My point:

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"There's a whole journalistic-industrial complex dedicated to keeping newsprint, TV screens and radio waves clean of destabilizing scoops damaging to corporations or the state." -- Alexander Cockburn, journalist

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." -- John Swinton, Chief of Staff, New York Times (in 1953!)

"If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves." -- Howard Zinn, historian and author

"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology." -- Michael Parenti, political scientist and author

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate." -- Noam Chomsky, American linguist

"As long as people are marginalized and distracted [they] have no way to organize or articulate their sentiments, or even know that others have these sentiments. People assume that they are the only people with a crazy idea in their heads. They never hear it from anywhere else. Nobody's supposed to think that. ... Since there's no way to get together with other people who share or reinforce that view and help you articulate it, you feel like an oddity, an oddball. So you just stay on the side and you don't pay any attention to what's going on. You look at something else, like the Superbowl." -- Noam Chomsky, American linguist

"One of the intentions of corporate-controlled media is to instill in people a sense of disempowerment, of immobilization and paralysis. Its outcome is to turn you into good consumers. It is to keep people isolated, to feel that there is no possibility for social change." -- David Barsamian, journalist and publisher

-- Infidel (Barbarians@thegate.com), December 14, 1999

Answers

Humm.

Better than the last one.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 14, 1999.


Hey, no kidding.

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), December 14, 1999.

Good one Infidel... Now if more people knew this....

"There is no free press in America, full court press maybe..." - yours truly

Oh well...

snoozin'...

-- The Dog (dogdesert@hotmail.com), December 15, 1999.


As recently as a few years ago Conrad Black owned over 50% of the daily newspapers in Canada. Recently he launched the National Post. Talk about great propaganda accomplishments!!

-- earl (ejrobill@pcpostal.com), December 15, 1999.

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