Nate Dogg, Herman & Chomsky

Domestic power interests fund my South Park, my Lost, my XL Records, my Batman movies, my Green Bay Packers, and the cans of Yoo-Hoo in my fridge. None of these things that I love so dearly would exist without someone attempting to sell me something. What's more is that the people trying to sell me products are also invested in the military-industrial complex, or support fascist regimes when it serves their purpose. With multinational corporations owning every facet of technological life, it's become very difficult to separate truth from fiction and vice versa. The different filters for propaganda all make perfect sense, and it also makes sense why people would want to manipulate others through the medium of print, radio, television, movies, internet, etc. It is a very profitable business to control what people buy in this country. GE and Westinghouse are not interested in journalistic ethics, they are interested in profit. And why shouldn't they be? We have always been a nation that does what it has to in order to make more money, be it supplying weapons to rebels who will use them to kill innocent people, or making money off of a privatized war economy. Money does not come with a moral compass. It's amazing to me that Herman and Chomsky were able to examine and explain the events of the past 100 years in propaganda and predict accurately what would later happen over the course of the Bush administration. What frustrates me the most about these essays is that while I'm eager to learn more about how government makes it expensive to become a source of news, or how "experts" relay news to us every day despite having no credibility in what they are reporting on, I don't feel that Herman or Chomsky offer any tips on what the hell to do about it. Obviously, the people in charge at General Electric are doing wrong by creating weapons and aggrevating hostile situations in the process, but is anyone really going to do anything about that? Simply knowing what is going on is one thing, but if what Herman and Chomsky say is true, then it's already far too late to change anything. Ethics and Media cannot coexist on a mass level. The wealthy will always sway the balance and their projected agenda will be published. The internet, the first personal publishing tool that has reached the masses, will become like the radio soon with net-neutrality on the horizon. I think we are doomed to be consumed by entertainment, and the more we pay and the less we complain, it's all the more profitable for great media.