While we have been accustomed to a diversity of media outlets in the U.S. many people do not understand the degree to which those corporate elitists of the far right have been hacking away at the diversity that is the cornerstone of any democracy. With attacks on the anti-trust legislation that was designed to prevent monopoly in American business including the media and merger upon merger now consolidating all of the giant media corporations into the hands of a very few people it is little wonder that the “news” resembles a “right wing echo chamber” as it is now often called. More people are becoming aware of the extremely propagandistic nature of our media and the treason being committed by those who control it as well as the Federal Communications Commission. Below is the video of Bill Moyers recent address in Memphis Tenn. before the National Conference for Media Reform in two parts.
We can see the icy cold hand of totalitarian control of what we must think in our local market with the establishment of the Eureka Reporter using the FOX “news” formula of bait and switch programing. The extreme slant and the Bill O’Reilly arrogance with which it is deployed are a threat to us all. The problem is not so much on the opinion pages, where you can often find more factual content than the rest of the paper, but in that which is presented as “news”, hand picked and rapidly spun, it offers a bully pulpit to the anti-democratic elitists who want to get even richer and more powerful at the expense of the rest of us, the environment or whatever else their greed dictates.
With people like Bill Moyers and a few others in the main stream speaking out it seems like a very good time for a, ah, surge of activity in order to bring a democratic media to America upon which a genuine democracy. It is not free speech when a hand full of people dominate the media for their own sake and it is therefor no infringement upon their right of free speech when we demand an end to the monopolistic practices and the corrupt manipulation of our government agencies such as the FCC which have no purpose other than to stifle dissent and allow only the propaganda of the Fascist right to be heard. Fascism, after al, simply means a government controlled by big business.
PART ONE of BILL MOYERS ADDRESS TO THE NCMR
PART TWO