Media ownership
“There is no such thing... as an independent press... There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes... they pull the strings and we dance. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
John Swinton, a chief of staff to the New York Times addressing the New York Press Club 1953.
This is so much more true now than it was in 1953. There are frighteningly few people now in control of the mainstream media, and but for the internet we would know very much less about what is actually happening around us. It is very naive to believe what we read, even in the "respectable" papers. There is a window of opportunity before the web becomes similarly dominated. The trouble is of course that there is a large amount of rubbish in cyberspace too. How do we filter it? I suggest by using our intelligence. It is possible to build a reliable picture of what really goes on behind the scenes and although obviously nobody can see the whole picture, the closer to the truth someone is, the more disinformation will surround them. It's interesting, if you know a great deal about a particular subject, to observe the way it is treated by, say, a BBC documentary. What is left out, what is included, the spin it is given. Somebody who is simply interested in the truth is advised not to settle for one version of events. The New testament provides four. One thing the internet does provide is a massive resource in terms of many different voices, a lot of which are not dependent on "the hand that feeds".
John Swinton, a chief of staff to the New York Times addressing the New York Press Club 1953.
This is so much more true now than it was in 1953. There are frighteningly few people now in control of the mainstream media, and but for the internet we would know very much less about what is actually happening around us. It is very naive to believe what we read, even in the "respectable" papers. There is a window of opportunity before the web becomes similarly dominated. The trouble is of course that there is a large amount of rubbish in cyberspace too. How do we filter it? I suggest by using our intelligence. It is possible to build a reliable picture of what really goes on behind the scenes and although obviously nobody can see the whole picture, the closer to the truth someone is, the more disinformation will surround them. It's interesting, if you know a great deal about a particular subject, to observe the way it is treated by, say, a BBC documentary. What is left out, what is included, the spin it is given. Somebody who is simply interested in the truth is advised not to settle for one version of events. The New testament provides four. One thing the internet does provide is a massive resource in terms of many different voices, a lot of which are not dependent on "the hand that feeds".
posted by John at 4:10 pm
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