Is our media controlled by big business

[luckyleftyme2]

Is big business controlling our political system? is the media being influenced by money?
who is really behind some of these programs on nbc,abc,cbs.
Who is "Tim Russert" of meet the press real boss? isn't "nbc" owned by "GE"? aren't they the second largest corporation on the planet? aren't they heavily involved with military contracts? Is this why "HILLARY" has been treated so poorly from the press.From the git go she has said get our troops out of Iraq.(hm mm) PR FLASH RUDY will beat any democrat!
WHERES RUDY,RUDY WHO!
THE right has slammed 'HILLARY "from the get go because they had no one to compete with her on a level playing field.
So whats next if Obama wins the nomination will the three net works get together and slam him into "rudy ville"
this is the year for democrats to ban together and vote straight democratic ticket.

[Echo In Light]

1. It's been this way for a long time. Some links:

Great doc film on the subject: Orwell Rolls In His Grave
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1179175516550155628&q=orwell+rolls+in+his+grave&total=308&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4&hl=en

"What you want in a media system is ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity."

Manufacturing Consent: Chomsky and The Media
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5631882395226827730&q=manufacturing+consent&total=263&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0&hl=en

The Myth of The Liberal Media
http://www.webpan.com/dsinclair/myths.html

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030224/alterman2

Myth: The U.S. has a liberal media.

Fact: The media are being increasingly monopolized by parent corporations with pro-corporate or conservative agendas.

Summary

The U.S. media are rapidly being monopolized by a dwindling number of parent corporations, all of whom have conservative economic agendas. The media are also critically dependent upon corporations for advertising. As a result, the news almost completely ignores corporate crime, as well as pro-labor and pro-consumer issues. Surveys of journalists show that the majority were personally liberal in the 1980s, but today they are centrists, with more conservatives than liberals on economic issues. However, no study has proven that they give their personal bias to the news. On the other hand, the political spectrum of pundits -- who do engage in noisy editorializing -- leans heavily to the right. The most extreme example of this is talk radio, where liberals are almost nonexistent. The Fairness Doctrine was designed to prevent one-sided bias in the media by requiring broadcasters to air opposing views. It once enjoyed the broad support of both liberals and conservatives. But now that the media have become increasingly owned and controlled by corporations, conservatives defiantly oppose the Fairness Doctrine. This is probably the best proof that the media's bias is conservative, not liberal.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-liberalmedia.htm

[laylah]

2. Does a bear

sh*t in the woods (they do, I have seen bear scat:P )? Does a hobby-horse have a hickory d*ck? Just askin' :shrug: And yes, we must ban together and vote a straight dem ticket in November. It may be our only chance after this debacle of a Primary.

[stillcool]

3. The only problem with the televised media..

is the people who watch it. How else could a mass of people work themselves up in a dither over the most inane, inconsequential use of 'a word', and yet be so submissive to torture, war, and the out-sourcing of our country?

Norman Solomon page
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Norman_Solomon/Norman_Solomon_page.html

The Politics of News Media
from the book
False Hope
by Norman Solomon, 1994

Corporate control is not interference in the newsroom-if you own an institution you aren't interfering in it, you're running it. Orwell anyone? The conditioned reflex of "stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought." The doublethink process "has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. "
The debilitating obstacles that face journalists-and the rest of us-are primarily institutional. If we push hard to challenge the institutions around us, the struggle can change us for the better in the process. Rather than succumbing to the media manipulation that continues to foreclose better options, we can tune up our personal and collective "radar screens" to track unidentified flying propaganda. Determination to battle for more autonomy over our own possibilities-as individuals, as people communicating with each other, and as a society- opens up new and vital horizons.
In contrast, evading the truth of corporate power over news media is a disorienting mental traffic pattern that keeps tromping a path of political confusion. False mappings of society immobilize us to the great extent that we trust public mythologies more than firsthand realities. Imagine if Rand McNally and its competitors issued maps that had little resemblance to actual streets and highways and terrain. To the extent that we believed those maps, we'd be unable to go much of anywhere; we wouldn't be able to plan our journeys, or meet up with other people; for that matter we wouldn't even really know where we were.
"The news" and punditry provide orientation- guiding the public's perception and navigation of the world. At various times, on various subjects, the media compass needle may actually be pointing south, north, east or west; it's no accident that conventional accounts of politics are disorienting, since they take citizens on detours every day-away from clarity about power: who wields it, how, and why. (Astute investors would never make the mistake of trying to get their bearings from the "A" sections of daily newspapers.) As informative compasses, the mass media indicate much more about how those in power want us to perceive and navigate the world than about how the world really is.
Popularized renderings of reality, however phony, supply us with shared illusions, suitable for complying with authorized itineraries, the requisite trips through never-never lands of public pretense. Privately, we struggle to make sense of our experiences; perhaps we can create some personal space so that our own perceptions and emotions have room to stretch. But the limits of privatized solutions are severe. Public spheres determine the very air we breathe and the social environments of our lives. The standard detours meander through imposing landscapes. Beyond the outer limits of customary responses, uncharted territory is "weird"-certainly not familiar from watching TV or reading daily papers. Following in the usual footsteps seems to be safer.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media_control_propaganda/False_Hope.html

Broadcast Media watch
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Broadcast_Media/Broadcast_Media.html