Corporate Controlled Media

Long ass post ahead (wrote most of this last night).

I have wanted to talk about the stuff I'm learning in my class. So in my class we have been dissecting the media and what the impact it has on our society. This is all stuff I have heard before, but you know when you are learning a subject, it just makes you a lot more aware of the impacts it truly does have around you.

I have always been skeptical of major news networks and absolutely abhored local news. When I lived with my parents, my mom would half of the time have some kind of news on in the house. The major reasons I hated it is it was obvious it wasn't really news. It was entertainment. It was there to draw viewers in, not to inform viewers. Local news is actually worse as it fills most of its stories with the most blantant scare tactics ("YOUR CHILDREN WILL DIE IF YOU LET THEM OUTSIDE", "SEXUAL PREDATORS AT EVERY CORNER", "HOW CAN YOU PROTECT YOURSELF AGAINST TERRORISTS").

Some major networks are worse than others and more blatant about it (Fox News is worse than MSNBC about it)... but they are all very guilty of this behavior. Obviously, the major driving factor behind it is money. News is driven by advertisements. Those ads essentially pay the bills. You have to draw in viewers though for the ads. So how do you do that with channel surfers? How do keep the interest of these low-attention-span viewers? Flashy graphics, simplified headlines, scare tactics, pundits, opinionated anchors, consistent high drama stories. These are all parts of how you keep these users glued to their televisions.

These things are fairly obvious. The things that are less obvious though is the agenda that isn't blatant. Simplified, yes we can say it's all about money. But delving deeper into the subject, we can see that there are specific political and social agendas that are pushed out. What those agendas are depends on the network... but what many people fail to realize is how tied in everything is. There are literally 5 major corporations that dispense all the news, movies, television, music, books, sports, newspapers, and magazines we read. When you think about the fact 5 corporations control 90% of the information we recieve on a daily basis... you should be very skeptical of what kind of messages you are receiving. Disney for example owns ABC, A&E, History Channel, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, MIramax, Buena Vista, Hyperion Books, Discover Magazine, US Weekly, Several Daily Newspapers, some major radio networks, etc. To get an old list of these mega corporations and what they own, you can check this PBS special on it called the Merchants of Cool. This was done in 2001 and since then, there's been more merging and these main 5 in the US control even more now.

Given that these companies want to keep making money... they will have an agenda to dictate the way we should live. That "way of life" they disseminate through advertisements, through movies, through books, through news, etc. They can keep out the things that disagree with their agenda, and highlight the ones that reaffirm their agenda. If you can paint a picture of women living a certain way in your films, books, newspapers, movies, television stations... this will in turn give an image to which women will be pressured to live by. The marketing becomes much easier for a group that is defined in such a simple fashion... and in the end it adds to the bottom line.

It isn't that people don't think... but when you are bombarded with images each and every day of what things you should have as a man/woman, American, student, or whatever demographic you want to define... psychologically it is going affect you somehow. I don't care who you are, you will find yourself affected by it in someway. Now the more you understand the agendas being pushed through and the more aware of how skeptical you should be, the less you will be affected. But ultimately, the average person will never see this information because there isn't going to be any reason these mega-corporations would want to attack themselves. You aren't going to find information through these mega-corporations.

What we define as a good American, or a man... or a woman... is all dictated through these mediums which we are exposed to everyday. Sometimes the messages are blatant. Many times the messages are a lot more subtle. Our perception of black Americans is skewed through television, movies, and music which comes out of these companies. Our image of what a woman should be is defined in Vogue articles, News Corporation owned movies like Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Disney owned shows like Desperate Housewives.

One thing that is happening right now, which is sort of scary, is that the major bandwidth providers in the US (Comcast, Verizon, AT&T) are trying to push legistlation through that allows them to give preferential treatment to their own services. It's not hard to imagine that in years to come, they gimp the Internet for those sites that don't fit within their structure and that they will push sites that do. It will be another form of controlling the information we recieve even on the net... as they could essentially block or kill sites that are against their agenda. You can read a little more about it on BBC News.

I would recommend that if this is all new to you, please do some research on it. Talk to people you know about it. Not because we should boycott all that we consume information wise... but it will be less apt to affect us if we know about the clever manipulation. And to understand that every source is biased in some way... allows us to make sure we take a look at several different sources of information before we make a conclusion. I think most of us who read Sehti... are generally skeptical folk... and we understand that business has influence in almost everything... but to understand the relationships of who owns what and to try to dissect their agendas... will help us stay more informed.