CITIZEN PRESS REVOLUTION

By Stewart N. Thorpe of Citizen Press Revolution
"Two words: media reform" once wrote my profile description.
No more. The Citizen Press Revolution no more believes it all boils down to media reform.
Look at the slew of D.C. lobby scandals. People demanded lobby reform. And what did we get? The political version of a stranger squeezing our cheeks and telling us how cute we are like little children. Lobby reform hasn't happened. Reform is a word that gives the responsibility and accountability to change things to the very people who got their power from the crooked system we expect them to change. We say reform to politicians and they act like we just giggled at what they have done.
We should have never demanded for lobby reform. We should have demanded lobby abolition. We should have demanded lobby termination. We should have demanded the execution of the lobbying system.
Reform says that with a few tweaks and a little WD40, everything will work again. Do you believe the six corporate media giants are nervous when people ask for "media reform"? Any reform that we can make, the very language sets it to be safe and polite, and meanwhile they can soak our "representatives" with money galore (how often does your representative represent you or anyone you know?).
The connotation of media reform is asking politely what we deserve from those same media giants and their pocket politicians.
Forget media reform.
I have.
Media liberation.
So, I am here for what I am starting to call media liberation instead of just media reform. It is a simple and dangerous reality that six corporations control nearly every media venue you receive not just your news, but your books, radio, movies and even music. Knowledge is not power. Knowledge only becomes power when it is freed and accessible. The public cannot communicate to itself effectively (without corporate rubber stamp of approval) anymore because of the sheer lack of independence and diversity in the media culture. The world that is communicated to us is the artificial, superficial perception of big money, a small minority of the population, wanting us to spend money, money that we sometimes don't even have.
I will not ask politely for what I deserve, for what you deserve, for what all people deserve: a voice and ability to be heard.
I demand media liberation.
A LITTLE STORY DEMONSTRATING THE IMPRISONMENT OF YOUR ...
The illusion of the mainstream media is that it is only the messenger. It isn't. It is a policy maker, a culture maker, and an idea maker.
Just six corporations control about 50% of the entire mass media in the U.S. A majority of the information you receive about events, society, the world around you, and opinions comes from just six corporations.
With such a corporate concentration over the media, they control what you know is happening and how you perceive it.
Corporate (and as Iraq showed, the Government too) interests and views are served consistently first in our "free press":
When two FOX journalists uncovered the dangerous health impact of the bovine growth hormone (BHG) injected into cows (which ends up in the milk you drink), their story was censored. Monsanto, BHG's manufacturer, pressured FOX management into killing the story. These FOX journalists, Steve Wilson and Jane Akre, lost their jobs because they refused to censor or whitewash the story to the likings of Monsanto.
This is just one of many examples.
Or did you hear about how an organization called Common Cause exposed fraudulent lobbying efforts by major telecom corporations (i.e. AT&T, Sprint, Verizon)? These corporations are not just lobbying with our politicians, but they were also paying for "non-profit" organizations to lobby falsely for them. These non-profit organizations claimed to represent concerned public citizens. They were funded by the telecom corporations and were, in fact, not representing concerned citizens, but, in fact, the interests of their telecom corporations' who funded them.
I didn't see it in any mainstream news.
I doubt you did too.
Do you think it might because these telecom corporations fund or advertise in the mainstream media? That, perhaps, is why it wasn't big news on our headlines or even to be found anywhere at all?
This is a BIG story.
This is a story of corporations undermining the fabric of democracy. And yet, nowhere, I see it nowhere in mainstream media's journalism.
The mainstream press has forgotten its duty written in the Constitution itself: to stand up for the voice and grievances of the public. It is the only private institution mentioned in the Constitution. John Madison knew that the press was vital to democracy. He knew that an effective and free press was necessary to check and balance power. Media reform is needed now and our current mainstream press no longer serves the public interest primarily.
Censorship on things like this is happening more often than you might imagine. Independent voices are routinely diminished and ignored. Control over information is power. If knowledge is power, then we are losing our power without even realizing it.
One quicker example: the government pressured the story about George W. Bush committing warrantless spying to be silenced during the exact time that he was running for re-election. Coincidence? What do you think? If this story was released when his election campaign was running, do you think he would have been elected again?
The question you have to ask yourself is if we want to live in a government that declares "We the People" or "We the Government and Corporations"?