Kirwan Articles 

CENSORSHIP in the Public's Eye

July 9,  2004

You can also view this article at  Old American Century

In the bad old days of the Viet Nam era, when media was still owned by independent people or organizations things were indeed much different. They weren't perfect then, but the possibilities for actually discovering the truth of any situation still existed. With the vainglorious end of that war, the major money interests behind the congressional-military-industrial complex began to pay attention to those who challenged the way they wanted to do business. The first step they took was to begin to buy up newspapers, magazines and television stations, along with radio. This method of simply owning those who could cause people to question their methods, proved to be very good for business.

Like some strange virus, this process began to grow like kudzu. The acquisitions departments of major conglomerates began to aggressively buy out the independents to the point where unpopular opinions were soon marginalized to the point of near extinction. And since most of this just rolled along in the shadow world of mega-mergers, and became nothing more than minor acquisitions for the new and thriving transnational corporations - few people even noticed what was really taking place. Who owns whom? www.bertelsmann.com/

Then came cable, and the wars between cable and telephone companies over access and complete control of entire sections of the airwaves in this country. In 1996, under Clinton, there was the Telecommunications Act of 1996 - that did away with all protections for the public, while licensing the corporations to expand to their heart's content, without fear of being charged with violations of the Anti-Trust laws, as those have now become a thing of the past.

Where does all this maneuvering leave the public? The airwaves in the USA are the property of the people, so how much did the transnationals pay for their use of our airwaves? I couldn't find actual figures for that, but it couldn't have been much, because it was not a factor in the 1996 'negotiations.' Time was, that the owners of the stations had to provide access to the public, and they needed to devote a certain percentage of their programming to public interest topics - those days are long gone.

In today's market driven economy the percentage of each program that is devoted to commercials is regulated by the levels of tolerance, from the viewing or the listening public. This means that in a 30 minute nationally televised news program, about nine minutes are spent on advertising, two to three minutes are devoted to major events and another three to five minutes are taken up by infomercials, the remainder tends to be celebrity gossip, propaganda or outright junk.

In the bad old days there were "white papers," that were aired, that tried to furnish in-depth stories about national issues of the day. There were specials dealing with investigations, but those programs are no longer part of popular media here. Even PBS no longer tends to air controversial programming. This practice has tended to twist most topics, for Americans, into a single point of view on a wide variety of topics; and this is not healthy in a society that once prided itself on individuality, when it came to political thought and the logical actions that would flow from those discussions.

America has become a nation without journalism, for the most part, a place where agenda's are set by those who are being questioned and not by those who represent the public's right to know what's really going on. On program after program, the "experts' tend to be those who agree with the individual or the agency under scrutiny, and together the interviewer and the interviewee just laugh at the thorny questions that a lot of people are seeking real answers for.

There is no appeal, no counter-culture place for people to go for answers, except of course to the Internet. Today, 'we are at war,' so the circumstances are now even more stigmatized - and this has not been good for the nation or the world. This was also the case in many previous dictatorial nations that chose to become Fascist or totalitarian, and this system of shutting down the public's voice certainly worked well for both the Nazi's and the Stalinists. It is not however, something that the US should be emulating.

We are living in a bubble of our own design. The statistics cited daily are manipulated by those whose interests are served by doctored figures - that tend to show a society that is much better off than reality would show. Just the numbers on the unemployed alone would be devastating, if the actual numbers were used.

Then there's what is actually happening in the US monetary world. "Since the beginning of 1998, total US borrowings have climbed from about 255% of US GDP to 302%! This is a new record - and this is higher than the 260% of GDP recorded at the height of the market in 1929, and we all know how well THAT turned out!" www.321gold.com/ 

Why aren't these record problems being discussed or debated now - because we're currently hell bent on "war, war, lots more war," as Mr. Rumsfeld was so fond of saying.

When a nation is immersed in near total war, then many of these inconvenient truths can disappear beneath the leaden shields of national security and ultra secrecy. This might explain our recent fascination with belligerence in almost every theater of operations on the planet. Currently we've staked out 'turf' and bragging rights in China, North Korea, Syria, and Iran as well as the two wars that we're currently involved in losing. www.estripes.com/  It would appear that the USA is determined to immerse itself in total war, just because we can.

Yet there are much larger questions here that are almost never asked. Why are Americans routinely uninformed about questions of life and death, policy and compromise, or any of the major questions in the world, in which our forces play a major part? Part of that answer has to be that the media outlets here are in league with those who want to keep Americans in the dark. This works well in dictatorships, but is not supposed to happen in the USA, especially when there are two wars already in progress, with apparently more on the way.

No society can function without accurate and timely knowledge about the things that are being done in the name of all its citizens. The USA is no different in this regard. It's one thing when our political leaders repeatedly lie to the public, but it's actually far more serious when those whose job it is, to report on the events of the day, appear not to give a damn about anything that's happened, either here or abroad.

What we have are cheerleaders for a completely corrupt and floundering leadership, and some enterprising lawyers need to now begin to discuss exactly how the media can be charged with collusion, in this farce that now passes for American Foreign Policy. During the Nuremberg Tribunals, media types from the Third Reich were tried right along with the Nazi generals, because their efforts at disinformation were deemed to be just as critical to the Nazi war effort, as was that of the Nazi General staff.

It's one thing when a politician lies; it's altogether another when a respected talking head begins telling half-truths and outright fables. Yet that is exactly what has begun to happen in the post 911-world of American media, and their affect on American life.

No nation can long survive without accurate and timely knowledge of what takes place in the world, especially when that nation is not only involved, but actually initiated the aggressions in the first place. People once looked to the news for answers or explanations of why their loved ones were put in harm's way. Today, the media thinks that it's enough to repeat the tales of heroics, and lives cut short by patriotism, while leaving out the gruesome facts of how many of our sons and daughters died, or were severely damaged by these wars. The government lies about the numbers, lies about the causalities and then covers up the deaths of those who come home in body bags. Where has been the intrepid voice of the media in all of this - sucking up to those sent those people out to death or injury of course.

Where for instance are the stories about the volunteers who could get no other job than that of mercenary? What are the real numbers for the jobs that have left the country in record numbers, and what about those who profit directly from that policy - not a word from the talking heads. NEWS has gone from real stories to just a sentence maybe two, as late as the Reagan administration. Now, a major story might be reduced to just a single phrase - no details, no background, not even a sentence to itself. But when it comes to infomercials - those stories can run to a full five minutes. Who loses, we all do: All of us that are not part of the corporate elite that is. Will this change? Not without a push from those of us who want to know what's really going on!

If and when one listens to the regular news, one might think that everything in this country is bright and optimistically headed for recovery. But we live in two worlds now, the one of privilege and the other of want and ever-present needs. Unless these two distinctly different worlds can find a way to equalize their aggravated differences, we will soon begin to crumble beneath the greed and indifference that no nation has yet been able to correct, once polarization takes complete control.

Bush instituted the policy of pre-emptive strikes against any that "might" do us harm. If that policy is followed all the way down the line in this country, then there could be hell to pay. The downtrodden and the poor among us, outnumber the elites and all their private armies, by millions of people. If the poor become convinced that they are really nothing more than faceless numbers to a world that does not care - then things will change, and that situation will not be one that anyone will welcome.

We must begin by removing censorship, from the eyes of the general public, unless of course we're not interested in having a country any longer.