The Myth of the Free Press-- "...the Mass Media are Essential Tools For Conformity"--Chris Hedges

[KoKo]

Published on Monday, October 27, 2014 by TruthDig
The Myth of the Free Press (additional Paragraph Breaks added for easier online reading)
by
Chris Hedges

The mass media, as C. Wright Mills pointed out, are essential tools for conformity. They impart to readers and viewers their sense of themselves. They tell them who they are. They tell them what their aspirations should be. They promise to help them achieve these aspirations. They offer a variety of techniques, advice and schemes that promise personal and professional success. The mass media, as Wright wrote, exist primarily to help citizens feel they are successful and that they have met their aspirations even if they have not.

They use language and images to manipulate and form opinions, not to foster genuine democratic debate and conversation or to open up public space for free political action and public deliberation. We are transformed into passive spectators of power by the mass media, which decide for us what is true and what is untrue, what is legitimate and what is not. Truth is not something we discover. It is decreed by the organs of mass communication.

“The divorce of truth from discourse and action—the instrumentalization of communication—has not merely increased the incidence of propaganda; it has disrupted the very notion of truth, and therefore the sense by which we take our bearings in the world is destroyed,” James W. Carey wrote in “Communication as Culture.”

Bridging the vast gap between the idealized identities—ones that in a commodity culture revolve around the acquisition of status, money, fame and power, or at least the illusion of it—and actual identities is the primary function of the mass media. And catering to these idealized identities, largely implanted by advertisers and the corporate culture, can be very profitable.

We are given not what we need but what we want. The mass media allow us to escape into the enticing world of entertainment and spectacle. News is filtered into the mix, but it is not the primary concern of the mass media. No more than 15 percent of the space in any newspaper is devoted to news; the rest is devoted to a futile quest for self-actualization. The ratio is even more lopsided on the airwaves.

“This,” Mills wrote, “is probably the basic psychological formula of the mass media today. But, as a formula, it is not attuned to the development of the human being. It is a formula of a pseudo-world which the media invent and sustain.”

At the core of this pseudo-world is the myth that our national institutions, including those of government, the military and finance, are efficient and virtuous, that we can trust them and that their intentions are good. These institutions can be criticized for excesses and abuses, but they cannot be assailed as being hostile to democracy and the common good. They cannot be exposed as criminal enterprises, at least if one hopes to retain a voice in the mass media.

----------snip---------

The press will attack groups within the power elite only when one faction within the circle of power goes to war with another. When Richard Nixon, who had used illegal and clandestine methods to harass and shut down the underground press as well as persecute anti-war activists and radical black dissidents, went after the Democratic Party he became fair game for the press.

His sin was not the abuse of power. He had abused power for a long time against people and groups that did not matter in the eyes of the Establishment. Nixon’s sin was to abuse power against a faction within the power elite itself.

CONTINUED AT:

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/10/27/myth-free-press

[cantbeserious]

1. K&R

eom

[Scuba]

2. “The heaviest restriction upon the freedom of public opinion is not the official censorship ...

“The heaviest restriction upon the freedom of public opinion is not the official censorship of a press, but the unofficial censorship by a press which exists not so much to express opinion as to manufacture it.”

Dorothy L. Sayers
1893-1957

British writer, essayist, playwright and translator.

[NYC_SKP]

3. Recommended. (nt)

[Bill USA]

4. tv network M$M = GOP television

The mass media blindly support the ideology of corporate capitalism. They laud and promote the myth of American democracy—even as we are stripped of civil liberties and money replaces the vote. They pay deference to the leaders on Wall Street and in Washington, no matter how perfidious their crimes. They slavishly venerate the military and law enforcement in the name of patriotism. They select the specialists and experts, almost always drawn from the centers of power, to interpret reality and explain policy. They usually rely on press releases, written by corporations, for their news. And they fill most of their news holes with celebrity gossip, lifestyle stories, sports and trivia. The role of the mass media is to entertain or to parrot official propaganda to the masses. The corporations, which own the press, hire journalists willing to be courtiers to the elites, and they promote them as celebrities. These journalistic courtiers, who can earn millions of dollars, are invited into the inner circles of power. They are, as John Ralston Saul writes, hedonists of power.

Despite the fact that the GOP has set records for filibustering, since Obama has been in office the word 'filibuster' is verboten on M$M tv. They can't say the word, thus they haven't reported on the seemingly newsworthy fact of the GOP's record setting performance of filibusters against Obama/Democratic legislative initiatives. Instead they have had dozens of round table discussions of Obama's "leadership" - a favorite chant of chief GOP sycophant, Charlie "fascist fellatiator" Rose.

.. recommended.. (would be nice to see this post over on Good Reads!) -- I don't know if everybody is aware of this group.