|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
Rogue newspapers or part of a continuum? |
|
by Systemic Disorder
(No verified email address) |
03 May 2012
|
|
Crude propaganda by the Murdoch empire vs. sophisticated propaganda elsewhere in corporate media |
You’ve got to hand it to the old pirate, Rupert Murdoch — he’s still at the top of his form. His performance at the “Leveson commission” in London last week was, in its own way, something to behold. Denying he seeks favors for his businesses, denying he has any influence, denying he knows anything that is happening within his company.
And Fox News is “fair and balanced.” There must be much unease within News Corp. these days, considering the number of old hands — some of whom worked there for decades — Murdoch so casually threw overboard. Before The Guardian last summer broke open the still unfolding News Corp. scandals, we were told hacking was the work of a single “rogue reporter.” Then it became the work of a single “rogue newspaper.” Next a “rogue country” perhaps? One can see where this might be headed, so Murdoch, in his two days of testimony last week, sought to head off the possibility that the, uh, whole company, might be “rogue” and so fell back on blaming his executives for keeping he and son James in the dark.
How much influence does Murdoch truly wield? Over the political process, evidentially plenty, considering how British politicians all feared his considerable wrath, and how cravenly Republicans in the U.S. seek the favors of Fox News. Media outlets that are wielded as weapons of destruction with no regard for reality, and readerships and viewerships in the millions, is coercive to democracy.
But do such outlets truly change minds and shape public opinion? What moves public opinion is repetition, and not repetition in a handful of obviously biased publications or networks, but rather repetition of viewpoints, reporting angles and underlying themes and assumptions, across the entire corporate media. There are a vast array of institutions, including corporations, “think tanks,” schools and militaries, to suffice a society with the viewpoints of the dominant, which in a capitalist society are its industrialists and financiers.
Full post at http://wp.me/p2cpPS-1g |
See also:
http://systemicdisorder.wordpress.com
|
Please Don't Feed the Trolls
Wikipedia defines an Internet Troll as: "An Internet troll is either a person who sends messages on the Internet hoping to entice other users into angry or fruitless responses, or a message sent by such a person." Boston IMC strives to provide both a grassroots media resource as well as a forum for people to contribute to a meaningful discussion about local issues. Please, when posting comments, be respectful of others and ignore those trying to interrupt or discourage meaningful discourse. Thank you.
-- Boston Indymedia volunteers
Due to on going anti spam work quick comments are currently broken please use the full comment form. We do hope to have quick comments back on line soon.
