social control and television

[Eagle Wing]

ever read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451?

it's scary that his futuro-fascist nightmare scenario seems to be closer and closer every day. Wall sized plasma TVs are here, and I don't know about the rest of you, but on one occasion there were definitely people in the TV looking directly at me and speaking to me.

well, at least that was way more interesting than CSI

a word of reminder for everyone, and caution to any of the younger people out there:
if you want to be in touch with PSI it is better to avoid the tube.

[Agent Smith]

you know it gets even creepier when you realize that a television is beaming energy/radiation directly into your neurovisual cortex, at a specific frequency...

..all very nice, espcially when you realize that they've had decades to perfect what ever it is they're up to.

[nanouk]

i believe certain people need the television to stay in touch with their reality. many peple have never read a book in their life, or life after school, more often...and many people have never left the boundaries of their city, province or borough...

i am now at the stage in my personal life, when my spelling is so bad from having had writers block for years, and need to get out of it...but as i said to the Singing Detective today, my books would probably be banned even if published anyway, haha!

what is even more evil, is subliminal advertising through music... we got the Big Mac through PWEI, and soon enough Life on Mars by Bowie would be the theme tune for Philip K. Dick's movie...with a Mars Bar advert in the trailer of course!

the biggest trouble with too much television is heart disease...

...but i bet the pharmaceutical companies love that )0:

Love & Respect,

Nanouk

[ May 08, 2005, 08:20 AM: Message edited by: nanouk ]

[Humming]

Television is MK Ultra 10 years later; voluntary implantation of false memories that condition the human mind to certain standards behavior and expectations of what life is like.

Oh, and also the belief that successful capitalism and material consumption are the only meaningful values that our society should strive to embody.

I forget who said, "Man is never more enslaved than when he thinks he is free." Perhaps Huxley?

[DogSoldiers]

I perhaps owe my life to that book. That and my wonderful high school English teacher who introduced the book to me (and my class). I can still recall the day when he started talking about how the system is set up and out of nowhere something deep inside of me connected (like god had turned on the pantry light) and my brain went haywire. After that I had to walk, and think, and walk. It was amazing. That's how I "woke up". Right there in English class.

Another great book for those wanting to learn or learn more about TV is "Five Arguments for the Elimination of TV" by Jerry Mander. I'm sure a few of you have heard of it, but I like to make double sure for those that haven't.

Also, isn't the exact "beaming energy/radiation" peering into us now as we glance at our computer monitors?!? (being rhetorical here)

[willoweyes]

Dogsoldier, that book was a red pill for a lot of kids--and to think they made us read it in high school!

As for your (rhetorical) comment about computer screens--there are of course actual and probably harmful rays being emitted--and the whole computer thing is almost inexplicably addicting. Who would have thought that children would give up the outdoors (and get fat) because they would rather play with their computer than play? I am addicted as well--but I don't blame it on rays. It is easy to communicate this way--as easy and dare I say as dehumanizing as driving a car.

Could there be a less sensual way to communicate than over the Internet? All senses except the eyes are discarded--I cannot see, hear, touch or smell the object. Even in a letter we have the emotions betrayed by the hand and pen.

It has happened so slowly, that I don't think most of us realize how cut off we are from the physical in our lives. I'm not saying it is bad or good--I'm just pointing out that it is yet another symptom of the way our lives are skewed toward the mental, and thus out of balance.

[Agent Smith]

actually the frequency rates for computer screens, and tv's are different... i think a standard monitor is actually possibly worse... the major difference however being that tv shifts images alot quicker, and more directly, whereas ostensibly with a computer, other parts of your brain are engaged... because, at least you think that you are interacting...and making choices about the information entering...

it's a slightly different technology... HDtv is different too...

spot on about MK Ultra, and memory implantation etc. Humming... i know more about the lives of the people on 'seinfeld' than i do about my own friends, and family... videodrome was a documentry.

[forteanajones]

I'm always wary of TV and what engineers may have been secretly up to over the years, however I'm more concerned about the social/psychic programming that takes place without need of overt mind control beams.

A truly eye-opening documentary put out recently by the BBC (still showing in some theaters, otherwise check your library) called The Century of the Self (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/century_of_the_self.shtml) goes into how blatant the engineering has been for the past several decades. I'll give you a preview: You can blame Freud and his family for a lot of it.

[DogSoldiers]

Thanks for the tip again Forteana. I'm downloading all 4 episodes as we speak. I live in Canada so the chances of it being here in theatres is minimal.

I've been limiting my TV watching to Movies and downloads. That way I have to practice a little 'delaying gratification' to watch something. And even at that, I'm slowly limiting myself more and more. With the goal of 'absolute zero tv' one day, especially before I have children.

As for the computer, they are less harmful to us in the mind control mumbo jumbo as we can control what sites see and there are many more mediums to choose from, such as this great forum. But the light coming into our eyes is still completely unnatural and the byproducts that come as a result of computer production that get dumped on the environment yet again gives one reason enough to one day soon end surfing for good as well.

After I've learned as much as possible from you wonderful people first. Natch. LOL.

[DogSoldiers]

I also find it quite amusing that MEL GIBSON has been trying to do a remake of F451 for years and so far Ray has been reluctant.

[stu]

so you think that TV is the devil do you. well i must say that i dig it to bits and you all appreciate it and probably rush to get the lastest upgrades of your current model. i think that as humans we are all decidedly materialistic and television, whether it be you 1979 black and white model or your latest sony model, feeds that obsession. why do you think that guys in bad series get paid a lot to play roles that would make a normal person break out in hives. ever watched any of the soapies that are out? who write that@#$#? but still we watch them and wish we lived their lives because we ca escape into them and then feel better about our own isnsignificant little lives

[tana]

TV programs can be either educational, narcotizing, or manipulative, depending on how the watcher uses it...or is it really that " the medium is the massage "?

What i find interesting (in a sickening sort of way) is how the shows are paired up with sponsors...for instance, when i watch the news, i notice that the vast majority of the commercials are for high-priced pharmecueticals. I think that those blaring, bombarding, ridiculous ads are more abusive than the actual programming...and now the endorsements are becoming incoporated into the programs themselves!

I do enjoy Nova and the Antiques Roadshow...PBS still seems to be harmless.

[willoweyes]

Tana, PBS=OK=Not for Long! did you read the recent post here re Bill Moyers' speech against the Republicanization of PBS? It seems that PBS has been consumed by the Monster--it is of course not through digesting its latest feast, but when it's finished, we may expect PBS to be crapping out stories re intelligent design, etc.

[willoweyes]

I think Antiques Roadshow may be safe, however. Common ground, you know.

[tana]

Ack! Didn't catch that bit of info until you mentioned it, Willow.

[Humming]

"TV programs can be either educational, narcotizing, or manipulative, depending on how the watcher uses it...or is it really that 'the medium is the massage'?"

I know a few mediums who give damn good massages. hehehe

Back to the topic.... the most invasive and socially destructive form of the mind control system that is television is the indoctrination of violence as entertainment. This psychological mentality not only creates aggressive, competitive and sadistic ego structures, but also allows the US government to get away with taking half of our tax dollars to kill third-world peoples for profit. When violence is fun and the heroes that are programmed into the social mind are always somehow morally good while simultaneously committing acts of henious violence, usually working for some governmental or quasi-governmental agency, the public accepts this image as the reality of the purpose and necessity of our military/criminal justice system. The truth, however, is quite different....

TV may turn four-year-olds into bullies
Mon, 23 May 2005 03:34:38 -0500
http://www.guerrillanews.com/headlines/1974/TV_may_turn_four_year_olds_into_bullies

Summary: The studies on TV and kids are always somewhat of a controversy. A new study finds a correlation between kids who become bullies and the amount of TV watched. Other factors like cognitive stimulation and parental emotional support were included into the research as well and were shown to have a corresponding effect as well.
[Posted By Ryz]
By Maggie McKee
Republished from New Scientist
New research suggests later aggressive behavior

Young children who watch a lot of television are more likely to become bullies, a new study reveals. The authors suggest the increasingly violent nature of children’s cartoons may be to blame.

Previous studies have linked television to aggressive behaviour in older children and adolescents. But a team led by Frederick Zimmerman, an economist at the University of Washington in Seattle, US, has now traced the phenomenon to four-year-olds.

The researchers used existing data from a national US survey to study the amount of television watched by 1266 four-year-olds. Then they compared that amount with follow-up reports – by the children’s mothers – on whether the children bullied or were “cruel or mean to others” when they were between six and 11 years old.

The study showed that four-year-olds who watched the average amount of television – 3.5 hours per day – were 25% more likely to become bullies than those who watched none. And children who watched eight hours of television a day were 200% more likely to become bullies.

Desensitised to violence
The study did not probe what types of programmes the children were watching, but Zimmerman suggests they were mainly animated videos and cartoons. He says such shows may follow a trend seen in movies and cites a recent study showing the average G-rated kids’ movie contains (U-rated in the UK) about 9.5 minutes of violence – up from 6 minutes in 1940.

“What I suspect is these violent animated shows are causing kids to become desensitised to violence,” he told New Scientist. “Parents should understand that, just because a TV show or movie is made for kids, it doesn’t mean it’s good for kids – especially four-year-olds.”

He suggests parents follow guidelines set by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends no television for children under two and no more than two hours a day for older kids. “We have added bullying to the list of potential negative consequences of excessive television viewing, along with obesity, inattention, and other types of aggression,” write the authors in the Archives of Pediatrics ” Adolescent Medicine.

Double whammy
The study also looked at two other factors thought to decrease the likelihood of bullying – cognitive stimulation and parental emotional support. It found that children whose parents regularly exposed them to ideas – by reading aloud or taking them to museums, for example – were a third less likely to become bullies, as were those whose parents provided them with emotional support – by eating meals together and talking.

“Each of these things has an independent effect,” says Zimmerman. “So parents who are not going to read to their children and who put their kids in front of the TV instead [represent] a double whammy” for their children’s chances of becoming bullies, he says.

Some would argue that parents of children genetically predisposed to bad behaviours and bullying may simply be putting them in front of the TV to reduce the stress of dealing with this negative behaviour, rather than the TV itself being a causal factor.

But because the effects of cognitive stimulation, emotional support and television viewing can be teased apart and examined separately, Zimmerman says the chances of the bad behaviours coming before the excess TV viewing are generally reduced.

Journal reference: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine (vol 159, p 384)

[ May 23, 2005, 01:29 PM: Message edited by: Humming ]

[jezebelle]

Hey stu I agree with you, but I'm not a tv freak, my addictions lie with movies. I go through phases with tv but hate the newscasters. I really hate high profile news, that horible tone, many friends hate it too. Yet like anything, it can be an indicator of where you are at.
Just a tool only. I've been reading more lately, but at a high spiritual moment I've caught tv, and found programs that reflect that space in myself too.
Just another tool but its how you use it.
respect, jez2

[Agent Smith]

HOLY CRAP!!!

i just checked out that link to 'century of the self'... freud was related to BERNAYS!!! WTF??????

that is too creepy beyond fuggin' words!!! yikes!!!

(bernays has been a personal archvillian of mine since i read 'toxic sludge is good for you'.... i actually considered getting a degree in P.R. to deconstruct the techniques, and see if anything good could have been extracted from them... hmmm, i still might...)

oh yeah, and bradbury has always been a literary hero of mine.

[ May 24, 2005, 10:25 AM: Message edited by: Agent Smith ]

[forteanajones]

"HOLY CRAP" is exactly what was going on in my mind during the entire 4-hour documentary. It was exhilarating, validating and totally amazing what has been accomplished. Despite the broken, cramped and creaky seats and c1980 audio, that was without a doubt the most important cinematic experience I have had to date.

Bernays has always been fascinating to me but I didn't actually realize quite how extensive his influence was, nor how he fit into the whole Freud paradigm. In the documentary interviews he was quite open about his feeling that most people are basically stupid (which is probably true but not in the way he means). He even declared this on Letterman once, and the audience appeared to completely dismiss the conviction in his attitude, which I'm sure he expected.

Here is a link to an old Adbusters article (http://www.beyond-the-pale.co.uk/bernays.htm), where I first became aware of Bernays' growing significance.

Anna Freud's work was probably every bit as significant and insidious though.

[DogSoldiers]

Not sure if you guys have heard of this one, but upon my research into Century of the Self I found another great Documentary from (I assume as it's the same narrator) the same BBC crew, "The Power Of Nightmares".

I've downloaded and watched the first two. The third is on the way.

[nanouk]

Tana wrote: "What i find interesting (in a sickening sort of way) is how the shows are paired up with sponsors...for instance, when i watch the news, i notice that the vast majority of the commercials are for high-priced pharmecueticals."

I agree, Tana, I will really worry when they start promoting serotonin replacements and other anti-depressants during the news reports...today the head lines are full of that 12-yearold girl that seriously molested and nearly killed a fiveyearold boy.
What the h**l is this world coming to?(I know, we all say that )0:, but still heartbreaking)

I am happy that BBC 6 Music is playing Disposable Heroes Of Hiphopricy's biggest hit on a daily basis again, a fave of mine when i lived in Chicago...and still very poignant!

The local evening paper just arrived here at the pub...headline: "Thugs terror attack on pregnant woman" :mad: :mad: :mad:

Peace, Mainly Tolerance, and Love,

~N~

[Agent Smith]

"thug terror attacks on pregnant women" ...uh, yeah that sounds like the neo-cons to me...

i just finished watching the second two installments of 'century of the self' a little weaker i felt than the first two especailly the portions on Clinton/Blair... although the reagan/thatcher bits seemed spot on...there was just so much going on in this arena during the 80's-90's that i thought they kind of dropped the ball, and went after a cheap subject. i mean by the time of clinton corprate mass media brainwashing techniques were a high art form. (which they touched on briefly, but then left alone.)

the bits on Fritz Perls, and the EST-holes were interesting. the 'human potential movement'. the 'encounter group' between the eslan crew, and the black radicals was hilarious. yep, they missed out on a real oppertunity to get to some veddy interesting, and uncommfortable things... if only they'd continued on with good ol' fritz perls, and gotten to the NLP crew, and their adaptation of these techinques for corprate america as charicatured in the person of Anthony Robbins.... but alas... nice screen shots of 'Max Headroom''s ;Blipverts' hahaha...

[Rob P]

...

Hi A. Smith~

Where did you download Century Of The Self ??...
Here in NYC Cinema Village is playing all 4 parts
in the theater...but I'm curious to see if I can DL it.....!

Also- I've been digging the Tactical Reality Dictionary...
I'm digesting it slowly, and it's pretty deep....
thanks for the tip!

seeya
r o b

[HaiG]

In the documentary interviews he was quite open about his feeling that most people are basically stupid (which is probably true but not in the way he means).

Times that factor by the tenth power Fortjeanes, since the 80's dumbing down techniques have risen exponentially.

A great book on the subject is>The Media Monopoly
by Ben H.

Bagdikianhttp://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/MediaMonopoly_Bagdikian.html

originally published in the 80's i believe it has seen quite a few revisions and is still a very popular and relevant book.

When first published it spoke of the 20 or so corporations controlling the media. By the late nineties that was distilled to about 9, today it stands at roughly 6 Megalopolies that have a major say in what we see think and feel about the World pumped into our brains via news, TV, films books ect. . .

excerpts like this can be found on the website above.

HaiG

What the hell am I doing in this handbasket, and where are we going???

The New Communications Cartel
from the
Preface to the Fifth Edition (1997)
of the book
The Media Monopoly
by Ben H. Bagdikian
published by Beacon Press, 1997


In the last 5 years, a small number of the country's largest industrial corporations has acquired more public communications power-including ownership of the news-than any private businesses have ever before possessed in world history.
Nothing in earlier history matches this corporate group's power to penetrate the social landscape. Using both old and new technology, by owning each other's shares, engaging in joint ventures as partners, and other forms of cooperation, this handful of giants has created what is, in effect, a new communications cartel within the United States.
At issue is not just a financial statistic, like production numbers or ordinary industrial products like refrigerators or clothing. At issue is the possession of power to surround almost every man, woman, and child in the country with controlled images and words, to socialize each new generation of Americans, to alter the political agenda of the country. And with that power comes the ability to exert influence that in many ways is greater than that of schools, religion, parents, and even government itself.
Aided by the digital revolution and the acquisition of subsidiaries that operate at every step in the mass communications process, from the creation of content to its delivery into the home, the communications cartel has exercised stunning influence over national legislation and government agencies, an influence whose scope and power would have been considered scandalous or illegal twenty years ago.
The new communications cartel has been made possible by the withdrawal of earlier government intervention that once aspired to protect consumers and move toward the ideal of diversity of content and ownership in the mass media. Government's passivity has emboldened the new giants to boast openly of monopoly and their ability to project news, commercial messages, and graphic images into the consciousness and subconscious of almost every American.
Strict control of public information is not new in the world, but historical dictatorships lacked the late twentieth century's digital multimedia and distribution technology. As the country approaches the millennium, the new cartel exercises a more complex and subtle kind of control.
*****
Because each of the dominant firms has adopted a strategy of creating its own closed system of control over every step in the national media process, from creation of content to its delivery, no content-news, entertainment, or other public messages-will reach the public unless a handful of corporate decision-makers decide that it will. Smaller independents have always helped provide an alternative and still do, but they have become ever more vulnerable to the power of the supergiants. As the size and financial power of the new dominant firms have escalated, so has their coercive power to offer a bothersome smaller competitor a choice of either selling out at once or slowly facing ruin as the larger firm uses its greater financial resources to undercut the independent competitor on price and motion. In the process, consumers have become less influential than ever.
*****
Perhaps the most troubling power of the new cartel is its control of the main body of news and public affairs information. The reporting of news has always been a commercial enterprise and this has always created conflicts of interest. But the behavior of the new corporate controllers of public information has produced a higher level of manipulation of news to pursue the owners' other financial and political goals. In the process, there has been a parallel shrinkage of any sense of obligation to serve the non-commercial information needs of public citizenship.
The idea of government interceding to protect consumers is contrary to the ideology of most of the media cartel's leaders, who with few exceptions, pursue the conservative political and economic notion of an uninhibited free market that operates without social or moral obligations.
*****
... earlier, it was possible to describe the dominant firms in each separate medium-daily newspapers, magazines, radio, television, books, and movies. With each passing year ... the number of controlling firms in all these media has shrunk: from fifty corporations in 1984 to twenty-six in 1987, followed by twenty-three in l990, and then, as the borders between the different media began to blur, to less than twenty in 1993. In 1996 the number of media corporations with dominant power in society is closer to ten. In terms of media possessions and resources, the newest dominant ten are Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation Limited (Murdoch), Sony, Tele-Communications, Inc., Seagram (TV, movies, cable, books, music), Westinghouse, Gannett, and General Electric.
*****
The magnitude of the new media cartel's power is reflected m the simple dollar size of recent transactions that produced it.
At the time of the first edition of this book, in 1983, the biggest media merger in history was a $340-million matter, when the Gannett Company, a newspaper chain, bought Combined Communications Corporation, an owner of billboards, newspapers, and broadcast stations. In 1996, when Disney merged with ABC/Cap Cities, it was a $19-billion deal-fifty-six times larger. This union produced a conglomerate that is powerful in every major mass medium: newspapers, magazines, books, radio, broadcast television, cable systems and programming, movies, recordings, video cassettes, and, through alliances and joint ventures, growing control of the golden wires into the American home-telephone and cable.
But the quantity of money involved is the least disturbing measure of events. More ominous is how this degree of concentrated control translates into the power to shape the country's political and economic agendas, to create models of behavior for each generation, and to achieve ever more aggressive, self-serving access to every level of government.
A prime exhibit of the cartel's new political power is the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This act was billed as a transformation of sixty-two years of federal communications law for the purpose of "increasing competition." It was, with some exceptions, largely described as such by most of the major news media. But its most dramatic immediate result has been to reduce competition and open the path to cooperation among the giants.
The new law opened the media field to new competitors, like the large regional telephone companies, on the theory that cable and telephone companies would compete for customers within the same community. In practice, the power of one company in television was enlarged to permit a single firm to reach 35 percent of all American households. The act made it possible, for the first time, for a single company to own more than one radio station in the same market. A single owner was now permitted to own both TV stations and cable systems in the same market. License periods for broadcasters were expanded.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 swept away even the minimal consumer and diversity protections of the 1934 act that preceded it. Though this was an intricate bill of 280 pages that would transform the American media landscape, its preparation and passage did not meet the standards of study and public participation that ordinarily would precede an historic transformation of a major influence on society.
*****
... Of the 1,500 daily newspapers in the country, 99 percent are the only daily in their cities. Of the 11,800 cable systems, all but a handful are monopolies in their cities. Of the 11,000 commercial radio stations, six or eight formats (all-talk, all-news, variations of rock music, rap, adult contemporary, etc.), with an all but uniform content within each format, dominate programming in every city. The four commercial television networks and their local affiliates carry programs of essentially the same type, with only the meagerly financed public stations offering a genuine alternative. Thus, most of the media meet the tongue-twisting argot of Wall Street in J being oligopolies that are collections of local monopolies. This means few choices for citizens looking for genuine differences.
*****
Almost all of the media leaders, possibly excepting Ted Turner of Turner Broadcasting, are political conservatives, a factor in the drastic shift in the entire spectrum of national politics to a brand of conservatism once thought of as "extreme."
*****
... most conservatives consider news bias to be any news that departs from the promotion of conservatism and corporate values.
*****
Domination of corporate values lies behind another profound imbalance in the news. Almost every metropolitan paper in the country has a whole section devoted to "Business," which, with rare exceptions, combines service to financiers and investors with presentation of corporate leaders as heroes or exciting combatants. There is no such systematic section for consumers, though most of the country's readers are not investors but consumers. When Time Warner and Turner merged, the New York Times devoted a full page to the story, but not one sentence was devoted to what the merger might mean to the national audience of viewers and listeners. "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer," broadcasting's centerpiece of non-commercial news, also ran a major segment on the merger with no mention of its probable impact on the audience.
The daily, even hourly, pursuit of corporate and stock market information by the standard news outlets is in stark contrast to their faint concern with the finances and economics of the majority of American families. From 1987 to 1994, the purchasing power of the minimum wage dropped 35 percent. Only years later when a political battle erupted over a move to increase the minimum wage was there any reporting in the standard news that noted the hardship this represented for the most needful American workers. If the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped 35 percent in seven years it would have been an ongoing and urgent issue in newscasts and on page one in newspapers, with insistence that official action be taken.
Another zone of near silence has led to ominous signs in the economy and a threat to social peace. In the United States, maldistribution of income-the growing gap between rich and non-rich-is among the worst among developed countries. Years of systematic silence on the matter in the news media has permitted an accumulation of public distrust, anger, and frustration.
Economist Lester Thurow has said of the widening gap, "Probably no country has ever had as large a shift in the distribution of wealth without having gone through a revolution or losing a major war." But the minimal appearance in the news during the years when this maldistribution was clearly developing has kept both its cause and possible solutions largely invisible - and therefore out of the political arena. As always, the public's lack of good information during a time of duress has led to finding scapegoats, and to increasing domestic right-wing terrorism of a sort once thought limited to the Third World.
In an era of headlines on cutting welfare to the poor, there has been no counterpoint emphasis on the $86 billion a year in taxpayers' subsidies (welfare) to American corporations, some of which help support the relocation of their operations to other countries, resulting in massive employee layoffs within the United States.
*****
Commercial television broadcasting's treatment of children and their needs continues to be a national disgrace. In 1951, when far fewer television channels existed, there were twenty-seven hours a week of children's programming. By the l990s, with far more channels, there were only three or four hours a week on all networks.
*****
The role of children in modern commercial television is that of targets-targets for commercials that sell snacks, soft drinks, fashionable clothes, and toys. The idea of the child as future responsible citizen seems not to exist on commercial TV. That role seems to be left to public television, whose appropriations conservatives and commercial interests have done their best to kill, and which in response has itself become dependent upon corporate advertising.
In the reign of the new media cartel, the integrity of much of the country's professional news has become more ambiguous than ever. The role of journalists within news companies has always been an inherent dilemma for reporters and editors. Reporters are expected by the public and by reportorial standards to act like independent, fair-minded professionals. But reporters are also employees of corporations that control their hiring, firing, and daily management- what stories they will cover and what part of their coverage will be used or discarded. It is a harsh newsroom reality that never seems to cause conservative critics to speculate why their corporate colleagues who own the news and have total control over both their reporters' careers and the news that gets into their papers would somehow delight in producing "liberal bias."
The new media conglomerates have exacerbated the traditional problems of professional news. The cartel includes some industries that have never before owned important news outlets. Some of the new owners find it bizarre that anyone would question the propriety of ordering their employee-journalists to produce news coverage designed to promote the owner's corporation.
Seeing their journalists as obedient workers on an assembly

line has produced a growing incidence of news corporations | demanding unethical acts. There are more instances than ever of management contempt and cruelty toward their journalists.
*****
the daily newspaper business ... remains one of the most profitable in the country. Profit level of daily newspapers is two to three times higher than average profits of the Fortune 500 top corporations, according to John Morton of Morton Research, an authoritative source on newspaper economics. According to Standard and Poor's Media Industry Survey, in 1994, not a banner year in the news industry, the average profit for publicly traded news companies was 20 percent.
*****
Letting advertisers influence the news is no novelty in less respected papers, but in the past it was usually done by innuendo, or quiet editing, reassignment, or firing. It has seldom before been so boldly stated and practiced in ways that typify the new contempt that some news companies feel for the professional independence of their journalists-and for the news audience. The trend typifies a growing attitude that reporting the news is just another business.
Local alternative news weeklies have always been publications that monitor their local dailies and broadcast stations and provide alternative information and opinion. They still do. But even this field has seen the growth of chains, the franchising of weekly papers, and the creeping influence of impersonal corporate management.
*****
Only fifteen years ago, it was possible to cite specific corporations dominant in one communications medium, with only a minority of those corporations similarly dominant in a second medium. Today, as noted, the largest media firms have an aggressive strategy of acquiring dominant positions across every medium of any current or expected future consequence. Known and admired on Wall Street as "synergy," the policy calls for one company subsidiary to be used to complement and promote another. The process has helped produce a quantum leap in the power of a dominant media corporation to create and manipulate popular culture and models of behavior (or misbehavior) - and to use this power for narrow commercial and political purposes.
*****
In 1987, cancellation of the Fairness Doctrine made another new antidemocratic phenomenon almost predictable. Talk radio has become an overwhelming ultraconservative political propaganda - machine. The most influential propagandist, Rush Limbaugh, has nineteen million listeners, and there is no right of reply to his extra- I ordinary record of lies, libels, and damaging fantasies.
*****
Almost from the start, national communications law has been based on the concept that the public owns the airwaves. For their part, broadcasters insist on government policing and penalties to prevent unlicensed operators from willingly or unwillingly jamming the frequencies of established stations; otherwise there would be a chaos of static on radio and screens full of "snow" on television. But federal law also mandates that those who hold licenses must maintain local studios and operate "in the public interest ' which, given the local nature of studios, has meant significant access to the airwaves by community groups. Holders of broadcast licenses have no right to licenses beyond their term limits and presumably may renew them only if they have fulfilled their community obligations.
Despite the law, in recent years both the major media operators and the Congress have acted as though its "public ownership" phrases are not there or can be safely ignored. The Congress, the White House, and the Federal Communications Commission have steadily relaxed standards to permit the growing exclusion of community voices on the country's 11,000 local commercial radio stations, I 1,500 television stations, and 11,800 local cable systems.
*****
There are basic measures to be taken if the public is to regain \ access to its own media and guarantee choices that have some relationship to the varying needs and tastes of the population. Many of these will require mandatory actions: the broadcast industry has an almost unrelieved history of cynicism and evasion in its promises of self-reform.
*****
[Proposals]
* It is time for a new, nonpartisan, nongovernmental commission I to study the present and desired future status of the country's media. In 1947, Henry Luce donated the money for the influential Commission on Freedom of the Press, headed by Robert Maynard Hutchins. It dealt with the printed press and gave the country a fresh look at modern needs of news and public information in a democracy. It was important following, as it did, the catastrophes of pre-war dictatorships' controlled media. These were still live memories at a time when most of American news was still strikingly narrow and parochial.
We need a modern commission to examine the more complex and compelling contemporary need-to remind the American public and the media industry itself of the new power of modern media technology and is obligations to democratic life. Such a commission must avoid the flaws of other important study commissions in which industry influence resulted in a final report that was either vague generalities or a watery support of the status quo.
* The National News Council that existed from 1973 to 1984 is needed today more than ever. Supported by foundations, the Council heard serious complaints about specific cases of national news media performance, studied the known facts with all parties free to be heard, and issued a report in each case. While none of is recommendations were mandatory, it provided the public with a voice and the news media with a forum for the recognition, admitted or not, of existing weaknesses. But when the foundations, after having created the Council and proved is feasibility and need, said it was time for the industry itself to support the idea, as is done in some other democracies, no major media organizations came forward to support the effort, and the Council died. It is worth trying again, now that the public is more aware of problems in the media than it was twenty years ago.
* The Telecommunications Act of 1996 needs to be replaced by a new law that can begin to break up the most egregious conglomerates, reinstate mandatory local community access, and put teeth in the requirement that stations demonstrate their record of public interest programming when they apply for renewal of their licenses. License challenge procedures have to be made more accessible to civic groups dissatisfied with their local radio and TV broadcast stations. (Networks are not regulated, but their local affiliates are.)
* Public broadcasting must be financed through a new, nonpolitical system, as is done for the best systems in other democracies. Today, non-commercial broadcasting depends on appropriations by federal and state legislatures that themselves are heavily beholden to corporate interests. A small surtax on all consumer electronic equipment-computers, VCRs, TV and radio sets, and the like-is minuscule at the individual retail level but could provide funding for a full-fledged multi-channel radio and TV non-commercial system, and for a substantial national broadcast news and documentary operation.
Ignored for so long that they now sound radical and remote are earlier proposals for funding public, non-commercial broadcasting. In 1967, a Carnegie Commission proposed a tax on television sets to finance non-commercial television. That year the Ford Foundation financed the Public Broadcasting Laboratory, which paid for an historic and popular one-hour program every Sunday that awakened for many Americans the possibilities that commercial broadcasting lacked.
* The Federal Communications Commission has succumbed to what seems to be the natural history of too many consumer protection agencies, which over time has been to shift from their original purpose of protecting consumers against unfair or dangerous industry behavior to an opposite role of protecting industries from their consumers. The agency needs to be reconstituted to include specified representatives from nonpartisan groups like the Parent Teachers Association, as well as presidential appointees. It has been a generation since 1961 when the new chairman of the FCC, Newton Minow, startled the convention of the National Association of Broadcasters with the statement that they operated "a vast wasteland" and were "squandering the public airwaves," and warned, "There's nothing permanent or sacred in a broadcast license."
* The Fairness Doctrine and equal time provisions desperately need to be restored. In 1987 broadcasters promised that their repeal would increase serious public affairs programming. In fact, that kind of programming has been largely abandoned in favor of more advertising and violence. The answer to the Rush Limbaughs is not censorship but a restoration of the public right of timely reply on the stations and at the times the Limbaughs and others now broadcast.
From the inception of commercially licensed broadcasting in 1927, the Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to devote a reasonable amount of time to discussion of controversial issues of public importance, and to permit reasonable opportunities for opposing views to be heard. It included special provisions to oblige stations to provide reasonable time for response by those attacked in discussions. Beginning in 1979 and continuing through the deregulation campaign of President Reagan in the early 1980s, broadcasters pushed for repeal of these regulations, and for all practical purposes the broadcasters won. An equal time provision in essence said that in the forty-five days before an election, stations must make time available to opposing candidates on roughly the same basis, whether for paid time or public service campaign discussions.
* End auctioning of broadcast frequencies to stations. The process implies license ownership. The public still owns the airwaves and frequencies should be granted as in the past-on credible promises made and kept of public service. Restore local voting on monopoly cable franchises instead of the present backroom deals. Let the FCC or its replacement do what basic public ownership of the airwaves implies-give stations licenses for a limited time, conditional on their general performance as good citizens in their communities.
Make it routine to notify all citizens of local market broadcast license renewals-all stations in a state have their renewal come up in the same year. As that date approaches, existing holders of licenses asking for renewal should be required to show public evidence of what they have done in the past.
* The country needs easy, inexpensive licensing of low-power, city- and neighborhood-range radio and TV stations. Japan has them and so can the United States. As it is, local communities and ordinary local businesses have been effectively excluded from the air by national broadcasters and advertisers.
* Paid political advertising should be banned from American broadcasting, as it is in most democracies. In the two months before elections, every station should be required to provide prime time hours for local and national candidates, with fifteen-minute minimums for presentations to avoid the slick sound biter without content that now dominate broadcast election campaigns.
* Teach serious media literacy in the schools, using independently created curricula. Some already are available and others are being developed. The average American child will spend more time in front of a TV set than in front of a teacher. The young are targets for slick materialism. They need to know how this important element in their lives operates and how it can be analyzed.
* More citizens need to join and contribute to the various media reform groups like the Cultural Environment Movement, the Center for Media Education, FAIR, and the Institute for Alternative Journalism. There are other groups, but these can lead interested citizens to specific action and to other action groups.
The domination of private money in public politics, which has subverted so much public policy, also prevents legal solutions to problems in the mass media. Most media proprietors show little or no evidence in their programming of any sense of obligation to treat the American audience as citizens of a democracy. Campaign finance reform and media reform are directed at the same societal sickness- the influence of private money that improperly negates civic need and public choice. Linked to the same problem, they have become linked in the ultimate remedy. At stake is the-accountability of politics and with it the media's socialization of American children and the nation's culture.

[DogSoldiers]

Hey Rob,

I downloaded it off my preferred p2p, Shareaza. I also believe it's around on torrents as well.

I don't believe it made it to any of the "arts" theatres here in Edmonton, so thank jebus for "pirating"!

Agent Smith,

Very interesting point about the NLP'ers. I would of loved to see them dive into that pool as well.

[Agent Smith]

i saw it at cinema village Rob. well worth it. enjoy the Dictionary...then reverse engineer it, and tear some cognative shit up LOL

(which is what i'm planning to do... if only my copy hadn't been stolen by some hipster messaih. bastard.)

oddly enough i spent yesterday in central park with a friend of mine who has just done something called 'Personal Dynamics', an outgrowth of 'the human potential movement', which sounds an awful lot like 'EST', and 'the landmark forum' haha... bad ideas never die.

[Giselle62]

Originally posted by nanouk:


what is even more evil, is subliminal advertising through music... we got the Big Mac through PWEI, and soon enough Life on Mars by Bowie would be the theme tune for Philip K. Dick's movie...with a Mars Bar advert in the trailer of course!

the biggest trouble with too much television is heart disease...

...but i bet the pharmaceutical companies love that )0:

Love & Respect,

Nanoukmmmmmmmmmmm....Mars Bars...i want one...aach, got me again!

[forteanajones]

Arise!A truly eye-opening documentary put out recently by the BBC (still showing in some theaters, otherwise check your library) called The Century of the Self (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/century_of_the_self.shtml) goes into how blatant the engineering has been for the past several decades.

It's been well over a year apparently since I've seen this film and I got the itch again. And lo! it's legally unavailable for purchase.

In case anyone else gets the same itch I can verify that it's still downloadable via Bit Torrent and other peer-to-peer programs. If you're not comfortable with the idea (or the tech hurdle) you can also watch it via Google Video (http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=The+Century+of+the+Self&hl=en).

[Rob P]

.......

hi fj
thanks for the reminder....

i loved seeing this last year too!

seeya
r o b

.......

[DogSoldiers]

Awesome. Thanks for the heads up FJ

I already have it downloaded but will definately buy it when I see it. The downloads aren't really super quality anyways so it'd be nice to have it without all the crackles and fernackles.

[K.J]

Thanks FJ! I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds mighty interesting.

K.J