by JerkyLeBoeuf » Fri Jan 27, 2006 6:49 am
A couple years ago, yer old pal Jerky was forwarded [url=<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://foi.missouri.edu/internatfoinews/seenoevil.html">foi.missouri.edu/internat...oevil.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END-->]an editorial[/url] by Patricia Pearson detailing her experiences writing for an explicitly "conservative" - or, more accurately in this case, right wing - newspaper. Essentially, what Pearson's chilling editorial describes is a cult-like environment, where deviation from the standard behavior model is first met with disbelief, then disapproval, followed by demands of conformity or silence, eventually moving into ostracism.<br><br>The paper in question is Canada's The National Post, but Pearson could just as easily have been describing the Reverend Moon's Washington Times, or Conrad Black's the New York Sun, or Richard Mellon Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, all of which are massive financial failures, and all of which are barely read, losing a shitload of money with every edition they print.<br><br>Leaving aside for a moment the inherent irony in the fact that these newspapers all spout free market rhetoric while requiring subsidization by right-wing billionaire benefactors to continue publishing, we must ask ourselves: "Why do they do it? Don't they mind losing all that money?"<br><br>The most obvious answer is that they do it for propaganda purposes, to change people's opinions, to give a voice to "their side." And that's probably true. But lately yer old pal Jerky's been thinking that's not the whole story. Now, I think these people are laying the groundwork for TOMORROW. They're literally writing history... History as they see it. They're giving future conservative movementarians something today's conservatives don't have... an archive of the "official" conservative (soon to be mainstream) view of history as recorded by contemporary journalists.<br><br>Thanks to the efforts of today's movement conservatives, tomorrow's conservative will look back on today's radical and extreme right-wing editorialists, ridiculously slanted news stories, and a whole canon of "studies and reports" put out by the countless right-wing think tanks that flew up in the wake of Nixon's humiliating resignation the way we look back on the archives of the New York Times, Washington Post, the Chicago Tribue... classic papers and news services that "they" have successfully re-characterized as unreliable due to their "liberal" bias. Never mind that it's total bullshit... that it's a case of the pot calling the snowball black. if the meme sticks, it sticks. "They" know this. And "they" use it to their advantage.<br><br>So ultimately, it's about money, yes... money and power. But it's even bigger than that. We're not only talking about newspapers here. We're talking about 24-7 right-wing hate on talk radio. We're talking about the journalistic mockery that is Fox News. We're talking about a dangerous, fascist tilt to the nation's corporate news media... and it's a trend that's growing like a cancerous tumor. This problem - and it is a problem - is bigger than just the NOW. It's creating information pollution... FOREVER. <p></p><i></i>
