What frightens you? For William Rivers Pitt, the editor of popular US independent news organisation Truthout, it's the "...accumulation of power and influence by a small cadre of corporate media elites".
Ask ten different people what they think is the greatest threat to liberty and democracy, and you'll probably get ten different answers. Someone with a rightward bent might say "radical Islam," "taxes" or "big government." Someone with a leftward bent might say "the military-industrial complex," "corporate power" or "environmental degradation." You might hear "unemployment," or "illegal immigration," or even something deranged like "birth certificates."
Shake me awake in the middle of the night, put the question to me, and I will tell you to your face without hesitation what I think: "The accumulation of power and influence by a small cadre of corporate media elites."
Period, end of file.
We face many terrible dilemmas and threats today, but none of them – not one – can or will be addressed in a democracy without an honestly informed voting populace … and when that populace is spoon-fed lies and misinformation by corporate news media outlets which have a vested financial interest in keeping the truth out of our ears, any effort to seek a solution to those dilemmas is doomed from the start.
The most recent, and perfect, example of this came after the financial meltdown and resulting recession. Bankers, hedge-fund managers and immoral mortgage lenders did this to us – with great and ongoing assistance from their friends in Congress – but the corporate media elites have managed to convince whole swaths of the populace that the fault lies instead with unions, public-sector employees like teachers, and a lack of tax breaks for the wealthiest among us. It is utter nonsense, but people believe it, because they see it on TV.
The world has recently been given a vivid crash course on the insidious nature of these corporate media entities, courtesy of Mr. Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch and his vast media empire have come under deep scrutiny, especially in Britain, over a phone-tapping scandal in which they allegedly hacked into the voicemail boxes of the families of murder victims and soldiers killed overseas. A New York police officer, now turned private investigator, has accused Murdoch's people of trying to get him to hack into the phone messages of 9/11 victims, so they could get their hands on the dying declarations of those trapped in the Towers, who were trying to say farewell to their families before the end came.
That's what we're dealing with, and while Murdoch may be the vilest example of the phenomenon, it is the phenomenon of corporate-controlled news itself that sits at the heart of all that ails us.
