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Benign Intent: Tools of Corporate Media Propaganda

January 2, 2015 By Simon Wood 4 Comments

In a healthy society governed by democratic principles and the rule of law, news media would be analogous to a powerful telescope, a roving, scrutinizing eye from which little or nothing can hide. Corrupt societies — ones that require the vast majority of the population to be passive, obedient, misinformed, ignorant, distracted and consumptive — require instead a media that acts as a kind of prism, a distorting lens that presents a perversion of reality.

The scale of this distortion varies greatly around the world, with some — mostly independent — media (sometimes lone journalists) laudably aiming to shine a torch as best they can on state and corporate power. At the other extreme, dictatorships like North Korea use state media to portray a false reality to help control their people, who nonetheless are surely aware that their freedoms are strictly limited.

Western corporate-owned media, however, is unique and quite remarkable in that while it depicts a reality as laughably false as that shown to the North Koreans, its readers/viewers — more accurately its consumers — are overwhelmingly unaware that they are being fed a pack of lies, that the picture given to them is — in key areas that concern corporate power and Western control of world resources — diametrically opposite to reality. With a corporate media monopoly over the information that enters people’s brains, information that is crucial to the formation of their worldview, reality is skewed with ease to serve the interests of capital and control. Not only are consumers of such information not aware of this cynical manipulation, they are not even aware that they are not aware.

Filed Under: Media & Culture Tagged With: 20th Century Fox, ABC News, Abu Ghraib, Alex Koppelman, Amplify, banks, Barack Obama, Barron’s, bias, Bill of Rights, Brazil, capitalism, Catechism of the Catholic Church, Catholic Church, CBS, Center for Research on Globalization, Central Intelligence Agency, Chechnya, CIA, CIA torture, class war, CNET, CNN, Comcast, Congo, Corporate America, corporate media, corporations, corruption, Cruise Lines, democracy, Disney, DJX, Dow Jones & Company, DPRK, Economist Magazine, Edward Bernays, Edward Snowden, Ellen Goodman, ESPN, Financial Times, Fox News, Fox News Channel, Fox News Corporation, freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, GCHQ, GCHQ JTRIG, Geneva Convention, Glenn Greenwald, Gustave Le Bon, Harper Collins Publishers, HBO, Hong Kong, Human Rights, Hyperion Books, IMF, imperialism, In Search of Enemies, intelligence, International Monetary Fund, Iraq, John Pilger, John Stanton, John Stockwell, Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, journalism, Latin America, mainstream media, Malala Yousafzai, Marvel Comics, MAX, Move Inc., National Security Agency, NBC Universal, neutrality, newspeak, Nobel Peace Prize, North Korea, NSA, oligarchy, Patrice Lumumba, Pearson, Penguin Random House, People Magazine., Philadelphia Flyers, poverty, propaganda, real estate, Reedy Energy Services., Russia, Russia Insider, Safa Younis Salim, Salon, Senate Intelligence Committee, Seymour Hersh, Simon & Schuster, Smithsonian Network, Sports Illustrated Kids, starvation, tax havens, taxes, The Intercept, Time magazine, Time Warner, Time Warner Cable., Tony Blair, torture, Touchstone Pictures, Umbrella Revolution, UNICEF, United Kingdom, United Nations, United Nations Convention Against Torture, United States Constitution, Vladimir Putin, Wall Street, Wall Street Journal, War, war crimes, weltanschauung, whistleblowers, World Bank

Why Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant Wants High Oil Prices for Fracking

December 1, 2014 By Steve Horn 2 Comments

Outgoing Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) chairman Phil Bryant — Mississippi’s Republican Governor — started his farewell address with a college football joke at IOGCC’s recent annual conference in Columbus, Ohio. Seconds later, things got more serious, as Bryant spoke to an audience of oil and gas industry executives and lobbyists, as well as state-level regulators.

“I know it’s a mixed blessing, but if you look at some of the pumps in Mississippi, gasoline is about $2.68 and people are amazed that it’s below $3 per gallon,” he said. “And it’s a good thing for industry, it’s a good thing for truckers, it’s a good thing for those who move goods and services and products across the waters and across the lands and we’re excited about where that’s headed.”

Bryant then discussed the flip side of the “mixed blessing” coin. “Of course the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale has a little problem with that, so as with most things in life, it’s a give and take,” Bryant stated. “It’s very good at one point and it’s helping a lot of people, but on the other side there’s a part of me that goes, ‘Darn! I hate that oil’s dropping, I hate that it’s going down.’ I don’t say that out-loud, but just to those in this room.”

Filed Under: Environment, National News Tagged With: ALEC, Aubrey McClendon, Bakken Shale, bloomberg, Chesapeake Energy, Columbus, Dan Dicker, Drilling Deeper A Reality Check on U.S. Government Forecasts for a Lasting Tight Oil & Shale Gas Boom, Eagle Ford Shale, enery, Floyd Wilson, fracked gas, Fracked Oil, fracking, Fraser Institute, gasoline, Halcón Resources Corp, hydraulic fracturing, Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, Jefferies LLC, MercBloc, Mississippi, Ohio, oil, oil and gas, oil prices, OPEC, Phil Bryant, Post Carbon Institute, Ralph Eads, Republican Party, Shale Bubble, State Policy Network, stink tanks, Texas, Tudor Pickering Holt & Co., Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, Utah, Wall Street Journal

Challenge & Promise In Germany’s Energiewende

October 15, 2014 By Kate Lanier 1 Comment

In 1997, the EU issued a Directive on Electricity Production from Renewable Energy Sources, with the modest goal of having 12% of electricity produced by renewable sources by 2010. Germany met that goal in 2007 and, flush with success, developed more challenging targets of its own:  40-45% electricity from renewables by 2025, 18% renewable energy […]

Filed Under: Environment, Foreign Affairs Tagged With: Angela Merkel, automobiles, BASF, Berlin, Brandenburg, carbon dioxide, Climate change, Der Spiegel, Directive on Electricity Production from Renewable Energy Sources, electric cars, Energiewende, environment, European Union, Feldheim, France, fuel efficiency, Fukushima, Germany, green movement, Greenpeace, natural gas, noise pollution, nuclear, nuclear power, renewable energy, Russia, Scientific American, solar power, Wall Street Journal, wind power

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