The Problem With Mainstream Media

It's nothing new, in fact this has been a problem for decades. The mainstream media has been putting a blindfold over our eyes. The American people are more concerned with whats happening on "American Idol" than what's happening in the world around them. Granted, world news is typically a grim subject. Even still, it's simply become a matter of what the media wants you to believe.

Take the atrocities in East Timor in the 70's for example. It's now a well known fact that the governmental powers responsible for the genocide at Timor were backed with U.S. funding. At the time the genocide brought about by Pol Pot had the attention of the world media, however East Timor was largely ignored by the U.S. media. This was due to the financial backing of the invasion and simply serves as an example of how the big media is controlled.

Today the problem is far more complex. The large scale of this deception is becoming more and more obvious. Due to independent media and access to the internet, news is available from every perspective imaginable. You can read everything from blogs about the war in Iraq from Iraqi journalists (who are being arrested by U.S. forces) to radical views concerning current events.

The importance of free media is just now coming to age. Unfortunately recent events may be shedding some light on the darker side of a burgeoning literary revolution. Recent news from independent media sources have reported on journalists being arrested and detained without any real crimes committed.

Ahmed Al-Majoun president of the Journalists’ Union in Tikrit, Iraw was arrested in July of this year. No reasons of the arrest have been given yet. Recently in the U.S. journalists have found themselves the target of unjustified police harassment. As recently as the Republican National Convention journalists were targeted by the police under the guise of "false reports". I-Witness news, and Democracy now being some of the more influential targets, among countless others.

The problem with the mainstream media is that they are becoming more and more like a centralized news network. It's become a governmental propaganda machine, force feeding people the news that isn't necessarily biased or false... But it's news that is meant to distract people from the reality of what's really happening.

Lets take a recent example of the distract and confuse tactic the media is using. I'm sure most of the people reading this are well aware of what the streets of both of the political conventions here in the U.S. was like. I can say I was there in the streets during the Democratic National Convention. I spent a good 48 hours marching in the streets and trying to document what was really happening. However, every time I turned on the news... I didn't see footage of the thousands of people marching in the streets. I was greeted by campaign ads. The majority of the actual news coverage that took place between the regulated blocks of revenue generating ad campaigns from pharmaceutical companies to foreclosure companies. What was covered was far from what was actually happening on the streets. On the rare occasion they would cut to some reporter to downplay the importance of a mere few thousand people taking to the street in protest.

The mainstream media has become so corrupt, so controlled it's lost it's function. The ability to give an unbiased, uncensored view of the world around us has slipped through their fingers and fallen on the shoulders of independent journalists and bloggers around the world.

Now, we are going to have to fight for our own right to speak our minds without fear of persecution.

How loud is your voice?