Break Up the Big Media Monopoly

It doesn’t take a genius to look around and see that power is clearly corrupt, the voice of the people is being silenced, and that the media has become the voice of the power they’re supposed to hold accountable.

The media isn’t reporting on the fact that the FDA, the federal agency charged with inspecting the food that ends up on the shelves at our stores, has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of agribusiness giants. Monsanto gets their hazardous GMO crops sped through FDA approval processes to increase their own sales revenue while potentially hurting all of us. And despite dangerous amounts of E-coli and other diseases coming up in poultry, the FDA is letting chicken processing plants inspect their own product. Instead of informing the public on what they were eating, mainstream news pundits were busy obsessing over the latest of many outrageously stupid remarks that came out of Herman Cain/Rick Perry/Rick Santorum’s mouth.

There was nary a peep in mainstream newspapers and cable news channels when tens of thousands of people took over their city streets during the Occupy movement’s May Day protests, as part of a global citizen-led resistance against austerity and corporate-controlled government. Even though Occupy Wall Street pressured Governor Cuomo to implement a millionaire’s tax he initially opposed, even though the Israeli youth movement pressured their government to make the richest citizens pay their fair share of taxes, even though hundreds of thousands of students in Canada protested against austerity as part of the nation’s biggest demonstration in history, the mainstream news media was laser-focused on telling their readers that the US government had heard the demands of a lone Chinese activist, and was willing to meet him on his terms.

While it’s easy to be a snobby media connoisseur and turn up our noses to the mainstream media, this problem is too grave to ignore and too easy to solve. The reason the bulk of the most important information won’t ever reach the exact people the Occupy movement is reaching out to, is because 90% of all media Americans consume is owned by six corporations. To put that in perspective, 232 executives at GE, NewsCorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS are deciding what 277 million Americans will watch, read and listen to every day. That’s one media executive for every 850,000 subscribers.

As Chomsky said “Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the [U.S.] media.”

(via anticapitalist)

I am going to become a member of the liberal media elite, and I am going to shake things up. Mark my words.

-Jess