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The Corporate Media’s threat to Freedom
By Mike Whitney
11/15/05 "ICH
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There is no similarity between the corporate media and a “free
press”. The corporate media operates according to its structural
make-up, which requires it to serve the interests of ownership and
maximize profits. Its top-down style of management ensures that it
will align itself with the political centers of power which create
the opportunity for greater prosperity. This explains why the media
giants have consistently concealed the Bush administration’s attacks
on civil liberties, supported the expansion of executive power, and
paved the way for global war. After all, they are just acting in
their own best interest, accommodating the political establishment
to allow for more consolidation and expansion. One hand washes the
other.
The cozy relationship between the administration and the media has
made it nearly impossible to tell where one ends and the other
begins. In fact, the media is the primary instrument of state
policy. Its task is to shape the public’s perception of government
and to project a benign image of the US to the world beyond.
Naturally, this symbiotic relationship has intensified as the needs
of the administration have increased. Now, the media crafts the
storyline of American magnanimity while the US military carries out
war crimes in Falluja or torture in Baghdad. It showers praise on
the Dear Leader while thousands wallow in squalor in New Orleans or
are cluster-bombed in Tal Afar. It waves the flags and sings the
patriotic anthems that prepare the nation for war. The media has
become indistinguishable from the political establishment; executing
its duties in a manner that best serve the objectives of the state.
Confidence in the media has never been lower. A broad section of the
public doesn’t believe anything they read in the papers nor do they
see reporters as impartial observers of world events. This should be
no great surprise. The model of a privately-owned media ensures that
the facts are massaged to suit ownership; a practice that inevitably
undermines credibility.
The marriage between the media and the state increases the danger to
the public interests. This is especially true when the media becomes
a marketing tool for the government, promoting its vastly unpopular
wars, its attacks on the social safety-net, and its vicious assault
on civil liberties.
The media has become an adversary to the people it is supposed to
serve. It now functions exclusively as a weapon in the imperial
arsenal; exalting the state and its wartime agenda, while savaging
the institutions of democracy and personal liberty. Its role as
state-propagandist is conspicuous in everything from its blind
devotion to the president to its obfuscation of facts that discredit
the administration.
If we consider a few of the critical stories the mainstream media
suppressed, we get a clearer idea of its overall agenda.
The media refused to cover the allegations of irregularities in the
2004 presidential election; dismissing the anomalies as conspiracy
theories. Independent investigations have cast serious doubt on the
legitimacy of the balloting, and just last week, the GAO confirmed
suspicions that widespread voter fraud may have taken place. Whether
or not the elections were fairly conducted is immaterial; given the
suspicious results of the 2000 election, this was a story that
should have been covered. Instead, it was purposely ignored to
silence critics and divert attention from the dysfunctional
electoral system.
The media has refused to cover the massive and devastating siege of
Falluja; an assault that displaced 250,000 civilians and
intentionally destroyed water lines, electrical power, sewage
treatment plants, government buildings, hospitals and schools. Even
now, a full year later, journalists have been kept from entering the
city or photographing the largest single war crime of the ongoing
conflict. And, even though news services around the world are
confirming the use of banned weapons, including napalm and other
“unidentified” substances during the attack, the American media
refuses to give details or demand an independent investigation. It
is interesting to compare the media’s silence on the carnage in Iraq
to its front-page coverage of the assassination of former Lebanese
Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Lavish attention has been devoted to
Hariri’s death because it advances the administration’s foreign
policy goals. Once again, the media is clearing the path for future
imperial conflicts by building the case for war against Syria.
The media has also refused to cover the Downing Street Memo; the
damning document written by a member of Tony Blair’s national
security team who verified that Bush planned to “remove Saddam
through military force” as early as July, 2003 (even though the
administration was saying that that it would “exhaust all peaceful
means”) The unprovoked attack would be “justified by the conjunction
of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being
fixed around the policy.”
Even though the memo provided the first piece of irrefutable
evidence that the administration deliberately manipulated the facts,
no American newspaper referred to the memo for more than 7 weeks
after its discovery. The details of the Downing Street Memo are
still unknown to many Americans, allowing Bush to continue to deny
the cherry-picking of pre-war intelligence. The memo proves that
Bush is lying.
The media has also refused to provide any coverage of the
mercenaries who were deployed to the streets of New Orleans
following Hurricane Katrina. This is the first time in American
history that a foreign (corporate) army has carried out operations
on US soil. The media made sure that no photos of these corporate
warriors appeared in any of the newspapers or TV programs. The
absence of coverage raises serious questions about censorship in
Bush’s America.
The media refuses to provide news of the Iraq war and the
devastation of Sunni heartland. Al Qaim, Husbaya, and Tel Afar have
all been attacked with the same ferocity as Falluja; forcing the
townspeople to flee and then destroying the water, electricity,
sewage and other critical parts of the infrastructure. The Pentagon
is now engaged in a scorched earth strategy knowing full well that
its policy of killing journalists will keep the story from being
reported. The obliteration of these cities shows that the military
has abandoned the idea of achieving a political solution in Iraq.
The present strategy is aimed at “destroying the resistance’s
ability to wage war”, by systematically laying to waste one city
after another. This is the Rumsfeld solution, but you won’t find it
in the media.
The news from Iraq focuses entirely on the random acts of violence
which perpetuate racial stereotypes of Islamic extremists. This
provides the justification for the continuing American occupation.
The media has worked in conjunction with the Pentagon to create the
story of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; the embodiment of a ruthless Muslim
fanatic who kills simply because he “hates freedom”.
No one can categorically deny that Zarqawi may exist. The fact is,
however, that there has never been a positive identification of him,
nor has anyone ever provided concrete proof of his whereabouts.
Reporters are responsible to provide the facts to their readers, not
to promote a narrative that suits the Pentagon’s agenda.
These are just a few of the stories that the media has refused to
cover because they conflict with the goals of the administration. If
we look deeper we see that the Cheney Energy papers, the 9-11
“whitewash, the corporate scandals, the “Able Danger” program, and
the attacks on civil liberties, have all met a similar fate. Stories
that are incompatible with the aims of ownership or administration
policy are usually left on the cutting room floor.
Freedom is impossible where the information systems are monopolized
by private industry. Democracy requires that people have access to
divergent points of view so they can form opinions free from
coercive influences. The corporate model aims at uniformity in order
to limit the range of debate and promote a business-friendly agenda.
In America, the news has become a study in uniformity; presenting
the very same topics from precisely the same perspective. This
creates the impression that the facts are generally agreed upon,
which is not the case. 65% of the American people do not support the
media’s pro-war stance, and yet, the anti-war position is nowhere to
be found on commercial TV.
The war on terror is not simply a misguided crusade against
non-state actors like Al Qaida. It is a sweeping plan for global
corporate domination. Managing information is vital to that effort.
Knowledge is power, and there is a deliberate attempt to seize that
power by controlling the sources of information. In effect, it is
the privatization of the truth; standardizing information through
greater media consolidation and disseminating it through its own
filtering systems. Its inhibiting effects on our democracy have
already been seen in the curtailing of civil liberties and the
twisting of facts that led to the Iraq war. The further merging of
the state and the media portend a strengthening of autocratic
government and a loss of personal liberty.
The multi-headed dragon of corporate media must be confronted and
defeated. Al Qaida may pose a threat to our security, but the
alliance of state and media poses a clear and present danger to our
freedom.
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