'The stupefaction of a nation'

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=14106

Corporate Media Propaganda and its Weapons of Mass Distraction

By Manuel Valenzuela

He who controls the media controls the masses. Today, America's media is controlled exclusively by fewer than a dozen multinational conglomerates and their many interests. NewsCorp, AOL, Viacom, General Electric, Disney and others have formed a media oligarch that reaches into every American home and most every citizen. These few omnipresent entities hold as paramount the belief in assuring for themselves perpetual loyalty from as many of the masses as possible. Revenue and profit, corporate growth and power, executive pay and ego, these are all determined by us, the masses, and helps explain why the oligarchy has decided to invest and take an interest in all forms of media that reaches and influences us.

We are the lifeblood of the conglomerate, of vital importance, and, as such, it is in its best interest to control as much of our lives as possible, transforming us into obedient servants of obliviousness. Is it no coincidence, then, that the United States has become a nation whose masses no longer question authority or the propaganda that passes for news? Is it any wonder why we seem so ignorant as to what is being done to us and incurious as to what is happening in the world, readily and naively accepting as true everything that is spewed out of our televisions and newspapers? We have allowed the oligarchy to hide the keys of democracy while we carelessly follow it on the road to fascism, where the elite have control of all aspects of our lives, including our mind.

We live at a time when capitalism's inner demons are beginning to be exhumed from the catacombs of the human ego, when love for the almighty dollar and her sister greed blinds those basking in the hypnotizing light of greenbacks and materialism. This phenomenon, combined with the addictions spurred by power and pomposity, has created in the last several decades a need by the powerful elite to manipulate and condition the masses; to transform and mold us into subservient drones that neither think, question, participate or demand.

Through the use of the television -- the most influential instrument of control and propaganda in present day America ñ conglomerates can direct and sway public opinion on virtually every subject they see fit. The television has become an opiate for the masses and a conduit from where conglomerates can dictate how society thinks, acts and evolves. Our habits and ethics are manipulated, our ideas and beliefs distorted. We are but pawns in a game of corporate capitalism played by a few elites whose economic interests lie in making us docile, conformist and oblivious creatures of mediocrity ingrained with the need to shop and consume. The system instills a sense of paralysis, isolation and uniformity among the masses. We are assimilated to conform to society, to incorporate how the oligarchy wants us to live. The derailment of democracy as we know it is the end result of the reality we are presently experiencing.

It's called the off button. Sure wish many would do the same.

"to transform and mold us into subservient drones that neither think, question, participate or demand".

I think it's called "education"

a period of detox the programming becomes really obvious. And tv itself is really jarring, especially the commercials.
And trying to tell people is like talking to an addict, they adamantly don't believe you, or they say they do agree with you, shake their head and get right back into it. Just like a drug.

But, not everyone who watches a lot of tv is programmed. Which is interesting, considering the onslaught. Maybe it's like not everyone who drinks a lot becomes an alcoholic, or everyone who seeks religion becomes a fundamentalist.

This is an interesting experiment we as a culture are performing on our members. I guess that poll where they looked at levels of misconceptions about the war based on viewership (Fox,NBC,CBS,PBS/NPR)would be a good place to start. Look at the predominantly Fox viewers who didn't have the misconceptions, now that's an interesting number.

and have them appoint "our" leaders.. Because that is the way it works out under the system we have.

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the damned Republican manufactured and programmed voting machines!

When will the Coup of 2000 be reported?!

...private corporate property. They exist in the common domain ostensibly regulated by government but with Congressional corruption have metasticized into strictly private tyrannical domains. It is like a few corporations claiming that the street belongs to them or the space that power and telephone wires pass through belongs to them. It doesn't really, it's public domain. But our elected representatives have chosen to forget that for a buck. Of course media can be very unkind to recalcitrant legislators. Those who comply with the baron's wishes receive his favors. Therefore, the people's common domain is turned over to the robber barons without a shadow of the former public interest represented on the airwaves.

We passed from feudalism, to bourgeous society and representative government and back to feudalism again. The interesting thing about the new corporate feudalism is that the common areas essential to reciprocal obligations of the leaders toward the lead are once again absent (gobbled up by overbearing greed) providing the impetus if not for revolution, for a tidal wave of popular reform.

What did Anton Scalia say? "Money is free speech?" This is the corporate version of Constitutional law. Free speech privatized. The commons don't exist anymore, there is no grazing area, no public square nor park, they exist only as vestigal remnants of age in which something called the common interest existed. Now every molecule, every electron, every H2O, every propagation of energy, every nanometer of two dimensional and three dimensional space is privatized and corporatized. There is no public domain.

I used to work for a media monitoring firm which basically meant we listened to the media all day and night 365 days a year and reported to the various companies and govt's as to what was said by whom - companies would also pay us to track what dollar value they got out sponsoring a certain charity (usually they'd only cough up the "philanthropic donation" if the likely free advertising was worth more than the "gift" but I digress)

During that sick making two years I completely gave up on the corporate media and have been better informed for it. I utilise the web to read a wide variety of international and local, political, financial and social news - on the odd occaision I tune into a commercial TV/radio station or leaf through a newspaper I usually find coverage of stories I read days before in independent sources, and the coverage is piss poor.

Eg - picked up the local Murdoch rag on the train yesterday and they had JUST gotten around to reporting the US bans non combatants from recon contracts - and they didnt mention the illegality of it just a lot of waffle about Australia may be able to pick a few crumbs from the floor after US/UK companies have had their feed and they seemed HAPPY about this - there was ONE sentance that said "some countries may protest the decision" that was it as far as opposition was canvassed.

If you have access to the net and a decent library you can easilly give up watching corp propaganda - as said above when you do happen to catch it after a break the bullshit and bias is so much more obvious.

That said I still watch Faux News quite regularly - it's funnier than anything on the Comedy Channel

Check your private mail for some off thread questions.