Go to consortiumblog.com to post comments

Order Now

Archives

Age of Obama
Barack Obama's presidency

Bush End Game
George W. Bush's presidency since 2007

Bush - Second Term
George W. Bush's presidency from 2005-06

Bush - First Term
George W. Bush's presidency, 2000-04

Who Is Bob Gates?
The secret world of Defense Secretary Gates

2004 Campaign
Bush Bests Kerry

Behind Colin Powell's Legend
Gauging Powell's reputation.

The 2000 Campaign
Recounting the controversial campaign.

Media Crisis
Is the national media a danger to democracy?

The Clinton Scandals
Behind President Clinton's impeachment.

Nazi Echo
Pinochet & Other Characters.

The Dark Side of Rev. Moon
Rev. Sun Myung Moon and American politics.

Contra Crack
Contra drug stories uncovered

Lost History
America's tainted historical record

The October Surprise "X-Files"
The 1980 election scandal exposed.

International
From free trade to the Kosovo crisis.

Other Investigative Stories

Editorials

Editor’s Note: Though the right-wing media continues to grow in power and influence, more and more grassroots Americans are recognizing how this propaganda apparatus works, how it fronts for rich corporations by having “populist” spokesmen convince gullible listeners that the threat they face is from Big Government, rather than from Big Corporations.

In a heart-felt appeal, hockey mom Lynne Gillooly from the Charlotte, North Carolina, area, urges more Americans to wake up to how the right-wing media is recruiting them against their own best interests:

As a concerned citizen, mother of four, small-business owner and a hockey mom (with no lipstick), I have studied politics and specifically talk radio for 12 years. It started when the Right impeached President Clinton.

At that time, I was a voter of both parties and usually selected my candidate based on personality or likability. Pretty superficial.

When I watched the country completely shut down for almost a year to talk about Monica and her blue dress ad nauseam at the expense of some very serious issues, not the least of which was Osama Bin Laden, I was shocked and angry.

After 12 years of listening, interacting with and complaining about political talk radio I have come to the conclusion that this media format was the nation’s primary cancer. Now that it has spread to 90 percent of our airwaves and onto Fox News, Web sites and think tanks – and the final nail being the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision of last week to give corporations carte blanche to pick and choose our elected officials – we have a full-fledged stage four metastasis.

What is most disconcerting is that this powerful media disease has spun the fight as one against the Big Government when the real fight is our democracy against corporatocracy. Right now, the government, Obama, progressives and anyone that wants to save our democracy should be our ally in this fight.

The Becks, Rushs, Hannitys, Savages, Ingrahams etc are winning in the battle to control the message and frame the fight, but if you listen carefully to these masters of manipulation, they convince their audiences that they are patriots and are fighting for our freedoms when at the end of every issue one of the Big Four corporate sectors is always being protected:

Big oil/ energy; Health / Pharma; Military Industrial Complex (not to be confused with our veterans, soldiers and their families, but rather the Halliburtons, Blackwaters and defense contractors); and Wall St./finance.

We need to define what is at stake. It is not a fight against Big Government; it is a fight to save democracy from a corporatocracy. Now more than ever we need to convince the President that we are behind him if he is behind us.

This means we cannot just sit back and let him be attacked and smeared 24/7 by corporate run talk radio and Fox News. They need to be held accountable for what they are doing.

Several months ago, talk radio hosts all over the country incited hate, anger and distrust towards the President and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano because of a Homeland Security report on right-wing extremists. The talk radio hosts convinced their audiences (tens of millions of Americans) that this report was to intimidate and spy on the average Republican voter.

Callers were furious at this supposed intrusion on their liberties. Threats were made against the President and the Government. People even started wearing t-shirts that said "I am a right-wing extremist."

What these overpaid corporate propagandists on the radio DID NOT tell their audiences was that this report had been initiated several months prior, during the Bush administration, and there had been a report on left-wing extremists also.

How is this OK? Americans deserve the whole truth, not just the corporate right-wing “truth.”

This is why the right-wing hosts panic over the mention of the Fairness Doctrine. In there were a system that required both sides of the story to be told, these tactics would be exposed for what they are.

As you can see, the fight will be difficult, but if we do not fight now we can say goodbye to democracy.

To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. (To make a blog comment about this or other stories, you can use your normal e-mail address and password. Ignore the prompt for a Google account.) To comment to us by e-mail, click here. To donate so we can continue reporting and publishing stories like the one you just read, click here.

Back to Home Page