Media - the control of information

"Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder
respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell

“North Americans are loosing the ability to think or reason intelligently - when information is highly
regulated freedom to explore and think is curtailed". –-John Groves:The Dumbing Down of America

“There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.” -- John Swinton, preeminent New York journalist speaking to media mogols in 1880

In North America there are 7 major movie studios, 1,800 daily newspapers, 12,000 magazines, 11,000 radio stations, 2,000 television stations, 2,500 book publishers. Yet a mere 18 corporations control more than 60% of the business in each of these media areas. (Update: Thanks to mergers the numbers currently are, 11 corporations controlling over 80%.) In some cases - television for example - they have a virtual monopoly. In most western countries (Canada, Australia, Britain) two or three individuals control over 80% of the news media. In Canada three people control/own/direct 90% of all newspapers; these same people set editorial content, and have fired award winning journalists for disagreeing with their political slant. This control of media by a handful of politically connected CEOs has rapidly become the norm in most G20 countries.

The result has been a gross simplification of discourse into black and white. A country/ideology/culture/religion is either good or bad, either for "our" values, or against them. There is little background information given to stories - people attack because they are simply evil and "hate our freedoms". True fact based debate is rare in media. Rather it is filled with  trivia. Debate of issues is replaced with the latest deviance of some alleged songstress or alleged actor. Hitler said it best:

A controlled media allows for and enhances the presentation of simplified ideas devoid of historical or cultural background. And elimination of alternate viewpoints other than in inconsequential and nonthreatening venues such as academic publications. Such marginalization of of true, fact-based discourse in favor of trivia is the de facto operating procedure recommended by Hitler and others of his ilk:

  • “During a war, news should be given out for instruction rather than information.” –Joseph Goebbels, Nazi head of propaganda
  • “Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.” –US General William Westmoreland, Commander in Vietnam
  • “The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominate political mythology.” –Michael Parenti
  • “The de facto censorship which leaves so many Americans functionally illiterate about the history of US foreign affairs may be all the more effective because it is not official, heavy-handed or conspiratorial, but woven artlessly into the fabric of education and media. No conspiracy is needed. The editors of Reader’s Digest and U.S. News and World Report do not need to meet covertly with the man from NBC in an FBI safe-house to plan next month’s stories and programs; for the simple truth is that these men would not have reached the positions they occupy if they themselves had not all been guided through the same tunnel of camouflaged history and emerged with the same selective memory and conventional wisdom.” –from Killing Hope, US Military and CIA Interventions since WWII, by William Blum
  • “We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets, and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.” — Katharine Graham (owner of the Washington Post)
  • “The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” –William Colby, former Director of the CIA
  • ‘It is inescapably censorship under guidelines imposed after the fact by those who are in temporary political power, and so it should be treated as what it is — a real-world moral and ethical battle with grimly wrongheaded, un-American types who play pick and choose when they define our freedoms of speech and religion as it fits their particular political needs.’” –Richard Dreyfus (discussing self-censorship on television by producers fearful of religious groups in government)

“Power ensures that costly facts and costly ideas are removed to the margins of social discourse and beyond.
It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.” –Noam Chomsky

"The receptive power of the masses is very slight; their understanding is very restricted. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare necessities... a few stereotyped formulae" -- Adolf Hitler