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/* Written  4:29 pm  Sep 21, 1992 by bfrg9732@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu in cdp:alt.activism */
/* ---------- "The Media Monopoly (part 2)" ---------- */

The Media Monopoly

by Ben H. Bagdikian

Part 2 -- Introduction

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"The dream of every leader, whether a tyrannical despot or a 
benign prophet, is to regulate the behavior of his people."
		-- Colin Blakemore ("Mechanics of the Mind")


Today we live in a world which is changing so rapidly that 
receiving the best information possible is indispensable. If we 
are not getting the *entire* picture, if we are not getting 
unbiased information, then we are unable to make *informed* 
decisions. Bagdikian declares that "...ignorance of economic and 
political change is destructive of democracy and fatal to 
intelligent decision making."

More than at any time in our history, we depend on the mass media 
to inform us about what is occurring, about the "news." It is the 
mass media which decide what *is* the news. "The mass media 
become the authority at any given moment for what is true and 
what is false, what is reality and what is fantasy, what is 
important and what is trivial."

"Authorities have always recognized that to control the public 
they must control information." Thus, those in power have it in 
their interest to control the information. And yet, for "a 
realistic picture of society there is no such thing as a central 
authority." Reality has many angles and to centralize control 
over information limits our perspective on reality to a single 
angle or viewpoint -- that of whoever has power.

"The Age of Enlightenment created a new kind of society... It 
acknowledged that the democratic consent of the governed is 
meaningless unless the consent is informed consent." Thus 
*information* was crucial in a democracy. In the United States, 
the first amendment sought to guarantee a plurality of 
viewpoints, a plurality of information. "Diversity of expression 
was assumed to be the natural state of enduring liberty."

But unfortunately, "Modern technology and American economics have 
quietly created a new kind of central authority over information 
-- the national and multinational corporation. By the 1980s, the 
majority of all major American media... were controlled by fifty 
giant corporations." These powerful information czars can easily 
drown out attempts by the less powerful to put forth dissenting 
viewpoints. "The fifty men and women who head these 
corporations... constitute a new Private Ministry of Information 
and Culture."

Bagdikian argues that "...while it is not possible for the media 
to tell the population what to think [at least not overtly, 
B.R.], they do tell the public what to think about." The 
permissable range of discussion is defined by the mass media. 
"What is reported enters the public agenda... [Thus,] More than 
any other single private source and often more than any 
governmental source, the fifty dominant media corporations can 
set the national agenda."

This control over our information and ultimately of our lives by 
these corporate dinosaurs is not new. "When Fred Friendly 
resigned as president of CBS News in 1966 because the network 
refused to cancel a fifth daytime rerun of 'I Love Lucy' for a 
crucial Senate hearing on the Vietnam War, he was told that the 
loss of revenue from a delayed episode of 'Lucy' was intolerable 
to shareholders, who would not accept any decrease in net 
profits."

Or again, more recently the chairman of the board of the largest 
newspaper chain, Gannet Company, told an interviewer, "Wall 
Street didn't give a damn if we put out a good paper in Niagara 
Falls. They just wanted to know if our profits would be in the 
15-20 percent range."

[When we see "commercials" on television, it becomes harder and 
harder to distinguish them from outright propaganda. Witness, for 
example, the string of Dow Chemical commercials ("Dow let's you 
do great things"). As Abbie Hoffman once said, "You see these 
commercials and you feel so relieved!" You want to exclaim, Wow! 
Thanks for helping, Dow!] B.R.

"News and public information have been integrated formally into 
the highest levels of financial and nonjournalistic corporate 
control. Conflicts of interest between the public's need for 
information and corporate desires for 'positive' information have 
vastly increased."

Although it is true that within the dominance of the fifty 
corporados controlling the media there still is *some* mixture of 
news and ideas -- still "there are also limits... The limits are 
felt on open discussion of the system that supports giantism in 
corporate life and of other values that have been enshrined under 
the inaccurate label 'free enterprise.'" Sure, these slaves of 
mammon will allow a controlled range of debate. But "when their 
most sensitive economic interests are at stake, the parent 
corporations seldom refrain from using their power over public 
information."

"When fifty men and women, chiefs of their corporations, control 
more than half the information and ideas that reach 220 million 
Americans, it is time for Americans to examine the institutions 
from which they receive their daily picture of the world."


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Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End part 2