The corrupt media just won’t be transparent about it and will carry the banner of “truth” like any other populist religious pamphlet.
The messages a medium distributes are selected according to a dynamic process that occurs in three levels: the chapter of the medium, the current demand of the consumers and the level of cash that is being poured in by external actors at a determined moment to push for an outcome. The corrupt media just won’t be transparent about it and will carry the banner of “truth” like any other populist religious pamphlet.
So, when the media tycoons started their visions, they always started out both with the great potential of the business per se in mind, but also with a designed, strategic ideological position they wished to add to. Be it, get the freedom message out there -as is our case-, or be it get the message from the academic community to the general public, or be it get the “unbiased” news out there to the citizens of the city, region or world. They all have founding chapters, and each founder comes from a specific background and wanted to be a voice about something in society. That founder searched for editors and writers in specific places at specific times and people of specific backgrounds heard about the new medium, that was a new voice about something they cared about, and reached out for a job. Many times, even, writing and producing content they didn’t like or want to right for the sake of that voice, and of what the public was demanding at that specific time.
What do media consumers demand? Ideally, most people demand being informed and “truth”.
Subconsciously, though, as it happens when one delves in the ocean of “truths”, what many people look for in the media is archetypical reassurance of their beliefs. What this means, basically, is that people consume the media that tells them what they think they want to hear. The concept associated to this practice has been coined “eco chamber” per the act of only following people and media that repeat only that which you wish to hear (read) on social media.
But the era of TV, meaning the era of cable/sat subscriptions, generated a particular dynamic in which TV shows started to play a role in “culturization” -borrowing an anthropological term- at the same level as schools and families. You are basically an individual response to those three cultural forces in terms of identity. If you watched TV every day for the past 10 years, you had three dads: your guardian, the talk-show host and your teacher. The tellers of “truths”. One of the problems with this dynamic is that it falls in the lap of free market economics, affecting the notion of competition -with corporate monopolies and oligopolies-, unsustainable industrial practices –mass consumption corporations controlling almost all of the advertising budget that finances the corporate media-, and an offer-based system that was only until recent years been the norm -you see what you get and don’t have a choice-, but that with the practice of shadow-banning and censoring of certain people and groups by the new great media corporations -Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.- has suffered a new setback in what should be a free Internet and market of exchange of ideas. And here is where it gets tricky.
Let me draw a “click-baity” analogy by using Islam as an example.
I read many times that some people want to “ban Islam“, many of them out of fear of terrorism and many out of fear that their lives will change if they won’t. But here’s the deal. Why has Islam surged so vastly? One thing happens when you don’t have competition and another happens when you have a respectable set of options. “By the sword”, as we have seen with the rise of the Islamic “State” and Radical Islamists who want to convert the world in the Middle East and Africa mainly. Islam, as a political ideology, has spread through the world’s poorest and most vulnerable populations. Where’s the competition? Why haven’t all these people seen in any of the other religious or political options a better choice? Well there’s many places where the competition has been exterminated by force, as in Saudi Arabia and the new developments in the Iraq-Syria border; and there are other places where muslims simply start choosing other ideologies because they simply find them a better option, as is the case of many young and second generation muslims living in large Western cities. Why should Islam be banned if there are actually better lifestyle options abound? I write this as an outspoken admirer and defender of Western Civilization. Christianity and Democracies should be competing more efficiently against them, and if they were, they would/should be winning the culture wars.
If a Western State starts banning voices like Islam or White-Supremacists, we will be walking the path of the Religious Monarchies and there are live examples of the effects that such practice may have in our lives and in our freedom. Meanwhile, if our message of liberty, freedom and self-determination is BETTER and is more efficiently delivered than those of any violent sect of fanatics we shouldn’t even be in trouble in the first place.
Problem is, the biggest advertising capitals in the world right now are from mass-consumption corporations (including Political Parties and States).
Hence, big media become the distributors of standardization messages in a 24/7 loop, repeat, multi-format strategy. So one problem is monopolies. And there are very good norms in form to protect the public from them. Another problem is consumer accountability and the responsibility media have to be transparent about the hows and whys of their content.
For instance, if we were openly told by @CNN when content is being sponsored by the Democratic Party, they wouldn’t be corrupt in terms with ethical standards. Good examples of this are Breitbart, which is openly Nationalistic and the Huffington Post which is openly progressive. For all we might dislike the HuffPost, at least they are upfront about what they do, and the competitors should be moved by how they might be doing a better job at reaching their target audience.
However, if the new great media corporations continue to, as has been proven in many occasions, censor specific movements and ideas either upfront or by the means of shadow-banning, Internet won’t be a universe of freedom to interchange and interrelate, but the essential tool of dictatorship and control. We need civilian consumer groups actively demanding that Anti-Trust practices are penalized and that Media Outlets are open about their funding. This, of course, falls also in the shoes of the consumer, who needs to be active in their responsibility of understanding the fabric of culture and society so they are better entitled to their rights.
@CulturOfFreedom
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