FCC commissioner:"President Eisenhower warned against the excesses of a military-industrial complex"

"In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird."

Orwell

commercials -- think the networks want to discourage a paying ADVERTISER when the Ad dollars are shrinking due to the Bush economy.

It starts out asking - in ominous tones, of course - what do you do when the enemy is secured in a place you wouldn't expect? ...and then the video game-esque surveillance graphics come into play as the voice over states that, paraphrasing, you keep an eye on the enemy at all times.

they all warn us, but we just don't listen.

Prime-time propaganda - How the White House secretly hooked network TV on its anti-drug message: A Salon special report.
By Daniel Forbes Jan 2000.

~snip~

Few Americans, however, know of a hidden government effort to shoehorn anti-drug messages into the most pervasive and powerful billboard of all -- network television programming.

Two years ago, Congress inadvertently created an enormous financial incentive for TV programmers to push anti-drug messages in their plots -- as much as $25 million in the past year and a half, with the promise of even more to come in the future. Under the sway of the office of President Clinton's drug czar, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, some of America's most popular shows -- including "ER," "Beverly Hills 90210," "Chicago Hope," "The Drew Carey Show" and "7th Heaven" -- have filled their episodes with anti-drug pitches to cash in on a complex government advertising subsidy.

~snip~

Rick Mater, the WB network's senior vice president for broadcast standards, acknowledges: "The White House did view scripts. They did sign off on them -- they read scripts, yes."

The arrangement, uncovered by a six-month Salon News investigation, is known to only a few insiders in Hollywood, New York and Washington. Almost none of the producers and writers crafting the anti-drug episodes knew of the deal. And top officials from the five networks involved last season -- NBC, ABC, CBS, the WB and Fox -- for the most part refused to discuss it. The sixth network, UPN, failed to attract the government's interest the first year of the program; it joined the flock this current TV season. The arrangement may violate payola laws that require networks to disclose, during a show's broadcast, arrangements with any party providing financial or other considerations, however direct or indirect.

~snip~

Much more at: http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2000/01/13/drugs/

And the '60s Generation constantly reminded us of it.

Only NOW is it acknowleged by a government official?

He as toady as the toadies come.

and being a major military contractor, there's a huge overlap there.

And other media companies are not going to rock the boat and go against GE, so in the name of being good "corporate citicizens" (a term, I really hear fairly often in the corporate world) you can end up with the news media protecting the military industry.

See it here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC53us-QfUc

see also Pentagon Propaganda Documents are now Online

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3256661