The convergence of wealth inequality and Media consolidation is explicated as the greatest risk to democracy. The degree of media consolidation is shocking and has led to the absence of so much of the dissenting evidence needed to form informed understandings regarding our collective foreign policy impact on the world stage. Without that we are unable of holding our government accountable and responsible for carrying out the will and interests of the majority population and instead become unconscious victims of the will and economic interests of the elite few. This show not only details the degree of media consolidation but also documents the methods and results of creating a misinformed electorate with clear examples and documentation. From the 1st Gulf War and before until today examples abound on how deceitfully misrepresentations were presented to the American public.
“In 1983, the US media was controlled by 50 companies. There were nine companies ruling in the 1990s, and by 2020 the number shrank to six — AT&T, which bought Time Warner, Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), Comcast, Disney, News Corp, and Viacom. This means that a huge amount of media companies are connected.”
Those that own the overwhelming disproportionate wealth, also own the media, and therefore own the purveyors of ideas from epoch to epoch. As Herbert Marcuse described back in the 1970s in his book One Dimensional Man, a closed universe of discourse is created that shapes and creates false truths, and false history with the result that things people often believe but which in fact are false or grossly misleading.
How we have been misled into conflict after conflict by control of information and the distorted presentation of false narratives is detailed with hard evidentiary examples. When foreign policy and public relations firms work hand in glove, we are advertised into supporting unjust interventions and wars. The last 25% of the show shifts to an introduction to the Libyan invasion of 2011 and the false propaganda that was connected to that war crime, which will be further explicated next week.
