The Weekend Economists' Panglossian Pandemic January 20-22, 2012

[Demeter]

13. You Can't Fool Mother Nature For Long: Mainstream Media by Charles Hugh Smith

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-you-cant-fool-mother-nature-long-mainstream-media

The Corporate Media in the U.S. is a handmaiden to the Financial and Political Elites, issuing simulacra of "news" and "analysis" in service of the Status Quo. If there is any America "industry" ripe for widespread discrediting, it is the U.S. Corporate Media--the six corporations that own most of the media outlets the conventional American sees, hears and reads. This week's theme is You Can't Fool Mother Nature For Long, and this is how it plays out in MediaLand:

when the disconnect between the actual economy
and what the American people are told is factual and true
about the U.S. economy and its Financial Elites by their Corporate Media
widens to surrealism,
then
the conventional American who has passively accepted propaganda in place of reality
will finally abandon belief in the "fairness and integrity" of the Mainstream Media,
and see it for what it is: a corporate house of prostitution,
where everything is for sale to the highest bidder.

Ask yourself how many hard-hitting, high-visibility series on the underbelly of American sickcare have been issued by any Mainstream Media outlet. Then look at how many of these outlets live off the revenues of adverts for pharmaceutical products, health insurance, fast foods and packaged foods-- all industries that are profiteering from the current sickcare system.

The answer, as far as I can discern, is (unsurprisingly) zero.

Present-day journalism in America has an unspoken double-standard. Any "news" story or analysis based on press releases from Central State fiefdoms such as the CBO, Medicare, BLS, etc. is accepted without reservations or independent inquiry, or indeed, even basic journalistic skepticism, while any reports that are critical of the Status Quo are treated quite differently: sources are treated as suspect, critical comments are always countered with official assurances, high-visibility "experts" are tapped to dismiss the criticism, and finally, the story is buried: it runs on a public-service broadcast in the wee hours of the morning, it is relegated to page B-19 in the newspaper, and it briefly appears at the bottom of a list of web stories that is quickly "refreshed" before too many people can spot it...

We now live in an era of unmitigated propaganda that is accepted much as propaganda in wartime: we all know it's been censored or gussied up with positive spin, but we accept it as "necessary" because the Status Quo is under threat. This "rally round the flag" mentality in wartime allows horrendous officially sanctioned errors and the resultant loss of life to be glossed over or simply buried, lest the Home Front get discouraged by official incompetence or error.

There is a subtext of this very belief system in the constantly cheery presentation of the "economic recovery" in painfully bogus unemployment statistics and analyses that are lacking in even Journalism 101 skepticism: we know it's all bogus but we fear the truth. So we accept the propaganda as "necessary for morale."There is a difference between now and World War II, though. In a full-blown global war, the nation itself was at risk. Now, it is the Financial and Political Elites who are risk. The Corporate Media's first and most critical line of propaganda is that if America's Financial and Political Elites fall, so too does the nation.This is of course false. The nation would be infinitely better off if its current crop of craven, corrupt Financial and Political Elites were revealed as financially and ethically bankrupt and delivered from great power into ignominious disgrace. A truly independent media would have been highlighting this reality daily since the financial house of cards began collapsing in 2007. Instead, the Corporate Media has presented the saving of the financial and political Status Quo Elites as the equivalent of saving the nation itself. This is self-serving, of course, but it is also fascist: the Corporate Media and the Central State are now essentially one.