[NLA] Media Alert

[Andres Muro]

I am reading a book by Chomsky and some other guy that was published recently. It is called the Guardians of Freedom  (In Spanish) I don't know the English name. In the book, the authors explain that there are 6 filters that limit what the media does. The filters are:

1. The major news entities are few and are huge corporations owned by stock holders (NBS, FOX, CNN, Gannett, UPI, etc). Principal stockholders are wealthy capitalists, with certain ideologies. It is likely that what media does has something to do with he ideology of major stockholders.

2. Advertisers will always advertise so that they can sell. No news that make their companies or ideologies look bad will get companies to buy advertising space.

3. news sources are usually, government agencies like the white house, the pentagon, the police department, large corporations. Their press releases, and media announcements most likely will portrait them in a favorable light. 

4. government entities and  powerful corporations have huge media departments with huge budgets to give credibility to their media releases and news related to them; and to make disfavorable news look weak.

5. There are legal bodies designed to prevent news media from portraying corporations negatively. They will bring legal action against anyone who portrays them negatively, unless, there is overwhelming evidence against an entity. 

6. To invalidate news, government and corporations can always label something communist, socialist, Marxist or leftist. the mere use of these terms applied to individuals or organizations can nullify any content. 

Of course, journalists and the media can circumvent all these filters in order to get "objective' news. However, the barriers are pretty significant. 

On ideological topics, I don't listen to the news to get the facts. I simply listen to the news to find out who died, what movies are playing, etc. I don't understand how some people devote so much time to watching the news. Someone referred to the news as "Manufacture of Consent" 

Andres


>>> KathleenBombach at aol.com 01/12/02 02:22PM >>>
We all know that media programming exists to sell products, but that is no 
reason not to fight to bring issues of our concern to the forefront. No one 
watches television just to watch the ads.

Journalism is a field with practitioners, too, and they learn professional 
ethics and understand their responsibility to inform the public. What is 
happening to the media today is unique: huge corporations are gobbling up 
multiple news sources and many fear they are standardizing their content. So 
instead of hearing news from multiplt independent sources, we are reading, 
viewing, and hearing the same news from multiple dependent sources--and we 
probably do not know it.

An example. You decide to go to the movies, so you watch your favorite film 
critic on TV to decide which current movie is the best. He is most positive 
about one movie in particular. You also notice that the news station you 
watch the most is covering the making of that particular movie with a great 
deal of fanfare, and your Internet provider is doing the same thing. In fact, 
you cannot go online without seeing that particular movie featured on their 
website. You decide to see the movie--with so many different people and 
sources featuring this movie, it is bound to be good.

What you do not know is that the same corporation owns the movie production 
company owns your ISP and the network with the film critic and the cable news 
network you watch. You are not hearing many different voices, you just think 
you are. 

Kathleen Bombach

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