Sometimes, the oligarchs are dissatisfied with controlling a nation through the media.  They may want complete power in their own hands along with the title and place in history.  This occurred recently in Italy where the conservative candidate became Prime Minister--and just happened to own most of the nation's press.  Coincidence?  He has built a coalition with the Italian neo-fascist party, the descendents of Mussolini.

The corporate media differs on some issues, but unites on at least two fronts, the celebration of capitalism and the maligning of nations, cultures, and peoples other than the U.S. and a few close allies.  When have you ever read an article favorable of the universal health care that the Swedes enjoy?  In the 1960s, North Viet Nam was portrayed as an atheist communist monster that planned to gobble up all of southeast Asia and turn it into an anti-American powerhouse.  This sort of misrepresentation of other peoples grants the oligarchs a free hand to bomb countries that insult corporate interests abroad, without suffering any public outcry.  Our CIA destroyed the democratically-elected government of Guatemala in the 1950s because it was preparing to levy a tax on United Fruit, a U.S. corporation with political connections.  The democracy was replaced with a military dictatorship and a list of "Communists" (democrats) was prepared.  Our ambassador wanted them shot.  (Source: Palimpsest by Gore Vidal.)  This is but one example of how the "land of the free" has behaved abroad and how we have retarded the growth of democracy in Latin American countries.

Privately-owned media mislabel propaganda as "news" in order to persuade Americans to fight and die on foreign soil to protect the interests of the rich, who in nearly every war have been exempt from the draft by one dodge or the other.  Viet Nam produced 50,000 American casualties and funnelled two trillion dollars into the defense industry, further enriching the already rich.  War serves as America's eugenics program to weed out the lower classes.  Foreign conflict also serves to keep the lower classes distracted from the problems they suffer at home, such as costly or inadequate medical care and education.  European countries have enjoyed universal health care and adequate education (including college-level) for decades.  In the United States, our tax money buys chemical and biological agents, nuclear weapons, fighters, bombers, and battleships; all of which defend the interests not of "freedom" as the media pretends, but of a handful of oligarchs.

The American people are kept woefully uninformed about important issues, because the oligarchs wish to decide such issues among themselves.  In the newspapers, magazines and television, "eye candy" and idle, gossipy chit-chat substitute for content and journalism.  More thought is put into the hairstyle of the talking head that reads the nightly news than in the brief stories he reports.  Sensational stories like Gary Condit's affair with Chandra Levy, Clinton's affair with Lewinsky, and the O.J. Simpson case easily "take over" the news, because the way that United States is governed should no longer be of concern to the inhabitants of this oligarchy.  Just to give another example: on August 25th, 2001, the headline on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution read: Light Spanking OK For Children, Study Finds."  The article went on to say that a study showed children were not irreparably harmed by light spanking.  Now, ask yourself this: could that possibly have been the most newsworthy event in the world, let alone the city of Atlanta, for that day?  Was nothing going on in Europe, Asia, or the U.S. Congress, that could have been placed in the headline instead?  Perhaps Americans take it for granted that world events and even the decisions of the U.S. Congress "do not concern them."  Many Americans no longer even bother to vote.  The consequences of this apathy, fostered by the corporate-owned media, are felt throughout the world.

Newspapers like the Atlanta Journal and Constitution devote 90% of their paper to advertisements, 5% to big pictures, and 5% for a few scant details that may or may not be true, written at the 5th grade reading level.  Nevertheless, the AJC thrives, because business owners are delighted by the neutered and muzzled watchdog in the community and pour their advertising dollars to keep the worthless rag afloat.  There is also a sizable group for whom the news is secondary to the Comics page, Sports section, and classified ads.  An idea that needs to be planted in peoples' minds is that citizens deserve to know what is happening in the world.  Americans deserve good, honest journalism from their media--not gossipy chit-chat or irrelevant fluff.

A possible solution to the concentration of media in the hands of a few would be for the government (if it is still by and for the people?) to bust up the media empires and sell off tiny pieces to thousands of different owners.  The media barons should be given financial compensation, of course, since this would be an exercise of the government's long-established right to eminent domain.  Eminent domain is usually levelled at poor homeowners who are forced to sell their house at whatever price the government determines, so that a highway or airport can be built over their land.

No one person should own two newspapers or two radio stations or two TV stations!  Control of the media represents an awesome power, as Goebbels the Propaganda Minister for the Third Reich well knew.  Though large businesses are not inherently evil and do enjoy efficiencies of scale and other economies taught in business school, where the media is concerned they pose a danger to society.  In the case of the media, so important in a democracy as the watchdog of every leader and every institution, we must interrupt the free flow of capitalism in order to protect the freedom of the press.  When dissenting voices cannot be heard through the corporate media, democracy has failed.  When a few tycoons control what is said in the nation's press, democracy has failed.

Another aspect of censorship is on the Internet.  Ever tried some of these services that purport to offer "free web space?"  In reality, these outfits will spam your email address, snatch every bit of information they can about you for sale to the highest bidder, and immediately delete any web site that you spent hours making if it does not conform to their corporate agenda, which means: no politics outside the mainstream.  You are given no warning or anything, your site just gets yanked abruptly and that's it.  Meanwhile all the users to your "free" web site get their computers filled up with ugly advertising banners and pop-up windows.  And your so-called "free" web host is busy collecting info about them too.  If you want a web site, use the free space your current ISP provides.  If your ISP provides no space, switch ISPs.  If you are using AOL you should switch, because they are a marketing monster lair and you will be subjected to all manner of ugly ads, and you'll pay a high monthly fee for that dubious privilege.  Also, having an ISP like AOL marks you, in the eyes of more experienced Internet users, as unsophisticated, at minimum.

Now the various search engines that purport to offer "free services" to users in reality are not searching for the best match for your search.  Instead, they prostitute themselves to the highest bidder and give you results based on who paid them the most to show up first on the list.  To find a non-corporate, even a disident web site, often requires a good deal of leg work on the part of the user.  Just try finding the Truth Tree or any other political web site on one of the popular search engines.  Since we don't pay a couple thousand dollars to get listed first, what you are going to see on most searches is well-funded, fundamentalist, conservative corporate, or for-profit web sites.  This is why conservative candidates do so well in elections, even though they vote against the interests of most citizens:  Conservative, monied interests control the public mind.  They play on divisions amongst the lower classes: black vs. white, gay vs. straight, female vs. male, religious vs. irreligious, and Christian vs. Muslim.  By dividing the people into hostile factions, they can more easily rule them all.

If you passively absorb whatever media happens to be most convenient to obtain, you get force-fed the lies that corporations want you to believe.  You have to put forth effort to find out the truth.

Bec Gracie wrote on September 4th, 2001:

I have been researching censorship of the press in a variety of countries. I can't believe what measures some governments will go to in order to have their misdemeanours kept hidden.
Anyone have any sites that demonstrate how journalists are using the net to publish their stories that would otherwise be censored in their country's press?
Thanks heaps, Bec;)

Al Gore and Joe Leiberman's strategy for getting elected in 2000 consisted of wearing their religious faith on their shirt sleeve and frequently invoking the name of God (though not Jesus, naturally) to prove their righteousness and calling for censorship of naughty movies, TV shows and song lyrics.  This was true to form.  In the 80's, Al's wife Tipper allied with the religious right to attack rock-n-roll lyrics (see our Mp3 section for Jello Biafra's confrontation with Tipper).  Little distinguished these gentlemen from their opponents Bush and Cheney.  They basically agreed with the Republicans on issues like continuing the wasteful drug war, globalization, campaign finance reform, military spending (Gore wanted an increase) and foreign policy.  Instead of attacking the Republican ticket, they agreed with the Republican ticket--and lost.  Let us pray that Gore has enough political wisdom to stay away from politics for good and not wreck the Dems' chances again.

A few years ago, legislation (H.R. 695) was proposed to make it illegal for any citizen in the United States to send an encrypted message to any other citizen in the United States unless he uses a government approved encryption program which the police can, with a court order, decrypt by using a built-in "back door."  This legislation is opposed by software vendors who use strong encryption to prevent credit card fraud.  It is opposed by the ACLU on constitutional grounds because it infringes on freedom of speech.

Crossbowman wrote in a message on September 8th, 2001:

Sept. 2001 Scientific American special issue:
"A legislative move in Europe that would also affect the U.S. is threatening the sometimes controversial ability of Internet users to mask their real-world identities. The move, which is heavily backed by the U.S. Department of Justice, is the cybercrime treaty, designed to make life easier for law enforcement by requiring Internet service providers (ISPs) to maintain logs of users' activities for up to seven years and to keep their networks tappable. The Council of Europe, a treaty-building body, announced its support of the cybercrime effort in June."

The interesting effect of such a treaty, if it were passed, is that it would likely supercede the U.S. constitution and equivalents overseas, at least of signing members, and of course non-signatories can always be brought in line through economic coercion. No domestic legislation would be required to empower it, and in fact were such a law to be enacted within the U.S., it would likely be struck down by the courts on constitutional grounds. The future trend in over-riding popular sovereignty and civil liberties is to do so by international treaty.

The Truth Tree's position on this issue is that freedom of speech cannot exist where communication is required by law to be accessible to the police.  The police already have the power to intercept postal and telephone communications with a court order.  The Internet is just another form of telecommunication, after all, and it would seem that no special legislation would be needed.  Perhaps the ease of encryption on the Internet is what concerns these lawmakers.  But if I want to tell you a secret, I can manage to do it in quite a number of ways which would be out of the reach of the police.  I can meet you at the Mall and whisper in your ear, for example.  Are we going to have laws against whispering without prior notification of the police?  I can see the government form now with a place for the name and SSN of the whisperer and the whisperee and the precise location and time of the planned communication.  The police would then, by court order I suppose, be authorized to set up a listening device which would be so sophisticated that it would be able to separate my whisperings from the background noise in the Mall.  Of course I might whisper in Cherokee. That would throw them off for a little while!  (Whispering in Cherokee is unusually difficult, however.)

Furthermore, it is the Tree's position that the only acceptable organized locus of control for information flow is at the receiving end.  Having a central agency, whether governmental or private decide what can be sent into an information channel should be vigorously opposed.  As Thomas Jefferson so insightfully observed, "Our liberty depends on freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."  The reason that what appears to be a reasonable limitation on freedom of speech cannot be tolerated is that it inevitably leads to further and further limitations which, taken incrementally, will all seem "reasonable."  There exist organizations in the world which are not concerned about objective truth but wish to impose their system of values and beliefs on others.  Political parties and religious organizations are two examples that readily come to mind.

And censorship even at the receiving end is by no means always acceptable.   It is often maintained that parents have a right to control what their children see and hear.  Up to what age? And shouldn't the qualifications of the parent to make these decisions be taken into account? I think of a family I know who restrict their children's reading to books and other printed matter that support "creationism".  They carefully censor anything that mentions the facts of biology.  There is no guarantee that a parent is wise or competent.  Automatically assuming that a decision made by a parent cannot be questionned is absurd.  Some parents due to religion will even restrict a sick child's access to life-saving medicines, leaving the child's fate up to "God's will."