Rise of fascism in America - III
In all past dictatorships control of the media was a central feature in perpetuating the power structure. Traditionally, the policy would be to apply the tools of censorship and propaganda in a coercive manner. These days in America the tools have somewhat changed:
"The media crisis is not due to incompetent or corrupt journalists or owners, but rather to a highly concentrated profit-driven media system that makes it rational to gut journalism and irrational to provide the content a free society so desperately requires."
So says "Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections and Destroy Democracy," written by media activists John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney.
Now if you want to control your citizens the best way to go about it is to keep them uninformed. That is the role of mainstream media in the present day America.
The media is more concerned with "filling time and entertaining the audience," says Nichols, "than informing them and getting to the truth". He adds that knowing what's going on with Michael Jackson or the Laci Petersen trial does not provide you with sufficient information to act as a citizen.
Indeed true. In "1984" the “proles”, i.e. the vast majority of the citizens who lived in miserable conditions, were continuously feed with sentimental, futile and vain media cultural products. Are we the “proles” of Bushism?
posted by Anonymous at
10:29 AM
1 Comments:
May I add that the Monthly Review, where McChesney writes, is one of the best left magazine for current affaris from an American socialist perspective. MR has ran regularly for over 50 years in a rather hostile political climate, that's an achievement. It has recently set up a web zine: http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/
One of the striking strategies of the US corporate media and its interplay with neocons, is bullying. The old fashioned censuring rules, set up by editors of what can be reported and why, are not new although still deplorable. But this confrontational style of the media is new, the attacking of left commentators and critics of the administration is praised. Where is the commitment to inform, to provide balanced reporting?
8:01 AM
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