Untwisting Reality

Who Owns Truth?

• By Poetry X
• 17 March, 2014
• 4 Comments

Since the telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed, the media is owned by very few people who “incidentally” have very close relations with commercial and financial businesses and actually own the media. In addition, those businesses also pay lobbyists to influence government in the policy making. We consume the script that is passed on from network to network in a much synchronized manner that makes us perceive a reality that serves the interests of the elites. There is total lack of ethics and basic decency in today’s journalism, and at many times, this gets to the level of inhumanity. (The rule of media liberty goes something like this: you have freedom of speech as long as nobody hears you unless you are worshipping the greatness of corporate entrepreneurship). GE (General Electric), Walt Disney, News Corp, Time Warner and Viacom, those are the big six and the absolute truth tellers.  These corporations own newspapers, radio, television channels, telecommunications and internet major sites.  Indeed, even intellectual and journalist are bought up to project the script of the corporations and the pentagon on the population.

These corporations make profits at a level never seen before in the history of mankind. GE alone made revenues of $157 billion just in 2009. [FreePress Ownership Chart] Rupert Murdoch through News Corp, here in the US only, owns Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox News Channel, the National Geographic Channel, HarperCollins, TV Guide, The Weekly Standard, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, as well as the film studios 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight and 28 TV station licenses for local TV stations around the US. [Democracy Now Jul 19th 2011] Here in the United States we still have some public media, but our very “hard working” politicians have made public assets available on an open market for corporate auctions. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie agreed to place the publicly owned New Jersey Network under control of WNET-TV with the implication that the private Caucus Educational Corporation would provide 20 hours of television content per week. Christie also agreed to sell all nine of New Jersey Network’s radio licenses to WHYY and New York Public Radio. [Democracy Now Jun 8th 2011]

Once in a while these monster media companies get caught with their pants down. Fox affiliate KMSP and NBC affiliate WMGM were both fined with $4,000 for spreading corporate propaganda as it were actual news.  The big heroes of this major accomplishment were Free Press and the Center for Media and Democracy which filed the complaint in 2006. We had to wait until 2011 to finally get a tiny victory. [Democracy Now Mar 28th 2011]