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A large part of the problem here is that all of these institutions and societal ways are gradually slipping away or being transformed--as opposed to violent repression--by either the "nice friendly smiley" face of corporate media, or by distraction-by-mindless-"entertainment." People have sometimes made the point that we would be protesting in the streets if they were knocking us on the head and burning down small newspaper publishers. Because it is this insidious brain-rot, on the other hand, it is harder for those who are not really paying attention to locate and name what it is, so no "focused mounting anger" builds up, as such.
What I think really explains the threat and the insult that is corporate "news" now, is to give examples showing the total coercion of these people, the way everything is told, worded, packaged. This gets across especially to anyone who is old enough to remember when the news really was more or less straightforward. There is now an endless stream of one basic, underlying perspective, even when it seemed the story changed: Corporations being investigated or sued are never referred to as criminal anymore; always "troubled" or "under siege," as if the victims are the problem. When corporations are forced to take dangerous drugs off the market because of reports they knowingly sold them even after disastrous results for the users, it is always reported as the "good, conscientious" corporation "voluntarily" removing the drug, no matter how hard they fought to keep it on sale. No matter what the case, the corporation is always presented as "good" or the "victim." All lawsuits against corporations are called "frivolous" or "spiteful." Taxes are always treated as something "we" all hate, and attempt to lower them are always called "relief," even when it is for multi-millionaires and billionaires, and so can have no possible meaning. Corporate price-gouging, on the other hand, is never investigated, but only told from the corporation's perspective, as if they "had to" raise prices, because their own profits are down, which of course is "horrible, and everybody knows that."
No investigation has ever been done of the war profiteering in Iraq, leading among other things to sustandard equipment and lack of supplies, causing deaths of our soldiers--there is no criticism! If you can stand to watch the "news" anymore, you will probably notice that every story has a "theme" that will not be departed from, like an ad campaign--a slant from beginning to end, generalized, that was applied from story to story, like the same dough or filling recipe. "Heartwarming," "The Hero," "Exciting New Techno Trend"; nothing is researched and explained the way journalists used to do. Now everything is an enacted clinical-persuasion-study result, with us as the targets. If we had been rounded up and subjected to this propaganda, it would have been considered an outrageous human rights violation, a Communist "re-education camp," but instead we turn on our TV sets or radios, and so it is the rich pimp's right. It is infuriating alone, to notice all the mind-control techniques they use, to further their ends and sabotage ours.
This was an actual scrolling graphic headline, across the bottom of the screen, on CNN Headline News cable channel, on April 7th: "Top pen & marker makers say principals, teachers largely driving demand for purple pens; one principal says parents have complained marking mistakes in red is 'stressful' for kids--AP" This tells you what they think this format is now for, and it isn't educational news; they don't even pretend to hide the true basis of story fabrication anymore. The fact that they would either try to get away with that as an actual "trend," or that they don't care what the peons think anymore, shows you that an entirely new group controls things now; this would never have happened before. Everything is sales now, and they intend to destroy every law or social custom that once existed, putting even one step between them and profit. A recent joke was that the media did not cover the Jeff Gannon story, because this is what they all are--fakes and liars, propagandists with no news writing experience or morals. They didn't know what the problem was.
Another example of their inherent lying to achieve another end, is this unbelievably reverential, worshipful coverage of the Pope's death and funeral, after this same media cut its own religious broadcasting down to nothing, even on Sunday morning, where it used to be. They have no qualms about ostentatiously exalting something they actually don't want. For a Catholic Church, by its own admission, split by this Pope's oppression of women, and refusal to help abuse victims for years, all of this has been censored. I remember a Phil Donahue program, the old morning one, with Father Andrew Greeley and a Chicago investigative reporter, who revealed the problem during, I think it was, the early '80s, and who were viciously castigated by this "lovely" Pope, and their investigation of abusive priests ordered stopped. I have often wondered how many of the original ones they exposed, years later were finally admitted to have been abusers. No refernce, by the corporate media. Things are censored and controlled on a scale you don't even suspect, because it is so all-pervasive that there is nothing to break the pattern and call attention to it. Even the fact that they will only cover two or three stories for weeks on end--or only celebrities, claiming "we" are all celeb-crazed--rather than the range of things, is a form of censorship.
Of course it goes on and on, endlessly. I would call attention to people how offensive and annoying it is that they have to be subjected to this crap, when it could so easily have been better, that we are not learning things that the rest of the educated world knows, and that our whole society is suffering for it. Remind people how most of them hate the superficial, slick, rich-corporate treatment of everything, but that no matter how they complain, nothing is ever solved. After all, people have been complaining about the "two minute news stories" and the "nine second" sound-bites that only make you ignorant, since the '80s--nothing. Nothing we do has any effect anymore with these people. This makes a powerful argument.
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