Jake Sexton is a skeptical nihilist recently experiencing bouts of optimism. But surely continued interaction with his fellow man will return him to his normal state of brooding, swearing and frightening small children.
By Jake Sexton
Daily Bruin Columnist
I stopped watching and reading the news five or six years ago out of sheer disgust. I don't trust their coverage, and I choose to be uninformed rather than misinformed. The wisdom of this decision remains to be seen.
It scares me that most people seem to form the backbone of their world view based on the information (or "infotainment") they receive from the major news media. Now, if news reports were detailed, expansive, unbiased and occasionally unfriendly, then this might be a valid way to perceive the world. But they're not.
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Perhaps I should pause to introduce myself here.
My name is Jake Sexton. I am here to: (a) objectively inform; (b) raise important, yet rarely discussed issues for thought and discussion; (c) tear apart your pathetic little belief structures and expose you for the sniveling little creature you really are; (d) amuse myself; (e) spin straw into gold.
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News is essentially shit for three main reasons.
First of all, news is business. It is a means with which to grab advertising revenue. Nothing more. To maximize advertising revenue, they must maximize their audience. And since their audience would much rather be entertained than informed, they wisely choose to focus their coverage on pop events and pop issues.
Several items will always make the news. When President so-and-so speaks or moves in public, it will nearly always be broadcast in some fashion, as will be various celebrity entanglements and embarrassments (Michael Jackson, Hugh Grant, you get the idea).
Impressive visual footage is usually broadcast as well. Planes crash everyday, but if some fool with a camcorder manages to get the fireball on tape, it's suddenly the top story. And the prevalent trend in entertainment news these days is the soap opera stories, the continuing sordid sagas: O.J. Bobbit Simpson Menendez Harding, etc. Personally, I feel that these stories get more attention due to the fact that they are all morality tales, but I won't go into that.
Of course, you must also make sure not to ever offend your sponsors, or else you would lose their business. The evening news may make mention of an ill-made car (although the media now face greater economic threats when they turn negative press against a powerful company), but they would never have a story that claimed that cars were the greatest threat to the environment. ABC taped an expose about the tobacco industry, including the ways that U.S. tobacco is being forced upon small Asian countries due to American economic clout, but the project was nixed due to pressure by the network's sponsors (the text of that documentary is available in Mother Jones, in the May/June 1996 issue).
Second, news can be used as a cultural-manipulation tool by its owners. Roughly eight corporations control 80 percent of the mass media in the United States. Television, radio, movies, newspapers, record labels, magazines, etc. Ponder this for a minute. This is an amazing consolidation of control of information systems. Corporations use these channels of information to benefit themselves and their interests. I don't mean giving the CEO his own fishing show on ESPN; I mean attempting to further their own economic, political and social ends through these means.
And, as most mega-rich folks are conservative, a philosophy which benefits those with money, they generally further conservative agendas while also attempting to maintain the status quo to make for a peaceful market.
Let's suppose you were the head of a large corporation whose only goal was to make big heaps o' cash. Your corporation happens to own several media companies: newspapers, TV stations, etc. Realizing the power of mass media, you might begin to form large plans. You want the people to be complacent consumers. Portray the state of the nation as so complex that the common man couldn't possibly change things. Leave the problems up to the "experts." Consumption is a way of life. Keep the public entertained and sedate with your videopiate. You also have to cover your own tracks so that the public doesn't turn against the real power-brokers of the nation: mega-rich CEOs like yourself. Problems with unemployment and poverty? Blame the poor! It's their own fault; they're just not trying hard enough. They're pilfering hard-earned cash from hard-working Americans in the form of welfare. But make sure to never mention the corporate welfare: big-time tax breaks, government subsidies, over-inflated government contracts. Blame Washington corruption on individual politicians and lobbyists, neglecting to mention that the politicians and lobbyists are both funded by your money.
I realize that all this sounds vaguely like some paranoid conspiracy theory, but I think it's fairly intuitive. If you're trying to find out why society is the way it is, look at who has power and who benefits by the current structures. You might gain some insight.
The third bit deals with relationships between corporate-owned press and the government.
If your hypothetical corporation wants to stay on the government's good side, make sure you tell everyone the story that the government wants the people to hear.
If you tell the wrong stories, suddenly your reporters are not invited to press conferences and your money-making news show suffers (it's also more cost-efficient to simply parrot a White House press release than to actually do research). So you have to follow the party line: we're not invading Iraq because of oil, we're invading in the name of international justice! We're not sending soldiers to Somalia to stop the Somalis from nationalizing their oil industry and thereby ousting the U.S. oil companies there, we're going over there to feed the hungry.
It's amazing how well the privately owned media serve the government as though they were an official Ministry of Propaganda.
And yes, Alanis, I see the irony of writing an anti-news column in a newspaper.
Now I beg your indulgence for a moment. It is quite easy for me to throw my tirades at you to accept, deny or ignore. But I'd prefer discourse and dialogue to statement and monologue.
I invite each and every one of you, even you professors, to e-mail me and begin a discussion of the issues I write about, or, indeed, any issues at all.
Don't just blindly accept or reject what I say; call me on it, ask me about it (I could give you a hell of a lot more detail than I have room for here), or even do your own research. Perhaps I'm right and perhaps I'm not, but either way, we could both learn from each other. Send me your objections, contrary evidence, questions, thoughts, death threats, etc.
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Or you can write to the Viewpoint address and maybe get published to boot. I certainly hope to hear from you.
Today's recommended reading: "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, and "The Media Monopoly" by Ben Bagdikian.
"We now return to the illusion of news, already in progress ..."