<"If you want to understand the way a system works, you look at its institutional structure. How it is organized, how it is controlled, how it is funded."
-Noam Chomsky
"The Mainstream media really represent elite interests, and what the propaganda model tries to do is stipulate a set of institutional variables, reflecting this elite power, that very powerfully influence the media."
-Edward Herman>
Ray, I love a good conspiracy and people are constantly trying to get one going and join it and benefit from it. Unfortunately, they are inherently unstable and fail. I think there is some kind of human equivalent for thermodynamic laws which preclude long term success, though a good conspiracy can run for some time to the profit of the participants. I suppose a short success is a success for narrow-minded egocentric people who live for their circumscribed perspectives. So I should give up the argument before I start.
But specifically on the media conspiracy and them being run by the elite.
Media need eyes on screens, customers buying those programmes, and swarms of people buying their newspapers. If people don't buy the newspaper, they don't get the money from the buyer and they don't sell advertizing to those trying to sell to the buyers of the newspapers.
So, the media are slaves to their market segments in the public arena who provide the money for the media elites to wield their "power".
I find my time less and less spent on elite media and more spent on reading your hilarious vitriol [I thought the fungal reference was good and your vituperation at Slagle not bad too - I do think I'm missing out on your ministrations; it's embarrassing to not get a regular Ray Duray broadside].
I used to read Time, old copies of American newspapers which wended their way to NZ, watched NZBC state television, listened to state radio and was generally hostage to Big Media, which was government run, or dependent. Offending the Prime Minister did not used to be good for one's financial position.
Now, the public pays the piper and calls the tune.
I think the way it works is more that millions and billions of people get various inputs, filter it through their DNA and previous experiences, and then put actions and ideas back "out there" to see what others do. Then, they review what others do and reiterate the process, in an unending feedback loop.
When a dumb idea gets going, it bounces back and forth until a critical mass of maniacal people are all in harmony and away we go again into Sieg Heil style. While Goebbels and ilk can use propaganda to boost the process, it is still dependent on the great public echo chamber. Plenty of people try to create those harmonics, for good or ill, but nearly all fail. It's only when the public, the propaganda and the current affairs are synergistic that we get the really crazy stuff. A few years later, when the smoke clears, everyone sagely nods their heads and says "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat this cliche" and joke. Never again they say. Never forget they rant.
Then, do it again another time, in another place.
It's not the media, it's the masses with limited brainpower and faulty DNA [which is all of us, though some more than others].
Mqurice |
