BuzzFlash Reviews

February, 2005

News Incorporated: Corporate Media Ownership And Its Threat To Democracy by Elliot D. Cohen

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Democracy is dependent upon the flow of truthful information, and we're not getting it from the mainstream media.

News divisions are now, for the most part, just corporate divisions of large conglomerate companies, more concerned with profit than shedding light on the public policy issues facing America and the world.

"News Incorporated" is a dangerously important anthology whose title speaks for the content of the book. News is no longer something that belongs to the population; but rather, it is a commodity owned by corporate interests aligned with the Republican Party. As the famous Gulf War television reporter, Arthur Kent, warns in his preface:

"For too many managers and editors, each news day has become a quest for a commercial narrative that will spike viewership or circulation; not the news as it is, but news you can use for higher share value....Worse, more than a few proprietors are only too pleased to merge their commercial storyline with the administration's political narrative."

Needless to say, Arthur Kent parted company with his Gulf War employer, NBC News, many a year ago.

"News Incorporated" covers the gamut of mainstream corporate media threats to democracy, most of which have already been realized. After all, this is the 5th year of the Bush Cartel rule, and it was only made possible because most of America is getting propaganda spoon fed to them over the corporate media pipelines instead of the actual news.

One of the most chilling sections of the book for BuzzFlash is Chapter 5: "The Threat to a Free Internet: What Corporate Media are Doing to Undermine Democracy in Cyberspace and What Government is Not Doing to Prevent It." Well in the old Soviet Union, the pro-democracy movement started communicating through illicit publications called samizdats.

We've got our printing press ready. The cause of freedom and our Constitution won't go dark.

The reality of reading a book like "News Incorporated" is that when you're done with it, you think it's great, but the title's wrong. It should be called "Propaganda Incorporated: Shilling for the GOP and Making a Profit."

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