THE POWER OF THE PRESS

An essay about matters that concern me.

We’re a nation of people who like to think we’re being kept informed. We read a lot of newspapers between us, so we know what’s going on, don’t we? We are fully genned up on what’s happening in the world, aren’t we?

Or are we?

True, we know what the proprietors of the newspapers want to tell us, and that’s just got to be what we ought to know, isn’t it? After all, they’ve got journalists in all four corners of the world, journalists who can see the very details of what friends and enemies, neighbours and strangers alike, are up to.

But who are those proprietors? Who owns the newspapers we depend on when we are forming our own opinions? Who is giving us the facts upon which we can build our own notions of reality? Or, to put it another way, who is providing us with the poison from which we can construct our personal prejudices?

They’re very wealthy people, that’s the answer in a nutshell. And those very wealthy people are from a cabal that does a great deal of ownership.

For starters, they own the aforementioned newspapers, and if there’s a bit of news they don’t want us to worry about then they don’t report it. And if there’s some corner of the political world in our own country they think might harm them, then they smear it. Take the way Jeremy Corbyn was treated. Most of what was reported in the right wing press was a tissue of lies and smears, and that guaranteed his party would stand no chance in any major election. For example, an outraged press insisted that he was anti-Semitic because he suggested that the Israeli Government might not always be even handed with their neighbours in Palestine. As if all people ethnically Jewish had a hand in crap government decisions! Nonsense! Have you got a hand in what our own government is doing? Really?

And here’s another example, still of Corbyn: he was a socialist and what could be lower than that?

How dreadful! That a politician should dare suggest that he believed in equality from birth for all men and women, and that their children should also have a fair and equal crack of the whip. And the very idea that there’s anything praiseworthy about equality of opportunity because it’s a cancer eating away at our society. In short, they turned the word Socialism and derivatives like socialist into dirty words.

But that isn’t enough. They need to control the government itself. They need to be behind decisions, like Brexit (you know, the stupid departure from the EU that’s slowly impoverishing us all �" take a look in some supermarkets if you don’t believe me). In his recent interview on Television the ex-spin doctor in Downing Street, Dominic Cummings, suggested that the Prime Minister referred to the Daily Telegraph as his boss! Not that Dominic Cummings is anything but a bright scumbag, the sort of man who would play in both teams at the same time because above all things he wanted to win.

So we have the Government highly influenced by what the editors of the press are going to report. And not just the press either. The newsroom of the BBC seems to have far too much input from Number 10.

Added to all of the above they have also succeeded in fatally weakening any real opposition to conservatism. The clever trick was weakening the Liberal party, that is, the traditional opposition to toryism, by sharing power with them for a few years and tarnishing them with their sceptic brush. I don’t know whose bright idea that was, but it worked a treat. And the labour party, the one political group to which everyone who works for a living and still struggles from day to day really ought to belong, that has been eaten away from both within and without. So it really looks as if those in the hands of the right wing press are going to stay there for ever and a day. Maybe they’ll produce a better Prime Minister in the future, who can tell, the bloke doing the job at the moment has hardly covered himself in glory though he may have sprinkled himself with dandruff. But whoever it is, the cartel of press barons will still hold all the cards.

And to get back to my opening remarks, if we think we’ve made up our own minds we’re most probably mistaken because that job has been done by non-domiciled billionaires with agendas of their own, and we hear or read what they say and believe it. After all, it’s only human.

© Peter Rogerson 26.07.21

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Reviews

[SweetNutmeg]

I live in the United States, so I don't know which media outlets you are talking about specifically, but in general terms the same applies here. FOX News, ugh! The long tendrils of influence and corruption reach far and wide. The media is hand in hand with greedy rich people who wish to control the government to maximize their market shares and stock dividends, without care for the suffering they cause. And the suffering is great. Here, it is standard to live in fear of losing your job, as there is no job security any more. It is standard to find your job increasingly stressful as others are laid off and you are expected to shoulder their work load as well as the workload you were hired to do. It is standard to live in fear of losing everything by getting very sick or seriously injured. In other words, it is standard to live in a state of deep anxiety & fear continually, never able to breathe easy. This is not the way we were designed to operate and there really is no need to do things this way. Astronomical profits expressed in numbers it is hard for the human mind to comprehend, are unnecessary. NO ONE needs that much money. I'm not sure what the best solution is, but I believe it needs to start with EVERYONE paying their fair share of taxes, not just the middle class. Or even the middle class and the wealthy mutli-millionaires. It is the obscenely rich multi-billionaires who need to cough up their fair share. And giant corporations need to pay as much in taxes as the basic mom and pop businesses do. It's only fair.

Rant over.

[Peter Rogerson]

It seems that there must be an almost inevitable domination of wealth and that once that wealth starts building and passing along generations so that all that's left for those doing the inheriting is build on a pile of cash and control everything, then we have the situation that we find hems us in today.

[Coyote Poetry]

I agree my friend. The media is controlled and to know the truth. We must seek the truth. Today media, government bought. Telling us to get the coronavirus shot, even on the YouTube breaks in song. We must pay attention and listen Peter. Thank you for sharing your amazing words and your thoughts.
Coyote