an incestuous one for decades..going back to Smedley Butler's heroism during the attempt to overthrow FDR, and going straight thru the
Media consolidation that even President Clinton did not stop when he was in office.Media people like Murdoch, Sinclair, Clear Channel, are doing everything they can to totally control what we see, hear and have access to on the internet.
It's history predates even Hillary Clinton's often ridiculed, but nonetheless prescient, remarks about a "great Rightwing Conspiracy"
http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/powell_memo_lewis.htmlThe Powell Memo
(also known as the Powell Manifesto)
Introduction
In 1971, Lewis F. Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell's nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell's legal objectivity. Anderson cautioned that Powell "might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice...in behalf of business interests."
Though Powell's memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration's "hands-off business" philosophy.
Most notable about these institutions was their focus on education, shifting values, and movement-building - a focus we share, though usually with contrasting goals. One of our great frustrations is that "progressive" foundations and funders have failed to learn from the success of these corporate institutions and decline to fund the Democracy Movement that we and a number of similarly-focused organizations are attempting to build. Instead, they overwhelmingly focus on damage control, band-aids and short-term results which provide little hope of the systemic change we so desperately need to reverse the trend of growing corporate dominance.
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EXCELLENT ARTICLE
http://www.webpan.com/dsinclair/myths.htmlThe Myth of The Liberal Media
http://www.prwatch.org/node/8882The Right Wing Media's Lie Machine
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/shortstack/2010/02/how_the_conservative_media_har.htmlHow the conservative media harm democracy
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0403-25.htmWhy Media Ownership Matters
This is an AMAZING resource!!http://www.corporations.org/media/Media Reform Information Center