today’s finds
December 7, 2007 by will shetterly
Largest Civil Disobedience Movement in US History Underway begins, “I am of the opinion that there has never been a movement in U.S. history with the number of arrests which have taken place in opposition to the Iraq War. This list of appeals, arrests and legal cases is not all-inclusive.”
The list is impressive. The corporatist* media has been burying the story of protest, of course. Freedom of the media means the owners of the media are free to tell the stories they wish. With the major media owned by the rich, the media gives us the stories the rich want us to hear, leaving the rest of us with the freedom to be marginalized.
Which may be better than being imprisoned as traitors, but unequal speech should not be confused with free speech. The Biparty’s political campaigns demonstrate that: in US elections, speech is free for any Democratic or Republican millionaire who wants to buy it.
From war on greed:
* Y’know, I’m not quite sure what I meant by that word. See the comments.
Well, maybe we all need to show up to be arrested, Wobbly-style… something to think about, especially as they move towards bombing Iran.
I’ve been staring at that term, “corporatist media,” and trying to figure out why it bothers me. I think the problem is that the term “corportist” implies a bunch of people who have an ideology; like, say, “corporations are good.” But when you speak of the major print and air and cable media, the point is not that they have this or that set of ideas. The point is that they ARE corporations, and as subject to economic laws as any other corporation. That is, the problem isn’t convincing a bunch of board members of these corporations that they should replace their ideas with other ideas; the problem is inherent in the nature of the beast. They aren’t “Corporatist media,” they are corporations.
I have no idea if these ruminations are as interesting to you as they were to me.
The two comments above are from the original LiveJournal post here, where I answered Steve like this:
I hesitated over the word. On the one hand, the people who promote corporations have precisely that ideology. Someone might do an interesting essay comparing corporations with governments, non-governmental organizations, and non-profit organizations, which are superficially so similar that certain kinds of conservatives think every aspect of life should be corporatized–which is usually what they mean when they say “privatize.” They don’t mean owners should be accountable: they want the shield of the corporation.
Maybe I used it because I like some of the liberal press, which is usually capitalist, but not always corporatist.
Or maybe I just can’t decide when to say “capitalist” and “communist” and when to find alternatives that won’t make some readers shut down their brains because they’ve been trained that these are words only used by evil and unrealistic people.
P.S. Or maybe I was having a brain fart: “corporate media”? “capitalist media”? “corporatist media”!
While it’s interesting to think about now, I didn’t think about it long when I made the post. I’m happy to dismiss it as a typo. (But I won’t correct it in the post ’cause the discussion is interesting.)