Sure, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr might have to run a little tighter ship over at the New York Times, since his reporters are a bit slow. However, at least he isn’t a deceptive sack of crap who hires perfectly coiffed liars to report the “news.” That’s right, Rupert Murdoch’s minions have once again demonstrated why anyone with a bit of brains and the ability to read refer to his cable station as “Faux News.” The latest example of Murdoch and his patsies manipulating the world around them is dragged to light by Media Matters, an organization dedicated to making sure journalists are, you know, journalists, rather than Goebbels-in-training. The issue they chose to obfuscate this time? Global warming.
Global warming is a rather serious deal, as you might have heard, and pretty much the only people who deny that humans are slowly killing the Earth are wealthy industrialists and the scientists they pay to muddy the waters (a few weeks ago Newsweek had an excellent article about scientists being paid tens of thousands of dollars to publish shoddy research for the sole purpose of stirring up a false debate). The reasons the super rich want to deny that global warming is happening? Many of the proposed remedies to global warming are based around the ideas that humans must produce and consume less products that rely on fossil fuels and other environmentally harmful processes. Of course, the rich are financially pinched at both ends – production and selling their product, and they’d rather make a quick dirty buck than lose a clean one.
It goes without speaking that Murdoch is one of these economically elite junk heads, and as such, he has a personal interest in dictating policy that revolves around no output caps such as those called for in the Kyoto Protocols. So, he has his employees pull junk like this.
Of course, most people would rather watch an American Idol marathon than read a book or question what they hear, so this sort of thing goes unnoticed. At this point, Faux News can basically say whatever they’d like without much fear that the public will rise up in significant enough numbers to make a scene. The conservative propaganda machine is rolling over America like a runaway tank.
Part of the fuel for the neocon war machine is the idea that the media is biased towards the left, and as such, reports about such issues as global warming are unreliable and/or flat-out lies. Reality couldn’t be further from that line of logic. Even the schlock master himself admits conservatives owners often influence the way the world is reported. According to Michael Parenti (1995):
Not surprisingly…ownership affects how news and commentary are manufactured. Virtually all the chief executives of mainstream news organizations are drawn from a narrow, high-income segment of the population and tilt decidedly to the right in their political preferences. Rupert Murdoch was once asked in an interview: “You’re considered to be politically conservative. To what extent do you influence the editorial posture of your newspapers?” He responded with refreshing candor: “Considerably…my editors have input, but I make the final decisions. (¶10)
There it is, straight from the horse’s mouth. Actually, since we’re making zoological references, when I hear the name Murdoch, a different four-legged pack animal comes to mind. I hold out hope that things will change sooner than later, but first its going to take a sea change (pun intended) in the United States for people to become more interested in the world around them than in what Simon Cowell has to say about America’s latest pop star failure.
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