Posted on 05/09/2002 5:45:20 PM PDT by Starmaker
The mainstream media consists of the major newspapers, magazines and television networks. It is these entities that have been providing biased political news for several generations. There are currently books and articles documenting the bias in the news media and even in the academic community for favoring activist pro-socialist government programs. Also this socialist or liberal bias has had an impact on how the American public views government and government programs.
My own example of this obvious bias comes from a magazine available at most public libraries in the country. In the February 26, 1996 Newsweek cover story was the following in large, bold and red letters: CORPORATE KILLERS. The article referred to massive layoffs by top CEOs of such companies as IBM, Digital, AT&T and Scott Paper. There were photographs — mug shots — of each of these executives. The inside story was called "The Hit Men" with more executive mug shots and beside each photograph was the number of employees laid off in the thousands for each company. The premise of the article was these corporations are like mafia criminals killing jobs and relishing it. This is propaganda. Corporations need profits in order to expand and flourish; steep downturns or changes in the economy often require reducing workers because the company cannot afford to exist without profits because their existence is at stake. Government today is under no such restrictions as it dances from deficit to deficit with annual increases in budgets no matter how it performs.
With the failure of so many current and past government programs costing hundreds of billions of dollars I have yet to read one mainstream media story on "Government Killers" causing massive job losses by depriving the American people and corporations of hundreds of billions of dollars that would have been used to grow the economy. The mainstream media often ignores scrutinizing government programs because the reporters and journalists often believe in an activist socialist government. They rarely, if ever, question the outcomes and lack of success in government programs, for they are often silent partners.
Where do these reporters and journalists get their education: we are now aware that colleges and universities prefer to hire liberal socialist types whose propaganda is funneled directly to students who often soak it up like a new sponge. If they don't soak it up they may not be good students! Now we are learning there is little intellectual diversity in colleges, which eventually translates to stories like Corporate Killers. Private companies are greedy while government whose financial mismanagement in government programs of all kinds is still considered viable and praiseworthy by the mainstream media with few exceptions. During the Clinton Administration the Department of Housing and Urban Development mismanaged and wasted tens of billions of dollars without any outcry or focus from the mainstream media. How many jobs were lost because those billions were wasted? Multiply waste in each government department and you have a significant drag and burden on the American economy. Billions of dollars retained by Americans would have created more wealth by allowing the economy to expand and jobs to be created. That is something that mainstream media cover stories don't tell.
The Mainstream media bemoans greed in corporate America, but greed by government is never a topic, never an issue and never a problem. The irony of this stance by the media elites is that the wealth of capitalism created everything around us, yet that very system appears to be despised by them. Corporate America is always suspect while government is never suspect. What kind of education would breed such a point of view?
The evidence that there is bias in the mainstream media and in the educational establishment is becoming pervasive. The Internet entrepreneur Matt Drudge was dismissed for a long time by the mainstream media as an amateur and gossip who did not verify his stories. He has proven himself by breaking many stories that the mainstream media with their multi-million dollar organizations have failed to inform us of. They may be jealous of this upstart who understood the impact of World Wide Web and its power to reshape not only news but also public opinion before the "professionals" in the mainstream media and academia. The new technology of the Internet may well rescue the American people from its sole reliance on the mainstream media for information, points of view and their dissemination.
The American spirit of can do and the struggle to maintain a free flow of unbiased information going on before us on the Internet may well influence in positive ways the mainstream media and our educational system. The genius of the American culture through technology may help insure our freedoms in the coming years. Controlling the free flow of information and ideas may become impossible with the advent of the Internet. That does not mean that government at the promptings of the politically powerful may not try to control the Internet. The Internet has planted the seeds of expanded freedoms with the potential for each individual to exercise. Those who are entrenched in positions within the mainstream media, academia and government may try stifle and belittle those who have not been anointed and approved by them.
Stifling freedom caused the formation of this country and the American invention of the Internet may be pivotal and essential in helping to preserve those freedoms against those who are trying to control and tame the American spirit.
To comment on this article or express your opinion directly to the author, you are invited to e-mail Henry at uniskywriter@yahoo.com .
This is SO true. Just imagine ANY national periodical using actual mug shots of corporate men and women, calling them hit men, and accusing them a mafia like firings.
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