Monday, October 11, 2010

Why media is not doing their job

I often complain on how mainstream media (that is: excepted a few rather marginal ones) is hiding facts and biasing information while aggrandizing some stuff that can only be thought as institutional propaganda.

George Washington at Washington Blog has today an excellent review on this matter applied to the case of the USA.

The whole article is a must read but I will synthesize here only the 5 main reasons why the media is not doing its job of informing truthfully and criticizing authorities when they are in fault. They could be grouped in just one: censorship by oligarchs and their political minions, but I'm following the original article here:

  1. Self-censorship by journalists: they know more or less what is acceptable and what will be punished by their bosses, so they normally stay at the safe side of the red line. 
  2. Censorship by higher-ups: these are company directors, corporations who are the ones paying for the publicity and even the governments. The vast majority of US media is today controlled by just six or maybe as little as four corporate owners. 
  3. Drumming up support for war or what is maybe better described as mindless pseudo-patriotism. Instead of being critical and informative the media as assumed its role as part of the governments' propaganda machinery, rallying people around governments. 
  4. Facilitating access: in particular the Washington Post is denounced as offering access to journalists and DC officials per a substantial fee (25,000 to 250,000 USD). This could be best described as corruption of the media, another aspect of it.
  5. Government censorship: just another aspect, and one most important, of point 2. 

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