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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Myth of the Free Press (Chris Hedges)
by Chris Hedges
TruthDig, Monday, October 27, 2014
There is more truth about American journalism in the film Kill the Messenger, which chronicles the mainstream medias discrediting of the work of the investigative journalist Gary Webb, than there is in the movie All the Presidents Men, which celebrates the exploits of the reporters who uncovered the Watergate scandal.
The mass media blindly support the ideology of corporate capitalism. They laud and promote the myth of American democracyeven as we are stripped of civil liberties and money replaces the vote. They pay deference to the leaders on Wall Street and in Washington, no matter how perfidious their crimes. They slavishly venerate the military and law enforcement in the name of patriotism. They select the specialists and experts, almost always drawn from the centers of power, to interpret reality and explain policy. They usually rely on press releases, written by corporations, for their news. And they fill most of their news holes with celebrity gossip, lifestyle stories, sports and trivia. The role of the mass media is to entertain or to parrot official propaganda to the masses. The corporations, which own the press, hire journalists willing to be courtiers to the elites, and they promote them as celebrities. These journalistic courtiers, who can earn millions of dollars, are invited into the inner circles of power. They are, as John Ralston Saul writes, hedonists of power.
SNIP...
The attacks against Webb have been renewed in publications such as The Washington Post since the release of the film earlier this month. These attacks are an act of self-justification. They are an attempt by the mass media to mask the collaboration between themselves and the power elite. The mass media, like the rest of the liberal establishment, seek to wrap themselves in the moral veneer of the fearless pursuit of truth and justice. But to maintain this myth they have to destroy the credibility of journalists such as Webb and Assange who shine a light on the sinister and murderous inner workings of empire, who care more about truth than news.
SNIP...
The mass media, as C. Wright Mills pointed out, are essential tools for conformity. They impart to readers and viewers their sense of themselves. They tell them who they are. They tell them what their aspirations should be. They promise to help them achieve these aspirations. They offer a variety of techniques, advice and schemes that promise personal and professional success. The mass media, as Wright wrote, exist primarily to help citizens feel they are successful and that they have met their aspirations even if they have not. They use language and images to manipulate and form opinions, not to foster genuine democratic debate and conversation or to open up public space for free political action and public deliberation. We are transformed into passive spectators of power by the mass media, which decide for us what is true and what is untrue, what is legitimate and what is not. Truth is not something we discover. It is decreed by the organs of mass communication.
The divorce of truth from discourse and actionthe instrumentalization of communicationhas not merely increased the incidence of propaganda; it has disrupted the very notion of truth, and therefore the sense by which we take our bearings in the world is destroyed, James W. Carey wrote in Communication as Culture.
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/10/27/myth-free-press
Hedges writes Truth.
Mike Nelson
(9,942 posts)...thank you for posting...
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)If we did, we'd ALL be a lot better off.
... well, all except the .01% Oligarchs that is.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)Watergate need not have gone down the way it did. Nixon was worried that Ellsberg had the goods on him and was getting ready to divulge them, even though the Pentagon Papers at McNamara's express instructions, had only covered the period up to LBJ's presidency.
As riveting as it was -- I still remember those dog days of 1973 and 74 -- Watergate ultimately really was a battle between factions of the elite:
The Watergate scandal, mythologized as evidence of a fearless and independent press, is illustrative of how circumscribed the mass media is when it comes to investigating centers of power.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)Who says "but the emperor has no closes on"...exposeing what we all should see but are afraid that if we do they will call you crazy.
K&R for a truthful observer.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Way to go, Octafish!
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)How Edward Bernays hacked democracy
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)truth2power
(8,219 posts)about America's "free press". I laughed aloud while driving.
Thanks for the post, Octafish.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Quantess
(27,630 posts)Blecht
(3,803 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Thanks for posting.