It's eerie. When it comes to OJ or the Dean Scream, when ten seconds of boyish exuberance cost a a miles-ahead Democratic frontrunner his party's nomination for the presidency, they can't give you enough. Every newsbreak between regular programming, the lead story of every newscast, concerns what media executives determine is important. Now the most brazen, unconstitutional, and what Anonymous calls "an outright declaration of war against the American people" is burning the wires of the better-informed quarters of the Internet, on both the left and the right, but to watch television you wouldn't know a single thing is happening.
Control of broadcast media, both cable and airwave, is a crucial part of control of the political process. Those of us who take for granted being on a fast connection all day with time to surf and keep up with what's going on, may not understand how much of America lives or gets its information. The millions of "pages views" of websites like this, news websites, and discussion forums, do not come close to the 30 million viewers of the nightly news coming over the Big Four (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News.)
In the first place, huge swaths of America, largely rural and red, are not served by reasonably priced, easily available broadband. Former Rep. John Peterson, John Peterson, who represented Pennsylvania's Fifth District and was co-chairman of the Congressional Rural Caucus, wrote in the NY Times:
A recent study found that fewer than one in four rural Americans have access to broadband. Those of us who live in rural America know that's an inflated estimate. And those of us with access know we can expect to pay as much as $100 a month for the luxury.
Because the US Senate gives greater weight per capita to sparsely populated, mostly rural states, as does the electoral college, American politics is structured to give greater weight to the views of people in Otero County, New Mexico than the Bronx. The 670,000 people in North Dakota get the same two senators in the most powerful chamber in the world as do the 37 million people in California.
Where do these folks get most of their news? Well, when I drive the vast empty distances (lots of jackrabbits) from El Paso International Airport to my folks' neck of the woods, meaning no less than two to four hours on the road depending on what folks I'm seeing, I get the entire spectrum of views on the car radio: from Rush Limbaugh, to Bill O'Reilly, to Sean Hannity. Then three more Christian stations, maybe a Spanish channel. Internet? Most people, yes in this day and age, out here have dial-up. That means too slow for anything but emailing your grandkids now and then and sending pictures of the family dog. If broadband is available, it is expensive, and often means getting it through a satellite, which is hideously expensive. This is the part of America where there is no work, and people are struggling. A roofing or construction job here or there, wife lucky to have landed something at the Walmart, where driving to and from costs expensive gas. This is the reality.
Even cable is expensive when there is no work, but lo and behold, there has been barely a whisper on CNN or MSNBC. The only segment on military detentions I am aware of has been on Judge Napolitano.
Believe you me, folks, people are NOT reading DailyKos, or they might think a lot more like you do. If Brian Williams didn't say it, it didn't happen. Newspaper subscriptions for the nearest metropolitan-area daily are expensive, the Kansas City Star, the Rocky Mountain News. Between hustling for work and the kids you don't have time to read it anyway.
Which is why it is so momentous that the boldest evisceration of the Bill of Rights in American history, which has survivors of American concentration camps for Japanese-Americans speaking out, is dropping onto the ground in much of America with the silence of a pin.
I remember very clearly. The first thing we saw happen after the election of Ronald Reagan was that newspapers and networks started getting bought up and consolidated, so all the news was in a few hands. Small, local independent papers became Gannett rags. The Media Reform Information Center reports:
In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called "alarmist" for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly. In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote "in the U.S., fewer than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass media" -- controlling almost all of America's newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. He predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies...
Twenty years later, everything Bagdikian said came true.
In 2004, Bagdikian's revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC is a close sixth.
A small number of easily controlled and managed news outlets is a precondition for what is happening now with the S. 1867 National Defense Authorization Act's provisions for indefinite military detention of American citizens whom the government will claim are suspected of connections to "terrorism," without charge or trial. In military custody you can be tortured and driven insane through permanent isolation, be given drugs, be deprived of all contact with family, friends, legal counsel, and the outside world for the rest of your life.
I guarantee you, were a whiff of this treason to emerge from the lips of Brian Williams, back where I come from, those senators would not be safe visiting some parts of the state, where the neighbors ride herd on their cattle with rifle stocks jutting out the saddle (the friendliest, most neighborly folks in the world, I might add.)
But no one knows about it. Even in a city where I live on the East Coast, most people don't know. Kossacks live in a bubble of being very well-informed on politics, and make the mistake of assuming everyone else is too, and that they just don't care. It's not true. They don't know.
The network airwaves are public property, leased to behemoth corporations for commercial purposes only so long as they also serve the public trust. This is the reasoning behind PSA (public service announcement) requirements. If the stations didn't have to run them, by law, instead of running paying advertising, they wouldn't.
No one is so naive as to think that the major media has not been corrupt and serving corporate interests for quite awhile now, but this is different. I draw the line at an outright coup on the Constitution. If they can report all-OJ-all-the-time, they can give a hint to what is happening. When this long, peaceful revolution is in full swing, which started with Occupy Wall Street, the media monopoly is the first thing we bust up. Major network media executives might count themselves lucky if they are not someday called accessories to treason.
DEC. 15, THURSDAY, OCCUPY US SENATE DISTRICT OFFICES, NO MILITARY DETENTION OF AMERICAN CITIZENS CODIFIED INTO LAW (MARCH TO JFK FEDERAL BUILDING IN BOSTON, OTHER OFFICES ACROSS NATION)
Background:
Senator Diane Feinstein confirms that she was unable to excise Section 1031, indefinite military detention of Americans, in an email:
Senator Feinstein Confirms President and Military Can Detain US Citizens Without a Trial
Like you, I oppose these provisions. Section 1031 is problematic because it authorizes the indefinite detention of American citizens without due process. In this democracy, due process is a fundamental right, and it protects us from being locked up by the government without charge. For this reason, I offered an amendment to prohibit the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial or charge. Unfortunately, on December 1, 2011, this amendment failed by a vote of 45-55.
I was, however, able to reach a compromise with the authors of the defense bill to state that no existing law or authorities to detain suspected terrorists are changed by this section of the bill. While I would have preferred to have restricted the government’s ability to detain U.S. citizens without charge, this compromise at least ensures that the bill does not expand the government’s authority in this area.
Anonymous Message to the American People:
Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) charging it was Obama who requested military detention for Americans provision:
The right to a jury trial is an "inalienable" right, which cannot be abolished through the flimsy device of declaring a war which by definition lasts forever, against an amorphous network rather a military hierarchy, and in which there is no one from whom to accept surrender.
The Oath of Office of the U.S. senator, required by the Constitution before assuming duties, as well as any American military officer, is: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” The Oath makes no mention of defending territory, the president, or anything other than the Constitution. The Founders intended that defense of the Constitution come before all else. Thomas Jefferson said: "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." By violating their Oath to protect and defend the United States Constitution, these senators have made themselves "domestic enemies" of the Constitution.