So.
Imagine what would happen if during a speech by the Anti-President, George W. Butch, a network like CBS cut away in the middle of the speech to televise a tussle going on at a Ratpub function. (As if the Rats had the energy to “tussle”. But like I said…imagine.)
Imagine if the network’s absolute policy during a Presidential campaign was “No coverage of Republicans. None.”
If it quite clearly supported a coup attempt against a sitting administration. A coup attempt that was also quite clearly managed by a foreign power.
Imagine.
The network would be done.
Over.
It would be accused of…oh, fill in the blanks.
Advertisers by the hundreds would drop out.
End of network.
Well…that is EXACTLY what happened at RCTV in Venezuela during the last several years. (Go here for a good overview of this.)
Not the advertiser pullout…after all, the station was supporting the corporatist interests that held Venezuela in a Rockefeller/Big Oil-dominated grip of iron for 75 years.
But the rest…in our own (totally corporation-owned) “free trade” system?
Gone with the wind.
Read on for commentary on the US mass media’s totally self-interested coverage of this.
Go to the Google News topic page that deals with this story for a rundown of Western media reactions to this event.
“Venezuelans Protest As TV Station Shuts” is the dominant theme.
Some articles say “hundreds”. Time mag says “thousands”. Wanna bet which number is closest to the reality of the situation? Wanna bet on how much money was spent ASSEMBLING those demonstrators?
A good example of the mainstream spin? The Chicago Tribune will do quite nicely.
By Chris Kraul
Tribune news services: Los Angeles Times
Published May 29, 2007
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan folk music, a Cuban documentary and heavy doses of government propaganda glorifying “21st Century Socialism” highlighted the first day of a new television channel that on Monday took over airspace of this nation’s oldest and most popular station, a frequent critic of leftist President Hugo Chavez.
At midnight Sunday, Radio Caracas Television, or RCTV, went dark for the first time in 53 years after the Chavez government refused to renew its broadcast license, alleging violations of telecommunications law. That decision was announced in December and had been slammed ever since by international press freedom groups, several governments and even some Chavez supporters.
Protests that began Sunday night around the national telecommunications regulatory commission’s office continued into the morning at several universities in the Caracas area. Police fired tear gas at demonstrators who closed down a lane of one of the city’s principal freeways Monday.
Nice
Venezuela’s oldest station.
A relic of the bad old days when US interests manipulated almost the entire culture in the same way as they manipulate ours.
Only much more plainly, as is the custom when dealing with a relatively small group of wogs.
Why spend money to be subtle? They are crude, stupid mud people anyway, and the US-armed police system will keep them in line if the hypno-media idea doesn’t quite get through the absolute misery and US domination of the lives of 98% of the people who live there.
I was IN Venezuela several times in the late’60s-early’70s, playing music for the people as a member of several great NYC Latin bands. I saw it. I nearly had my ass kicked by a literal mob in a working-class/poor neighborhood of Caracas into which I had foolishly wandered, because the media had been promoting Charles Manson as an example of American hippiedom in an effort to keep the rising youth movement of the States from spreading into the fertile ground of US-dominated satellite states like Venezuela. And I had a beard and a ponytail. Two blocks further in before the street-corner fools saw me and their hypno-media induced rage started the chase and I would quite likely have been beaten to death.
As it was, I barely made it back to the heavily armed patrol post that separated the vast poverty-dominated outer city from the Fifth Avenue-like inner city before they caught me.
I saw it a hundred times there. Caracas was a pit of contradiction. An ARMED pit, with most of the the arms on the side of the owners.
A revolution waiting to happen.
And of course, as do ALL situations like that eventually…it fell.
But not totally. Like Iraq…there’s OIL in them thar hills. So the CIA just keeps on digging.
And Chavez just closed up one of the opposition stations.
Media War.
The next big thing.
The REAL fear of US corporatist interests.
“JEEZ, RB!!! What if it happens HERE!!!???”
Chavez understands.
If only someone in a position of real influence and power understood the concept here.
Someone once asked Mahatma Gandhi what he thought of Western Civilization, and he answered “I think that it would be a very good idea.”
Ditto the concept of a free press as it exists in our culture.
It WOULD be a very good idea.
But of course it does not exist.
Not really.
PRAVDA press is what we have got.
Bet on it.
“OK, RB. Dem or Rat this time around?”
“Ohhhh…I don’t know. One of each, I guess. Better safe than sorry. Right?”
“Ohhhh YASSUH, Boss! You is ALWAYS right, suh!! An’ ah’ll git RIGHT ON IT, suh. You BETCHA I will!!! We is ON THE CASE!!!
Yup.
Take corporate money out of the media and watch what would happen.
But of course…that ain’t GONNA happen.
Not here it ain’t.
This is the center of Babylon.
The whole hypno-media supported system would collapse in a matter of years as people quite quickly woke up to the truth of the matter.
Can’t have THAT happening.
So our media system plods on, uninterrupted by even a GLANCE at reality.
You think not?
Look at what happened to even the most pallid of efforts to spread some left-wing cheer.
Air America.
“Money troubles.”
Translation?
Corporate money refuses to support it.
And it dies a slow death as it tries to walk the line between disseminating the truth and getting enough sponsorship to continue.
It progressively waters down its coverage and makes the nattering, mediocre little comic Al Franken its “star”.
As he speaks you can hear THOUSANDS of radios being turned away from his voice.
“Who IS that, Martha? Sounds like Aunt Maggie when she’s in a bad mood. What else is on?”
Down the tubes.
This is a VERY effective system.
But like all systems totally based on lies, it too will eventually fall. Rotted from the inside out until it collapses.
And it is a BIG system.
The collapse will be quite…
Messy.
Bet on it.
The solution?
NEWSTRIKE!!!
Bring the media to their knees by the application of a boycott. The one thing that corporate bottom liners fear most.
Oh.
Wait a minute.
Sorry.
I forgot.
Y’all can’t GO cold turkey.
Nevermind.
Have fun watching…
The US public.
Voyeurism raised to never before dreamed of levels.
Nice.
The REAL “American Dream”.
“ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz…whut’s on tonite, Honey? ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz… “
While them wogs wake the fuck up.
Oh boy!!!
ARE we ever in trouble!!!
Later…
AG
