Video & Multimedia
In reply to the discussion: Why Doesn't the Media Care About Dead Palestinians? [View all]PatrickforO
(15,432 posts)produce the stories; the camerapeople, computer folks, clerks, etc. However, those who OWN the media are in fact the <1%. Consider Rupert Murdoch. He has final say in what his networks put out.
I think the person who called the media the <1% was making the point that corporate oligarchs exert direct or indirect censorship control over what is published or aired.
An example: my wife and I were watching the documentary 'The Sixties.' It's pretty well done, and the episode we were watching was about the Freedom Riders during the Civil Rights movement. The media was very segregated at that time, particularly in Mississippi. They would only report negative things about civil rights activists, ridicule them or downplay them, and were virulently pro-segregation. Medgar Evers demanded equal time on the air. Because of the 'fairness doctrine,' stations had to give him time, and a few weeks later he was murdered by a Klan coward.
The national media at that time at least made the effort to report news, and when Bull Connor and the rest of the bigots brought out the vicious dogs and firehoses to torment black children, Americans throughout the nation were offended by the footage - they saw what was ACTUALLY going on and went south in droves to help the civil rights movement.
Now, fast forward just under 2 decades on that unhappy day in January 1981 when Ronald Reagan injected himself into the White House like a plague bacillus. One of his first acts was to overturn the 'fairness doctrine.' This opened the way for giants like Walter Winchell, Cronkite and the rest to be replaced by propagandists like Limbaugh, Krystal and the Fox News gang.
I would aver that the today's national media tend to report things and highlight 'issues' that keep money flowing to the military-industrial-security complex Ike first warned us about.
As to the tragic killings of Palestinians, do you really think most Americans value their lives as highly as our own? This is the problem, you see - the 'enemy' is a shadow one, labeled 'terrorists.' As long as we dehumanize them (consider the brave 'patriotic' Americans demonstrating against that busload of kids at the border) - as long as the enemy has no face, then it is easy not to value their lives as highly as our own. Yet in the eyes of many on this earth, it is we who are the real terrorists. Again, consider our drone policies.