The Mainstream Media on both sides of the Atlantic are a twisted product of the corporatist, anti democratic societies they have helped to create. Big business, like the big State, need the big media to sell their manipulation of voters as their “service of the people”. But the people no longer buy it.
Opinion polls in the USA (eg Edelman, January 2017) showed that trust in major media institutions, the government, and business plummeted from an already low 36 percent at the start of 2016 to 26 percent. Faith in the media fell from 36% to 24%, in business from 46% to 33% and faith in Charities – that classic sanctimonious combination of State corporate subsidy providing comfortable salaries for administrators – fell from 50% to 32%.
Whatever the corporatist right and the elitist “liberal” left turn their Statist hands to collapses in the confidence of the public. No wonder politics is being turned upside down, because the State is not the public – it never was but so long as the politician paid by the State could sell that fallacy he was safe! This has been graphically demonstrated in the UK where MPs have just received a 13% pay rise over the last 3 years while State sector employees were restricted to 1% a year. High Court Judges have just received a 11% pay rise (equivalent to £20,000 pa)
In the USA 69% of voters do not believe the media are honest and truthful (according to an MRC/Yougov poll conducted in November 2016. 78% believed that the news coverage of the Presidential campaign was biased and even 32% of Clinton supporters believed the media were “pro Clinton”. But (three cheers for the American people!) 97% said they did not let the media influence their vote.
In the USA 6 media giants control 90% of the audience. The big media groups are: GE, Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS
There is a remarkable correlation between the businesses these groups own and donations to the Clintons. Will you ever again believe that these corporations are providing you with objective news and comment when you know that they donated between them several million dollars to the Clinton campaign, the Clinton Foundation and the US Democratic party?
Google, Reuters, News Corporation, the New York Times, Bloomberg, AOL, Time Warner, Washington Post, Huffington Post, ABC, NBC, Turner Broadcasting, HBO, Howard Stringer CBS and the owner of Politico.
And is it not remarkable that these media groups were all predicting a big victory for Hillary Clinton in the published “opinion polls”? Were they accurately reflecting the vote or manipulating the voters? The following were the leads in the popular vote given by these media on the eve of poll: (the result was a 2% lead for Clinton)
New York Times: 3.1%
Huffington Post 5.0%
Bloomberg: 3.0%
CBS News: 4.0%
Fox news: 4.0%
Reuters/IPSOS 3.0%
ABC/Washington Post: 4.0%
NBC News 6.0%
Why would information and media organisations, devoted (!!) to objective, or at least balanced, information for the public, donate millions to one political dynasty representing one political party and one political philosophy? Decent, balanced media would run a mile from any political party or movement if it wanted to retain credibility.
In Europe there are similar dominant cartels of big media. In the UK Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation owns the mass circulation Sun and the UK’s “official journal of record” The Times, the Sunday Times and through “21st Century Fox” 39% of satellite broadcasting network BSkyB.
The left wing Trinity Mirror Group owns five major national titles, the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Sunday People and the Scottish Sunday Mail and Daily Record as well as over 100 regional newspapers. They claim to have a monthly digital reach of 73 million.
In Germany that great supporter of Nazi Germany and publisher of propaganda for Hitler’s armed forces, Bertelsmann controls the French RTL media group, Random House in New York, Penguin, Gruner and Jahr, BMG and Arvato. It owns Doubleday in the USA, the former New York Times magazines, Fremantle Media, the German mass circulation Stern magazine and its BMG entertainment rights group owns the rights of among others Celine Dior, Jennifer Lopez and Britney Spears.
From a Hitler propagandist and controversial buyer of Random House (despite much Jewish opposition in New York) Bertelsmann has become ironically the largest English language publisher in the world!
These corporatist media concerns – like most big politically powerful supranational companies – are not balanced and decent defenders of democracy and the people, they see themselves as allies of the supranational pseudo elites who feel they “run the world”. They get particularly anxious when elections come round, or when a new power (like Russia or China) emerges to challenge their imperial, Soros funded, agendas around the world – or when the people find ways of communicating with each other by bypassing the mainstream media, or when new genuinely democratic parties spring up.
The mainstream media and supranational corporatists of left and right calls these real expressions of the peoples’ will “populist”. “Populism” is the word elitists use to describe democratic change which they do not control!
FACEBOOK CENSORS CHRISTIANS BUT AGREES TO CHINESE CENSORSHIP
Facebook is a powerful supranational internet player and has recently cooperated with others in censoring what it calls “fake news” – that is news on the web which it and other mainstream media do not control. It also has a record of censoring Christian views as Elizabeth Johnston found out when she replied to an attack on Christians by referring to the Book of Leviticus and its condemnation of homosexuality. Her post was censored and her account closed. After other media picked up the story Facebook restored her account and Johnston was showered with other examples from around the world of Facebook’s censorship of Christians and their beliefs. Needless to say Facebook has not made an issue of censoring Islamic calls for the killing of homosexuals!
China is a major market of great potential for Facebook and its owner Mark Zuckerberg – a great supporter of LGBT rights, immigrants in the USA. But he is not so liberal as to resist Chinese censorship of Facebook. The social network has developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas. This “suppression tool” was developed to help Facebook get into China.
When challenged by his own employees on this rank hypocrisy Zuckerberg said: “It’s better for Facebook to be a part of enabling conversation, even if it’s not yet the full conversation.” Zuckerberg has spent a lot of time sucking up to China’s leader President Xi Jinping who presides over a communist atheist regime which persecutes Christians and imprisons dissidents and publishers of political material. Oh how these “Liberals” love their dictators.
And this is not the first time Facebook has censored output in specific countries. Pakistan, Turkey and many other countries were favoured by Zuckerberg in return for his access to money making. But the new suppression tool is even more effective – by preventing content from appearing in feeds in China in the first place!
In true weasily and amoral fashion Facebook will avoid using the suppression tool itself – but instead hand it to the Chinese so they can censor to their heart’s content!
So this is the kind, liberal, “world citizen” promoting, peace loving Facebook who have just announced a new suppression tool. It was announced by the saccharin-tongued Zuckerberg (his name means sugar mountain!) and will flag any stories which have been “disputed by a 3rd party” before users attempt to share them. Needless to say the group of third parties Facebook recognises (eg The Washington Post and the Climate Change lobby) reflect its politics and therefore will be tantamount to political censorship.
But censorship of sexually obscene material, including sexual images of schoolgirls touted by some depraved users of Facebook are apparently of less concern to Facebook. The BBC reported to Facebook 100 examples of such material but Facebook removed only 12 of them saying the rest did not conflict with its standards! Facebook then had the gall to report the BBC to the police for exposing the obscenities on Facebook. The chairman of the British House of Commons media committee, Damian Collins MP, said he had “grave doubts” about the effectiveness of Facebook’s content moderation systems.
Whether it is sexual abuse on Facebook, developing “suppression tools” for the use of authoritarian governments, attacking Christians or kowtowing to Communist dictators for profit we should all have grave doubts about Facebook.
