Sunday, September 25, 2011

Our illiberal Media

Have you been following the action on Wall Street? You know, the protests by a couple of thousand of people near the stock exchange, complete with handcuffing, mace, and arrests? What? You haven't heard of Occupy Wall Street?

You aren't alone, and that is the way our corporate media wants it. The video below will give you an idea of how corporate domination of American media plays out. The point here is not whether you agree with the protesters, or think Wall Street is, or isn't, at the heart of America's economic pain. The point is that almost no mainstream media outlet is willing to cover, even critically, the mini-occupation, the arrests, the shouting. The foreign press is covering it, as are alternative news sites on the Internet. Our major networks will get to it, but they will be slow and shallow; the more revealing the story, the slower and shallower the coverage will be.

How can you not cover protests in the streets, Wall Street? And as Keith Olberman notes, if this were a crowd of teabaggers bitchin' about taxes or Obama's birth certificate, the coverage would have been wall-to-wall. This is what media do in banana republics, or the old Soviet Union.

You see what they want you to see.




Speaking of Wall Street, if you get a chance, get a copy of Inside Job.

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