Great speech on media conglomeration and how it affects democracy..
http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf … e16193.htm
Some quotes:
-- Virtually everything the average person sees or hears outside of her own personal communications, is determined by the interests of private, unaccountable executives and investors whose primary goal is increasing profits and raising the country's share price. More insidiously, this small group of elites determine what ordinary people do not see or hear. In-depth coverage of anything, let alone the problems real people face day to day, is as scarce as sex, violence, and voyeurism are pervasive.
-- In Garfinkel's book, “When,” Garfinkel says, “the richest nation in the world has to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to pay its bill, when its middle class citizens sit on a mountain of debt to maintain their living standards, when the nation's economy has difficulty producing secure jobs, or enough jobs of any kind, something is amiss.”
-- patriotism has come to mean blind support for failed leaders
-- They have even managed to turn the escalation of a failed war into a “surge,” as if it were a current of electricity through a wire, instead of blood spurting from the ruptured vein of a soldier.
-- One Indiana school teacher told the Washington Post, “From what we've heard from the media, it seems what they feel is that Saddam and the whole al-Qaeda thing are connected.”
-- When I watch one of those faux debates on a Washington public affairs show, with one politician saying, “This is a bad bill,” and the other politician saying, “This is a good bill,” I yearn to see the smiling, nodding, beltway anchor suddenly interrupt and insist, “Good bill or bad bill, this is a bought bill. Now, let's cut to the chase. Whose financial interests are you advancing with this bill?”
-- We have reached the stage when the Poo-bahs of punditry have only to declare that “the world is flat,” for everyone to agree it is, without going to the edge and looking over themselves. It's called reporting.
-- So if we need to know what is happening, and big media won't tell us; if we need to know why it matters, and big media won't tell us; if we need to know what to do about it, and big media won't tell us, it's clear what we have to do. We have to tell the story ourselves. And this is what the plantation owners feared most of all. Over all those decades here in the South, when they used human beings as chattel, and quoted scripture to justify it, property rights over human rights was God's way, they secretly lived in fear that one day, instead of saying, “Yes, Massa,” those gaunt, weary, sweat-soaked field hands, bending low over the cotton under the burning sun, would suddenly stand up straight, look around, see their sweltering and stooping kin and say, “This ain't the product of intelligent design. The boss man in the big house has been lying to me. Something is wrong with this system.” This is the moment freedom begins, the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story, and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.
-- Old media acquire new media and vice versa. Rupert Murdoch, forever savvy about the next key outlet that will attract eyeballs, purchased MySpace, spending nearly $600 million, so he could, in the language of Wall Street, monetize those eyeballs. Goggle became a partner in Time Warner, investing $1 billion in its AOL online service. And now Goggle has bought YouTube, so it would have a better vehicle for delivering interactive ads for Madison Avenue. Viacom, Microsoft, large ad agencies, and others have been buying up key media properties, many of them the leading online sites, with a result that will be a thoroughly commercialized environment, a media plantation for the 21st century, dominated by the same corporate and ideological forces that have produced the system we have lived under the last 50 years.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf … e16193.htm
Some quotes:
-- Virtually everything the average person sees or hears outside of her own personal communications, is determined by the interests of private, unaccountable executives and investors whose primary goal is increasing profits and raising the country's share price. More insidiously, this small group of elites determine what ordinary people do not see or hear. In-depth coverage of anything, let alone the problems real people face day to day, is as scarce as sex, violence, and voyeurism are pervasive.
-- In Garfinkel's book, “When,” Garfinkel says, “the richest nation in the world has to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to pay its bill, when its middle class citizens sit on a mountain of debt to maintain their living standards, when the nation's economy has difficulty producing secure jobs, or enough jobs of any kind, something is amiss.”
-- patriotism has come to mean blind support for failed leaders
-- They have even managed to turn the escalation of a failed war into a “surge,” as if it were a current of electricity through a wire, instead of blood spurting from the ruptured vein of a soldier.
-- One Indiana school teacher told the Washington Post, “From what we've heard from the media, it seems what they feel is that Saddam and the whole al-Qaeda thing are connected.”
-- When I watch one of those faux debates on a Washington public affairs show, with one politician saying, “This is a bad bill,” and the other politician saying, “This is a good bill,” I yearn to see the smiling, nodding, beltway anchor suddenly interrupt and insist, “Good bill or bad bill, this is a bought bill. Now, let's cut to the chase. Whose financial interests are you advancing with this bill?”
-- We have reached the stage when the Poo-bahs of punditry have only to declare that “the world is flat,” for everyone to agree it is, without going to the edge and looking over themselves. It's called reporting.
-- So if we need to know what is happening, and big media won't tell us; if we need to know why it matters, and big media won't tell us; if we need to know what to do about it, and big media won't tell us, it's clear what we have to do. We have to tell the story ourselves. And this is what the plantation owners feared most of all. Over all those decades here in the South, when they used human beings as chattel, and quoted scripture to justify it, property rights over human rights was God's way, they secretly lived in fear that one day, instead of saying, “Yes, Massa,” those gaunt, weary, sweat-soaked field hands, bending low over the cotton under the burning sun, would suddenly stand up straight, look around, see their sweltering and stooping kin and say, “This ain't the product of intelligent design. The boss man in the big house has been lying to me. Something is wrong with this system.” This is the moment freedom begins, the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story, and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.
-- Old media acquire new media and vice versa. Rupert Murdoch, forever savvy about the next key outlet that will attract eyeballs, purchased MySpace, spending nearly $600 million, so he could, in the language of Wall Street, monetize those eyeballs. Goggle became a partner in Time Warner, investing $1 billion in its AOL online service. And now Goggle has bought YouTube, so it would have a better vehicle for delivering interactive ads for Madison Avenue. Viacom, Microsoft, large ad agencies, and others have been buying up key media properties, many of them the leading online sites, with a result that will be a thoroughly commercialized environment, a media plantation for the 21st century, dominated by the same corporate and ideological forces that have produced the system we have lived under the last 50 years.