15/2/02

Who Controls The Western Media?

Iran While many Islamists celebrated 9/11, thousands of IRANIANS poured into the streets to show their SOLIDARITY with the families of the victims of the terrorist attack in America. With pictures!  (Link now defunct)

Here is one of the pictures. 

These are Iranians - men and women - one week after the terrorist attack.

On BBC News 24 this evening, the programme Correspondent showed footage of a large demonstration in Iran following 9/11 to send CONDOLENCES to America for the terrible loss of innocent life.

Now, I was absolutely glued to my TV set following 9/11 and I scoured the internet for all the information about the resulting situation as the days and weeks followed.

NOT ONCE did I hear about, or read about, let alone see any pictures of, any such popular support for America coming from Iran.

NOT ONCE!

Why not?

Well. Maybe there was, in fact, some coverage, and I just happened to miss it. But, surely, this would have been a very big story; given the dangerous hostility towards Muslims that 9/11 was inflaming.

But why was this large Iranian demonstration in support for America's victims of 9/11 not widely reported in the western media?

Over and over again, here in the UK on various mainstream TV channels we saw the same film footage of a small group of Palestinians actually cheering and celebrating 9/11. 

But why were we not shown with similar enthusiasm the footage of what was happening in Iran in support of the Americans?

Whose interest was being served by keeping this quiet?

Why hide the fact that many Iranians were in deep sympathy with the Americans?

Who benefits by trying to keep the western populations in a state of hostility towards Iran?

And, perhaps, even more astonishing is, How the hell was it done?

What kind of ENORMOUS forces must there be which are capable of suppressing, pretty effectively, the whole western media with regard to even just this single, but HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT, event?

Well, the answer must lie somewhere in the name of Rupert Murdoch, and in the names of all those others who are far too powerful for our good.

They will, of course, have been scratching the President's back, and, sometime later, he will surely be expected to scratch theirs.

TWO YEARS LATER 

Bush gives the media moguls the payoff for hiding the facts about this demonstration in Iran, and also about many other things - such as the illegitimate invasion of Iraq ... 

Murdoch, Molding Men's Minds, and the FCC Sell-Out 

Hal Pawluk

Republican Michael Powell, Chairman of the FCC, has jammed through another give-away in the media arena. This time, it essentially gives one of the largest-and-getting-larger-still media companies in the world a corner on the global satellite market, and increases its huge holdings in the US market even more.

In a 3-2 vote along party lines, Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein joined fellow Democrat Michael J. Copps in opposing News Corp.'s purchase of a controlling stake in DirecTV. They said more stringent conditions were needed to prevent News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch — whose empire includes Fox Broadcasting, two dozen cable channels and 35 television stations in 26 cities that reach 44% of U.S. households — from squeezing or retaliating against rivals that don't play by his rules.

"With this unprecedented combination, News Corp. could be in a position to raise programming prices for consumers, harm competition in video programming and distribution markets nationwide and decrease the diversity of media voices," Adelstein said in a statement. [FCC Approves News Corp.'s DirecTV Bid subscription]

The Justice Department said they would notoppose the deal.

It's part of the current Republican policy of paying back Big Media for their Big Campaign Contributions. Eleven media companies own about 90% of all the media in the US. And now we're going to get all the news [the right wants us to get] all the time.

Michael Powell, son of Colin Powell [but I sometimes wonder if Michael wasn't adopted], did a similar thing earlier this year, too.

The largest media companies had exceeded ownership limits so instead of penalizing them, Michael and the Republicans on the committee jammed through rules that extended ownership limits and gave Big Media even more headroom for even more acquisitions (like this one). The FCC received a million or so calls and letters opposing the extension, but MP ignored all of them [because, you know, I can do anything I want and you can't stop me]. I watched him on one of the "news talk" shows insisting through his teeth, over and over, that allowing fewer Big Media companies to control more media would increase diversity of viewpoints in the news we receive.

Don't expect any help from Congress.