"I hope we shall crush... in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country”
- Thomas Jefferson
Less than 2 years after the creation of the Federal Reserve:
In March, 1915, the J. P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press ... They found it was necessary to purchase the control of only 25 of the greatest papers. An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers."
- U.S. Congressman Oscar Callaway, 1917
1983 – Ben Bagdikian writes “The Media Monopoly” which details 50 major corporations controlling the media.
1987 – 2nd edition of “The Media Monopoly” notes 29 major corporations.
2000 – 7th edition re-titled “The New Media Monopoly” describes five major companies controlling more than 75% of media.
http://www.gradethenews.org/pages2/bagdikian.htm
"He reserves his deepest scorn for the heads of the five media conglomerates -- one of which, Time Warner, actually had the gall to copyright the song, "Happy Birthday." (The other four companies are Viacom, Bertelesmann, the News Corporation and Disney. General Electric is a contender for No. 6, he said.)"
``I know the secret of making the average American believe anything I want him to. Just let me control television.... You put something on the television and it becomes reality. If the world outside the TV set contradicts the images, people start trying to change the world to make it like the TV set images...''
--Hal Becker, media ``expert'' and management consultant, the Futures Group, in an interview in 1981
"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world, if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The super-national sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."
- David Rockefeller, good friend of the Federal Reserve
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
- Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
7thdirection
10 Comments
what do you think? (with regards to media)
If our news media actually went out and did the job they are supposed to do (find all the evidence, sifting through different points of view, but ultimately making informed judgments about what is possible, probably, or certain, and what is unlikely or absolutely impossible) then we'd be fine.
The problem today is not that we don't have enough points of view represented; it is that we have too many points of view that are utter bullsh*t.
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
http://video.google.com/v...docid=6737097743434902428
7th direction both monopoly and overpowerful proprietors are a grave danger, but monopoly of course makes the second worse. My daily and Sunday newspapers are owned by trusts (trusts in the UK sense), because their original owners thought the media should be independent and free, and gave their family interest and stake in them up.
http://www.michaelparenti.org/MonopolyMedia.html
If our news media actually went out and did the job they are supposed to do (find all the evidence, sifting through different points of view, but ultimately making informed judgments about what is possible, probably, or certain, and what is unlikely or absolutely impossible)
well that's a little utopian (and if you wait to publish till all the evidence is in, you have a problem); our competing newspapers are a kind of surrogate for what you want, admittedly a highly imperfect and ****-peddling one, in that they genuinely do compete and their political views vary somewhat. (Since Piers Morgan was sacked from the Mirror, that's probably less true.)
http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/toys/dailymail/
Hey you know AdGuy always gets the last word! ;)