The corporate media in our country has gone from being a public trust that had an obligation to serve the public good and conform to the people's will to be able to retain its license(s), to the mouthpiece of the global corporate oppressor who now gives us orders, and it was the killing of the Fairness Doctrine that brought it about. When that happened, the FCC lost its real purpose and reason for existence, and the broadcast industry and what it was supposed to be, shifted from a concern about the welfare of the people and the rights of the Nation, to a total, and civic-killing, emphasis on the "property rights" and "ownership" of rich capitalists. The entire broadcast industry went from being the public forum of the Nation and the discussion of its important issues--often the catalyst for great social change, by analyzing protests and new movements, and presenting opinions on issues with an attitude of education and an educated public--to the personal property of rich hoarders who were now free to use TV and radio stations only as moneymakers for themselves, and to push their own selfish monolithic propaganda, every minute of every day, to their own advantage, cutting out the entire American population.
This set of policies covered not only "equal time" access for candidates, but fair coverage of all issues, and an opportunity for people who could demonstrate that their side of an issue was either not presented at all or was slandered, to reply. The 1969 case of Red Lion Broadcasting vs. FCC, which upheld the Constitutionality of the rule, was about just such a thing. Red Lion had put on a program on the "Christian Crusade," an archconservative group, and had attacked an author, Fred J. Cook, during the program. Cook requested an opportunity to respond, and was denied. Cook sued, and the suit was taken all the way to the Supreme Court, which at that time was not a branch of the Republican Party, and so it won on the merits. The whole basis of the law was that the people have rights, and corporations are going to respect them. Then that bastard Reagan came along, refused to enforce FCC rules, and finally killed the Fairness Doctrine itself. This allowed a total unbalancing of opinions that were to appear on the media from then on. Extremist corporate archconservatism, which represented a minute portion of the population, was now the only voice heard, and personal attacks now were not even able to be answered. Deliberate falsehoods now stand uncorrected, and all news coverage is reduced and trivialized. (FAIR had a really good article in its "Extra" Magazine, by the way, this past Feb. It is on their website, at
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2053 "The Fairness Doctrine: How We Lost It, and Why We Need It Back.")
You have no idea what levels the corporate propaganda has reached, how complete, even obsessive, the manipulation is now, unless you have access to other perspectives. With that cut off, and the number of people giving all opinions shrinking--fewer corporations owning everything, so it is like there are only 3 or 4 actual channels, and fewer differences of opinion--the media now is just a drumbeat, merciless, (attempting to be) hypnotic, offensive, more and more visually hysterical all the time, and giving the effect of a distant, now totally cut-off corporate propagandist oppressing us. Forcing the law changes they want, telling it the way they want, attacking whomever and whatever they want, and shifting all their taxes onto us. Now, unable to make public, coherent statements of support for our anger and opposition to it all, no real fight against it can be organized. Many people, too overworked to study these issues, do not even know how widespread the hatred of the corporate oppressor now is, so the resultant movement against it can never build up, because it can never focus its knowledge and agreement, and seek the next step, action. This is the profoundest violation of the people that the corporate media does, and knowingly. It stops us from being our own coherent society, apart from them, and affecting things the way we want. They are always interposed between what we as a society would do, and the mechanisms needed to get change rolling. We are now always silenced, in the dark, and unable to operate or control anything in our own country anymore, all the while listening to the horrible, acrid voice of global capitalism telling us that outsourcing and union-busting, pension-killing and wage-reductions, price-gouging and Republican corporations counting election votes, are all fine, fine, fine... Sleep.
Once, the media was the extension of the Nation's real population, and was legally under its control. It was a multitude of small and large corporations, none of whom had control of propaganda over us. Now, with anti-trust laws gone, it is as a monolith, facing us with hostility, actually studying how to fool and trick us, then have deniability later. This seems to me to be the only place to start, to work up a real, general hatred of these traitors--since we are censored, attacked, cannot get (UNEDITED) air time and cannot get fair coverage of any issue anymore. First, tell the situation clearly, so people will know what this corporate threat is, how it got there and what they do, what we lost and how it undermines everything we want to accomplish as a society every day. We cannot even solve our own ordinary problems anymore, with this enemy blocking us. Get people to hate it, and disconnect from it, and most of the task will be accomplished; it will then start to lose its power over us, when people routinely know how it lies and manipulates every issue against us and for itself. If you cannot yet affect the situation, at least first disenthrall yourself, so the lies stop working.
Realize that as soon as the Fairness Doctrine was killed, the corporate media became the biggest treasonous threat that the American people ever faced.
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