IF THE SHOE FITS, WEAR IT OUT?
Some thoughts on the media.....
The press in this country is now and always has been so thoroughly dominated by the wealthy few of the country that it cannot be depended upon to give the great masses of the people that correct information concerning political, economical and social subjects which it is necessary that the mass of people shall have in order that they shall vote and in all ways act in the best way to protect themselves from the brutal force and chicanery of the ruling and employing class.
-- E.W. Scripps (newspaper publisher ca 1900 in
memorandum sent to his editorial executives)
The mass media become the authority at any given moment for what is true and what is false, what is reality and what is fantasy, what is important and what is trivial. There is no greater force in shaping the public mind; even brute force triumphs only by creating an accepting attitude toward the brutes. --Ben Bagdikian (The Media Monopoly)
An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. - Joseph Pulitzer
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." -William Colby, former Director of the CIA.
In an authoritarian society there is a ministry, or a commissar, or a directorate that controls what everybody will see and hear. We call that a dictatorship. Here we have a handful of very powerful corporations led by a handful of very powerful men and women who control everything we see and hear beyond the natural environment and our own families. That's something which surrounds us every day and night. If it were one person we'd call that a dictatorship, a ministry of information. -- Ben Bagdikan
During a war, news should be given out for instruction rather than information. -- Joseph Goebbels
---
Finally --- please ask yourself how does this next piece of wisdom fit the case of Howard Dean?
And how does this fit the other candidates? Who do you suppose is the National Media's annointed Democratic candidate???
"Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness." --George Orwell
"It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true." -- Henry Kissinger |
