COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
In today's advanced world, if you do not receive press
coverage, you effectively do not exist, and your words are like whispers in a
deep forest.
Owing to a period of intense corporate consolidation, only about
a half dozen companies control most of what Americans learn about events.
This small number of corporations are not friendly to any
kind of iconoclast. You must be well vetted and approved by the power
establishment to get generous or even proper coverage.
There is a tight establishment of power in America – large
corporations, special interest political donors, and the massive
military-security establishment whose job is to protect and advance them. The press supports and re-inforces that
establishment, always. Indeed, since the press itself consists of a few massive
corporations, it is just part of the ruling structure, and it knows well what
its job is.
After all, the press is in many ways dependent upon that
establishment, dependent for advertising revenue, for access to officials, for
leaks, and just for the right to keep their privileged little club going. They
are not about to upset things.
Hillary, from the beginning, was blessed as the
establishment's choice. She's everything they want, including ruthless in the
use of power, immensely practiced at lying, and compromised a hundred times
over in her frenetic pursuit of power, even having blood on her hands already.
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are both unexpected and
unwanted wild cards in a political structure designed to deliver the goods with
a fair appearance of democratic process.
The recent Harvard School of Government study showed how the
press played games with Bernie. At key points, his voice just disappeared. We
saw the last big such effort with the AP story on the eve of the huge
California primary that Hillary had clinched the nomination. She had not, but
the story undoubtedly discouraged voters, as it was intended.
And now that Trump is a really serious candidate and not just
an interesting and curious phenomenon, the press will use the same tactics on
him.
Well, at least he has an endless supply of money with which
to buy advertising, that is, if the television networks accept his ads,
something which is another game that they can play.
An excellent concise example of what the press can do may be
seen in Britain with the newspaper, The Guardian. The Guardian has an old
reputation for supporting labor and progressive affairs, but its current
management does not live up to that old reputation at all. They have a
different agenda which they try to camouflage with fluffy columns, here and
there, about social issues such as various prejudices in society. When it comes
to what matters, political power, they are total supporters of Tony Blair’s
awful crowd, a group not much different in substance from the Conservatives.
In recent months, The Guardian has conducted a huge and
complex operation at attacking the British Labour Party’s newly-elected leader,
Jeremy Corbyn, a decent and truly anti-establishment man, and at getting a
"remain" result from the ill-conceived EU referendum, an event which
was stupidly called by a virtually incompetent Conservative Prime Minister David
Cameron.
There was only the slightest pretense at balance with the
odd column by someone advocating for Corbyn or someone advocating for
"leave."
Set against those tokens to balance was an absolute
onslaught, ranging in tone from dire warnings to silly special pleadings and
even to efforts at humor or pathos - all of it generated and published to
discredit Jeremy Corbyn and to make “remain” seem like the only rational
choice. So overwhelming was the effort, one sometimes smiled at an Internet
page embarrassingly littered with such stories.
So, it was especially pleasing that the British people went
their own way in the EU vote, and indeed almost certainly would have given a
larger "leave" majority if it hadn't been for the unfortunate murder
by a lunatic of MP Jo Cox (who was campaigning for "remain" when
killed), an act which was relentlessly exploited in stories and pictures day
after day. The polls visibly shifted as a result.
In the case of Corbyn’s leadership, they have now scented
blood and are busy trying to run their prey to ground, knowing full well that
after the “leave” vote and David Cameron’s shameful resignation, Corbyn’s party
might have had an opportunity for victory.
