Media Literacy

Media Literacy Essay By Jason Barnett

In this essay I will discuss corporate ownership of the media, who owns these media outlets, and there tools of deceiving the public. There is a great group out there called "Project Censored" and this group "shows important news stories that aren't being covered properly" (project censored.org) "Every year for the past three decades, Sonoma State University's Department of Sociology has produced a powerful little book called "Project Censored", reporting on the "top 25" censored stories ignored or suppressed by our corporately-owned commercially-financed mainstream culture of "news". (Project Censored 2006). Why is this? It is because of what they call "Junk food news" (http://www.answers.com/topic/junk-food-news); news that has no relevance to anything but trying to sell us more cars or just fill our minds with filler. "The "Junk News" section reminds us what stories dominated the headlines, Ashton and Demi, the Michael Jackson imbroglio, etc. – no need to remind you of them
As the United States enters the 21st century, however, its third century as a so-called constitutional Republic, most mainstream American journalists, out of fear, ignorance, or denial, refuse to acknowledge a simple fact about our great country. The state of our "news" culture is deeply troubling. The United States is now the most powerful Empire in the world. And, as citizens of the most powerful Empire in world history, Americans had better know what the hell is going on. But when it comes to "news," Americans live in one of the most heavily censored societies in the world. We've got dozens of television stations, hundreds of magazines, thousands of radio stations, millions of web sites. Pay no attention to the fact that most Americans surveyed claim to get all of their news and information about the world from television.(http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7162) Or that we see, on average, more than 3,000 advertisements each day. Or that 90% of our media content is owned by one of six transnational corporations. (Project censored 2006, project censored.org) "Or that millions taxpayer dollars are funneled into dozens of federal agencies for the express purpose of manufacturing of corporate-friendly "news" VNRS (video news releases) broadcast daily on millions of American TV sets without being identified as such". (http://www.robwilliamsmedia.com/blog.php?id=98). "Denial" is not just a river in Egypt. Fortunately, though for those who care about investigative journalism, and what a year 2005-2006 was for obfuscation, diversion, spin, on the screens and in the pages of the U.S. mainstream press. Want to know how many Iraqis have been killed more than 100,000. Wondering if any lingering questions about the 911 "terrorist" attacks exist? How ‘bout that "Oil For Food" program? Concerned about Big Brother, the Patriot Act, and the arrival of a post-911 "surveillance society"? What happened during the 2004 presidential "election" anyway? Questioning why the new Department of Homeland Security seems incapable of rooting out the bad guys here. Meanwhile, the theft of the 2004 presidential "election", and the cozy relationship between the military/industrial complex and corporate media owners, to name but a few. This now brings me to how this information comes to be and the evil tyrants who control the media. These news channels have what are called "Conglomerates" which are a "corporations made up of a number of different companies that operate in diversified fields". (Webster's dictionary) What this means is, say the New York Times, wants to write a story about how the new Ford f-250 has a steering problem. This story will be buried before it gets told because The New York times are affiliated with the Ford Motor Company. It is examples like this that make it hard to ever hear any news because, guaranteed a news story will have something to do with a corporation investments or interest. In politics, "the public interest" is generally recognized as a code phrase for "what I want." It is less widely understood that the word "deregulation" can be another kind of obfuscation, aimed at persuading a different set of onlookers. Many rules governing media have been loosened or repealed in the last 30 years, and this can be presented as a deregulation of the media. Remove the frame, and it becomes obvious not only that new regulations have arrived as the old ones disappeared, but that they've often been backed by the same people who present themselves as the promoters of deregulation. This now brings me to the tools of these media outlets in deceiving the public. Noam Chomsky, and others, has written quit a few books on the issue of "Engineering Opinion" and "Necessary Illusion". Chomsky's basic idea of Engineering Opinion "is also necessary to whip up the population in support of foreign adventures. "Usually the population is pacifist, just like they were during the First World War. The public sees no reason to get involved in foreign adventures, killing, and torture. So you have to whip them up. And to whip them up you have to frighten them...." (Noam Chomsky,http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/chomsky03.htm) He also feels that propaganda and democracy are necessary in the functioning of state affairs. He compares it with a totalitarian state, where the government can use the military to keep the population in order. In a "free" society, Chomsky believes, ideas are the state's weapons of control. "What you can't control with force, use manufacturing consent (propaganda in the old days) to control what they [people] think." (Noam Chomsky,http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/chomsky03.htm) He offers the theory that the American media has, "through the production of "convenient myths," allowed the government to play a role in global affairs that is far more influential, party-motivated, and repressive than the people believe" (Noam Chomsky,http://www.chomsky.info/articles.htm). He feels the primary purpose of mass media in today's society is to bring together support for interests of government. He also expresses his concern for the trend in mass, corporate-based media which recognizes the main purpose of the media is to make people follow orders and not think for themselves. Example of "Engineering Opinion" is to get the public to get behind the government on the issues of protecting or steeling natural resources (A.K.A. WAR) The public in whole does not agree with torturing others so the government needs to create a false reason for war; to get the public behind the ideas. The Next issue he discusses is "Necessary Illusion" and the theory of Chomsky's argument is that "propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship".(Noam Chomsky,http://www.chomsky.info/articles.htm) Chomsky Also Say's that "propaganda is contrary to popular assumptions is more important and vital to a democratic society because people still have some rights"(Noam Chomsky,http://www.chomsky.info/articles.htm). That is, since people can talk, the powers that be must ensure that only the correct words come out of the peoples' mouths. In a dictatorship it does not really matter too much what people think; for whatever they may think, they have to do what they are told, by pain of death. In countries such as the US (and the UK) other, more subtle, methods are required. "An example of "Necessary Illusion" is the war in Iraq and how the media and their corporate interests only tell us very little, and just tell us the war is to protect the Nation "National Security"."They're selling privileged audiences - these are big corporations selling privileged audiences to other corporations….And is this anything more than the idea that, basically, the press is relatively right wing, with some exceptions, because it's owned by big business - which is a truism, it's well known?"(Noam Chomsky,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky). I have described the new terms of "Propaganda" but there are "Media Filters", according to Michael Parenti's Media distortions that are used to further the illusion. Michael Parenti's suggestions concerning media distortions support my view that a corporate/media bias does exist. Parenti lists at least nine components that play into falsifying the news. Parenti's components include the following; suppression by omission, attack, labels, preemptive assumptions, face value transmission, slighting of content, false balancing, follow-up avoidance, and framing. A good example of omission in current news is the number of Iraqi casualties in the war, as mentioned before in this paper, compared to the number of American soldiers killed in the war. Very rarely do the media show the number of innocent women and children killed during the war. If a media outlet did report the number of innocent victims killed during the war, according to Parenti that media outlet would be attacked as "bad journalism" because it's not going along with all the other reports and media outlets. Another of Parenti's media distortions is called labeling. Labeling was obvious during the Hurricane Katrina media coverage when black people were characterized as "looters" and white people were simply trying to secure supplies for their families. Over and over we saw video of black people smiling and taking goods from the local Wal-Mart, when really a single, African-American mother tried to defend herself by explaining that she was trying to get shoes and dry clothes for her 5 children who were soaking wet and thirsty. Who could judge a mother for trying to feed and clothe her children during the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States? Yet, this innocent woman was judged as a "looter" when the government couldn't help her at all. Framing is another example presented by Parenti about how the media distorts the news. Framing is simply the technological elements about how a news package is presented to the public. Things like camera angles and where a story is placed within the news broadcast seriously impact the viewer's perception of the importance of the story. A very important story could be buried in the middle section of the newspaper or in the middle of a broadcast and the viewers don't view it as important because the media does not draw attention to it or make it seem important. Framing also happens when certain vocabulary or key words are used to discuss and issue, for example, "pro-life' supporters began using the term "pro-life" instead of "anti-abortion" because it created a more positive meaning. The "anti-abortion" opponents then began calling themselves the "pro-choice" movement in order to achieve a more positive meaning that combats the "Pro-life" movement. Both sides wanted to change their image by using a positive or pre-fix, like "pro" rather than "anti" which has a very negative association.(These media filters info I received from www.michaelparenti.org/monopolymedia.html) In conclusion, the "Project Censored" Team, Noam Chomsky, and Michael Parenti are trying to illustrate media bias through the Propaganda Model and the Media Distortion filters. They are revealing these biases in order to expose the corporate agenda in the media. The bottom line is that we can't trust the general media to give us all sides of any story because of the corporate influence in the media and media advertising dollars. The corporations own the media so how can we expect the media to not be biased? I will now leave this paper with some words from our sponsor's……………… "The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country"----- "It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."------ "The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants." George W Bush
"The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." -on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
"I'm not into this detail stuff. I'm more concepty."
"I don't do quagmires."
"I don't do diplomacy."
"I don't do foreign policy."
"I don't do predictions.""I don't do numbers."

Donald Rumsfeld