Control of media

Date:   4/26/2007 2:39:13 PM ( 17 y ago)

K - note - you guessed it, this is somewhat related to the previous post. You can find a link there to the story about drug smuggling by the CIA, but that is not the point here.
This is about media control from the point of view of the journalists, about how it is done.

News media control

If you told the police and your boss at the newspaper that the CIA was smuggling huge amounts of drugs into the USA, and had videos and papers and other solid evidence, you want to see it on the evening news. You would expect it to be on the evening news. When it is not ever printed, you might wonder why, and whats going on. Your boss might tell you that he has orders from important people like the CIA not to print it because it would mess up another investigation, or that they want to follow the players a bit more, or whatever reasons for not exposing and ending that drug smuggling opration you uncovered. Risked your life to uncover.

That happens a lot in the media industry. We don't get the news we would be most interested in hearing. Here are some thoughts on how they keep the news media industry so well controlled.

The reporters and journalists are the front-line people we are talking about when we refer to the "mass media". They write the stories and do the legwork, they see and hear all the news we would love to see and hear, but don't. They are just regular people and they could likely tell us some juicy stuff, they must be bursting at the seams wanting to spill the beans sometimes. But they don't do it. They stay silent.

So, if they are regular people like you and me then we have to wonder why they play their roles so eagerly, why they are so accepting of the limitations placed on them. It starts in school, getting their journalism degrees requires a big committment, and now expense too [since tuitions have gone sop high in the past 20 years]. That makes anyone forget their little concerns and stay focused on the big picture.

In the classroom it will be drilled into them - I am guessing here, tell me I am wrong - that "knowing the chain of command in the journalsm industry is essential to your career path". That bit of pedagogy will instill in students the essential job survival skill of "looking up to their bosses as having the job they will get if they go through the motions, it is a natural progression" - meaning also that you won't get anywhere if you are on the bad side of the editor or the publisher or the owner/shareholders or especially your immediate boss in the press room. You won't have a job at all if you rock the boat, so stay within your station and the truth will be revealed to youwhen you are ready, when you have paid your dues.

From there, the students either drop out - many do - or they toe the line forevermore. Eventually, they don't even remember the idea of self-expression through writing styles or even the basic reason for having reporters in the first place - to look out at the world, snoop around and find interesting or informative things, and then write about them. once employed, they will just do their job as laid out by their bosses. If they do it well they get rewarded with pretty good money and maybe a pulitizer, but not for writing the truth.

Finding a job, keeping a job, pleasing your bosses - thats more than enough to keep anyone distracted from having a burning desire to write the truth about this or that. This is true across most industries, not just journalism and publishing. Oddly enough, even if you do get the top job and have enough money to live three lifetimes on, you willstill cling to the notion that keeping your job is essential. It was drilled into you inschool, and it has been re-enforced by years of "clawing your away up the career path". You won't want to screw up now, and that pension is worth shutting up for.

The upper management in the journalism industry are getting their orders from political and corporate leaders, groups like PNAC and think-tanks and the Yale grad group Skull and Bones. It is often the same people running those various groups. They will tell editors and owners not to print stories about CIA drug smuggling, or about election rigging, or money paid to despots and criminals. Those editors and owners know the story about career paths better than their underlings do, so they follow orders even better, thats how it works. The upper classes have much more to lose.

Retirement is not much different. You might think they could spill the beans once out from under their career path's 'sword of Damocles' situation. Nope. It is a very rare bird who will stuff a mattress with their life savings and go under cover to be a whistleblower, and even then they will find out that nothing will get printed anyhow. Some of them risk their lives to go dig up facts on some conspiracy they knew about only to realise later that someone else had allready given those facts to the media bosses and were ignored, it was never printed. They will feel pretty sheepish after all that.


 

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