Coastal
Post Online
June, 2003
Corporate Media And Homeland Security Move Towards
Total Information Control
By Peter Phillips
Freedom of information in American society is in danger because
corporate media needs to maintain access to official sources of news.
Consolidation of media has brought the total news sources for most Americans to
less than a handful and these news groups have an ever-increasing dependency on
pre-arranged content.
The 24-hour news shows on MSNBC, Fox
and CNN are closely interconnected with various governmental and corporate
sources of news. Maintenance of continuous news shows requires a constant feed
and an ever-entertaining supply of stimulating events and breaking news bites.
Advertisement for mass consumption drives the system and pre-packaged sources
of news are vital within this global news process. Ratings demand continued
cooperation from multiple-sources for on-going weather reports, war stories,
sports scores, business news, and regional headlines. Print, radio and TV news
also engages in this constant interchange with news sources.
The preparation for and following of
ongoing wars and terrorism fits well into the visual kaleidoscope of
pre-planned news. Government public relations specialists and media experts
from private commercial interests provide on going news feeds to the national
media distributions systems. The result is an emerging macro-symbiotic
relationship between news dispensers and news suppliers. Perfect examples of
this relationship are the press pools organized by the Pentagon both in the
Middle-East and in Washington D.C., which give pre-scheduled reports on the war
in Iraq to selected groups of news collectors (journalists) for distribution
through their individual media organizations.
Embedded reporters (news collectors)
working directly with military units in the field must maintain cooperative
working relationships with unit commanders as they feed breaking news back to
the US public. Cooperative reporting is vital to continued access to government
news sources. Therefore, rows of news story reviewers back at corporate media
headquarters rewrite, soften or spike news stories from the field that threaten
the symbiotics of global news management.
Journalists who fail to recognize
their role as cooperative news collectors will be disciplined in the field or
barred from reporting as in the recent celebrity cases of Geraldo Rivera and
Peter Arnett.
Journalists working outside of this
mass media system face ever-increasing dangers from "accidents" of
war and corporate-media dismissal of their news reports. Massive civilian
casualties caused by US. troops, extensive damage to private homes and
businesses, and reports that contradict the official public relations line were
downplayed, deleted, or ignored by corporate media, while content were analyzed
by experts (retired generals and other approved collaborators) from within the
symbiotic global news structure.
Symbiotic global news distribution is
a conscious and deliberate attempt by the powerful to control news and
information in society. The Homeland Security Act Title II Section 201(d)(5)
specifically asks the directorate to "develop a comprehensive plan for
securing the key resources and critical infrastructure of the United States
including 'information technology and telecommunications systems (including
satellites), emergency preparedness communications systems'."
Corporate media today is perhaps too
vast to enforce complete control over all content 24 hours a day. However, the
government's goal is the operationalization of total information control and
the continuing consolidation of media makes this process easier to achieve.
Freedom of information and citizen
access to objective news is rapidly fading in the United States and the world.
In its place is a complex entertainment-oriented news system, which protects
its own bottom-line by servicing the most powerful military-industrial complex
in the world.
For the majority of Americans who
depend on corporate media for their daily news, this monolithic news structure
creates intellectual celibacy, inaction and fear. The result is a docile
population, whose principal function within society is to simply shut-up and go
shopping. The powerful would like us quiet and consumptive and the corporate
media is delivering that message on a daily basis.
Peter Phillips is an Associate
Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project
Censored a media research organization. http://www.projectcensored.org/