"I think if you're a regular viewer of Fox News, you're among the most cynical people on planet Earth," Keller (Bill Keller, New York Times editor) said. "I cannot think of a more cynical slogan than 'Fair and Balanced' "
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Corporate Media Again…
Here’s an article that again to the concerns about corporate controlled media. The evening news programs continue to be ‘entertainment’ rather than the providing of complete facts… Have a read.
“ABC World News With Diane Sawyer kicked off its "Made in America" series on February 28, encouraging consumers to buy U.S.-made products in order to spur job growth. But why focus on consumers and not major corporations like ABC parent Disney, who are the ones who actually choose to manufacture products overseas?
The February 28 report consisted of reporter David Muir touring one family's home, discovering that the vast majority of the family's possessions are not made in the United States. Muir even checks the children's toys, only to discover that they are mostly made in China.
Consumers, of course, do not choose where the products offered in their local stores are manufactured. Instead of focusing on what consumers should do with their limited choices, why not focus on the much more powerful decisions made by major corporations--like Disney? FAIR founder Jeff Cohen (CommonDreams, 2/27/11) checked the label at the Disney Store website:
What would be more helpful is a TV news series that scrutinizes the powerful U.S. corporations that make decisions every day determining what products mainstream Americans have access to.
I scrutinized Disney myself by going to DisneyStore.com -- "Official Site for Disney Merchandise." The first 40 products I looked at were all listed as "Imported."
As Muir put it at the close of the segment, "Economists say if we spent 1 percent more than what we're spending now on American goods, we could create 200,000 jobs immediately."
"That's 18 cents a day!" anchor Diane Sawyer exclaimed. The following night (3/1/11) Sawyer reiterated that point, telling viewers that spending just $64 a year will create 200,000 U.S. jobs.
Why is the focus on consumers--and not corporations? Will the ABC series talk about Disney, whose reliance on cheap labor is well-documented? The company's history is not encouraging. As FAIR pointed out (Action Alert, 11/20/00), ABC News killed critical investigations into Disney theme parks and sweatshops, evidence of a larger pattern:
One ABC producer says that the need to avoid news stories that might displease Disney "comes up all the time" because "no one here wants to piss off the bosses" (New Yorker, 8/14/00).
The closest ABC came on February 28 to mentioning Disney was noting that the family being profiled lives on Snow White Drive.”
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
The newest threat?
As I grew up in the 50’s it was the communist threat that we were warned about. That was continued as the 60’s saw this country embroiled in another war we chose to enter to “deter the domino effect of the communist movement”. Again, history has shown the folly of that decision. For the next two decades we were told the ‘cold war’ demanded our obscene investment in the same military/industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower had warned us about as he left office. Fear of the communist threat was again the rational for enriching the elite corporations that have now grown to control our government. (So who was the REAL threat?)
It’s probably not necessary to elaborate further on the many lies and deceptions that justified our entry into a war in the middle east that continues to roll on, now as the longest war we ever engaged in; once again, enriching the very people and corporations who lied to us about the need for the war in the first place! how is it that the citizenry continues to accept this ongoing propaganda campaign when there are ACTUAL threats present within our borders now! And I’m not talking about some Islamophobic plot.
Right here in Wisconsin we currently have a REAL and ACTUAL threat bearing down on the freedoms of the middle class; and somehow the perpetrators of this threat have managed to convince large numbers of people, using tea party tactics, to carry water for the oligarchy and its attempts to seize even more control! Governor Scott Walker, in his short two months in office has done more to create and fuel social discontent than any of his predecessors in the past 150+ years. He is demonstrably a mere pawn in the hands of the moneyed elites (read Koch brothers, Rupert Murdock, et. al.) to destroy our government from the inside…. The same crime the poorly organized communist movement in this country was accused of for so many years.
So where’s the outcry!
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