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Most media companies are owned by one man. It is far from free. The press have a greater
responsibility than the politicians. We vote our governments in, but propaganda can be bought. Do
not try and tell me newspapers have not won and lost elections. The media machine decides the power.
Who controls the media, controls the will of the people. In Britain, most newspapers are affiliated
to a political party. You can paint an angle on anything. Newspapers have won and lost elections, if
the "free" press is truly free, a few of the secrets of democracy would not be so hidden. |
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This is true. The influence of the government looms large in many Western countries. In America, in
particular, the relationship between the government and media organisations is embarrassingly
incestuous. There is barely even a pretence of detachment.
American journalists seem to see it as part of their professional duty to cultivate government
sources. This is probably part of the baneful legacy of Watergate. Woodward and Bernstein, of
course, were steered on their way by an insider, the legendary Deep Throat. So American journalists
think the way to professional success is to cultivate inside sources.
Unfortunately, this has resulted in them becoming the playthings of the politicians, who feed
driblets of politically useful information to their eternally hungry journalistic pawns.
We only have to look at the run-up to the Iraq war to see how tragically dysfunctional the
relationship has become. The failure to critically examine the claims of the US government during
this time is, arguably, the greatest failure in the history of the profession of journalism.
Everyone who participated in it deserves to be remembered in infamy. You even had two journalists,
Bob Woodward and Judith Miller, who were essentially acting as de facto agents of the Bush
administration within their own organisations. Some journalists, like Armstrong Williams, were on
the government payroll; and others might as well have been.
As to whether there are actual CIA connections, yes. Carl Bernstein wrote an article in Rolling
Stone a long time ago in which he mentioned that fact that the CIA had dozens of operatives within
media organisations in America. There is no reason to believe that the practice has changed. |
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There are always problems with media coverage of events, and the possibility that governmental
officials and corporations may try to influence the press has always been a concern. Yet if you
compare some of the Western world's most respected papers, like the New York Times, the Washington
Post, the Guardian, the Telegraph, Le Monde diplomatique and many others, to publications like the
Zimbabwe Herald, or the North Korean News Service (KCNA), you will very quickly notice the
difference between the free press, and papers consciously controlled by dictatorial regimes.
Most papers published in the West do not tend to print government propaganda, even if all
publications have their own unique biases and some are beholden to political and economic interests.
For all the apparent shortcomings, however, most of us in North America and nearly all those in
Europe live in societies where freedom of the media is valued. This is why the best papers will
publish columns and opinion articles that may go against the views of editors. |
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Well there are always media groups which represent the government and others which do not represent
it and are free media groups. Free media groups can have liking or disliking of their own but they
don't follow the guidelines of the government. As far propoganda is concerned , its present there in
eastern media as well as western media. |
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02 Apr 2008 18:52
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