Reply #8: Nah... They're just doing their jobs ...

[warren pease]

It's just that their job descriptions have changed over the past few decades. Their transition is now complete and they're effectively the ministry of propaganda for the RNC and, by extension, the Bushies. Have been for at least 30 years, dating back to their smear campaign against Carter circa 1978.

They were a little more subtle about it back then. I guess Fux Nudes removed any need to seem fair and balanced.

They haven't even tried to act like a free and independent press since the 1992 campaign, when they suddenly realized that Bush might lose and they'd have to deal with Clinton.

No problem, as it turned out. Clinton's GOP-inspired Telecom Act of 1996 accelerated the whole media consolidation frenzy.

More than 30 years of FCC non-regulation and pro-media consolidation rulings have had the desired results. Today, only six giant conglomerates control more than 85 percent of everything Americans see, hear and read. It's pretty easy to control the message that gets beaten into peoples' heads when that's all they get all day, every day from any element of US mass media.

Arguably, the vilest of these six holding companies is GE, which owns NBC and all the other *.NBCs out there, some radio stations and a few newspapers. They're also one of the largest weapons systems manufacturers in the world.

So one part of GE is all over the airwaves, glorifying war and shilling constantly for a lengthy US presence in Iraq. If the Bushies' script calls for it, they'll start selling the public on a bombing campaign for Iran, too. They pretty much do what they're told or heads roll in production rooms throughout the network.

Another part of GE is making incredible piles of money selling various planes and helicopters and tanks and other war necessities to the DoD. That vast river of money will be interrupted if the US pulls out of Iraq and fails to start a war with Iran.

So what's a corporation to do?

Surely there's no connection between shilling for war and selling the implements of war. That would be an outrageous conflict of interest and highly illegal. Plus which, that kind of stuff would never fly in America, self-appointed occupant of the moral high ground. So it must not be happening.

Unless it is...


wp