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Corporate propaganda

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I think that we’re headed towards a future where most mass media outlets will function primarily as propaganda for the larger corporations that own them. It’s getting harder for newspapers to turn a profit, but a big megaphone to spew propaganda that helps other parts of your company, that is something that can be very valuable, even if its own operation loses money. The Moonies figured this out a while ago, though I think they may have overspent (apologies for the self-link, I’m very proud of the post title there).

Maybe the future of pseudo-journalism-as-corporate-propaganda is already here. I noticed that the Washington Post editorial page has come out strongly against Net Neutrality, with both an unsigned editorial and a piece by a Republican FCC commissioner in the past few days. Turns out the Washington Post Company owns broadband provider Cable One.

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42Comments

  4. 4.

    drkrick

    The Post has been a loss leader for the Meyer/Graham/Weymouth family for most of the 70 odd years they’ve owned it. Eugene Meyer, when handing out paychecks in the newsroom, used to make a point of reminding each employee the money had actually come from his radio station. Now the money comes from a ripoff “University.”

  5. 5.

    Mike Kay (Team America)

    Next thing you know, WaPo reporters will charging special interests $25,ooo in protection money for salons; firing reporters who accurately expose wingers, and lobby republicans for special provisions affecting their holdings in GATT agreements.

  6. 6.

    The Dangerman

    Turns out the Washington Post Company owns broadband provider Cable One.

    IANAL, but isn’t this why there are antitrust laws?

  8. 8.

    SiubhanDuinne

    That was not only one of your best post titles, but quite possibly one of the best titles anywhere by anyone of all time EVAH.

  9. 9.

    Chris

    From a sci-fi nerd’s POV, the term you’re looking for in reference to our future is “cyberpunk.” Dystopia, here we come.

  11. 11.

    kdaug

    Amazing. I heard somewhere, also, that defense contractors own networks. And that foreign corporations own “channels”. And that we may not being given the “WholeTruth” on the TV programming we pay for.

    Brave new world, my friends. At least around here we weed out the sub-epsilons.

  12. 12.

    Citizen_X

    So what are people’s takes on the coming FCC net neutrality decision? The right hates it, yes, but some critics on the left are screaming that it’s a complete sellout (Huffpo right now has the headline, “FCC CAVES ON NET NEUTRALITY”).

    Wired has a good article about how seemingly no one is pleased by the ruling, including comments by the activist that wrote the Huffpo article. I’m not sure where I stand on it yet. Is it a lukewarm compromise that is doomed to leave everyone dissatisfied?

  13. 13.

    JGabriel

    @Mike Kay (Team America):

    WaPo is corrupt! I’m SHOCKED! I’m SHOCKED!

    Anyone sufficiently cynical, i.e. anyone sufficiently versed in today’s media, will be unsurprisedby this, but it really is shocking that one of America’s most (formerly) respected newspapers, and the default paper of record for the nation’s capital, would editorialize on such an issue without disclosing its own conflict of interest.

    .

  14. 14.

    mk3872

    No one really knows what the impact of the FCC’s move will mean. Yet here we have the corporations and Repubs representing end-of-the-world scenarios in WaPo and if you go over to HuffPo, you’ll be shocked to learn that the FCC is actually CAVING to corporations.

    WTF? I think neither side really truly understands. They just don’t know how to do anything other than dig in and cry wolf.

  15. 15.

    Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther

    Well, in fairness, the periods in American history in which this was not more or less the case are fairly rare and brief.

    There was no golden age. There were many golden people, but no general, country/industry-wide golden age.

  18. 18.

    DearOldDad

    I don’t think most people realize that once the free flow of info on the internet is stifled we will be in the dark and not even know it ..

  20. 20.

    Jager

    Apply for a new low power FM in your community, do it now! Get one in every town in America and then link them together and speak the god-damned truth. Get them now before the fucking Christians get them all. (and if you don’t they will!) With the net restricted we have to go back to the original “wireless”…move people move!

  22. 22.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Jager: Most of the reserved noncommercial FM channels (88-92 MHz or so) in large and medium-sized markets are already in the hands of religious broadcasters, some occupied solely to keep community/public radio stations from being able to run translator stations on them.

  23. 23.

    Tim

    the “future” has been here for some time. we live in a corporate state. all news is (corporate) propaganda.

  24. 24.

    Restrung

    Internet? How the fuck do they work?

    I don’t think most people realize that once the free flow of info on the internet is stifled we will be in the dark and not even know it ..

    DearOldDad, you obviously don’t listen to Glenn. Unlike my own dear old dad.

  25. 25.

    gleek

    @DearOldDad:

    I think the “most people” you refer to here care much more about playing farmville and posting inane crap on their friend’s wall to care much about that shit @ all.

  26. 26.

    Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen

    GOLIATH – All you’ll ever need.

    That is something that can be very valuable, even if its own operation loses money. The Moonies figured this out a while ago

    And they still managed to never come close to turning a profit.

    Turns out the Washington Post Company owns broadband provider Cable One.

    Well give them a break. I mean it isn’t like they issued an op-ed piece defending for-profit higher education institutions or anything.

    Oh wait …

  28. 28.

    James Hare

    I love the hilariously-filtered comments. On an issue the Intertubes are really jazzed up about, they run a Friday editorial and get only 5 comments, 4 of which are cheering them on?

  29. 29.

    Restrung

    Again: money party vs. everybody else.
    It’s most obvious today and yesterday with the Senate and Zadroga, but ferfuxake, does the GOP really need to fuckup a nuclear arms treaty? Really, why?

    I said here on Nov 2 that everybody I voted for would win. They did. (McCollum, Mariani, Pappas, Dayton)

    Maybe I should move to Arizona so I can have someone to screech at? That would be fun. NOT

  38. 38.

    Kat

    Interview with Chris Hedges, author of Death of the Liberal Class

    Chris Hedges is a fellow at the Nation Institute, former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 as part of a team covering the issue of global terror. He’s author of a number of books; his latest, Death of the Liberal Class. On Thursday, Chris Hedges was one of the more than 130 people, mainly war veterans, arrested outside the White House in an antiwar protest led by the group Veterans for Peace.

    AMY GOODMAN: What happened? It hardly got any coverage in the corporate media.

    CHRIS HEDGES: Yeah, well, that’s not much of a surprise, at this point. I think we’ve seen a kind of a withering of corporate media, including my own paper, the New York Times. As advertising rates decline and as circulation drops, they become even more craven in their service of the power elite and reportage that in no way offends the structures of power. So, you know, events like that one are nonentities for mainstream news organizations.

    AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean by the “death of the liberal class”?

    CHRIS HEDGES: The collapse of the pillar, the primary pillars of the liberal establishment, those liberal institutions—the press, labor, public education and, in particular universities, culture, liberal religious institutions and the Democratic Party—that have been under assault. …

  39. 39.

    Chris

    “a future where most mass media outlets will function primarily as propaganda for the larger corporations that own them” -DougJ

    That’s why WikiLeaks and net neutrality are two sides of the same coin for the establishment media: each threatens the establishment media’s dominance in, if not monopoly on, defining news – and choking off potential competing narratives. “What do you mean, ‘what else is going on?’? Nothing else is going on, because we say it’s not – or, in some cases, we’re not saying it is.”

  41. 41.

    Price Geoffrey

    @kdaug: I think this is one of the main reasons to begin fleeing the major mass media, television and newspapers, especially. At this point, I think most would agree that these two are essentially surviving off of the Boomer-and-Older demo. Their content reflects it, just as does it more apparent tilt toward a conservative pro-corporate mentality when it reports on tax-cuts, union efficacy, government inefficiency, and, most shamelessly and shamefully, xenophobic urges, as in the DREAM Act and the Burlington Coat Mosque. Just spouting the “other side’s” narrative is poisoning an already toxic mass media.

    I’m trying to get rid of cable television, the domain of senior citizens. Almost everything on my cable spectrum tilts toward Real Americans and conservatives, including the network tripe. The newspapers are a total waste of my time at this point. A boss of mine waved a Newsweek at us during ameeting, and asked, “Who’s read this story?” None of us had. It’s laughable to consider myself reading Newsweek for my news. Everything is out there on the Web often with shockingly better/transparent sourcing and with varied spins and analyses. It’s disgust that makes me try to cut my cable bill by using free content on youtube and what I pay for with Netflix via AppleTV. The newspapers are a simple matter: I haven’t had the urge to read one or visit their websites in years (since Steno Judy and the NYTimes, in fact). Don’t lament them; leave them to the bitter anger-junkies. Defund their profitability. It’ a “free market” initiative.

    Really, though, this is like when I first heard of Husker Du back in about 1986, right around when D. Boone died in a van in AZ. I’m late to this one, but I’m not going to walk around with my cell phone in a holster on my belt or with my shirts tucked in anymore when it comes to social change. It’s happening already. Don’t believe me. Can’t see the forest for the trees? Ask someone who is about 15 what they watch on tv, and after a few shows, it gets quiet quickly. TV is on life-support now.

    Have you ever spent time with a republican who pisses and moans about the “liberal media”? This whole gig is beginning to sound boring like that, too.

  42. 42.

    dave

    Yes.. that day already is here. There is a lot of fighting over left vs. right, but that hasn’t been the bias problem in the media for a long time now. There is NO television outlet that ever takes a look at issues outside of the corporate lens. They all live the corporate world and they except it as the right thing and as a given. It’s easy to see it when issues like net neutrality come up. If the non-corporate point of view comes up, it gets belittled or connected with words like “hacker,” etc. We are already in an environment where big corporations control the flow of information on major media like TV and radio, and the net neutrality issue shows they would love to extend that control into the last place where the individual has a chance to make noise, the Internet.

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