July 19, 2011

The Murdoch Rot is Deeper Than The Hacking Scandal And Larger Than The Murdoch Empire

We won't ever get to the bottom of the scandal that is evolving day by day around Rupert Murdoch's media empire if we focus our attention on Murdoch alone. Murdoch is just a manifestation of what the modern press is built on and what its objectives are in relation to the mass of the public in Western society.

True, the propaganda that you read in The New York Times or The Washington Post is on a lower magnitude of bullshit compared to anything that Murdoch puts out in his newspapers, but bullshit is bullshit, and lies are lies, no matter if they are presented to the public by a grotesque looking individual like Murdoch or by professional spin masters who work at the Times and the Post.

The politico-media complex in the West extends beyond Murdoch's empire, which is only an extreme demonstration of how the corporate/state press is used to manipulate people's opinions and thoughts. The Murdoch rot that plagues modern society is the rot of the press. What's the point of bringing down a media mogul if the deeper issues and the larger dynamic of how the corporate press functions is not addressed head on? We should all follow Thomas Jefferson's advice, who said, "I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it."

Why should you not read a newspaper? Because it is all junk. Neither the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, or The Guardian, or The Toronto Star, or whatever stinking newspaper will inform the people about the truth about the 9/11 attacks because the truth is a threat to the present political order. The current order is built on deception, state murder, state terror, political assassinations, and propaganda. "Telling the truth is a revolutionary act," said George Orwell. Newspapers are not in the revolution or the truth business. They are in the lying business.

Journalist John Swinton, who was the chief editorial writer at The New York Times in the 1860s, famously said:
"There is no such thing, at this stage of the world’s history in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my papers, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
A lot of people are lamenting the fact that newspapers are dying. I couldn't be happier. The day The New York Times is out of print will be a day to celebrate. It will mark a great victory for freedom and justice in this world.

The only hope mankind has for the spread of true, reliable and uncensored information comes from a free and independent press. I.F. Stone was a maverick in this field. He helped to lay the groundwork. So did George Seldes, Lewis Hill, and many others. Amy Goodman and Democracy Now come out of this great tradition. Antiwar.com and OpEdNews.com belong to this independent press tradition as well. So does Alex Jones's Infowars.com, The Real News Network, and numerous other alternative news websites that are spreading like wildfire across the web. These independent sites are focusing the light of knowledge on the smoke of lies coming out of Washington D.C.

What we must aim for in the months and years ahead is not the emancipation of the public mind from the Murdoch empire, but from the entire corporate-state media complex that is suppressing the truth about 9/11 and blocking the road to justice. Each of us must turn off television news and put all media products (New York Times, People Magazine, etc) in the garbage because that is where they belong. It is good that these tyrannical and hypocritical newspapers are losing business every single day. They are guilty of spreading government propaganda, manipulating and brainwashing the public, and suppressing facts that can save hundreds of thousands of lives.

In order to move away from the disinformation society that newspapers and cable television has created we have to actively dig for the truth because we won't get it by reading newspapers or watching television. Tom Shachtman writes in his 1995 book, 'The Inarticulate Society: Eloquence and Culture in America':
To be active rather than a passive audience member, whether at home or in a school, one must do more than push a button to seek information. Active in the best sense means to be curious, skeptical, reticent, individual, and/or imaginative in relation to what is being proffered. Old time radio earned the appellation "the theater of the imagination" because it required that sort of active audience participation. (Shachtman, The Inarticulate Society. New York: The Free Press. Pg. 146).
Murdoch's empire can only maintain its existence on the invisible graves of dead minds. If the public mind was not jello, if people actually thought for a minute or two about what they read in the press and what they hear from their government officials, then there wouldn't be a Murdoch who builds his power by exploiting mass ignorance and mass stupidity.

Murdoch is a cruel, heartless bastard, like many others who work in the newspaper and media business. But he isn't the problem. He is a symptom of a much larger problem that has plagued humanity for ages, since the dawn of civilization. The problem is that people don't like to think for themselves. Most people see what they believe, not what is true, and they are easily controlled by fear. Too many people trust the government and the media when neither deserves the people's trust because they both use fear and disinformation to deceive the people and gain their sacred support for wars and other mass injustices.

The solution is simple and easy: Boycott every Murdoch media product, as well as every other corporate newspaper and radio/television station that refuses to tell the public the honest to god truth about the 9/11 attacks, false flag terrorism, and the covert establishment of a dictatorial global government.

Hopefully, there are honest and good people in the media who are willing to step up to reform their dying and rotten business. It would be great if they join independent press giants Alex Jones and Amy Goodman in educating the American and global public about the evil lies and crimes of our young century.

I will end this "crazy conspiratorial rant" as the snakes in the corporate press like to call anything that has truth in it by quoting former White House Press Corps correspondent Helen Thomas. In her book, 'Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public,' Thomas said that hope for the future rests in an independent and free press:
We are the guardians of the people's right to know, not of transient administrations who misuse and abuse their power, often to muzzle the press. It was Abraham Lincoln who said, "Let the people know the facts and the country will be safe."

I believe that, and I believe that is the purpose and promise of journalists in the twenty-first century and beyond. (Thomas, Watchdogs of Democracy? New York: Scribner. Pg. 201).