Information Control    

 

An open and uncontrolled media is the essential prerequisite for any democratic political system. Citizens need to understand the issues of the day in order to make informed decisions as to what courses of actions their nations should undertake. When such information is withheld from them, or the information is skewed according to someone’s self-interest, democratic decision making falters.

  In the world today huge multinational media conglomerates provide most “news.” In the USA, for example, a small number of companies control almost all news and information venues.[i] A small group of multinational corporations control our news, and indeed they control our access to news. They control our understanding of reality itself thereby. The corporations which control our governments also control our very understandings of reality itself! The world is run by corporations, in the interests of corporations. It is not run in the human interest.

  I can personally recall in January, and again in February of 2003, participating, with my wife Ramona, in two very large anti-Iraq War demonstrations in San Francisco. The route of these was to assemble at the Embarcadero, then march down Market Street to City Hall. During both marches, I made crowd estimates. People marched about 18 abreast, in rough rows separated by about 3 feet from one another. From this, simple calculations showed that in January there could not have been less that about 200,000 participants. In February, there could not have been less than about 300,000 persons involved. In fact, because there were so many persons the space around City Hall filled up with perhaps 200,000 plus persons and then could not fit any others. Yet Market Street was still clogged with people packed back many blocks to the Embarcadero. Arriving at the vicinity of City Hall they milled around unable to enter and eventually dispersed. I would say that there were at least 400,000 and quite possibly, a full half-million people there that day.

Returning from these events to our hotel room we were astonished to learn from CNN Headline News that “thousands” had marched in January. In February, it was “about 20,000” or simply “tens of thousands.” In neither case was the story given much time or depth of coverage, nor was the coverage given, such as it was, particularly “sympathetic.” Instead, the narrative quickly switched back to the steadily escalating drum beat for war. It was the same story with about the same figures, on all of the other news channels as well. The propagandistic nature of corporate news was on full display. Even the two San Francisco daily newspapers joined in with the numerical falsifications. My wife and I almost wondered if we had been in the same universe as the one reported on by the mass media, as those reports bore little resemblance to our first hand, real world experience.     
            Yet, this media contrived “universe” is the one which most people unthinkingly assume is the "real" world. Except that it isn’t.