Image "To Be A Light" Courtesy of Sabin Corneliu Baraga Late at night, most nights, I listen to podcasts of the news that mainstream media does not cover. We in the western world have come to expect to hear news of bad behavior like Mel Gibson's anti-semetic outburst or Michael Richards racial slurring instead of the real news about what is really going on in the world. Several months ago, before I started to blog, I got my news and information from what I thought was the most unbiased sources available: NPR, CBC, NYT. In fact, these media outlets are only ever-so slightly less full of bullshit than NBC,CNN and the rest of the mainstream media, print, television and radio alike. There is a pervassive sickness in the western world. A contagion so powerful it has put the whole of our population into a malaise that threatens to put us in a permanent coma. How possibly can anything that happens to Britany Spears be more important than 650,000 Iraqis dead, nearly 3000 Americans dead and the entire Middle East about to launch us into an never-ending world war? When we aren't being scared to death by our own government and the tools of deception and obfuscation of the media, we are being ginned up to fight the "global war on terror" and to hate. Hate everyone brown, hate other Americans, especially if they are brown, and never, never, get true information. Just "spin" and "fluff", oh and don't forget to shop.
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! is one of the few journalists that tries against the odds to bring the truth. Unfiltered through white house 'talking points'. Today's show features Chief correspondent for the Middle East at London's The Independent, Robert Fisk addresses the Iraq Study Report and it's "experts". Please listen to his brilliant talk and notice how it affects you to hear the truth instead of the bullshit that inundates us each and everyday from the mainstream media.
The truth shall set you free.
11 comments:
The corporate TV media always uses the excuse that they are just serving up what sells. How could they possibly know whether "real" news would sell or not when the networks and the cable channels have never really done it? How can you get away with putting about 15 minutes a day worth of "news" on a 24 hour a day "news network?"
Of course, we know that the concentration of news under the few remaining corporate sources serves the oligarchs' interests, certainly not ours.
Today as I was working, the TV was tuned to CNN. They had long reports of 5 minutes or so every 15 minutes about the search being called off for the lost hikers at Mt. Hood. While tragic, it is not NEWS. Especially 4 times an hour. How many soldiers died today? How many Iraqis? Have you heard a single Iraqi name in the estimated 650,000 killed? There is a special ring in hell reserved for the MSM.
When I lived in the US full time, I thought I was immune - I didn't have TV after all. But the more time I spent abroad the more I realized how immersed one is in the illusion just by being in that culture. I know some people can handle it, but not me. It is coming at you everywhere you look, and in everything you hear, and in the way people act. I just found it to be too much work to sift through it all day after day. Living abroad has been a huge relief for me, though I am no less active in political matters.
MSM is not there to deliver news or even sell news. They are there to shape minds - or just turn them to mush - and paint the illusion.
Great post. Thanks.
Great to see you Panda! Hope the season finds you and yours well. Thanks as always for stopping by. Let me know about the piece we discussed when you have the time.
-Best Swim
The corporate TV media always uses the excuse that they are just serving up what sells.
As pandabonium says, this is complete bullshit. Two words: Jeff Gannon.
I agree with you, hope... Britney and Paris, Rosie O'Donnell's latest attack du jour, and right now I'm hearing about the Keith Ellison/ Dennis Prager koarn thing again! Didn't we go over this last month?! If it smells, it sells. Enough of the trivial news.
The climbers on Mt. Hood and the stranded James Kim and family is horrible, tragic news, but we don't need to hear about them hour after hour.
Sorry for the typo. don't want to offend anyone by misspelling "Koran" or "Quran" if you prefer.
I seriously thought of calling my blog "Britney's Ass Cleavage," and struggled between having a popular and entertaining blog which played off the media, having a private diary open only to friends and family, or a free-form MSM place. I went for the third option, but once aired my thoughts in a post on the Britney ass-thing. I still get people coming to that post from their Google searches looking for Britney's exposed body parts.
Bread and circuses? Bread and ass cleavage.
'or a free-form MSM place'
above that should've read "MSM-free," as in not having any
The mainstram news is a mechanism that exists to keep the cultural narrative going. Without it how would people understand the greater context of their lives? It is horribly fractured and perverse sort-of like the inner-state of most of us filled with contradictions, rationalizations and, above all, avoidance and denial. Hunter Thompson used the term "nation of swine" to describe our culture some time ago--he saw the essence early on and chose the more honest course of self-medication rather than accepting psychic lobotomy. Still, we can learn from this when we see the similarity between the inner and outer--you know, like get in touch with the inner-Bush, or even weirder, the inner Dick Cheney. But I wish the inner Amy Goodman in all of us good health--she's a real warrior.
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