Media: “mainstream” has nothing to do with the massively monopolized machine that has a chokehold on our democracy.

February 10, 2008 by CommonDreams.org | There’s Nothing Mainstream About the Corporate Media | by Harvey Wasserman
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... Today’s mass media is Corporate, not Mainstream, and the distinction is critical.

Calling the Corporate Media (CM) “mainstream” implies that it speaks for mid-road opinion, and it absolutely does not.
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The mainstream of American opinion wants this country out of Iraq. The Corporate Media does not. It refuses to give serious coverage to the devastating human, spiritual and economic costs of the war, and it marginalizes those demanding it end.

The mainstream of American opinion wants national health care. The CM does not.

The mainstream of American opinion is deeply distrustful and in many ways hostile to the power of large corporations. Obviously, the CM is not.

The mainstream of American opinion strongly questions whether our elections are being manipulated and stolen. The CM treats with contempt those who dare report on the issue.

The Corporate Media takes partisan stands (often in favor of the Republican Party, but always in defense of corporate interests) by sabotaging political candidacies, especially those of candidates who challenge corporate power. This year it blacklisted the populist candidacy of John Edwards, suffocating his ability to compete for the Democratic nomination.
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Never in our history has the control of the nation’s sources of information been more centralized, or more at odds with what the country as a whole believes.
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The “news” pushed by the major radio/TV networks and newspapers slants unerringly toward the interests of the five major corporations that own the bulk of them. They bury stories of vital importance while spewing endless hours and column inches at the mind-deadening likes of Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears.
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But the real profit centers of the corporations that own the CM are not in providing news and information. General Electric, Westinghouse, Disney and the other media-financial-industrial behemoths have too much to lose from an accurate reporting of the true news of the world. To protect their core interests, they are bread-and-circus PR/diversion machines, not real news organizations. They resemble the old Soviet official mouthpieces Izvestia and Pravda far more than the news providers envisioned in the First Amendment, by Founders who saw balanced, aggressive reporting as the lifeblood of democracy.Nor does the corporate right never hesitate to attack. ...
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The word “mainstream” has nothing to do with the massively monopolized machine that has a chokehold on our democracy. It’s the “Corporate Media,” and there’s nothing mainstream about it.