainment, distractive effect of the MSM on the New York Times’ “Caucus” blog about the Sunday Morning news shows just a few hours before I read Wasserman’s column —- now I would call it CM:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/sundays-breakfast-menu-feb-10/
The myth of the free-market and “giving people what they want” has become ludicrous. What happens, in reality, is that the cheapest story wins. Investigative reporting on corporate fraud or government cover ups is both expensive and not in the interests of the parent company. So they show celebrity news: Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, or whoever else has done something of “interest”. These news stories come along so ridiculously cheap and require virtually no money to produce. The number of viewers it takes to profit of these stories is incredibly small. Corporate abuses could yield higher viewership, and even if it did, it still would not be as profitable. “Giving People what they want” is a ridiculous statement that is better worded, “Making the most money while ignoring any responsibility we have as public informers in a democracy.” Keep in mind that even Keith Olbermann has a show filled with such slop, despite being the most informative show on the air.
Let us not forget we had a Democratic president when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened the door to such consilidation in the name of “competition” and “deregulation”. Let us not forget that the Supreme Court of Florida declared that falsifying news was not against the law. And most of all, remember that corporations are bound by a responsibility to their stockholders to put their financial interests above all other interests, even if it means breaking the law.
There is no conspiracy theory about this, and none is required. The corporate media we have is a natural outgrowth of a deregulated capitalist system taking its natural path to highest profit margin. You would think the Democrats would be the ultimate media activists. Instead problems are treated as only problems with individuals. “If only we had some trustworthy people in charge”. Forget about it.
This is an institutional problem that deserves the attention of every mass movement.
“I am a psychologist.
I believe that what the corporate media does is nothing short of brainwashing.”
Agreed, Oscar. While I intuited this before, I grok it now.
For a very good look at the psychological use of the media (a la Freud) and how utterly controlled we are, check out the series Century of the Self that the BBC did a few years ago. There are 4 one hour installments, and each is revealing in its own.
“Episode One: Happiness Machines
The story of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and his American nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud’s ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn’t need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.”
http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=140
WHICH BRINGS US TO THE INTERNET: The only truly democratic medium left (thank God). But the right wing has the web in its crosshairs. The assault will come in the form of “internet deregulation” which is an euphanism for letting the net providers (the Comcasts, the Verizons, etc.) control content. The media fight of the early part of the 21st century will be “Net Neutrality” (us) vs “Internet Deregulation” (them). Right now, there is nothing codified in law that prevents the telecoms from exercising some form of content control. Only the “threat” of a government reaction prevents them from doing so. You can bet the right wing and their corporate bed partners are frothing at the mouth, hoping to pounce at the first opportunity to stifle the only democratic medium we have left. The are already making headway incrementally. And make no mistake, it will be a fight. And it will be bloody. Stay tuned.
Maybe should call it CMM-Corporate Mass Media (a government sponsored psyops entity-GSPE from the Ministry of Truth)
So call it whatever you want, MSM or CM, or CMM, but from little I see of it now, Baghdad Bob’s image keeps popping into my head and I wonder how these guys and gals keep a straight face some of the time. Most of them speak in a tone like a teacher does to a 6 year old.
The news is corrupted to such an extent it can not be trusted. It is useful in the sense that when they are all suddenly start trying to spin a story the same way at the same time, you know to search for the truth in some other direction.
iammyself, thank you very much for the link to the BBC “Century of the Self” four part series regarding political economic control.
This series should be viewed by all CDers and as many progressive, thinking Americans as possible.
I had read Ewan’s book on Bernays several years ago, and was very impressed.
I never knew of the BBC series. I adds to and reinforces the issues of political economic control vs self-control of people.
I agree, down with the corporate media. Our generations desires and goals have been smashed and despoiled by the likes of GW Bush and his controllers. What we have is not what we disired or wanted. What you see happening around us is the result of a group of nefarious international elites twisting things to their will not ours. We are just along for the ride, all we get to do is complain about the driving.
This is very old news. Wasserman suggests “busting up the monopolies that warp public access to information and opinion,” but this isn’t on the program of any Democratic candidate or the Congressional leadership.
In spite of the assurances of “Pollyanna” Obama, the media conglomerates will never negotiate away their power, and Hillary…
Can you imagine this headline?
Harharharhar!!! What next?
So get ready for another eight years of distortion and propaganda, and idiotic elections in a country where 80% of voters only know what Big Media tells them.
My activist resolution for this year is to work on media reform.
Karita Hummer
Edwards Democrat
let us never type MSM again.
Except to tell others not to type MSM, that is.
Hey, thanks everybody for these great comments. I realize this is “old news” overall, with the path well-worn by FAIR and others. But I still do see the “MSM” moniker turning up, and it needs to go. Thanks CD (commondreams.org) for publishing this, along with our own www.freepress.org. Without the internet, whatever we have left of our democracy would’ve long been gone. no nukes!!! harveyw
Step #1: Unplug.
Stop paying for cable/satellite TV. I think it was a book by Gerry Mander, “Five Arguments Against Television,” that noted how TV affects the alpha-wave state of the brain. It has the effect of sedation. You save $50 per month by unplugging, and you’re going to need that money as the economy spirals downward.
Step #2: Read.
Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s “Manufacturing Consent” is a good look at past media distortions. There’s also very readable work from Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon, formerly of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (another good source). Also check out books by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber - they cover the PR industry via PR Watch.
Books and the Internet are somewhat free media. A FAIR study found that people were less informed when their source for news was the TV. You get dumber watching the boob tube.
The so called MSM is nothing more that the propaganda arm of their corporate owners. Everything the reporters/journalist do and say is filtered through the prism of their corporate owners self interest. There may at time be factual coverage of events and happenings, but that only occurs in cases where the corporate owners have no vested interest. There’s still PBS, BBC, and certain internet sites where one can still get truth in reporting.
In addition to iammyself’s suggestion about the BBC series ‘The Century of the Self’ I would like to suggest another 3-part BBC series by the same maker, called ‘The Trap’:
http://www.disseminate.com/2007/04/bbcs-trap.html
This series explains how Western societies have fallen into the trap of believing that breaking everything down to numbers will somehow bring ‘freedom’, with enormous damage to the social fabric of our lives and, indeed, to our ability for critical thinking and connecting the dots. Which brings us back to the unbelievable lack of popular protest in the face of the CM’s complacency, compliance, and complicity vis-a-vis illegal wars and the breakdown of our natural and social habitat.
Jack37 (February 10th, 2008 3:47 pm) wrote:
Fine article. And for chrissake, once and for all, the word MEDIA is PLURAL. Medium is—Media ARE.
COMMENT:
I’ve long been annoyed by “improper” grammar. The loss of the subjunctive as in “wish I was” makes my skin crawl, and “may” vs “can” is important to me, but I have learned swimming against the current is tiring and futile. The language we are using here is a living language and “media IS” has won the battle.
In this case, however, I’ll concede that popular practice may even be correct. One way to look at it is to think of media as an industry: then you would say the “information industry IS,” not information industry ARE. Ditto for media: it is popularly thought of as a collective not a collection, and therefore “mainstream media” is a particular industry and deserves the singular.
I guess what has concerned me for a while is, given how candidates who oppose the corporate interests, such as Dennis Kucinich, have been so thoroughly excluded from media coverage of the Presidential race, what does this tell us about the ones who are left? We’ve been sold the Obama-or-Clinton package since, like, the last election. We all always knew it would be one of the two of them. The other guys needn’t have bothered — although, by getting themselves excluded from corporate debates, they showed just how serious the problem is, a valuable service.
So, I suppose I find it very difficult to get too excited about either of our options, given that they wouldn’t be where they are if the corporations hadn’t chosen them…
And the fact that this whole process goes on for so long, needlessly. In other countries, they call the election and it’s over after a month or so.
Who benefits from this excrutiatingly tedious circus? Where do all those gazillions in campaign funds go? Why, right back to our corporate masters, of course. Given that the corporations pick the candidates in the major races and ensure that their favorites win, what hope have we of campaign finance reform, or anti-trust legislation, that might change the situation?
I’m visiting the US soon, and the one thing I dread is being exposed to the corporate propaganda soup that passes for the mass media in the US. I don’t fool myself that I am less susceptible than any other person — and I really don’t want to come back convinced that it’s freedom and democracy we’re fighting for in Iraq, if you know what I mean. Perhaps I’ll bring earplugs or something.
arkitekton (February 10th, 2008 4:38 pm) wrote:
“This year it [the corporate media] blacklisted the populist candidacy of John Edwards, suffocating his ability to compete for the Democratic nomination.”
Harvey Wasserman needs to given examples here, cite studies, *something*!
COMMENT:
Wasserman isn’t presenting a doctoral dissertation here: this is an opinion piece! If you insist on verifying the obvious, you can do your own study or use a research service: just see how often Hillary and Obama were given more mention and more space than Edwards or the even more suppressed Dennis.
Good article, but old truths.
Problem as I see it,is getting the majority to take notice of this fact or too even to want to take notice of this fact.
Most in the middle class have been bought off with comfortable livestyles and all the goodies they can charge, and would just as soon not upset the applecart.
Some see it, but don’t see a way out and so they a life of quiet futility, coming and going in a semi comatose state, not daring to look to far down the rabbit hole.
Some,know that they have been deceived and that the deception goes way back,but feel buried under the weight of lie and don’t see any way to change it.
They do have the power to control perception and they use to further their agendas and to protect they futures.
For them I think it just as simple as the basic law of nature..”The strong survive and the weak die”.
frank1569 (February 10th, 2008 5:06 pm) wrote:
One suggestion: Big Corporate Media, BCM, instead of Corporate Media.
Because, big or small, all media companies are “incorporated.” There’s no reason to lump in the “mom and pops” with the giant anti-American propagandists.
COMMENT:
Good point, but the real problem is not corporations big or small nor even corporations as “citizens,” but wealthy people who control the media. The enemies of free thought are people: real live people, people who own, or hold controlling interests, or manage, edit, or write or fail to write, who censor those below or who self-censor.
Rupert Murdoch, for example, is a person, not a corporation, but it is he, a person, who controls the corporations he has investments in, and it is he, a person, who controls what his corporations do, and what information is made available, or withheld by those corporations.
The problem is people: people of great wealth or who manage great wealth that can control the easy access to information to the masses.
It is true that there are institutional problems in modern society, but we should never forget that behind all institutions are people. Institutions need to be controlled, but people run them and ultimately it is people that must be controlled. Control the wealth that permits people to cause harm and you can control the people.
I’m looking for a more accurate term than MSM, something on the order of WPM (Wealthy Peoples Media), or GPM (Greedy Peoples Media), or perhaps FBM (Fascist Bastards Media).
Harvey Wasserman is dead right as usual, but I would quibble with his calling it the ‘CM’ or Corporate Media; while that’s true, I prefer the term ‘Big Media’ and its initials ‘BM’ as being more accurately descriptive of what passes as news these days in America.
”The strong survive and the weak die”.
It’s much deeper than that.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, but the ones most responsive to change.”
Charles Darwin
Quite frankly, we’re dealing with a public which is completely non-responsive, unable to deal with change, unable to think of alternatives, unable to think outside the box, unable to come up with solutions.
Someone brought up Neisczhe in another thread. This mentality I describe above is straightforward Master-Slave morality. The public is in the slave mindset, the knee jerk reactionaries at the whim of the Masters, whom define “values” for the masses.
“Do what you will, but first be such as are able to will.”
There’s no doubt about the severity of the degree to which we’ve been brainwashed. Most Americans believe that appliedt trickle-down theory is what is best for their pocketbooks even though they’re well aware the rich keep getting richer as they struggle to stay afloat. It’s as if we’re still operating under the influence of peasant software inherited from our ancestors. We may like John Edwards but are afraid to vote for him.
Mafia Media.
“Problem as I see it,is getting the majority to take notice of this fact or too even to want to take notice of this fact”
Yes. The problem is that we have moated ourselves on left
sites.
The Solution: paste articles from here onto mainstream newspapers.
Results: I registered on 25 different big city newspapers like, St Louis Post Dispatch etc.IN FIVE MINUTES I CAN CUT AND PASTE AN ARTICLE FROM HERE ONTO TWENTYFIVE SITES.
Think for minute: which will produce the greatest amount of change: reading another article on this site of intoducing this site INTO the MAINSTREAM?
The whole point of the article was “Who will define what is mainstream” If you paste these artiles into big daily newspaper sites, the answer is you!
When you do this you are COMBATING THE MOATING OF THE INTERNET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!ESSAY ON !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Paste away:
http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/usstate/usatable.htm
Dont forget areas of the country that probably dont get to hear any even-half-dissidentpoints of view, like Springfield Missouri!
Regarding “media” actually being plural, I agree it can be used that way. But in practice, it is used as a mass noun in the context referred to in this article. For example: “I put the ‘gravel’ into the wheelbarrow.” We don’t say “gravels.” The “corporate media” refers to the mass of corporations that together, as a mass of entities, form the corporate media. And the switch from “mainstream media” to “corporate media” has been underway for several years, quite naturally. It is a more accurate framing of our system of public communication, which also includes alternative and/or independent media. I think the same adjective (corporate) needs to be applied to “globalization,” “Democrat,” “regime,” “candidate” and many other non-progressive phenomena and institutions in the United States. We can have progressive globalization rather than corporate globalization. (Read People before Profit by Charles Derber.) We have progressive Democrats such as DK, Barbara Lee and many others, and corporate Democrats such as Senators Clinton and Obama. We have corporate regimes and progressive regimes. (According to Charles Derber in his book Hidden Power, the current corporate regime is the third in US history and began in full expression in 1980. The other two were called the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties.)
Let’s use *our* names for our society, not those of our corporate, conservative, warmongering, torture-supporting adversaries. There is no better way to penetrate the corporate propaganda and bring forth a new progressive regime in America.
Bravo to Wasserman for writing such a good, clear article about it.
What’s really amazing about all of this is that there are still some people - not just pundits or powerful neocons, but “regular” people - who believe the liberal media myth. An acquaintance who plays poker with me on a regular basis is a real rightwinger. He has told me that he used to be a liberal, and in fact worked for the McGovern campaign when he was in college, but “saw the light” and increasingly became conservative.
(Of course, I have long been of the opinion that the word “conservative” has lost its real meaning and that the current crop of so-call conservatives are actually radicals. But that’s the subject for another forum.)
What I’ve learned from my association with my poker-playing friend is that people who listen to wingnut radio and get their news from Fox are convinced that all networks, all news channels, and all the major newspapers are far left. This guy even insists that Fox is NOT rightwing! He once said that all the networks are liberal, but NBC is the worst. We have implicitly agreed to disagree and not discuss politics or religion, as it would seriously interfere with my ability to remain on speaking terms with him, so I don’t have any specifics concerning his assertions.
I have tried to listen to some of the rightwing radio talk shows and read the extremist columnists like Coulter and their more lowkey colleagues like George Will, but it’s just too horrifying, so I don’t have much of a firsthand familiarity with them. However, I get the impression that there are a large number of ignorant folks who do pay attention and get their information (using the word loosely) from those sources.
From what I have gleaned from a few short political conversations with my friend, those people really think that the media are feeding socialist gospel to the people of the US and are undermining our democracy. They believe that Islam is the greatest threat to America since Communism, and they think the media suppress information about how Christians are being attacked all over the world. They don’t understand the real meanings of words like “liberal” and “conservative.”
I am convinced that mainstream Americans are far, far to the left of corporate media and that the True Believers in rightwing propaganda are fewer than the CM would have us believe. But the nutjobs and jingoists are still around in large enough numbers to assist the media in their dominance.
The next election will probably not bring huge reforms no matter who becomes president. Clinton and Obama seem to be much too indebted to large corporations and the Powers That Be. One can only hope that a Democratic victory will be a step in a better direction than the one in which our country has been heading for the past 20-some years.
Re “the liberal media myth”
The Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the Univ. of Maryland has done multiple objective studies into how informed/misinformed listeners/viewers are according to where they get their news, be it CNN, FOX, NBC, CBS, ABC, or PBS/NPR. People who primarily watch FOX news are the most factually misinformed, while those who watch/listen to PBS/NPR are the least factually misinformed. The rest of the sources are in between these two, and if my memory serves me here, CNN is closer to the misinformed side. While these studies look at opinions, they do so only insofar as how opinions are related to the degree of misinformation thought to be true by consumers of news. These studies are valuable due to their focus on the actual knowledge of the facts upon which people then form their conclusions.
CM just doesn’t cut it for me. You’ve got to have 3 letters to make it official. I like CCM (Corporate Controlled Media.
But you know, I’ve always found this problem particularly untenable. Many progressives shout about the problem with the media, but what can you do? You can’t force people to watch what that don’t want to watch. At the beginning of TV in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s we had only a few channels and the newscasters on them seemed to have a reasonable intelligence and desire to be civic-minded. They felt they had a responsibility and they took that responsibility seriously. But things have really changed. Now we’ve got 100’s of channels! Anyone can always find someone saying exactly what they want to hear. It seems impossible for me to go back to what we had. It would be great but I don’t see it happening. Sad but true.
“The citizens of the United States are the most lied to people in the world.”
— Father Miguel D’Escoto, former foreign minister of Nicaragua, in a speech at Princeton University, November 1991.
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.
I made precisely this argument some years back and a few picked it up on BradBlog. So, obviously I concur in full with Mr. Wasserman’s take on this widespread misnomer, “Mainstream Media.”
Nevertheless I have to ask… what do you propose we do about it?
I think we progressives agitate like old people screw. It’s time for a more radical agenda and methodology. Money talks and BS walks in America.
Anti-globalists have just been listed as potential terrorists by an overwhelming majority of the U.S. Congress.
How does THAT make you feel? We are too late, with too little. We’re great at stating the problem ad nauseum. Come ON, Harvey… you’re one of my heroes. Show me what ELSE you got.
Woohoo, Great article!
I stopped paying attention to the CM a few years ago; hopefully more American’s will catch on and the corporate media will one day be the one’s that are marginalized.
Spread the real news that the only real news is on the Internet on sites such as Commondreams.
Do we want a candidacy that will put thorns in the eyes of the corporate media?
http://www.petitiononline.com/granad08/petition.html
Sorrowfully, as Eyor always views life: in The Iron Heel in 1908, Jack London understood the CM’s dominance over the MSM: “You have forgotten the editors. They draw their salaries for the policy they maintain. Their policy is to print nothing that is a vital menace to the established…. The press of the United States? It is a parasitic growth that battens on the Capitalist class. Its function is to serve the established by moulding public opinion.” How poignantly does this reality fulfill the historic Karr prophecy: “Plus Ça change, plus c’est la même chose”(the more things change, the more they stay the same). Sigh!
Thanks to Wasserman for another great article, much appreciated Harvey. What is said may not be new per se, but it’s good to point this out and even review it. And for many what he says here is actually a new concept. The distinction is key to understanding what is going on: “mainstream media ” vs. “corporate media.” It’s not mainstream. They just want you to think it is. It’s really disturbing for me that so many of my old friends that I grew up with, and partied with now watch Fox News all the time and they now really parrot all the O’Reilly, Tucker, O’Hannity nonsense. They also love Rush Limbaugh. It’s amazing because trying to reason with them is hopeless! They’ve become ‘Stepford Conservatives’! Omigawd!
LeeannG, yes, your observations are correct. The radical right (no their not conservatives. What are they conserving?) always push the argument to right by crying about the mythical liberal media. It now has been pushed so far to the right that we actually have articles, debates, and legal manipulation to condone torture. To completely transform our country into a fascist state via the ‘war on terror’ (started with ‘war on drugs’) you need to have terrorist’s. The simplest way to get terrorist’s is by torture. Big brother bully’s twisting your arm and commanding you to say uncle. You respond ‘uncle’ …. there ’s your terrorist and it didn’t take long. Most witch hunters will find witches…it’s their job.
Guess I’ve gotten off topic. What I say to most of these gullible souls is that if the media were truly liberal then why would we constantly be hearing about the ‘liberal media’ from the liberal media. Wouldn’t they be trying to move the discourse to the left by constantly referring to the ‘right wing media’?
In the early days of German Fascism where the media (radio, pamphlets, newspapers) where flooded with anti-Semitic rhetoric. The jews are taking over the media, banking, entertainment, corrupting are very way of life, lusting after our fist born’, etc. Well if the jews had this much power would they allow all this anti-Semitic information to be disseminated about them. Of course not. In both the ‘liberal media’ and the anti-Semitic propaganda the purpose is to have a convenient scapegoat to project your owns groups darker ambitions as a diversionary tactic onto. I.E. Hitler says the Jews are trying to take over the world but certainly not him.
If the media was truly liberal would we not see countless articles about the lack of universal health care, of declining schools and education, crumbling infrastructure, loss of pensions and jobs, homelessness, the general erosion of the common wealth (common wealth or commons has been so eroded most people don’t even know what is refers to: the publicly owned assets of the nation).
Do we ever see articles in so called ‘liberal media’ about nationalizing certain problem areas for the common good of society. If said media where to suggest that as the recent oil wars have proven so costly with so little benefit, that we might consider nationalizing the fuel and power industries here there would be a near lynching of the authors. Of course we don’t. In fact everything goes the other way. Public programs, infrastructure, and services are neglected and the suggested remedy (’because they don’t work’) is to privatize them. Which really means walmartize them by creating a system where the employes make bare-bones wages with the elite managers and share holders reaping the bulk of the profits. Think school systems, prison systems, health care (already happening), transportation systems, the list goes on and on. Eventually we will have retraced our time line footsteps some 600 years and revisit the feudal state. So much for progress and the mythical ‘liberal media’.
I whizzed by quite a few comments, so I hope I’m not repeating something.
There IS Free Speech TV, and also Link TV. Anybody who has satellite TV can get them. If they could get enough support, they could do a lot better.
Someone mentioned that it’s not so bad for the CM to be corporate and that it would be possible for a corporation to be run democratically: I suppose it is possible,so I tentatively agree that it’s not so bad that they are corporations. The problem is that they are conglomerates-or parts of conglomerates. What really needs to be done ( besides bringing back the fairness doctrine)is to require that all news organizations be divested of all conflicting interests. None of them can be expected to approach being anything like “fair and balanced if they are beholden members of the military industrial complex.
Nathaniel Heidenheimer is right ..post links on corporate media news sites
Jack37 and Advocate and earthian
“once and for all, the word MEDIA is PLURAL. Medium is—Media ARE.”
not always
“Usage note Media, like data, is the plural form of a word borrowed directly from Latin. The singular, medium, early developed the meaning “an intervening agency, means, or instrument” and was first applied to newspapers two centuries ago. In the 1920s media began to appear as a singular collective noun, sometimes with the plural medias. This singular use is now common in the fields of mass communication and advertising, but it is not frequently found outside them: The media is (or are) not antibusiness.”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/media
THANK YOU to the PEOPLE WHO RUN COMMON DREAMS
You provide a very important service
Brevity, unfortunately for people trying to track down the vested interests of the various CEOs and major investors of the Big Media, they often own stock, or someone in their family or a front company owns stock, in other corporations that won’t show up as part of the corporation’s holdings but nevertheless influences what they allow to be reported. This is similar to the Ford family investing heavily in oil stocks and then having Ford Motor Co. stake its future on gas-guzzling SUVs — there is no ‘direct’ connection that would be on FoMoCo’s books, but there is a connection — and a very profitable one.
Arkitekton, I paid close attention to the media coverage following Edwards placing second in Iowa — he was practically off the radar as the media focused on what Hillary had to do to stay in the race rather than what Edwards had to do to gain the lead. It was particularly appalling that CNN during that period before the NH primary, played parts of speeches by Hillary and Obama, but nothing from Edwards.
Off22, you don’t have to give the people what they want when you own everything, as we’ve seen with the declining quality of services and products from ‘American’ companies in recent years. Package up the ‘investigative report’ on the latest missing smiley blonde white girl or celebrity driving mishap and throw it on for an hour — it eats up airtime and who cares what you think?
John R: “We may like John Edwards but are afraid to vote for him.”
A lot of us never had the chance since he quit the race.
Lee Ann G, I have had the same kind of conversations with people who say they are ‘conservative’ and even those who call themselves moderates. They refuse to believe, against the evidence of history and what’s currently happening, that corporations and the wealthy elite that run them would band together to protect their interests at the expense of the nation. They dismiss it as a left-wing ‘conspriracy theory.’ Some of these people have changed their tune when they lose a job to outsourcing overseas, but it is still hard for them to swallow that their elected officials, their government, and the Big Media would blatantly lie to them to enhance corporate profits and maintain power. It’s naive, but then Americans have been indoctrinated to be naive; Europeans I’ve met think we’re idiot children to take such notions of corporate, governmental and media ‘goodness’ seriously, and so would the Founders of our country. As John Maynard Keynes once said, “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”
My best line to those who believe in the myth of the liberal media is to ask them why then the NY Times and Washington Post both supported Bush’s Iraq invasion (and the Post continues to support the Iraq debacle in their editorials). Sometimes they stop and think about that.
Harvey Wasserman has done great work, especially on the Ohio election theft in 2004, but getting some of these ‘conservatives’ and ‘moderates’ to sit down and read it is like pulling teeth! Some just do not want to hear it — it’s another ‘conspiracy theory.’ (I did have one mild success on this front, offset by many failures, even with liberal-minded people.)
BTW, Lee Ann, there are differences between Obama and Hillary: for one thing, he doesn’t take corporate or PAC money — she does. Let me give one more plug to Obama — he recently said that he would keep the Internet open and free.
Good idea, Nathaniel Heidenheimer.
Cranky_Chatter, we are doing what we can do about it — you never know who is going to read your postings or emails and what effect it might have on them. I know of at least one soldier in Iraq whose mind was changed from ‘hu-ah’ Bush conservatism to antiwar liberalism from reading the comments on a progressive site. These days the guy reads Chomsky and Zinn and laughs at Limbaugh and O’Reilly.
Atelios, in the 50s and 60s, all the big TV networks took a loss on their news divisions as presenting the news satisfied their requirement to provide public service in exchange for their licenses. (And there was also a Fairness Doctrine which, if it existed today, would pretty much shut down the right-wing media.) Of course, Reagan deregulation changed all that; now, news departments are typically under the entertainment divisions at the networks; this started when they found out they could make money from ‘happy talk’ and tabloid news, better known as ‘infotainment.’ Reagan also ushered in the era of corporate consolidation which left us with 6 major national news providers down from about 85 in 1980. Apparently, while big bueaucratic government is supposedly anathema to neocons (unless it is dispensing fat no-bid contracts to private firms), big bureaucratic corporations are wonderful institutions. Yet another conservative contradiction that is being resolved as we slip into third-world status economically.
As Stephen Colbert said, “The truth has a well known liberal bias.” No wonder the BM ignore it like the plague.
“I prefer the term ‘Big Media’ and its initials ‘BM’ as being more accurately descriptive of what passes as news these days in America.”
Now that’s calling it as it is!
Another great documentary on the media is “Orwell Rolls in His Grave.”
“Are Americans being given the information a democracy needs to survive or have they been electronically lobotomized? Has the frenzy for media consolidation led to a dangerous irony where in an era of more news sources the majority of the population has actually become less informed? Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave reminds us that 1984 is no longer a date in the future.”
http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=87
Wow. Yeah, I’m guilty of this too. Corporate media (or CM) it is from now on. Good call.
“Someone brought up Neisczhe in another thread. This mentality I describe above is straightforward Master-Slave morality. The public is in the slave mindset, the knee jerk reactionaries at the whim of the Masters, whom define “values” for the masses.”
That’s been true for 4, to 6,000 years, albeit with a strand of humanity, to whom we are heir, who resisted and pushed against enslavement. But the real beginning of our present struggle was the release into the ether of “We the People…” that phrase now resounds around the world as people claim their rights from the very same corporations and mind sets that we’re talking about here. This isn’t just America’s fight, it’s a global fight against 6,000 years of tyranny.
VOICE FROM THE DARK SIDE
What would you say of German newspaper editors who knew about Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald during the Nazi regime and didn’t publish it, didn’t make it available for public scrutiny? Should they have been held accountable as willing accomplices in the destruction of human rights, of lives, of crimes against humanity? Or what about their Soviet counterparts who knew about the gulags?
Perhaps this is an unfair comparison. Those editors did not live in societies that allowed them the right to criticize. But we do! By not exercising their obligations as powerful voices of a free press in a free society, the managers of The Discovery Channel should rightly be held accountable for consciously withholding essential information from the public regarding the destruction of human rights in the prolonged illegal imprisonment and the upcoming kangaroo court of those accused of the events of 9/11. These prisoners may indeed be guilty of that crime. But fundamental to our concept of law, they were to have been considered innocent until proven guilty, allowed adequate council, the right of habeus corpus, and certainly not subjected to even the appearance of torture.
Indeed, “Taxi to The Dark Side” is a controversial film and for that very reason it needs to be available to a well-informed public. We cannot allow the Discovery Channel to claim “a business decision” in order to whitewash their complicity in the destruction of legal and human rights. Having bought this important film they are not only refusing to show it but also willfully preventing others from broadcasting it on national television.
Good comparison piece on MAINSTREAM versus CORPORATE media.
I made a magnetic bumper sticker that has one of those “JUST SAY NO” symbols — and beside that, it says, “Turn off the TV and Think for Youself”. It’s right next to my “Not Fooled by the Media” sticker. I like to see the faces of the people behind me when they read it. They smile and THINK about it. If only we can get everyone to learn to think and reason for themselves then propaganda would have no home in anyone’s mind.
I agree with the psychologist who said this is an attempt at mind control. It really is. See this quote:
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” — William Casey, former CIA director, at his first staff meeting in 1981.