Mixed Media

Yesterday’s “Everything is Broken” tackled the sorry state of our media moonscape.  All roads funnel into 6!  Back in ancient times, 1993, 50 corporations had the lion's share of USA media; today it is 6.  If Time-Warner and Comcast come together …

A documentary film is being shot at WUSB by Tony Salva – he was set up in the studio with me during the program and then did a more formal interview after.  Mixed media indeed!

Back to that bleak road we are forced to travel … an informed electorate was considered a pillar of democracy when Sally Hemings’ pot farmer lover Tom Jefferson held sway.  And I quote:

“I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.  Well, I guess Rupert Murdock “to a certain degree” informs his readers of the WSJ, and mouth-breather viewers of Fox News, but that for another day.

My featured guests on the program represented the Long Island Media Task Force.  They are doing everything they can to muster local resistance to the runaway corporate takeover of our society.  I applaud their efforts.

I see 3 principal avenues of toxic fallout from media consolidation:  1.  outright government and/or corporate propaganda; 2.  corporate product marketing in drag: i.e. everything from product placement to story slant to VNR’s (video news releases that a corporation’s PR firm produced that is presented as “news,” often with video of a “reporter” on the scene); 3.  the outright blackout of stories we really need to hear: e.g. Fukishima; the TPP; the drone wars; alternatives to capitalism.  Im sure you can conjure up more categories for all of this.  drop me a note with your thoughts!

The media mess is one area of “brokenness” that we all should be fighting.  Do what you can locally; take mainstream corporate media with a grain of salt; find some online sources that are less ideologically filtered.  Lets see if we can open our own roads to information, knowledge and the power that comes with that.

Mix your own media!