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MEDIA PRESSURE ON DEMOCRACY

T

Teddybrae

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]While the cut and pasted article is from an Australian source it seems to me to be relevant to the Whole World.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]
[/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Recently (in political terms) a Prime Minister here was ousted after a sustained media attack by the Murdoch Press. Most of the News Outlets in Oz are owned by Murdoch.
[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]I understand Fox News is a Murdoch outlet and had much to do with supporting the Trump Presidency (altho I see this is changed post election).[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]
[/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif]For me it is a travesty that Media be owned by a single organisiation. I can’t see how such a situation fits into a Democratic political structure.[/FONT]

"Former Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull have teamed up to push for a royal commission into Australian media, with a particular focus on what they describe as News Corp’s “monopoly” over the market.


The two former leaders, from opposing political parties, made a joint appearance on ABC’s Insiders yesterday calling for a national conversation on News Corp’s power in Australia, as well as in other countries such as the US.


The pair also explained why they think a royal commission, originally called for by Rudd through an online petition, is needed. Rudd’s petition, which was signed by Turnbull, reached a record 501,876 signatures.


Rudd says he launched the petition so that people can call out News Corp’s treatment of figures, such as himself and Turnbull, without being afraid.


“The second objective in this national petition, and I thank Malcolm for signing it, is to establish a royal commission so that all appropriate and alternative media models from other democracies can be examined to maximise media diversity,” Rudd said.


“So we don’t end up with a situation for example in my state of Queensland where nearly 100% of the papers are owned by Murdoch. Monopoly is bad for democracy like it’s bad for the economy.”

Credit: www.adnews.com 9th November.
 
A

Amynamous

Active member
I agree that a media monopoly can be a dangerous thing. John Oliver did a story on his comedy show about the Sinclair Group, which is a US media conglomerate that owns a lot of small local stations throughout the US.

https://youtu.be/GvtNyOzGogc

It’s 20 minutes long, but it’s John Oliver so it’s entertaining. I believe it is worth watching.
 
Gry

Gry

Well-known member
A course in media history shows that the all major media outlets were run by those of a similar class,
and were all controlled by the military as a national security issue. Which, when one thinks of ship to shore communications, does indeed make sense. From the first twisted pair forward, military intel was involved from the inception, and that remains true going forward:
Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet
by Yasha Levine (Author)
https://surveillancevalley.com/

Book Review: Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet
A book review by Ross Sempek

To the top-brass of the late-century US military, the modern Internet and its connected devices wouldn’t appear as a mind-numbing culture shock. In fact they would likely beam with pride to see their ideas refined, and applied to a scale that was beyond their capabilities. They would pine for its utility in warfare, assured that it would have favored US operations in the war-zones of 1960s southeast Asia. In Surveillance Valley, Yasha Levine employs journalistic grit and extreme thoroughness to expose a history of the Internet that is at once frightening and familiar. The cogent narrative ferries the reader from the humid, embattled jungles of Vietnam to the technological opulence of the San Francisco Bay Area. Careening through the forgotten canals of history, Captain Levine makes the absolutely incredible sound totally obvious, and in doing so prepares readers for revelations that might seem absurd had they not already read the first two-thirds of this book.
So what’s the secret? Well…on the surface it’s not that secret. Many people are likely aware that beginning in the 1960s, a civilian outfit at the Pentagon called the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) funded the development of what we now know as the Internet. These varied projects were outsourced to enterprise and academia alike, and later field-tested by the armed forces in the Vietnam war. Levine shrewdly begins here, and gradually introduces more esoteric facets to these stories, including a glimpse into the lives and ethos of military engineers.
The devil is in the data, and they fit together to form a story of greed, ego and escalation.
A few of the ARPA higher-ups shared creepy dreams of a technological utopia – a future in which society would be programmed into its ideal form by machines and mathematics; a cybernetic society devoid of crime, centralized-government, and suffering. It’s this deceptively idealistic brainchild informs the sheer brutality waged by these very same minds. One ARPA-funded project was part of the counter-insurgency activities in Thailand. US forces artificially induced famines, assassinated leaders and forced relocation of Thai villages in order to break the peoples’ spirit. What’s more, those who ideated this program spoke of these practices’ viability in a domestic setting. This eventually gained traction as psychological-operations that aimed to subjugate disenfranchised populations.
While these tactics in Thailand satisfied the military’s combat operations of snuffing out communism, the real aim was to collect, and analyze data. The knowledge gained from prisoner interviews, experiments, and banal personal details promised to be a fountainhead for efficient military operations. The ultimate goal was to build a sort of “left-wing radar” to predict and snuff communist uprisings. But there was so much data that it was difficult to realize an omniscient war machine in real-time. The need for an efficient means for sharing information between disparate locations presented itself to the problem solvers of the pentagon. All of these worldwide computerized nodes, these silos of classified information, had to be connected by a network.
This network would become the Internet, and despite its decades-long funding from public coffers, back-door deals awarded private companies access to and control over these vertebrae of worldwide communication. It now comes as no surprise that US legislators have been sluggish to regulate internet enterprise, allowing companies to violate users’ privacy with impunity. The surveillance capabilities employed by Facebook, Google, and Amazon is much too convenient and valuable for the government to decry its partners in business.
Levine’s skill as a storyteller is exemplified by his craftsmanship. He seamlessly weaves a remarkably detailed collection of references into a coherent narrative, all while making you feel really smart. This is no small feat considering the breadth of citations; scores per chapter, one with nearly 160 endnotes. But the minor reading-adjustment necessitated by the references is well worth the effort. Levine has done all of the heavy-lifting, and you get to reap the fruits of his labor.
Given that his arguments grate against a popular ideation of the Internet, Levine runs the risk of sounding like an intense conspiracy-theorist. However his tone is measured and he delivers novel concepts as a peer. He strays from overtly divisive language, and bolsters his arguments with solid academic research. The depth of resources is staggering; the ones of which that can be accessed online are worth checking out. You’ll see the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal cited in the same chapter, as well as articles from verge.com, arstechnica.com, interviews, ex-employee tell-alls, and laudatory biographies.
And here’s another tightrope Levine walks: in a book that profiles the military’s warmongering and surveillance, it would seem easy to take a left-leaning, anti-war slant. But besides an underlying humanistic plea for cooperation and communication, the narrative doesn’t take a stand for the sake of politics. In arguing for the right to privacy in today’s milieu, Levine names Democrats, Republicans, commune hippies, private enterprise, and Libertarians whose actions contribute in some way to our contemporary lack of privacy. Even Barack Obama, and Al Gore (known as “Big Al” to some Google execs) are complicit in perpetrating privacy violations.
Being such a broad and critical treatise, it even challenged my perspectives on intellectual freedom as a sacrosanct pursuit. A freedom-loving citizen of the US, I balk at the internet censorship in China and Russia. But Levine’s perspective adds some rationale to these free-speech crackdowns. These countries enacted such measures, in part, to resist US propaganda like Radio Free Asia from infiltrating the porous borders of the Internet. It got me to wonder: are measures like The Great Firewall, and Russia’s recent internet legislation really that different from Facebook and Twitter deleting fake news? The border between the good guys and the bad guys evaporates and national allegiances arise to demarcate the optics of domestic policy. Freedom of inquiry also gets muddled by the fact that engaging in internet-connected information seeking only widens the profit margins of surveillance capitalists. They’d be totally OK with you unabashedly seeking and sharing information – your dossier only gets more detailed.
Having just finished the incendiary accounts that make up his secret military history of the internet, I craved perspective on where we go from here: Yasha! I’m all fired up, what do I do?! But those looking for a map to navigate this quagmire of a landscape are out of luck. Levine notes that, in addition to the daunting ubiquity of it all, the problems that plague the internet are the very same ones that plague humanity – this is no coincidence. The tools in our hands can be used in the name of civility and respect, or they can be employed to exert national control by blackmailing its citizens. The choice is up to us, and I’d like to think that being conscious of this torrid history is a necessary first step in the right direction. To quote the beginning of chapter 3, Spying on Americans:
Historical mythmaking is made possible only by forgetting. – Nancy Isenberg, White Trash

The above review was pulled from :
Intellectual Freedom Blog

The Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association

https://www.oif.ala.org/oif/?p=17364


___________________
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]That which matters most [/FONT]


​
 
Gry

Gry

Well-known member
Amynamous said:
I agree that a media monopoly can be a dangerous thing. John Oliver did a story on his comedy show about the Sinclair Group, which is a US media conglomerate that owns a lot of small local stations throughout the US.

https://youtu.be/GvtNyOzGogc

It’s 20 minutes long, but it’s John Oliver so it’s entertaining. I believe it is worth watching.
Click to expand...
Am told the Trump family will be involving themselves with a similar outfit upon leaving the White House.
 
T

Teddybrae

This seems a perfectly fitting way to keep the Trump base intact.

And that those who cultivate a White Grievance Mentality can continue to have a base, rhetorically speaking.


And I presently see Trump criticising Fox. (HA HA! Ironically, for telling the truth!)

Gry said:
Am told the Trump family will be involving themselves with a similar outfit upon leaving the White House.
Click to expand...
 
C

CosmicGiggle

Well-known member
Moderator
Veteran
Gry said:
Am told the Trump family will be involving themselves with a similar outfit upon leaving the White House.
Click to expand...

I think the trump empire is over, it was all a house of cards to begin with and will now crash and burn.

It would take a large loan to set up a new propaganda machine and the only one interested in financing a documented BS artist like trump would be PUTIN!;)

....... and that wouldn't go over very well in USA.
 
Switcher56

Switcher56

Comfortably numb!
Gry said:
A course in media history shows that the all major media outlets were run by those of a similar class,
and were all controlled by the military as a national security issue. Which, when one thinks of ship to shore communications, does indeed make sense. From the first twisted pair forward, military intel was involved from the inception, and that remains true going forward:
Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet
by Yasha Levine (Author)
https://surveillancevalley.com/

Book Review: Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet
A book review by Ross Sempek

To the top-brass of the late-century US military, the modern Internet and its connected devices wouldn’t appear as a mind-numbing culture shock. In fact they would likely beam with pride to see their ideas refined, and applied to a scale that was beyond their capabilities. They would pine for its utility in warfare, assured that it would have favored US operations in the war-zones of 1960s southeast Asia. In Surveillance Valley, Yasha Levine employs journalistic grit and extreme thoroughness to expose a history of the Internet that is at once frightening and familiar. The cogent narrative ferries the reader from the humid, embattled jungles of Vietnam to the technological opulence of the San Francisco Bay Area. Careening through the forgotten canals of history, Captain Levine makes the absolutely incredible sound totally obvious, and in doing so prepares readers for revelations that might seem absurd had they not already read the first two-thirds of this book.
So what’s the secret? Well…on the surface it’s not that secret. Many people are likely aware that beginning in the 1960s, a civilian outfit at the Pentagon called the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) funded the development of what we now know as the Internet. These varied projects were outsourced to enterprise and academia alike, and later field-tested by the armed forces in the Vietnam war. Levine shrewdly begins here, and gradually introduces more esoteric facets to these stories, including a glimpse into the lives and ethos of military engineers.
The devil is in the data, and they fit together to form a story of greed, ego and escalation.
A few of the ARPA higher-ups shared creepy dreams of a technological utopia – a future in which society would be programmed into its ideal form by machines and mathematics; a cybernetic society devoid of crime, centralized-government, and suffering. It’s this deceptively idealistic brainchild informs the sheer brutality waged by these very same minds. One ARPA-funded project was part of the counter-insurgency activities in Thailand. US forces artificially induced famines, assassinated leaders and forced relocation of Thai villages in order to break the peoples’ spirit. What’s more, those who ideated this program spoke of these practices’ viability in a domestic setting. This eventually gained traction as psychological-operations that aimed to subjugate disenfranchised populations.
While these tactics in Thailand satisfied the military’s combat operations of snuffing out communism, the real aim was to collect, and analyze data. The knowledge gained from prisoner interviews, experiments, and banal personal details promised to be a fountainhead for efficient military operations. The ultimate goal was to build a sort of “left-wing radar” to predict and snuff communist uprisings. But there was so much data that it was difficult to realize an omniscient war machine in real-time. The need for an efficient means for sharing information between disparate locations presented itself to the problem solvers of the pentagon. All of these worldwide computerized nodes, these silos of classified information, had to be connected by a network.
This network would become the Internet, and despite its decades-long funding from public coffers, back-door deals awarded private companies access to and control over these vertebrae of worldwide communication. It now comes as no surprise that US legislators have been sluggish to regulate internet enterprise, allowing companies to violate users’ privacy with impunity. The surveillance capabilities employed by Facebook, Google, and Amazon is much too convenient and valuable for the government to decry its partners in business.
Levine’s skill as a storyteller is exemplified by his craftsmanship. He seamlessly weaves a remarkably detailed collection of references into a coherent narrative, all while making you feel really smart. This is no small feat considering the breadth of citations; scores per chapter, one with nearly 160 endnotes. But the minor reading-adjustment necessitated by the references is well worth the effort. Levine has done all of the heavy-lifting, and you get to reap the fruits of his labor.
Given that his arguments grate against a popular ideation of the Internet, Levine runs the risk of sounding like an intense conspiracy-theorist. However his tone is measured and he delivers novel concepts as a peer. He strays from overtly divisive language, and bolsters his arguments with solid academic research. The depth of resources is staggering; the ones of which that can be accessed online are worth checking out. You’ll see the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal cited in the same chapter, as well as articles from verge.com, arstechnica.com, interviews, ex-employee tell-alls, and laudatory biographies.
And here’s another tightrope Levine walks: in a book that profiles the military’s warmongering and surveillance, it would seem easy to take a left-leaning, anti-war slant. But besides an underlying humanistic plea for cooperation and communication, the narrative doesn’t take a stand for the sake of politics. In arguing for the right to privacy in today’s milieu, Levine names Democrats, Republicans, commune hippies, private enterprise, and Libertarians whose actions contribute in some way to our contemporary lack of privacy. Even Barack Obama, and Al Gore (known as “Big Al” to some Google execs) are complicit in perpetrating privacy violations.
Being such a broad and critical treatise, it even challenged my perspectives on intellectual freedom as a sacrosanct pursuit. A freedom-loving citizen of the US, I balk at the internet censorship in China and Russia. But Levine’s perspective adds some rationale to these free-speech crackdowns. These countries enacted such measures, in part, to resist US propaganda like Radio Free Asia from infiltrating the porous borders of the Internet. It got me to wonder: are measures like The Great Firewall, and Russia’s recent internet legislation really that different from Facebook and Twitter deleting fake news? The border between the good guys and the bad guys evaporates and national allegiances arise to demarcate the optics of domestic policy. Freedom of inquiry also gets muddled by the fact that engaging in internet-connected information seeking only widens the profit margins of surveillance capitalists. They’d be totally OK with you unabashedly seeking and sharing information – your dossier only gets more detailed.
Having just finished the incendiary accounts that make up his secret military history of the internet, I craved perspective on where we go from here: Yasha! I’m all fired up, what do I do?! But those looking for a map to navigate this quagmire of a landscape are out of luck. Levine notes that, in addition to the daunting ubiquity of it all, the problems that plague the internet are the very same ones that plague humanity – this is no coincidence. The tools in our hands can be used in the name of civility and respect, or they can be employed to exert national control by blackmailing its citizens. The choice is up to us, and I’d like to think that being conscious of this torrid history is a necessary first step in the right direction. To quote the beginning of chapter 3, Spying on Americans:
Historical mythmaking is made possible only by forgetting. – Nancy Isenberg, White Trash

The above review was pulled from :
Intellectual Freedom Blog

The Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association

https://www.oif.ala.org/oif/?p=17364


___________________
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]That which matters most [/FONT]​
Click to expand...

... and they say Snowden is a traitor. I would like to see him pardoned, or at a minimum receive a fair trial (not about to happen). He sated on more than one occasion, he would return to the States to face the music, in a court of his peers (public), not one formulated by the "machine", where it is next to impossible to formulate a cohesive and successful defense. It is hard to beat the dealer, when he has all 4 aces up his sleeve!

I didn't know it reached back that far. I started to see nuances in the 90s, circa '97 to be exact. It was scary then. Now it is a continual nightmare.

The media/Hollywood have been desensitizing the public for years. Logan's Run, the Minority Report etc... to name a few.

Life was a hell of a lot simpler, when phones required a cord!

I wrote a paper in 1970 "The evolution of man will lead to his/its destruction" I was 14 at the time, not realizing that (at the time), that epiphany would come to fruition later in life.

Today, I realize I wasn't far from the truth, although at the time it was pure speculation, or was it!

Just look at humanity these days. It is almost non existent. A coincidence? I think not!
​
 
Switcher56

Switcher56

Comfortably numb!
CosmicGiggle said:
I think the trump empire is over, it was all a house of cards to begin with and will now crash and burn.

It would take a large loan to set up a new propaganda machine and the only one interested in financing a documented BS artist like trump would be PUTIN!;)

....... and that wouldn't go over very well in USA.
Click to expand...
I said it before he became president (2015) he was an idiot and an asshole (amongst other things), not knowing his intricate past (in detail) as we know now.

His shortfall was he wasn't a politician and in doing so, didn't know how to navigate the swamp he wanted to drain, without the assistance of "swamp pumps". He had the right idea, just didn't have the tools to pull it off, nor the gumption to keep his big mouth/thumbs shut/crippled!

The machine brought him down. The same machine that controls and will influence Biden. Considering, who he is presently aligned with lobbyist and transition people (from Wall St), we're going back to Clinton years and, how did that work out? The near economical collapse of the world economy in 2008.

One thing the US should think of, is to get rid of career politicians. 12 years max, then the door is there and don't allow it to hit you on your way out. K streets are writing the laws, not our elected officials.

Now, we have politicians that want to blacklist GOP supporters and enablers to be "blacklisted" for any public office (I can support that) but, to blacklist them for any meaningful work in the future??? That is total overreach and unadulterated BS! I gather that the "blacklisting" has since been rescinded. It should have never been brought up in the 1st place.
 
JKD

JKD

Well-known member
Veteran
Regarding the Australian example - Considering the supposed functions of the ACCC and ACMA I will be interested in what a Royal Commission, if it goes ahead, will find. How do you end up with these virtual monopolies, or duopolies when (particularly the ACCC) there are powerful organisations with stautatory independence specifically to prevent this from happening?
 
T

Teddybrae

Switcher above infers a 'politician' class in the US ... and we also keep drawing our Politicians from a political class. But the US seems particularly vulnerable to this. Here in Oz there are many "Independents" which are elected usually as a reaction to the same old political bullshit from the major parties.

Currently our national media organsiation, the ABC (a quasi-autonomous government organisation) has it's investigative hooks into the culture that produces our mainstream politicians.

Those politicians often attend expensive private schools where privilege, contempt for women and the expectation or belief that society is naturally stratified underpins the status quo. (It's theocracy if one delves deep enough.) Never before has there been such a detailed look into a 'class' of people here. (Not that the ABC has managed to change things yet!)


So given this cultural state of affairs our politicians 'naturally' create rules that allow monopoly and superiority. And because it is 'cultural' it is accepted. Even when politicians like Rudd ... a socialist in US terms ... call-out unjust circumstances ... it is very difficult to get organisations such as the ACCC to actually change things. (They are criticised for their inaction on a number of fronts but at least they are suing Google!)


There is this term by a French Sociologist ... "Hegemony" ... the momentum that prevents change in the status quo thru society's unconscious acceptance of the status quo.

JKD said:
Regarding the Australian example - Considering the supposed functions of the ACCC and ACMA I will be interested in what a Royal Commission, if it goes ahead, will find. How do you end up with these virtual monopolies, or duopolies when (particularly the ACCC) there are powerful organisations with stautatory independence specifically to prevent this from happening?
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
JKD

JKD

Well-known member
Veteran
“the momentum that prevents change in the status quo thru society's unconscious acceptance of the status quo”

An ACCC approval of a Fox acquisition I read recently included that 67% of the public were unconcerned - exactly in line with your reasoning and quote. But the public generally are not experts on anti-competitive behaviour so it would be reasonable to expect the ACCC to balance public opinion with expertise. Life as an idealist frequently disappoints me...
 
Last edited:
T

Teddybrae

The idea of Hegemony is carried further by Foucault who points out that conversations shared by societies are what underpins the behaviour within those societies. Foucault called those conversations 'Discourses'.

For example if Culture is defined as: "The things we do and the things we talk about" then discourses are neither true or false they are simply the things we talk about ... which permit individual or group behaviours!

Consciousness is always the key to Clarity ... but such nonsense as this is only known to Idealists!

And some in the Media ...

JKD said:
“the momentum that prevents change in the status quo thru society's unconscious acceptance of the status quo”

An ACCC approval of a Fox acquisition I read recently included that 67% of the public were unconcerned - exactly in line with your reasoning and quote. But the public generally are not experts on anti-competitive behaviour so it would be reasonable to expect the ACCC to balance public opinion with expertise. Life as an idealist frequently disappoints me...
Click to expand...
 
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