Today's corporate media are like the clerks of the 12th Century court whose purpose was to bolster and protect the dogma of the church and the divine right of kings. They cannot allow a free flow of new ideas into their systems because the ideas would be destructive to the systems themselves.
Speaking of entrenchment in tradition, the New York Times - "the paper of record," arguably the most important paper in the world -- adheres so rigidly to tradition that a reporter in that paper cannot refer to a person in a second reference without a title such as Mr, Mrs, Miss or Ms. If the paper refers to Ringo Starr for example, it says "Mr. Starr," even though "Ringo Starr" is a stage name, hardly at home in a formal setting. In a second reference to Sid Vicious, the reporter would presumably be required to say "Mr. Vicious," which is probably as good a reason as any why you don't see much coverage of such people in the New York Times.
As the Paper of Record, the Times is the keeper of history, so every morning it must theoretically proclaim and document the most important events of the previous day, even if its entire audience has heard those events in a hundred TV and radio broadcasts and several editions of tabloids already.
Just as its editorial style encumbers its ability to talk about contemporary events, it is handicapped in its ability to accommodate a broad range of events in the 21st century for which there are no precedents. How does, for example, the Times deal with a stolen presidential election? More or less by denial.
Since the Times and its brethren cannot discuss the stolen election as a stolen election, it must talk about it as though it were legitimate, and then fall into its standard patterns of language to refer to "the president" exactly the same as if he had actually been elected. When its own research shows that the operation was a heist, it must be polite to the extent of entirely avoiding anything that would be embarassing. As events become ever more extreme, it puts the Times at a greater distance from the real world its readers.
In the past, the major media has been very successful in enforcing ideas upon the public. If the polls commissioned by the major TV networks and newspapers tell us that a huge majority "approve" of "the job the president is doing," that judgment the becomes the accepted reality. But it is not at all sure that that the major media will retain its perceived authority as the gap between what they report and what the population can see for itself widens.
Under the Bush administration, the corporate state's drive to seize power and nullify democratic power has been unleashed and gone into runaway. A corresponding reaction is taking place in the population, a change that is not reflected in the major corporate media because the self-consciousness of that social change would be anathema to the corporations that own the media.
That changing awareness, which is little more than a natural reaction to the pressures of the corporate state to marginalize the majority, is finding a channel for expression on the Internet.
As Mussolini said explicitly, fascism IS corporatism. That is the process we are now witnessing: the ever increasing accumulation of wealth by an ever decreasing number of corporate entities; the turning over of the government to these entities; and their use of it as an instrument of war, by which they further enhance their profits and power.
|