The Problem with our Current Media.

Fox news is conservative, MSNBC is liberal, and CNN, well CNN is retarded.

These are the big three news media sources. And there rise and control on the market is disturbing. Corporate influence on the media means that not all the information gets out, advertisers have pull as business is business.

The news media has declined in the past twenty years. With the passage of certain laws and the veto of others we get slanted viewpoints from corporate giants that only report what is in their interests, and not yours.

Let me educate you on a little thing called the Fairness Doctrine.

This doctrine was a FCC policy that was introduced in 1949. It demanded that those who hold broadcast licenses were to present news in a manner that was honest, equitable and balanced.

Sounds like a good deal right? I mean if you only have so many channels to which information is broadcasted to you, you should prefer that the news medium be honest.

Fast forward to the 1980s when Reagan was president, the doctrine started to come under heat, some say it was a violation of free speech, even though in 1969 the Supreme Court upheld the doctrine by an 8-0 vote. However the doctrine was not law and democrats in the 80s tried to make it be one. It reached the desk of President Reagan and was promptly vetoed. By 1987 the conservative FCC voted out the doctrine.

Now let’s focus on something called the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

The big issue with this act is that it allows any one medium to own up to 35 percent of a broadcast in an area. Hello deregulation. It helps create media giants that can control several sources of information that you hear. This isn’t to say limit who gets Fox or who gets CBS but more or less who gets to hear the information from an uninfluenced source.

Take for example Clear Channel Communications.  They are the largest owner of AM, FM and Shortwave radio stations. Most of their news stations are broadcast in the south. You don’t think that Clear Channel would report on anything that might be bad for business. I mean what business owner would.  Hell they even go to the lengths to hire paid actors to call into their radio stations through a subsidiary company known as Premiere Radio Networks.

See, you’re not getting unbiased news.

So it seems that the only real source of unbiased news is coming from the print side. But anyone who pays attention to the world knows that newspapers are failing thanks to the creation of the internet and sites like Craigslist that steal from newspaper sources of income.

So that leaves one place left, the internet. And if you don’t think the elite are trying to get control of that, think again. Look what happened in Egypt.

As long as corporate media is allowed to go unchecked and unregulated we cannot guarantee that we are getting fair and balanced information, whether these companies want to claim it or not. The internet is the last place of free information where it can be released and not be affected by advertisers. See Anonymous or Wikileaks. Truth seekers are often lambasted and the money makers don’t like to be shone in a bad light. The web is our last ground, lets not let them take control of that.