Big Media, following the Fox News Fraudcasting model, has driven us over the brink... creating a news cycle based on profits rather than information. Talking about the Trump campaign, CBS CEO, Leslie Moonves recently said, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Moonves continued, “Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? The money’s rolling in and this is fun [...] This is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry it’s a terrible thing to say, but bring it on Donald. Keep going.”

The First Amendment provides for freedom of the press. Unfortunately that freedom allows the media to mislead, distort, and misinform the public. There is no fairness doctrine. A democracy is dependent on reliable information to make informed decisions. This is certainly one reason our democracy is a corporate oligarchy. And there is wide consensus this is what we've become:

Listen to Jimmy Carter: “It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors...”

Or how about our current Vice President Biden: “Now where the money is, there’s almost always implicitly some string attached […] It’s awful hard to take a whole lot of money from a group you know has a particular position then you conclude they’re wrong [and] vote no.”

After 29 terms, Representative John Dingell had this to say at his retirement: “Allowing people and corporate interest groups and others to spend an unlimited amount of unidentified money has enabled certain individuals to swing any and all elections, whether they are congressional, federal, local, state […] rarely are these people having goals which are in line with those of the general public. History well shows that there is a very selfish game that’s going on and that our government has largely been put up for sale.”

Much of the corporate control of America lies in the hands of big media. It is really no surprise that big media = big corporations. They are not passive reporters, but powerful actors in the oligarchy.


There has been some corporate ownership changes and mergers since this graphic was created, but you get the idea. A few corporate entities control what most Americans see and hear.

So the Trump campaign is driving really good TV profits, and they cover him more and more. That's easy to understand. But why is there a media blackout about Bernie Sanders? Last fall ABC evening news devoted 81 minutes to Donald Trump and 20 seconds to Bernie Sanders. He's drawing thousands (last week there were 17000 people at his Salt Lake City rally alone). Wouldn't that sell advertising?

You need to watch a round of commercial news and see the ads to understand. They're largely Big Pharma, Insurance, and Investment/mortgage commercials. These are companies Senator Sanders has targeted in his revolution for the people.

The central plank in Bernie's platform is to get the money out of politics. There's a lot of revenue in political ads for these media corporations.

Another reason corporate media pans the Sanders campaign is the TPP. In fact there is barely a mention of the pending trade deal because there is favorable intellectual property language for big media in the TPP. They want to sneak it through during the lame duck session. The less the public knows, the better.

So Trump adds profit to big media, Sanders would take it away. Bernie declared war on the billionaires that own these media giants, and their millionaire talking heads like to believe they are in the club too. Many of the talking heads have a natural bias against Sanders as well. There's Mrs Alan Greenspan (Andrea Mitchell), George (Clinton press secretary) Stephenopoulus, Chris Matthews: https://theintercept.com/2016/03/11/chris-matthewss-hardball-guests-have... Lee Fang has an article over at the intercept about paid Clinton advisers being presented as commentators: https://theintercept.com/2016/02/25/tv-pundits-praise-hillary-clinton-on...

I think it is evident everything possible is being done to stomp out Bernie Sanders campaign. The DailyKos is another symptom of the same pressures that the powers that be are bring to bear on the elimination of the Sanders revolution.

I would like to continue this media discussion. I want to take on public broadcasting as well in my next rant. I asked in another thread about Twitter. I'm not a user but I understand that the hashtag #whichhillary was taken down by the owner (a Hillary supporter). Does anyone know about that situation?
Thanks for reading. I look forward to your comments. Happy Spring!