A way with words... I just had to share...

[stillcool]

... it's one of those articles, that I can read over and over.
here's a sample...

The Politics of News Media
from the book
False Hope
by Norman Solomon, 1994

For people on corporate payrolls, more than a little parental company discretion is advised. Mainstream journalists are cases in point: Criticisms of government-and disparagements of the public sector overall-are far more acceptable than condemnations of corporate power. Yet the facts are cold and hard. "It is beyond doubt that the large corporation has always governed, most importantly by deciding whether untold numbers of people will live or die, will be injured, or will sicken," _ comments Morton Mintz, who left the Washington Post in 1988 after twenty-nine years as a reporter there; his attitude was rare in the newsroom. Media professionals are almost uniformly unwilling to voice anything that smacks of a systemic critique of the private-industry juggernaut.
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Corporate control is not interference in the newsroom-if you own an institution you aren't interfering in it, you're running it. Orwell anyone? The conditioned reflex of "stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought." The doublethink process "has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. "
The debilitating obstacles that face journalists-and the rest of us-are primarily institutional. If we push hard to challenge the institutions around us, the struggle can change us for the better in the process. Rather than succumbing to the media manipulation that continues to foreclose better options, we can tune up our personal and collective "radar screens" to track unidentified flying propaganda. Determination to battle for more autonomy over our own possibilities-as individuals, as people communicating with each other, and as a society- opens up new and vital horizons.
In contrast, evading the truth of corporate power over news media is a disorienting mental traffic pattern that keeps tromping a path of political confusion. False mappings of society immobilize us to the great extent that we trust public mythologies more than firsthand realities. Imagine if Rand McNally and its competitors issued maps that had little resemblance to actual streets and highways and terrain. To the extent that we believed those maps, we'd be unable to go much of anywhere; we wouldn't be able to plan our journeys, or meet up with other people; for that matter we wouldn't even really know where we were.
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Popularized renderings of reality, however phony, supply us with shared illusions, suitable for complying with authorized itineraries, the requisite trips through never-never lands of public pretense. Privately, we struggle to make sense of our experiences; perhaps we can create some personal space so that our own perceptions and emotions have room to stretch. But the limits of privatized solutions are severe. Public spheres determine the very air we breathe and the social environments of our lives. The standard detours meander through imposing landscapes. Beyond the outer limits of customary responses, uncharted territory is "weird"-certainly not familiar from watching TV or reading daily papers. Following in the usual footsteps seems to be safer.
Confusion about politics and power denies us clues as to where to go from here. Anne Wilson Schaef has identified pivotal results of such confusion:
" First, it keeps us powerless and controllable. No one is more controllable than a confused person; no society is more controllable than a confused society. Politicians know this better than anyone, and that is why they use innuendos, veiled references, and out-and-out lies instead of speaking clearly and truthfully.
Second, it keeps us ignorant. Professionals give their clients confusing information cloaked in intimidating language that lay-people cannot understand. They preserve their "one-up" status while preventing us from learning about our own bodies, our legal rights, and our psychology.
Third, it keeps us from taking responsibility for our own lives. No one expects confused people to own up to the things they think, say, or do, or face the truth about who they are.
Fourth, it keeps us busy. When we must spend all our time and energy trying to figure out what is going on, we have none left over for reflecting on the system, challenging it, or exploring alternatives to it.
These have the combined effect of keeping us stuck within the system. And this, I believe, is the primary purpose of confusion. A confused person will stay within the system because the thought of moving out of it is too frightening. It takes a certain amount of clarity to try new things, walk new roads, and cross new bridges, ~ and confusion makes clarity and risk taking impossible."
Mass media encourage us-viewers, listeners, readers-to suspend disbelief, willingly or otherwise. Stalked by propaganda wolves in chic clothing, we are the intended sheep. Conformity is disguised with appearances of diversity-just as silence about what matters most is in no way inconsistent with constant verbiage.
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The pretense is that You Are There, or you have choices; the reality, much more likely, is that you aren't anywhere, and/you can choose from the choices that have already been made for you. The delusion of "choice" from an array of televised (and corporately backed) programs is parallel to the delusion of choice from an array of pre-screened (and corporately backed) presidential candidates.
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In effect, "The TV newsman comforts us as John Wayne comforted our grandparents, by seeming to have the whole affair in hand.... Since no one seems to live on television, no one seems to die there. And the medium's temporal facility deprives all terminal moments of their weight."
Being numb to untoward events is in sync with being passive. For mass media, this is a perfect fit. Television, a powerful number, asks that we do nothing-"don't touch that dial"-except go out and buy things. Everything is well-produced, including the latest war; especially one made in the USA.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media_control_propaganda/PoliticsNewsMedia.html