Feb 27, 2015

Information/Press 4 - Tracing The Corporate Media's Money & Political Trail To Determine The Source Of Their Bias


Many false beliefs in public opinion originate from the GOP conservatives from the Fox News Network. This proves how influential media is in public opinion (obviously as media provides news and if the news is false so will be the information the public has and this will affect their ability to make intelligent & well-informed decisions). This post outlines the betrayal going on in our media to a greater extent then my previous ones. It should be noted that our news media is owned by corporations and not by "we the people" so all misleading or incorrect information can be traced directly to the interests of those who own & run that particular corporation.

Note: One of the GOP's/Fox News's favorite ploy is to take stories/opinions from Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal and using it on Rupert Murdoch's Fox News to create a little echo chamber which requires no real news to create.

Fox News' False Statements -
 Fox News turns into a lying dynasty when PolitiFact checks the news network for false statements. (5:36)...
Partial list of Fox News's FALSE Statements as checked by PolitiFact.com;

Less than 10 percent of Obama's Cabinet appointees "have any experience in the private sector."

Texas board of Education may eliminate references to Christmas and the Constitution from textbooks

Healthcare reform is a government takeover of healthcare

The Muslim brotherhood has openly stated they want to declare war on Israel

American troops have never been under the formal control of another nation

Florida's Gov. Rick Scott's approval ratings are up

Massachusetts health care plan is wildly unpopular among state residents

There's been more debt under Obama than all other President's combined

Health care bill includes death panels

Cash for clunkers will give government complete access to your home computer

Halting gulf drilling costs 8 billion a day in imports

Democrats plan largest tax increase in history

John Holdren proposed forced abortions and putting sterilants in drinking water

Nobody at Fox News ever said you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance
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[ The above image is edited from "Capitalism Visualized" where MANY of the connections between corporations and the federal government is laid out - I found the link to the above image from BillMoyers.com (at the bottom of this page) ]
During the Bush years - Fox News (the GOP channel) became embedded in the Federal Government which continues to this day i.e. the Supreme Court protects thier right to lie & deceive the population for political or monetary gain (what? do you think that you get a new President and the entire system changes as well?). Piers Morgan is a great example. He worked for Rupert Murdoch in the News of the World then later won an award on Donald Trump's show (who is supporting Romney as is Murdoch and Fox News). Another great example of how the media have come under the GOP is how Donahue was fired for being anti-war when Dick Cheney & George Bush decided to falsify evidence to invade Iraq (such a big heist, no wonder they took over elements of MSNBC!).... I could go on if I have to but my point is this... all of the media's top journalists and talk shows ARE connected in some way or another and many are even friends.
Note: Rupert Murdoch's style of newsmanship is 'like the gossiping of a 14 year old girl'. 
By deregulating the market the result is that one type of 'newsman' gets more power over dessimination of news and thus the quality of the product (i.e. news) becomes lower. (i.e. Rupert's style is of a rumor mongerer, so, at the very least, that is what we will get).

Especially notice that Colin Powell's son states that "[this deregulation] will advance our diversity and localism goals and maintain a vigourously competitive environement". Obviously, the opposite has happened - decrease in competition is the very definition of conglomeration.
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lol! One guy controlling the news to ANY large extend is a straight up set up to lead us into tyranny. No concept could be simpler to understand. (look up the information scale).
Economics Explanation Of Why Monopolies (i.e. What Murdoch Is Doing) Is Bad:

By having a monopoly in the news media you reduce the quality of media across a whole spectrum of media. for example; Murdoch's tabloid style newsmanship is a model that works for business, in that it attracts attention, and makes money and can direct attention of viewers for advertising purposes.

[Note: To assume that a business model is correct simply because it works is the equivalent of assuming that slavery should be accepted because it has economic value, i.e. cheap labor that works to keep costs down.] 

A basic definition of Monopoly and Oligopoly  i.e. when a corporation gets so big it can crush it's competition (such a market then ceases to be a free one and instead becomes dominated by one - or a few - very big companies):

What Does Monopoly Mean? A situation in which a single company or group owns all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service. By definition, monopoly is characterized by an absence of competition, which often results in high prices and inferior products.

According to a strict academic definition, a monopoly is a market containing a single firm. 

 In such instances where a single firm holds monopoly power, the company will typically be forced to divest its assets. Antimonopoly regulation protects free markets from being dominated by a single entity.

Investopedia explains Monopoly
Monopoly is the extreme case in capitalism. Most believe that, with few exceptions, the system just doesn't work when there is only one provider of a good or service because there is no incentive to improve it to meet the demands of consumers. Governments attempt to prevent monopolies from arising through the use of antitrust laws.

Of course, there are gray areas; take for example the granting of patents on new inventions. These give, in effect, a monopoly on a product for a set period of time. The reasoning behind patents is to give innovators some time to recoup what are often large research and development costs. In theory, they are a way of using monopolies to promote innovation. Another example are public monopolies set up by governments to provide essential services. Some believe that utilities should offer public goods and services such as water and electricity at a price that is affordable to everyone. 



What Does Oligopoly Mean?


A situation in which a particular market is controlled by a small group of firms. An oligopoly is much like a monopoly, in which only one company exerts control over most of a market. In an oligopoly, there are at least two firms controlling the market.

Investopedia explains Oligopoly
The retail gas market is a good example of an oligopoly because a small number of firms control a large majority of the market


Extracts are from here and are in italics:

Why do economists object to monopoly? The purely “economic” argument against monopoly is very different from what noneconomists might expect. Successful monopolists charge prices above what they would be with competition so that customers pay more and the monopolists (and perhaps their employees) gain. It may seem strange, but economists see no reason to criticize monopolies simply because they transfer wealth from customers to monopoly producers. That is because economists have no way of knowing who is the more worthy of the two parties—the producer or the customer. Of course, people (including economists) may object to the wealth transfer on other grounds, including moral ones. But the transfer itself does not present an “economic” problem.

Rather, the purely “economic” case against monopoly is that it reduces aggregate economic welfare (as opposed to simply making some people worse off and others better off by an equal amount). When the monopolist raises prices above the competitive level in order to reap his monopoly profits, customers buy less of the product, less is produced, and society as a whole is worse off. In short, monopoly reduces society’s income. 

Money trail to explain the Fox News & GOP echo chamber (what we can trace so far, anyways)... 

News Corp. gives $1 million to Republicans... 
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Thoughts:

It probably began with Ronald Reagan's executive order (12333) allowing the NSA to collect whatever information it likes which we learned about more recently under Obama with Snowden's "betrayal" which revealed nothing that any political historian didn't already know. Whatever actions were taken in the 1980's forever altered the landscape of American Democracy. From Reagan's criminal subterfuge to his funding death squads in South America (GOP sponsored Genocide), the Constitution was shattered and this was more or less, left uncovered by the media, betraying it's trust of the public, doing what it is specifically NOT supposed to do, i.e.believing the words of politicians while ignoring their actions. By the time Bill Clinton came along the GOP conservatives had destroyed the constitution and were busy unraveling all regulations that could restrict powerful and rich people from stealing and getting away with it. Bill Clinton took part in this by the advice by his master Alan Greenspan who was smart enough to be out of office when the results of his actions began to take proper effect.

To increase the level of their betrayal the GOP created Fox News to be their propaganda tool. They also consolidated all mainstream media channels by putting GOP members (even actual Senators! Making the creation of news for public consumption and 'doing the American peoples will' a joke) on it's board circumventing anti-monopoly laws (Links: CNN's parent company board - MSNBC seems to just have a plant or two or three), with conservatives posing as liberals and by silencing anti-GOP policy positions where appropriate (done under the GOP administration with their plants still functioning just fine). The most interesting result of this manipulation is that although acts are being committed with the acceptance with approximately 50-65% of the population, this implicit permission of the people would not exist if the truth were told. Thus we are witnesses to the spectacle of the very rich thieves who are in a sort of public acceptance that the US is a sort of Oligarchy that takes actions for selfish interests and that's OK (all those of a tyrannical mind think like this due to a lack of empathy). So we get little treats of what the "upper echelons"  of society think when people like Alan Greenspan come out and say bluntly, in a carefully outline autobiography, that the Iraq Invasion was for oil. After he wrote, checked, printed and marketed his autobiography his allies - Dick Cheney & the Neo Cons - made him retract his statement (kinda)... and THAT is good news. Although these people are intentionally stealing and/or profiteering using the armed forces, they can't get away with it if the truth comes out. Right now the GOP are hanging on by a thread with their entire strategy relying on the fact that they have createda cult of people who only listen to their media outlets. If that changes they are done for in a bad way. (Ironically, because of their tendency to believe thier leaders like preachers, the people who are religious and are most concerned with truth and honesty are also the worst citizens for a Democracy to have because of how easily thier leaders can manipulate them. Deep religious fervor in politics & genocide seem to go hand and hand. A little skepticism can go a long way.) 

Previous posts in this series:


Information/Press 1 - Setting The Stage for Understanding The Corporate Media's Past

Information/Press 2 - A Quick Look Back At How Well The Information About Iraq Was Presented To The American People

Information/Press 3 - The GOP / Fox News Fake Conservative Echo Chamber


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