Our Freedom of the Press has been eviscerated, but that same Press failed to report that: Just as they failed to tell us of their extraordinary lobbying successes to control our airwaves and deny us our constitutional rights. With radio and television both unregulated for the common good we are left with a corporate media system that is not dissimilar from a state run media system of the type we loved to abhor in the former Soviet Union.
The Existing Media System in the United States Is the Antithesis of That Which the Founders Intended
Instead of a media system providing an unimpeded flow of divergent ideas, our system provides the single perspective of the wealthy and powerful. The conglomerates which control our airwaves are owned by some of the richest people in the country. They are sympathetic to tax breaks for the rich, anti-union, pro-war (war is good for business too). They determine what is important enough to be covered in the news, what is considered unworthy of attention, what is to be ridiculed and what needs to be spun. Why would owners of media conglomerates, who spend billions buying off Congress to get their power, report about anything which would undermine their power? That includes not only what is detrimental to their profit making interests, but also anything the government wants kept from the people: the suffering caused by our bombing of innocent human beings, information suppressed “in the name of national security”, the regular stifling of dissent. By controlling our information these huge media corporations have eradicated our free press, without which our democracy cannot survive.
The problem with the media being granted such monopoly status is that unlike other corporations which control more and more aspects of our lives, this one controls information. If the government wants war, a media system which relies on the government to continue to ignore its antitrust responsibilities, will sell war. It will also sell elections. A full one third of the broadcast revenue of these media conglomerates comes from political ads. Those wealthy enough to pay will have a voice; everyone else’s interest–the majority of the American people – will not be heard from. As if the people don’t exist.
“Big money is I think largely sitting on the windpipe of the First Amendment. Those who have the bucks are able to filter what gets on and what stays off.”
– Norman Solomon
The current media system, as predicted by the Founders, is subverting the constitutional structure upon which our democracy depends.
“The two central tests of a free press are how well it monitors the warmaking power of the government and permits the citizenry to prevent military adventurism; and how well it empowers citizens to effectively conduct elections for leadership of the government”
The above heading is taken from Robert McChesney’s and John Nichols’ new book, Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy, in which they explain:
The crisis of the media in the United States, a crisis that threatens the existence of viable self-government.....manifests itself in innumerable ways, but in this book we have concentrated upon what are arguably the two most important duties of a free press: how it engages the citizenry to permit them to monitor the war-making power of the government; and how it provides the necessary information such that citizens can participate meaningfully in elections. If the media system fails in these areas, whatever good it does otherwise is of limited value. Under the auspices of our mainstream media, we invaded a nation on bogus grounds, and have arguably left the world in a much more dangerous place. We held a money-drenched presidential election that managed to avoid large issues facing our country and world. Much as Madison feared, our polity is increasingly a tragedy and a farce. But there is nothing funny about it.
Madison had understood that the war powers, with its concomitant excesses of executive power, needed to be particularly restrained:
War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war a physical force is to be created, and it is the executive will which is to direct it. In war the public treasures are to be unlocked, and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. In war the honors and emoluments of offices are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed. It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and the most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venial love of fame are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
It was with this appreciation for the need to keep in check the executive war powers that Madison warned:
A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.
Not only did the media fail to inform us of the knowledge we needed, like the fact that our government intended to start a war in Iraq long before September 11th, but the media deliberately kept us ignorant, suppressing this information and all other information we needed, rendering us powerless to prevent this war. They served their and the government’s interests, compliantly reporting as fact the ever changing invented justifications for a war that had been decided on long before the fabricated pretexts which were passed on to us as news.
The United States Media System, Owned by a Handful of Government Sponsored Monopolies, Sold Us this War by Their Unquestioning Reporting of the Government’s Lies and Their Suppression of Dissent
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The deplorable role the media played in reporting the government’s propaganda leading up to the war and continuing to the present time, not only failed to provide the people with the truth they needed to resist a corrupt government, but by dutifully reporting the administration’s lies, spreading the government’s manufactured fear and attacking dissenting opinions as unpatriotic, the media was an essential instrument in what Noam Chomsky has called “manufacturing consent” and what Herman Goering has described below as what is needed to “drag people along”.
