Techno-Media's Takeover of Democracy
Amusing Ourselves to Death
“All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.”
― I.F. Stone, In a Time of Torment: 1961–1967
It’s an understatement to note how today’s mainstream media is a perpetual propaganda machine that spins lies as fact. There is no need to link to the misrepresentations because it would be far easier to link to the accurate stories which are few and far between such as this anodyne coverage of Kate Middleton’s online chat with a few parents the other week. Hello could not have done better. Still, this leaves me asking: Where’s the news?
The way that journalism has been transformed over the last fifty years makes the standard of unemotional, detached news delivery on TV and objectively-toned articles virtually unrecognisable qualities within major media today. Where content was once based on a journalist going onto the street to report what was happening, today this tradition of representing facts on the ground is simply a thing of the past.
Beginning in the 1980s, media machines like CNN emerged turning towards a content-based approach which catered to target audiences presenting the news on a 24-hour news cycle which, when you left the television on for more than a few hours would rinse and repeat the same news. In much the same way that the advertising giants used the media to target their brands so that housewives would be the ones seeing the laundry soap commercials in breaks from daytime television viewing from the 1950s through the 1970s, today we have a media machinery that targets a specific audience based on political affinities. From CNN’s emergence in 1980 to Fox’s sixteen years later, we have been given two choices on the media menu of news: spin from the right and spin from the left. There was CNN’s “Crossfire” and PBS’ “McLaughlin Report” both of which offered a left versus right perspective where shows took on current news topics and often ended in heated debates. Who wasn’t hooked?
While these are great models for op-ed journalism, who would have foreseen that less than two decades later journalism would be dominated by either opinion pieces or staged “straight journalism” which superficially read as objective, but which are merely embedded through political partisanship. Journalism has become staged in every way in a way not dissimilar to how in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman criticises the use visual imagery within politics, news, history, and news to entertainment. From the divisive nature of mainstream media over the past four years which has sought to cement the injustices of one political party (while eliding problems on the other side of the aisle) to the burgeoning “hate-o-tainment” factor these media outlets cash in on, we are thick in the middle of a political propaganda tempest brought to us by the very media which stumps for politicians.
Nothing speaks more loudly to this plight than the protests of 6 January at the Capitol and how mainstream media misrepresented the throngs of peaceful protestors that day. One would think that this would have been a wakeup call for those of us interested in the news being covered fairly and objectively. Instead, we were told by mainstream media’s partisan moderators that the events were “white privilege on display” as many articles effectively covered Twitter feed on the protests with little to no content about why people amassed in the capital. It’s no coincidence that the images posted by mainstream media focussed upon the Capitol building. To do otherwise might have shown the throngs of peaceful protestors forcing editors to address what the vast majority of protestors were doing peacefully protesting. Instead, we were pelted with op-ed letting us get the message loud and clear: Nobody should be even slightly curious as to why people protested peacefully in DC. Newsweek ran an article effectively equating the presence at a protest with being implicated with a “riot” while the title of its article, “Every Republican State Legislator Spotted At Rally Before Capitol Riot,” contradicts the content which states that “a handful of Republican state legislators” were seen amidst the peaceful protests.
Watching the events last month in DC, I was dismayed by the media coverage which focussed uniquely on the group of individuals who broke the law by entering the US Capitol grounds or building, with a scant few looting and few carrying weapons. That the media covered this illegal and dangerous mob is not an issue. USA Today has a brilliant write-up of these individuals who chose illegal actions over peaceful protest. While most everyone agrees that the violence of that one specific mob should be condemned, the media effectively ignored the voices of the peaceful protestors.
There is a glaring hole in the coverage from last month which I keep waiting to kick in—and it simply has not. Major media ignored the tens of thousands of peaceful protestors in Washington DC on 6 January allowing its neoliberal pundits to brandish the entire group of protestors as “racists” and “white supremacists.” Even alternative media like The Conversation made no attempt to query the aporia of coverage, instead choosing to repeat the major media mantra that the entirely of the protestors were part of “Proud Boys” or were “white supremacists.” And Eudaimonia & Co similarly fed the flames of hyperbole by running a story on fascism while using an image of the Capitol as clickbait and not once referring to the protest. Just as troubling are the many articles coming out of mainstream media comparing the reactions to last year’s Black Lives Matter protest and the protest last month at the Capitol such as this piece by CNN which cites the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s statement, “Make no mistake, if the protesters were Black, we would have been tear-gassed, battered, and perhaps shot.” But wait a minute—people were shot, one protestor died as a result of a gunshot!
This raises many questions about media transparency. For starters, why is the media copying and pasting unsubstantiated claims made on BLM’s website instead of speaking with the protestors or covering the stories on-site? For instance, I have spent weeks trying to get actual figures about the numbers of protestors in DC on 6 January. The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia informed me that they don’t have any estimated numbers. A cursory a look at the photos within the media and of those sent to me by various people who attended the protests, it is clear that there were at least 20,000 protestors, if not far more. Photojournalist Jeremy Lee Quinn also attested to the fact that there were “tens of thousands” of peaceful protestors who elided media coverage. Yet, nowhere in the media are accurate numbers to be found, nor is there any media coverage as to the reasons behind these protestors’ presence in DC.
As Quinn noted in his observation of the protests last month, this group of protestors was expressing a form of dissent against what they feel to be a very real curtailment of their freedom of speech. And the representation of their protest in media was yet another stream of hyperbole fit with cherry-picked extremists who were on-site (as were many in last year’s BLM protests). A quick study of the names and faces of those arrested for trespassing the Capitol will also disabuse anyone of the notion that this was a white supremacist coup. Ultimately, we were fed a story that was largely manufactured by major media which depended entirely upon our outrage keeping weeks of outrage culture by the Democrats alive both on the Hill and throughout social media.
Between the removal of Parler from Amazon’s servers, of its app from both Apple’s and Google’s respective online stores to the locking out of the New York Post from its Twitter account after running the Hunter Biden story, it’s no wonder those on the right are suspicious of Big Tech. And they should be suspicious given that social media giants like Twitter and Facebook had not only taken action to shut down this story but so too had other media sites as noted by the New York Postin December 2020 which demonstrates how myriad left-wing sites were running disinformation stories during October to derail the potential weight of the Biden story on the US election. Despite the evidence of meddled elections, many of us on the left are as sceptical about the engineering of media news reports since the way that Big Tech orchestrated the silencing of sharing the Hunter Biden story is enough to make anyone distrustful of the impact of Big Tech's hold over free speech.
Then there is the idea that the right-wing media has committed itself to in recent months: that if Big Tech cuts off the ability of those on the right from communicating with each, this will cut off their ability to grow in size. Even the curtailing of Trump’s ability to post on Twitter and Facebook resulted in harsh criticism by the likes of Angela Merkel whose spokesman, Steffen Seibert, stated at a regular news conference in Berlin that the freedom of speech “can be interfered with, but by law and within the framework defined by the legislature — not according to a corporate decision.” Junior Minister for European Union Affairs Clement Beaune echoed similar sentiments announcing his shock in seeing to see a private company make decisions that should be made by citizens. As much as many of us on the left cringed these past four years as Trump repeatedly accused major media of “fake news,” he was often not wrong about many of his claims, and more so, the Big Tech giants realised that his claims were being carried through its very platforms. It's a no-brainer that these corporations set out to stifle dissenting voices from not only the right but from across the political spectrum, all the way to the White House.
From the $500K in Bitcoin allegedly sent from a French computer programmer to US far-right groups to the fact that Democratic politicians are now asking for their political opponents to be sacked, we are in dire straights if we cannot understand why the right is digging in its heels, demanding to be heard. Georgia representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene faced calls over her social media posts and for what some house members call her “extremism.” The resolution to have her removed from her committee assignments was co-sponsored by two other Democrats: Ted Deutch of Florida and Jahana Hayes of Connecticut. While Greene’s remarks are considered incendiary by some, there was no such proposal made by the Republican lawmakers in 2019 after Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar caused an uproar with tweets that many held to be as anti-Semitic. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida leading the resolution, referred to the actions of her and her colleagues as “polic[ing] their own.”
That Greene has advocated violence against Democrat opponents and has cast doubt on the 9/11 terror attacks and the school mass shootings at Parkland and Sandy Hook are no small affairs. But so too must we not forget the extremism on both sides of the political aisle. On Thursday, Greene was voted off her committee duties and now, in retribution for this, the Republicans are seeking to remove Ilhan Omar from her committee duties. The GOP conference will also seek to strip Liz Cheney of a leadership position for backing the second set of impeachment charges against Donald Trump. It’s a veritable game of “gotcha tag” and the adults seem to have left the room both within the US government leaving the corporate media to cheerlead. Is it any wonder that more and more people are turning off their televisions and getting their media from independent journalists who are not going to back down from posting stories about Hunter Biden?
So, if you have been thinking it’s political Opposite Day lately, welcome to what seems to be the new “new normal” where right-wing media tends to be covering more the issues of class as the leftist-ish media is still debating if zir is better than they or perhaps demi-sexual bottom-top easy-over with a side of bacon. As more and more pundits from the right express dissent against the censorship rife on social media, to include the negotiation of Section 230, we are seeing a sharp indifference to the rights of the un-woke who are outspoken as AOC steps up her game in making the political personal last week. As more and more Democrats are invested in taking the Capitol back from the “insurgents”, AOC has successfully turned the Capitol it into her own personal Hallmark movie entitled, “Me, Myself and I: Hey, Enough About Me, Let’s Talk About What You Think About Me!”
Where Conservative commentator Glenn Beck has drawn backlash for a comparison of recent social media crackdowns to WWII “ghettos” and leftist journalist Glenn Greenwald has denounced Twitter for condemning political internet censorship in Uganda after banning President Donald Trump and his allies, one thing is certain: We have barely touched the iceberg’s tip.
Big Tech is challenging anything that threatens the control of its domination today. Just ask Brett Weinstein who was similarly punished by Twitter for his Articles of Unity campaign. What the right fails to realise is that this is not a war uniquely on the right. This is a Big Tech shutdown of anything that threatens Big Tech’s domination on media control and its corporate sponsors. Skip to Scene III where Apple and Facebook are now at odds over Apple’s privacy changes which will necessarily mean that users can opt-out of being tracked and their data being used which would result in Facebook losing the ability to monetise our data. Think of it this way: Apple would effectively allow individual users to put up a damn blocking all apps and websites access to user data. The irony here, of course, is that Big Tech has no problems curtailing free speech, but is intolerant to the idea that individuals can own their own data uniquely.
What’s most bizarre about Big Tech’s hod over free speech is that it now seems to have set the metronome of society as other media-based industries have rallied around shutting down what their very industry ostensibly does. Take the publishing industry where last summer Sasha White, a literary agent, was fired for criticising gender-neutral pronouns. Or the other literary agent, Colleen Oefelein, who was fired for using Parler and Gab by the Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency. Or how about the many journalists who have mobilised against their colleagues demanding that they be shut down? From the mobbing of Suzanne Moore who abruptly left the Guardian after 338 of her colleagues, from the technical, commercial and editorial teams, targeted her in a letter published on BuzzFeed in March. The signatories said they were “disappointed in the Guardian’s repeated decision to publish anti-trans views.” This is akin to doctors refusing to see patients because they are triggered by disease. But hey, don’t go to the ACLU to complain about your civil liberties being violated—especially if you are one of those evil types who believe that the earth is round or that sex is immutable.
In the US, the situation is even graver despite the existence of the First Amendment where Anand Giridharadas, author, MSNBC talking head, asked if “Fox News be allowed to exist,” adding that “Brain-mashing as a business model shouldn’t be legal.” Giridharadas is a fellow of the Aspen Institute which has extremely troubling ties to the military-industrial complex in addition to calls for expanding the “definition of national security.”
And then in December, the two-time Pulitzer winning dean of Columbia Journalism School, Steve Coll suggested that free speech is being “weaponised against the principles journalism.” What principles would those be given much of journalism’s abandonment of any modicum of objective news coverage? What is clear here is that now the MSBC and other faux-left media outlets are peddling the notion that the biggest problem the United States faces is the enemy within.
I need not remind you, dear reader, of the dangers inherent in demanding that the police surveil a sector of the population, to include rather recent history when the domestic pushback to the Global War on Terror or the Occupy Wall Street protests resulted in peaceful protests being repressed through barricades and kettling and even the disappearance of 14,000 Muslim men within the US without a word from major media on this subject. The point of free speech is that it exists for us to not only exercise it but that we might listen to those with whom we disagree.
One saving grace over the past month was this letter penned by Representative Rashida Tlaib and nine other members of Congress which urges Pelosi, McConnell, McCarthy, and Schumer to step away from the urge to seek "comfort in increased national security powers in the wake of this attack." The letter goes on to state, "Our history is littered with examples of initiatives sold as being necessary to fight extremism that quickly devolve into tools used for the mass violation of the human and civil rights of the American people," giving examples from the era of House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), the Patriot Act, and FBI’s Assessment Authority and Operation IRON FIST.
We need to be brave and let go of our partisan politics and our ideology. We must read across the political spectrum and worry—worry deeply—that the tens of thousands of protestor in DC were entirely Photoshopped out of media coverage, their voices erased in most cases, and entirely misrepresented when they were referred to. We must stand up for the rights of those with whom we fervently disagree allowing them the freedom to express their views openly. These individuals, be they MAGA rioters, QAnon cultists, or anywhere on the whole Trumpian spectrum, as much as we might kick and scream against certain ideas they espouse, we must use logic and not repression as our counter-argument. We must also sit tight and listen to these opposing voices and insist that media engage in and include the fair representation of their voices.
As any healthy society should allow dissent to be aired civilly, the events of 6 January serve as a wakeup call. The voices from the right are becoming more and more toxic as the left clamps down on free speech just as Biden is about to address antitrust regulation of Big Tech. The subject of free speech might paradoxically serve as a point of union between both sides of the aisle and it would be a shame for us to miss this opportunity to hold government and media accountable. As Jennifer Palmieri, former communications director in the Obama White House, commented on Twitter, “It has not escaped my attention that the day social media companies decided there actually IS more they could do to police Trump’s destructive behaviour was the same day they learned Democrats would chair all the congressional committees that oversee them.”
If our only solution to political disagreement is to penalise "wrong think" while serving up QAnon and their ilk to a post-9/11 treatment that our government afforded the “terrorists,” then we are willingly signing up to take part in the tragedy which is nothing other than a new domestic War on Terror. We are bound to repeat, yet again, our history that did not end well each time we experimented with this as a nation. It is a no-brainer that such strategies will surely fare no better tomorrow.
The end result of a corporate media which is not only its controlling the news we are told is “fit to print” but worse, the greater side-effect of the former is that major media together with social media is now commanding our societal indifference towards the news. Or rather, don’t you want to know what the thousands of people marching on the Capitol last month think?
I do.