AMERICAN MEDIA ISN'T OBJECTIVE
When I listen to the BBC I am astonished at what is NOT covered in American media. The BBC is not dependent on the same advertising behemoths that American media is. Advertising rules in the USA.
There has always been a right-wing slant to American media reporting. Of course the right-wingers will dispute that. But while news sources and media news stories may be good, there is a silent, hidden fear of angering the huge advertisers who make for media profits. And many of these immense advertisers are the same corporations that make huge profits off of war and the production of war machinery. In fact, some of the largest corporate producers of war equipment have owned networks and major media outlets. News syndicate owner, Hearst, bragged about how he could get a war started.
For the past hundred years or so Europe and the U.S. have been engaged in a long battle between the political perspectives and political organizations related to the two great forces of the 20th Century, Communism and Fascism. Communism has pretty much been vanquished by Western confrontation and self-destruction. The collapse of the Soviet Union had as much to do with its own mistakes and miscues as it did with outside military might. And the system imposed on the Eastern bloc [the Soviet form of communism] was a dismal failure and had to be propped up by a regimental and sinister government.
Fascism, on the other hand, was from its beginning a system of government and political posturing that was supported by big industry and big banking. Henry Ford and the duPont family in America were very early supporters of fascism in Italy and Germany. Ford directly supported Hitler and Ford was awarded medals from the Nazi government and Hitler himself. Western bankers met annually in Switzerland to support the Nazi regime. Krupp, Messerschmidt, I.G Farben, steel companies, and other huge German war corporations were supported by American and Western European corporate interests.
Forms of fascism survived the Second World War, and while regimes in Argentina and Chile were obvious examples, nations with fascist-like regimes were continually supported by the United States and encouraged by American corporations.
To this day there survive in the U.S. remnants of fascist thinking. Joseph McCarthy's brand of government intervention, the John Birch Society, the House Un-American Activities Committee, J. Edgar Hoover and FBI snooping into left-leaning organizations and individuals, Guantanamo, American torture of prisoners of war and others, lies that got us to invade sovereign nations, American imperial experiments, favors given to war corporations, huge no-bid war contracts to favored corporations, an accommodating American media regarding U.S. military adventures, snooping and right-wing reporting by Rupert Murdoch media which now has 5 more of their journalists jailed in Britain, U.S. participation in killing left-leaning Allende in Chile and advancement of a fascistic government there, invasion of Greneda, blockade of Cuba, support of Somoza and Marcos, Dick Cheney as Vice President, ad infinitum; all evidence of the ongoing right-wing posturing and acceptance in this country.
And we are told that our "system" of government, long veered away from the U.S. Constitution, is necessary to take these right-wing steps. However many historians and other informed observers feel that all these steps have caused more problems than they have solved. And a social democracy like Sweden is doing quite well, thank you. But capitalism's other nations like the U.S., Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland, etc. are not doing so marvelously. The argument about fascism vs. communism is ongoing and moot. But in the U.S. we get a distorted and right-wing accommodating viewpoint.
In the next blog or two, I will offer some viewpoints and resources that never seem to reach mainstream media in the U.S. While I disagree with many viewpoints from the left or the right, I do not think we should be kept from objective and total news reporting. Americans are getting filtered news, and incomplete news coverage and reporting. And our public broadcasting venues are getting even less support from our government. What we receive from American news sources is incomplete, at best; and contrived and tilted at worst.
