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[Guest guest]

Corporate and political domination of the media.

 

How much control and influence they have determine

most things.

 

This is why people in different countries can have

widely diverging views. It is related to how much

misinformation is purposely spread and to what degree

by those that control what you hear and how it is

presented.

 

.. How open and free the media is important to every

aspect of our lives.

 

It also explains why a greater percentage of people in

Canada or the EU understand what is going on in the

USA and the world more than do the people in the USA

 

This explains why 80% of Canadians dislike Bush but

like americans and generally feel a kinship and

approve of the USA. . There are many more examples

 

It is also why most real health news is generated from

outside the USA today.

 

F.

 

 

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php?story=20040203045301663 & mode=print

 

Extra, Extra, Read All About It

Tuesday, February 03 2004 @ 04:53 AM MST

Contributed by: Reverend Blair

 

And they’d rather you believe

In coronation street capers

In the war of circulation, it sells newspapers

Could it be an infringement

Of the freedom of the press

To print pictures of women in states of undress”

–Billy Bragg, It Says Here

 

The media plays a huge part in all of our lives. The

news we get shapes the way we perceive the world

around us. That news is shaped by the writers,

editors, management, owners and, to a large extent,

the advertising departments of the companies that give

us the news.

 

aWhat gets on the air, and what doesn’t make it, is

decided by a very few people who have the ability to

shape the way we see the world. While there are more

sources available through the internet and access to

information has never been as easy as it is today,

most people still get their news from traditional

media...television, radio, newspapers and magazines.

Many do not care to search out alternate news sources

and many do not have access to the internet for

economic reasons.

 

Controlling the media, what stories get told and how

they get told, is a major political strategy. All

political parties have their spin doctors. Teams of

speech writers and back-room policy makers who decide

what gets said and how it is presented. All

governments try to time the release of news in ways

most favourable to them. Press releases that will

reflect unfavourably on the government tend to come on

Friday afternoons before long weekends.

 

Increasingly the media is being used as an

imperialistic tool and that affects the overall

freedom of the press. In 2002 Reporters Without

Borders published its first world press freedom

ranking. The rankings were based on a questionnaire

given to “people who have a deep knowledge of the

state of press freedom in a country or a number of

countries : local journalists or foreign reporters

based in a country, researchers, jurists, regional

specialists and the researchers working for Reporters

Without Borders' International Secretariat,” according

to the Reporters Without Borders web-site. The

questionnaire was based on, “53 criteria for assessing

the state of press freedom in each country. It

includes every kind of violation directly affecting

journalists (such as murders, imprisonment, physical

attacks and threats) and news media (censorship,

confiscation of issues, searches and harassment). It

registers the degree of impunity enjoyed by those

responsible for these press freedom violations. It

takes account of the legal and judicial situation

affecting the news media (such as the penalties for

press offences, the existence of a state monopoly in

certain areas and the existence of a regulatory body)

and the behaviour of the authorities towards the

state-owned news media and international press. It

also takes account of the main obstacles to the free

flow of information on the Internet. Reporters Without

Borders has taken account not only of abuses

attributable to the state, but also those by armed

militia, clandestine organisations or pressure groups

that can pose a real threat to press freedom”

 

In the October 2002 rankings Finland was first, Canada

ranked fifth, and the US seventeenth. Most EU

countries did reasonably well. Countries from the

former Soviet Union did poorly, as did most Middle

Eastern Countries. Iraq, then under the control of

Saddam Hussein, ranked 130th.

 

The rankings for 2003 are slightly different. Most EU

countries stayed close to where they were previously.

Canada dropped to tenth. The US was given two

rankings, as was Israel. The dual ranking was given to

address behaviour domestically and abroad. The US

placed in thirty-first domestically and 135th in Iraq,

five places lower than Iraq had placed under the

control of Saddam Hussein and lower than Afghanistan

(134), The United Arab Emirates (122), Iraq itself

(124) and many other states not known for their

enlightened attitudes toward the press.

 

The US drop in rankings, both at home and abroad, is a

result of attempts to control the press. Bombing al

Jazeera offices hurts rankings, so does arresting

reporters. Attacking those who offer dissenting

opinions does not help promote press freedom. The

results are reflected in the rankings of Reporters

Without Borders.

 

Attempts and actions that limit press freedom are not

the only issues affecting the press. There is also the

very effects that the press have on us through their

reporting. Consider the massive number of Americans

that believed that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden

were working together, and that Iraq was directly

involved in the attack on the World Trade Center.

Consider the number of Americans that believe that

weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.

Compare the attempts, including embedding reporters,

to limit the news coming out of the invasion of Iraq.

Those are all very real results of the media not doing

its job.

 

Those are symptoms of a larger problem though. As

media ownership has become more concentrated and media

companies have developed interests in areas other than

news gathering, analysis, and dissemination the news

available to many has become quite one-sided.

 

For example, protestors against globalization, at

least in its present form, are generally presented by

the press as being Molotov cocktail wielding

anarchists bent on the wanton destruction of private

property. Less likely to make the news are the average

citizens, many from developing countries, some who are

risking their lives by speaking out, who are concerned

with the very real issues surrounding the matter. What

we see most is politicians and business leaders in

very controlled situations appearing to have their

pictures taken shaking hands.

 

How are those average citizens from the developing

world represented when we bother to represent them at

all? More often than not, the media shows them as poor

people who have been whipped into submission and are

being taken advantage of by those our governments

oppose or as proof as the failure of socialism, or the

ineptitude of non-western societies. Their only hope

is that we in the west swoop down and save them with

our offers of trade deals, financial backing from the

IMF, and privatisation schemes.

 

This distorted view serves the western corporations

well. It gives a reason for them to continue eroding

workers’ rights in the developed world, offers an

extremely cheap source of labour and resources from

developing nations, and opens up captive markets for

the delivery of essential services such as water. When

it comes to globalization, media control is a must.

 

Not that there is a group of men in suits gathered in

a dark room someplace plotting the takeover of the

world. There is no overt conspiracy. There are a

limited and ever shrinking number of people who

control the news though. They are wealthy. They are

overwhelmingly from the west. They are familiar with

and share the views and concerns of the upper classes

and business. According to a 2001 article by Robert

McChesney, seven multi-national conglomerates dominate

global media. Disney, AOL Time Warner, Sony, News

Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, and Bertelsmann control

the vast majority of what we see, hear and, through

that, think. There is a second tier of media power

control by a few dozen companies. These few dozen

companies and the seven big players own parts of one

another and shore economic interests in unrelated

companies. They are all dependent on advertising

revenues, often from corporations with shares in their

company, to turn a profit.

 

It does not take a vast conspiracy for the

corporate-controlled media to present only what

promotes the interests of corporations at this point.

Several individuals working towards a similar

goal...deregulation and unfettered capitalism...will

have the same effect. Stories that present alternate

views or may be unpopular with advertisers make their

way to the cutting room floor. Journalists who insist

on doing such stories find themselves working in the

alternative press.

 

A homogenous society dedicated to consumption is in

the best interests of the corporate media.

Globalization is their friend. As usual in the modern

world, trade and profits are put before the needs of

people or the greater good. The internet and the

alternative press offer some hope, but their scope and

influence is still limited and the corporate media is

not without influence in these areas, especially on

the internet.

 

Most news agencies have a daily business report, but

there is no corresponding time dedicated to labour

issues. Most people are more directly and immediately

effected by labour issues than business issues though.

Perhaps the first step on getting the media back on

the right track is to convince some of the large media

sources that it would be in their best interests to

provide equal time to labour issues. Perhaps the first

step is stop buying their news.

 

Read more: www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=8248

www.thirdworldtraveler.com/McChesney/GlobalMedia

www.jaxeed.com/uk/imperial.htm

www.macroscan.com/cur/may03/cur220503Media_Imper---

Reverend Blair was raised in Saskatchewan and

currently lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He comes from a

long line of social activists and cried on Tommy

Douglas before his first birthday. His column appears

biweekly on Vive le Canada.

 

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