WAKE UP CALLS

• The networks and magazines sell your head to the corporations that make the products that you will in turn buy. A magazine in fact promises the advertiser a certain amount of heads. “My circulation is 25,000 copies, 3 readers per copy ... that's 75,000 heads. In other words, 75,000 people that could buy your product ... the bigger the size of the ad, the bigger the cheese on the mousetrap.

• The global media market has come to be dominated by seven multinational corporations: Disney, AOL Time Warner, Sony, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, and Bertelsmann. These seven companies own the major U.S. film studios, all but one of the U.S. television networks, the few companies that control 80-85 percent of the global music market, the preponderance of satellite broadcasting worldwide.

• Whopping three-quarters of global spending on advertising ends up in the pockets of a mere 20 media companies. Ad spending has grown by leaps and bounds in the past decade, as TV has been opened to commercial exploitation, and is growing at more than twice the rate of gross domestic product growth.

• As a reader, have you ever filled out those polls in magazines? They don’t do those for popularity contests. They do them to know what you are buying, where you live, how old you are. etc. The magazines then use this information to sell your head. And hopefully you will buy a product advertised in the next issue.

• There has been a dramatic shift in sales among the books that were published. The book business has begun shifting even more heavily towards celebrity-driven best-sellers. The number of best-sellers (books that sold 100,000 or more copies) grew substantially in the 1990s. When that fact is juxtaposed against an overall decline in book sales, it is clear that mid-list books are falling off the edge. Good fiction, investigative reporting and other quality books are simply being squeezed out of the market.

• Ad spending hit a record $244 billion last year, with companies investing more money and brainpower than ever to make you buy. That figure will drop this year for the first time since 1991, though it is projected to hit a new record in 2002.

• Kids influence $200 billion in spending each year; the ad industry employs market researchers and developmental psychologists to hone its pitch.

• Recent research shows that the average American 3-year old recognizes 100 brand logos.

• A study by the University of Wisconsin found that the space occupied by corporate logos at schools, such as billboards and scoreboards, went up 539 percent in the last decade, while the amount of corporate-sponsored education materials had gone up 20-fold.

• Companies are hiring people to surf the Web, enter chat rooms and pose as regular folks while touting products – or just defending certain companies from criticism.

Inspirations

This makes frightening sense in a globalized economy where consumerism is more desired than active citizenship, where power is increasingly concentrated and the public is increasingly unwelcome in a public discourse defined by the powerful. If your goal is to numb people and drive them away from active participation, then TV as ‘weapon of mass distraction’ and wall-to-wall entertainment makes sense. Shut up and shop is now the message, one that makes sense to advertiser-dominated media outlets.
Danny Schechter

The professed concern for freedom of the press in the West is not very persuasive in the light of ... the actual performance of the media in serving the powerful and privileged as an agency of manipulation, indoctrination, and control. A ‘democratic communications policy’, in contrast, would seek to develop means of expression and interaction that reflect the interests and concerns of the general population, and to encourage their self-education and their individual and collective action.
Noam Chomsky

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
Steve Biko

Private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information. It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
Albert Einstein

Most of the news the world receives comes from and is directed at a minority of humanity – understandably so from the point of view of the commercial operations that sell news and collect the lion's share of their revenues in Europe and the United States. It's a monologue by the North ... Other regions and countries get little or no attention except in the case of war or catastrophe, and then the journalists covering the story often don't speak the language or have the least idea of local history or culture. The [global] South is condemned to look at itself through the eyes of those who scorn it.
Eduardo Galeano

Whoever controls the media – the images – controls the culture.
Allen Ginsberg

Electric technology is directly related to our central nervous system, so it is ridiculous to talk of ‘what the public wants’ played over its nerves. Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left.
Marshall McLuhan

We are drowning in information, but starved for knowledge.
John Naisbilt

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have these three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to practice neither.
Mark Twain

Beware of the newspapers. They will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing.
Malcolm X

Source: The Internet