It is amazing the history of free press suppression amongst those who want to take or remain in control. And more than one philosopher has noted that; He Who Owns The Media, Owns The Minds Of The People. Today we see Silicon Valley, namely Google and Facebook wanting to eliminate what they call “Fake breaking news” from their websites, namely Google News and Facebook’s News Feed. Of course, this presents a rather slippery slope – one of mass censorship. Indeed, both companies have been caught suppressing right-wing news and enhancing positive news towards left-leaning politicians.
In Washington DC, there is work to prevent Fake News in the media or online to keep foreign governments from trying to subvert our elections or poison the minds of our people from propaganda. Still, it is obvious by the mainstream media’s reporting on this effort in Washington DC that the target is right-wing alternative online news. The mainstream media is worried that it is losing millions of viewers, thus huge amounts of advertising revenues due to online news sites – competition they’d prefer not to have. Are all these forces; the mainstream media, Democrat Party, and major Internet social networks and search engines converging to control the our information and control the minds of the masses?
Well, if history is any judge, then the answer is yes. All dictatorships, communist countries, and even the NAZI regime worked very hard to control the news. Even the terrorists, spies and nation-states that sponsor terrorism use the news for propaganda.
There was an interesting article in Foreign Affairs published on January 7, 2014 titled; “Al Jazeera’s ‘False News’ Problem,” by Judy Bachrach. The way I see this is that every news agency has an agenda, and one hell of a lot of power owning the minds of the people. When discussing this at our think tank, one thinker noted;
“The author of that article placed Israel right near the central fulcrum of their judgement, then gives a contradictor closing, then sums it up this way: 1. Can’t blame them for abusing journalist who lie,
2. Guess, I should side with the liars because 2nd Amendment says – it is their right to lie.”
The think tanker type notes that this is dangerous emotional banter, rather than facts and states he’d rather read something about the American Networks because he often has to go to BBC, and other media outlets to get the real news.
Wow, now those are some interesting comments indeed. Still, when I look at news media like RT (Russian TV) it often has a negative slant towards the US, sometimes they are right and make us look in the mirror, sometimes it’s just persnickety negative diatribes. More like a clock, right a couple of times per day. Al Jazeera America, I believe is often better than RT, but not when it comes to Middle East sectarian issues, they are all one-way also. RT is generally leftist slant, makes sense. Modern day news, well it takes a sharp eye and commitment to read between the type, bullet points and sound bites.
