And a cartel is born. A cartel can be a group of corporations within one industry who meet to set prices. In the case of oil and rubber companies early in the last century, a cartel ran light rail lines out of business and lobbied aggressively for the building of an interstate highway system-a manipulation that led to what the documentary "The End of Suburbia" modestly refers to as "the single greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world."
And yet the asset being manipulated to the public detriment by the corporate media-information-is arguably even more basic and precious than oil.
The five media companies that control the television airwaves-Time/Warner (CNN), GE (NBC), Viacom (CBS), Disney (ABC), and Fox-operate as an information cartel with the power to "create reality" in exactly the way a White House official described it to journalist Ron Suskind:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality-judiciously, as you will-we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
In such an environment, hate and misinformation feed on each other, and reality is flipped on and off like . . . well, like a TV.
Right now there are a good half a dozen threats to the Constitution, including the wars on Iraq and Iran, the White House firing of US attorneys in an effort to shore up the 2008 election, and deleted White House emails showing just how those firings came about.
In a reality-based universe, these issues would be all-consuming, receiving the kind of saturation coverage given to the late lamented Anna Nicole. Those deleted White House/RNC emails, in particular, seem like the perfect media scandal, since they could easily lead straight to impeachment-particularly if people got as worked up about it as they are about Don Imus.
We certainly need to study the media information cartel-judiciously, of course-but right now it's more important that we join "history's actors." This is not an optional fight. We can't hope to take back reality by targeting individual media personalities or even by targeting their sponsors. We can't do without government regulation of corporate media giants, any more than we can just give up on proper regulation of our food and drug supply.
If you're still in doubt, please tune in to PBS on April 25 to see Bill Moyers lay out the Record of Iraq War Lies. David Swanson, who saw an advance copy of the program, writes, "Spending that 90 minutes on this will actually save you time, because you'll never watch television news again-not even on PBS, which comes in for its share of criticism."
We can use that time instead to work on breaking up the media information cartel that's destroying our freedom. We can start by writing to our congressmembers, senators, and local papers. Tell them that in order to prevent the abuse of our public airwaves you support Dennis Kucinich's plan to restore the fairness doctrine.
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