The Publication of Fear

I just realized something. When I wrote my article Fear, Education, and Indoctrination, I wrote at length on one of my two favorite subjects: The use of the educational system as a tool for State/economic indoctrination. However, my other favorite subject is related: the use of the media in similar indoctrination. The Chomsky book Manufacturing Consent is my favorite work in this arena. Here are some interesting points: Mass media corporations are some of the largest companies in the world. These companies are publicly traded, and as such, have a responsibility to provide returns to their stockholders. In order to understand the priorities of these companies, we need only to examine their products and customers. So, who are the media's customers? Initially, it may seem that the viewer/reader is the customer. After all, we receive the information. A simple look at this assumption, however, shows that it is flawed. Many of the television and radio information is provided free of charge (not including cable). Newspapers are hardly profitable at $0.25 a piece. This free information is not conducive to the stockholder returns that are required. Customers typically pay for products or services they receive. So, who pays the media corporations? In large part, they are paid by advertisers. The reason that television media exists is so that the advertising can be distributed to the masses. The larger the viewership, the more valuable the advertising spots. This is the true reason that companies care about their viewing statistics. Now that we have established that advertisers, not viewers, are the actual customer, we need to understand what the advertisers are buying. In short, they are buying us. We are the commodity that is being sold by the media and bought by the advertisers; our time and attention to new products and ideas is for sale, and corporations pay vast sums for the right to inundate us with product propaganda. Two basic facts have been established: 1. Advertisers are the customers of the media. 2. We are the commodity being sold. The next startling realization answers the following question - do corporations typically act in the best interests of their customers, or their commodity? Companies will do what their customers want, because the customers have the money. This means that the media acts in the interest of advertisers. Advertisers are simply portions of other large corporations, however, so we can see that the media services the interests of companies, and not the people consuming the news. So much for the Liberal Media Bias.