austin-murphy-the-triumph-of-evil

18 THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL
as the "bad guys" (Zion, 1995). This attitude has resulted in the USA
being internationally perceived by some to be the "capital of global
arrogance" (Azad, 1998).
Americans' attitudes (arrogant or otherwise) are heavily shaped by a
press that has become increasingly concentrated under the control of
just a few USA companies (Foerstel, 2000). Jensen (2000) has reported
that six media firms now "control most of the world's information:
Time Warner, Viacom/CBS, Disney, Bertelsmann, General Electric, and
the News Corp." Even these few companies work together closely with
each other in many joint ventures (McChesney, 2000). As stated by
Phillips (2000), "Media is no longer a competitive industry but rather
an oligopolic collective of like-minded rich, white, upper-class elites
with shared agendas seeking to expand their power and influence globally.
This concentrated media can easily manipulate (and censor) the
information provided to the public to help it achieve its capitalist goals.
For instance, in response to a question regarding the media's silence
on a particular issue that would have portrayed corporate America in a
negative light, one television station manager bluntly stated, "We paid
$3 billion for these stations, and we have the right to make the news.
The news is what we say it is" (Clark, 2000).
''The six largest U.S. firms accounted for more than 90 percent of
U.S. theatre revenue," and "half a dozen major chains" rule "the roost"
in the newspaper industry (McChesney, 2000). "More and more places
are becoming 'one-paper' towns," and "radio is now dominated by a
few mega-companies, each of which own hundreds of stations" (Jackson,
2000), while "U.S. book publishing is now dominated by seven
firms, the music industry by five, cable TV by six," and "nearly all of
these are now parts of vast media conglomerates" (McChesney, 2000).
"The ownership and control of news media by an increasingly small
and select group of business owners is bound to restrict the kinds of stories
that get widely reported" (Lewis, 2000). One journalist put it more
subtly, "If you know that they really don't want certain stories at the
top, you're not going to do those kinds of stories" (Andersen, 2000).
While there are small and alternative media organizations (Foerstel,
2000), their credibility is often marginalized, such as by comparing
them with fantasy magazines like the National Enquirer if their views
vary substantially from those of the mainstream giants, which thereby
/NTRODUCTION
set the standards. Some of the big media/entertainment conglomerates
have a significant amount of non-media commercial holdings (including
in the armaments industry), and, in the interest of their own corporate
profit maximization (as well as that of their rich corporate advertising
clients), they have a natural pro-USA-capitalism (and even pro-war)
bias (Foerstel, 2000). Also contributing to the media's pro-USA-capitalism
prejudice is the fact that "the media corporations and the sponsoring
corporations [i.e., the large corporate advertisers which effectively
use their advertising expenditures to buy the media] are themselves
tightly interlocked" (Jackson, 2000).
The media's pro-USA bias is further reinforced by the heavy reliance
of the press on USA government sources of information for their
gathering and analysis of news, which can lead to extreme distortions
in reporting to the public (Herman and Chomsky, 1988). In particular,
with respect to international events, the mainstream media often just
regurgitates stories created by tpe CIA for propaganda purposes (Goff,
2000). Saadawi (2000) concludes, "Never before in history has there
been such domination of people's minds by the mass media .... How can
we be free to choose if the media injects us day and night with false
information?"
While "tabloid" or ''yellow journalism" has long existed in the capi­
talist media to incite people to war and for other ends (such as to mobi­
lize support for launching the War of 1898 against Spain), a form of
capitalist journalism has developed in the USA and in Western coun­
tries that even more blatantly admits to being particularly biased and
one-sided (Pirocanac, 2000). This new "journalism of attachment" is
designed to provide a type of psychological "therapy" reporting which
attempts to make the journalists and their readers feel good about them­
selves and their country regardless of the facts (Independent Com­
mission of Inquiry, 1999). It represents the philosophy of "giving the
people what they want" irrespective of factual information, or lack
thereof (Schlechter, 2000). Since the advertisers who pay for televi­
sion and other media are looking for audiences with money to spend,
the "people" the press feel obligated to satisfy are those with more
money, w.hose very wealth naturally makes them right-wing anticom­
munists, and whom the media do not want to tum off with overly "lib­
eral" reporting (Foerstel, 2000). There is thus no "market" for anti-USA
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