On why I don't watch TV
I am out of the commercial media loop, and have been since 1990. I don't watch television. I don't listen to radio. I don't read the newspaper.
Most people cannot conceive of this splendid isolation. "You mean you've never seen Survivor? American Idol? Friends? Seinfeld?" No. No, I have not. "Why?" they ask.
Why? Well, the coverage of the first Persian Gulf War destroyed my faith in the ability and integrity of the mainstream media to provide meaningful coverage. It looked like a 4th of July party glorifying war technology. There was too little coverage of the human cost of the war, there was very little in the way of coverage of dissenting opinion, and I was disgusted that the media dropped the coverage of Neil Bush's (son and brother of the Presidents Bush) role in the Savings and Loan Scandal of the late 80's and early 90's in order to go into an orgy of flash-and-dazzle-replay war coverage.
My pool of independent news providers has been shrinking, and its not surprising. The majority of the media organizations in the US are owned by six huge corporations: Disney (ABC, Disney Channel, ESPN, 10 TV and 72 radio stations), General Electric (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, Bravo, Universal Pictures and 28 TV stations), Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (FOX, HarperCollins, New York Post, Weekly Standard, TV Guide, DirecTV and 35 TV stations), Time Warner (AOL, CNN, Warner Bros, Time and its 130-plus magazines), Viacom (CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures, Simon & Schuster and 183 U.S. radio stations), and Bertelsmann (Random House and its more than 120 imprints worldwide, and Gruner + Jahr and its more than 110 magazines in 10 countries). If a media source is owned by a major
corporation, I fully expect that the story I am reading, watching, or hearing has been vetted and sanitized according to the best interests of that parent corporation.
Since corporations like General Electric and Westinghouse (which owned CBS during the Persian Gulf War) have major weapons contracts with the US Government, it would not be in the interests of the parent corporation for its media branches to expose the dark and seedy underbelly of the US Government and its biggest vendors, ie the military-industrial complex.
And the media is too easily manipulated according to the interests of its parent corporations. Obviously, war is in the interests of big business, as seen by the fact that there was so much coverage of the WMD assertion by the Bush Government that a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that 56 percent of Americans still think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, while six in 10 said they believe that Iraq provided direct support to the al-Qaida terrorist network. This, despite the fact that these assertions have long since been thoroughly researched and debunked. In the lead-up to war, the world was deceived into accepting the WMD bait. The fact that there were no WMD has been downplayed, hardly getting any coverage at all, and when it is covered, it is always mentioned that the US had bad intelligence, but was acting in good-faith on that intelligence. Yeah, right. The intelligence was manufactured to suit the needs of the Bush Administration.
The fact that the Bush Administration has been creating and dispatching fake newcasts to local stations to broadcast is frightening. The White House says it is the responsibility of the stations to verify the accuracy of the information they broadcast... but lets think a minute. If it comes from the White House, are you going to question the veracity of the data? Or are you going to run it? Who, really, is going to research it and bounce it back, accusing the White House of peddling propaganda?
The FCC assault (lead by Gen Colin Powell's son Michael) on restrictions against mega-corporation ownership of greater than 35% of the media in any given area has been temporarily stayed by the efforts of small grass-roots media-activist organizations like the Prometheus Radio Project and Democracy Now! which opposed de-regulation and the sale of air-waves and won a suit in Federal courts last June.
Until the day that fake reality TV shows are supplanted by media coverage of the daily realities of people struggling to get by, to house, feed, and clothe themselves and their children; until the media covers victories that happen every day in our communities, like victories over violent, domestic, and hate crimes, economic depression, poverty and other hardships; until they show the grainy truth of life in war-torn regions around the globe; until a reporter can shed light on the underbelly of the major corporation that owns his newspaper, magazine, radio, or television station, I'm opting out.
And if the news is so slanted and dishonest in my opinion, why bother with sitcoms and gameshows that are shameless whores for the fashion and pop culture, little more than filler between commercials. Yes, that's entertainment.
My boycott of the mainstream media is personal and certainly has zero impact on the economy of these mega-corporations. But it is my protest, and as long as I have the ability to choose for myself what line of bull is fed into my brain, I will continue to chose independent news sources and pity the poor fools gullible enough to believe that if it is in print or on TV, it must be true.
Most people cannot conceive of this splendid isolation. "You mean you've never seen Survivor? American Idol? Friends? Seinfeld?" No. No, I have not. "Why?" they ask.
Why? Well, the coverage of the first Persian Gulf War destroyed my faith in the ability and integrity of the mainstream media to provide meaningful coverage. It looked like a 4th of July party glorifying war technology. There was too little coverage of the human cost of the war, there was very little in the way of coverage of dissenting opinion, and I was disgusted that the media dropped the coverage of Neil Bush's (son and brother of the Presidents Bush) role in the Savings and Loan Scandal of the late 80's and early 90's in order to go into an orgy of flash-and-dazzle-replay war coverage.
My pool of independent news providers has been shrinking, and its not surprising. The majority of the media organizations in the US are owned by six huge corporations: Disney (ABC, Disney Channel, ESPN, 10 TV and 72 radio stations), General Electric (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, Bravo, Universal Pictures and 28 TV stations), Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (FOX, HarperCollins, New York Post, Weekly Standard, TV Guide, DirecTV and 35 TV stations), Time Warner (AOL, CNN, Warner Bros, Time and its 130-plus magazines), Viacom (CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures, Simon & Schuster and 183 U.S. radio stations), and Bertelsmann (Random House and its more than 120 imprints worldwide, and Gruner + Jahr and its more than 110 magazines in 10 countries). If a media source is owned by a major
corporation, I fully expect that the story I am reading, watching, or hearing has been vetted and sanitized according to the best interests of that parent corporation.
Since corporations like General Electric and Westinghouse (which owned CBS during the Persian Gulf War) have major weapons contracts with the US Government, it would not be in the interests of the parent corporation for its media branches to expose the dark and seedy underbelly of the US Government and its biggest vendors, ie the military-industrial complex.
And the media is too easily manipulated according to the interests of its parent corporations. Obviously, war is in the interests of big business, as seen by the fact that there was so much coverage of the WMD assertion by the Bush Government that a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that 56 percent of Americans still think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, while six in 10 said they believe that Iraq provided direct support to the al-Qaida terrorist network. This, despite the fact that these assertions have long since been thoroughly researched and debunked. In the lead-up to war, the world was deceived into accepting the WMD bait. The fact that there were no WMD has been downplayed, hardly getting any coverage at all, and when it is covered, it is always mentioned that the US had bad intelligence, but was acting in good-faith on that intelligence. Yeah, right. The intelligence was manufactured to suit the needs of the Bush Administration.
The fact that the Bush Administration has been creating and dispatching fake newcasts to local stations to broadcast is frightening. The White House says it is the responsibility of the stations to verify the accuracy of the information they broadcast... but lets think a minute. If it comes from the White House, are you going to question the veracity of the data? Or are you going to run it? Who, really, is going to research it and bounce it back, accusing the White House of peddling propaganda?
The FCC assault (lead by Gen Colin Powell's son Michael) on restrictions against mega-corporation ownership of greater than 35% of the media in any given area has been temporarily stayed by the efforts of small grass-roots media-activist organizations like the Prometheus Radio Project and Democracy Now! which opposed de-regulation and the sale of air-waves and won a suit in Federal courts last June.
Until the day that fake reality TV shows are supplanted by media coverage of the daily realities of people struggling to get by, to house, feed, and clothe themselves and their children; until the media covers victories that happen every day in our communities, like victories over violent, domestic, and hate crimes, economic depression, poverty and other hardships; until they show the grainy truth of life in war-torn regions around the globe; until a reporter can shed light on the underbelly of the major corporation that owns his newspaper, magazine, radio, or television station, I'm opting out.
And if the news is so slanted and dishonest in my opinion, why bother with sitcoms and gameshows that are shameless whores for the fashion and pop culture, little more than filler between commercials. Yes, that's entertainment.
My boycott of the mainstream media is personal and certainly has zero impact on the economy of these mega-corporations. But it is my protest, and as long as I have the ability to choose for myself what line of bull is fed into my brain, I will continue to chose independent news sources and pity the poor fools gullible enough to believe that if it is in print or on TV, it must be true.
posted by KR | 4/10/2005 09:21:00 AM
4 Comments:
I am 100% in agreement!! The only thing that I might add is that PBS is one of the very few sources that I even trust to get unbiased info. Even then, I try and keep an open mind as to what I accept as fact.
Unfortunately, even PBS has recently succumbed to pressure from the NEA, now increasingly under the influence of conservatives. PBS receives subsidy from the NEA.
I lived for years without a TV. The one I have now is primarily used to watch videos. I do read newspapers, mostly on the Internet. You are right about the ownership of major media organizations. The BBC may not be perfect but it says a lot about the Brits when an organization fully funded by the government does not pull punches in criticizing Blair and his cabinet. Can we think of the Voice of America inviting Gore Vidal or Noam Chomsky to comment about President Bush!
>Unfortunately, even PBS has recently succumbed to pressure from the NEA, now increasingly under the influence of conservatives. PBS receives subsidy from the NEA.
I'm afraid you are right Musifar, I have noticed that politics is slowly creeping into PBS programming!!They were even "forced" to show Tucker Carlson or lose funding!!What are we to do?
Not to mention the pressure and threats they received for showing "Postcards from Buster" in which Buster visits a same sex marriage household.
i haven't trusted the media for a very long time now. but i could never articulate the reasons so well and with so many striking facts. thanx for enlightening me.
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