"Mitchell Rabin" - Tune in to Tuning In - Mindful Media Choices
March 28, 2011 By: Progressive Radio Network Host Mitchell Rabin (A Better World - 6pm-EST)
There is a lot of good news out there, such as news to make you smile about the robustness of the human spirit even in "the worst of times" as Dickens would say. There are heroes that show up in daily life, helping those in need, risking their comfort and sometimes their lives. In so many ways, humans can be so impressive and powerful for the good. And while not reported on at any length, there are some news stories that highlight the heroic. These people stand as models for us all.
Most news found on commercial TV or radio is filtered through corporate agendas. This is particularly disturbing because some of these corporations own media companies almost like playtoys and more importantly, as a gateway which delimits the news and defines what is news, plus what, per their financial agenda, is newsworthy. As a result, ABC, NBC and CBS as news gatekeepers, not as impartial reporters, literally mold public opinion about the important issues of our day and even choose what those issues even are. It’s not just informing, it’s not just influencing: it is molding, and there are important distinctions between these.
Along these same lines, some media conglomerates have vested interests in military armaments and equipment. They profit prolifically from military operations. If these diminish due to peace-keeping efforts or diplomacy, so do their profits. Framing political discussion such that war is a dignified way to resolving conflict, the sales revenues shoot upward. Would this influence their way of covering a war? Who they may interview? What their angles may be. This is how serious a fraud the American People are facing every single news hour on conventional, commercial radio and television. Not to mention that between segments, the viewer is being offered every type of drug known to man in the commercials, even for problems that don’t exist. These are every bit as onerous as the news segments that they are bookmarking, and just as insulting to our intelligence.
But there is another form of good news, and that’s something that we could call impartial news (“Give me the facts, just the facts…”). This is sometimes blended with intelligent, progressive commentary. These commentaries help to set an historical context for the facts, which are part of a news story. This context-setting confers a perspective rarely broadcast in commercial media. A viewer has little sense of either the precedents or antecedents to what is going on in today’s current news. You would often think that what’s happening is the first time we’re experienced an earthquake or a tsunami. You wouldn’t know, for instance, that the U.S. has a history of supporting dictatorships across the world for decades, when the commercial media leads us to think that the USA is always “the good guy” upholding Democracy around the world. But rarely would you hear about the truth about the CIA deposing the Democratically-elected president, for instance, of Iran in 1952 and installing the Shah. Or the support of Gen. Suharto in Indonesia, or Marcos in Philippines, and that the U.S. taxpayer probably ‘footed the bill’, no pun intended, for Emelda’s glamorous shoe collection. And what about democratically-elected President Allende of Chile being run out of town by the U.S.-backed Pinochet regime, one of the most ruthless of all time. Most recently, egg was dripping down Obama’s face as old-friend-dictator Mubarak in Egypt was chased out of Cairo. And neighbors in Yemen the same thing, Tunisia, Bahrain and of course, Saudi Arabia.
This kind of historical perspective you will get on Progressive Radio Network and on other non-commercial media networks, Free Speech TV, Pacifica, but there just aren’t that many out there. Gary Null, for instance, on a host of stations, most notably WBAI for 28 years, but on radio for 37, has become a veritable icon of investigative reporting and going where “angels fear to tread”, and with a rigor, diligence and courage that is nothing short of exemplary. Often when people want to tell “the truth and nothing but the truth”, there are obliged to resign their positions in commercial media, as was the case with Chris Hedges and the New York Times.
There are stories of many defections of this sort over time. These are but two heroes of an increasing number with progressive thinking in the non-commercial, non-corporatized media. I myself have been on non-commercial, cable, public-access TV in NYC this month marking my 18th year. And there are others who have been committed to the voices of reason, thoughtfulness, compassion and agendas other than corporate who populate the media. Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now are two other courageous souls speaking truth to power year after year. Among the giants of these, not formally in media but outspoken through his writing and teaching for decades is of course Noam Chomsky. Another is Naomi Klein. And then there are others who began on one side of the fence such as Chalmers Johnson, Kevin Phillips and Ray McGovern, who through experience and time, saw that corporate agendas build empires which are opposed to the will and well-being of the People of a nation, and changed their tunes and positions, coming over to the progressive perspective from the often Republican, corporate ones.
To give you some practical choices in the area of progressive news, ranging from health to ecology to politics and economics, this partial list at least gives you a good start:
www.progressiveradionetwork.com, www.abetterworld.net, www.wbai.org, www.democracynow.org, www.naturalnews.com, www.digg.com, www.truthout.com, www.thenation.com, www.reddit.com, www.rense.com, www.slashdot.org, www.wikileaks.info and certainly don't forget www.theonion.com.
As mentioned One of the biggest problems we are currently facing these days is the outrageous slanting of material skewed toward supporting a permanent war economy, a healthcare system based on Big Pharma's drugging the population from a hiccough to a headache, and chemicals galore for food preservation to cleaning toilet bowls. The world has, thanks to the hunger for money gone askew in the 'big-boy' corporate world, gone mad.
As a psychotherapist for some 30 years who has largely abandoned the use of the DSM and any manual suggesting that it has successfully categorized humanity into pathological categories, but who very realistically yet optimistically seeks to support the healthier parts of a human being grow and evolve, when contemplating the behaviors, individual and collective, of many of our captains of corporate culture, I have been first angered, then deeply aggrieved by the lack of personal, emotional and psychological development of these so-called leaders. Their unabashed omission of ethics and morality to guide their actions in business are onerous and heinous, leaving us with a world that has been raped and pillaged by short-term profits for the benefit of the few at the cost of the many.
Funnily I feel grateful for Big Pharma's development of sedatives, which I think should be roundly distributed to these captains of the Wall St. gang and many bankers who have effectively stolen the American Dream from the America People, while running like bandits to the White House for protection while also running down the street with the American People's wallets in their Swiss bank accounts.
It's pretty obvious that the Judicial Branch of government is injudiciously allowing the rape, pillage and plunder of our dream which includes equality, and basic human decency and justice for all by these pathologically-based individuals without prosecution. As has been pointed out here, by Danny Schechter, Gary Null and by the Oscar-award winning director of Inside Job, Charles Ferguson, trillions have been stolen, millions of homes lost, the wealth of America plundered, and not one criminal prosecution has taken place. Not ONE!
And besides the crimes of Wall St., there are the crimes of commercial media as discussed previously.
In that light, you would hardly know that over 100,000 working people have been gathered for weeks in Madison, WI, protesting the loss of fundamental American, Constitutional freedoms, such as the right to negotiate. You wouldn't know that there have been similar uprisings in states across the country. You would just know the weather fairly well, and that Obama, even in the height of nuclear catastrophes, the most devastating earthquake in Japanese history plus a tsunami, found making basketball team choices newsworthy. This is frightful!
I recommend that people learn the lessons and turn their attention away from commercial TV interrupting you every few minutes to sell you drugs or cars, insurance or a new investment scheme and start paying attention to things that matter. Our world is in trouble, trebled trouble, and needs our loving compassion, thoughtfulness and attention.
Our children and seniors are being drugged and given corporate drothers, everybody in between. Medicine is a shadow of what it could be because it is dominated by money interests instead of doctors and healers. You can't have a medical system that is corporate and effective, yet that's the direction everything is going.
Prisons, hospitals, schools, all public works are being privatized. In prison, it becomes a free labor pool. In schools, only the children from high-income families get a decent education. In hospitals, income is derived from longer hospital stays and having the beds filled: where is the incentive here for healing? We know: it ‘ain’t’ there.
It is so time to wake up my friends, a popular phrase, and one many of us having been using for decades. Out of the slumber and into action, with conscience and consciousness, with three-brained alignment as the great dance teacher, Mr. George Gurdjieff would say. Our minds with our hearts and bodies, need to be unified in thought, feeling and action. Our brothers and sisters need our help!
