There are a number of things to consider when looking at the traditional mainstram media’s increasingly fragile hold on our minds.
Video is useful as one black man oppressed by the Police in Los Angeles learned to the benefit of oppressed people around the world. This was 1991 and his name was Rodney King. In 2021 his name is George Floyd. Sadly he will have another name in 2031, and 2041.
It’s hard for the judge to take the policeman’s word when the video of Rodney King allows us to actually see the past. Information technology is a double-edged weapon – it’s handy for them for surveillance but it’s also handy for us as evidence. The progress of exploitation is delayed by the fact that whatever technology is invented to be used against us, may also be used by us against them.
But this didn’t prevent the Police from being acquitted. Resort to obscure and dubious film theory enabled the defence attorney to convince the jury that what they saw was not in any sense “real” because there is apparently no such thing. The racist Police offenders were acquitted of obvious brutality, and Los Angeles burned under a riot.
Of course there’s no censorship in our media. But if the newspaper strays from the government line, there’s no more Government invites or any other official business. No more credibility. No more sales. No more newspaper. The Free Market will censor. And when it doesn’t, the license can always be withdrawn. Just one example of this happened in Britain when Thames TV screened “Death on the Rock” exposing the lies of the Government version of how three Irish citizens were executed by the Security Services in Gibraltar. Who needs the death penalty when the state can perform surrogate executions, or beat people to death in police custody, or drive people to suicide in state prisons. There are many ways to murder your citizens. They may not be legal but if they are done in the service of the State then they go unpunished. State Terrorism is a fact of life.
Thames TV did not have their license renewed but of course this had nothing to do with censorship, as the rest of the media informed us. Truth is not the priority, survival is. The media generally will not bite the hand that feeds. Instead, in their complicity in covering up gross institutional violations against humanity, they are feeding the hand that bites.
Countries beyond the ultra-refined Western media monopolies practice censorship. In “civilised” countries, the mainstream is swamped with propaganda, misinformation, distortion, selective and loyal reporting and truth omission. The other side of the story is discredited, ignored and marginalised into the late night schedule and the minority press. Censorship in “civilised” countries is practised by excluding the facts from the mainstream.
It is necessary for Media managers to employ the “right sort”- if the rookie journalist comes from a good background and has not been directly over-exposed to the brutal injustices of other people’s everyday life, then our rookie is less likely to see systemic evil and more likely to perceive corrupt individuals, more likely to perceive the essentially benign intent of the system and its earnest efforts through Public Enquiries to correct its unintended faults. Much more secure career paths are of course available to those who lean towards the Establishment rather than against it.
But as with oppressed nations, so with oppressed media. You can’t beat unity. If the media unite against the sanctions that the Press Offices of the Power Elite could impose on them, they could start to report without favour and start to tell us truths that we are not conditioned to hear. The content and the bias would change dramatically and real clarity (and real barbarity) would finally emerge. For example…
“We’re not bringing freedom, we’re subjugating and exploiting defenceless foreigners.”
“We’re not offering fair trade, we’re paying a dictator to give it to Wall Street on the cheap.”
“We’re not preventing communist aggression, we’re killing people to steal their land”
An honest Media could expose the reality of this ghastly and brutal System. So what would be the consequences if they did?