MEDIA: THE KINGDOM, THE POWER, AND THE FURY

 

 

 

By Gianni DeVincent Hayes, Ph.D
December 21, 2004
NewsWithViews.com

It's been said that only a handful of people own all the money in the world. Many refuse to believe this, but in reality, there are only about six people/corporations that own the ten big media.

If given much consideration, one can discern that the power of the news rests with these head-haunchos who determine what we should be told, how, by whom, and when, and certainly what slant or outright untruths and disinformation should be passed on to us. I find it amazing that educated people today still trust in the media for the truth, and even worse, have no concept of the media's hidden agenda for a one-world government, and how they have made us fodder for it all, and how fallow we are about what really is happening

The Columbia Journalism Review does a commendable of job of trying to keep up with all the media ownership and merger changes. The lists of monopolies and cross-owernships run seemingly endlessly like the roll call of immigrants on Ellis Islands' walls. Therein lie two key problems: 1). domination, and 2). pre-determined information. The global media giants kick us in our pants every time we turn on a radio or TV channel, surf the Net, read a newspaper, magazine, or book by feeding us only what they want us to know, and not what is authentic. Thus, our opinions are built solely on their propaganda.

They're no dummies. They've set themselves up so that they could never collide into a financial collapse, as their holdings aren't limited to just sole print or non-print conduit; instead, they own in whole or in part such other entities as sports teams, amusement parks, movie screens, music groups, satellite and cable networks, cable wires, toy companies, Blockbuster and other video and music stores, shopping networks, retail stores, beverage firms, communications companies, computer services, appliances and weapons, websites, water industries, cartoons, mobile phones, resort areas, video games, and on an on.

Who Owns What

Here is a small smattering of who owns what; only half are American properties. The big six consist of:

AOL TIME WARNER (world's largest media company)
Time Magazine, HBO, History Book Club, publishing companies; Hanna-Barbera Cartoons; Warner Bros. Studio in 30+ countries, amusement parks, numerous magazines (120 million readers); Turner Entertainments internationally, such TBS station, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, TNT, and others. Sports, such Metro Sports, the Atlanta Braves, Atlanta Hawks, and Turner Thrashers. Also operating under this media mogul are high speed cable, online services in addition to AOL, i.e. CompuServe, Interactive Services, and Netscape, etc.. Too, ownership exists in CNN Newsroom; all of Warner Music Group as Warner Bros. Records, Reprise, Atlantic Jazz, Elektra, and 47 other labels. They also possess stores in over 30 countries, as well as theme parks, and various consumer products. The company partners with other media ownerships, such as Sony.

Chairman: Steve Case; CEO: Gerald Levin; 79,000 employees; ~$32 billion revenues[1] AOL division: Chairman & CEO: Jon Miller, J. Michael Kelly; about 18,000 employees;

THE DISNEY COMPANY
As the second largest media dynasty, Disney has percentages of other various corporations and media holdings. Its biggest acquisition is Capital Cities/all of ABC TV, radio networks, and publishing groups (magazines, books, daily newspapers). TiVo (partial investment), Disney productions, and much of the ESPN networks (especially sports), belong primarily to Disney but they also share the History Channel (with Hearst and GE). More Disney properties, some co-held, include Disney Channel UK, France, Italy, and Spain; Eurosport England, Tele-Munchen Germany, Scandinavian Broadcast System; sports franchises and Sports Network of Canada, and the broadcasting of sports around the world, such as soccer in Latin America, table tennis in Asia, cricket in India, Anaheim Ducks (national hockey league), a world's sports complex, and other major league teams. Additionally, they hold Hollywood pictures, Miramax Films, Caravan Pictures, Buena Vista Television, Touchstone Television, WD Television, Disney Animation, with production facilities in Australia, Canada, and Japan. Online shopping, 15 amusement parks, hotels, cruise lines, stores, their own merchandise, and communications tools belong to this titanic company.

Chairman & CEO: Michael D. Eisner; nearly $24 billion in revenues

BERTELSMANN
Labeled as the third largest media firm, this corporation has ownership in other companies, and is the world's largest publisher as seen in this sampling: Random House (in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and UK as well), with Ballantine, Bantam, Crown, Doubleday, Knopf, Fodor's, audio components, and business, science, trade and professional, and medical books. Additionally, Modern Library, Book-of-the-Month Club, and Doubleday Book Club are also their properties, as are 50% ownership of Bookspan, European book clubs, online bookstores, and 40% ownership of Barnes & Noble. They also hold international TV and radio stations, various newspapers, magazines such as PARENTS, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC (France), FAMILY CIRCLE., McCALLS, PRIMA, FOCUS, etc., along with music groups (Arista, RCA, BMG, EMI), and videos, DVDs, and Lycos Fireball. This gigantic company owns companies that are in the paper business as well, such as offset paperback manufacturing, a maul-belser industry, graphic design entities, along with locking in computer/database businesses, e-commerce, financial services, and call centers.

CEO: Dr. Thomas Middlehof; 64,000 employees; $16-billion in revenues)

NEWS CORPORATION
This is the Australian-born but naturalized U.S. citizen Rupert Murdoch's holding which encompasses, New York Post, and, internationally, books-owned in whole or in part with other media magnates-published from top-notch houses like Harper Collins, Hearst Book Group, William Morrow, Avon, Zondervan, and others. Fox broadcasting, BskyB, sport networks, Madison Square Garden network, Fox News, and many other cable/TV stations, and film companies belong to him, not counting cross-ownership with Cablevision, Speedvision, the Health Network, and Liberty Media - a bagful of more goodies. News Corporation owns magazines, studios, and partially the L.A. Staples Center, the NY Knicks, NY Rangers, the L.A. Dodgers, L.A. Kings, L.A. Lakers, an Australian rugby league, U.K. football clubs, as well as sports and entertainment.

Chair and CEO: Rupert Murdoch; 50,000 employees; revenues of about $14-billion.

VIACOM
This company, as is true with other media tycoons, owns some properties outright, while many are held in a percentage ownership. Simon & Schuster imprints, MTV books, Scribner, the Free Press, and other publishing houses; numerous nationwide T.V. film, and radio networks, such as Infinity Radio (184 stations) belong to this company. Others consist of Nicolodeon, CBS and all its affiliates, VH1, Spelling Television, King World Productions, UPN T.V. stations, cable networks, United Paramount Films, consumer products, MTV, videos, DVDs, cinemas, United Cinemas International (with Vivendi Universal) media merchandise, online music, Sonicnet.com, sports online, as well as 7,300 American Blockbuster stores with additional stores in nearly 30 other countries. Under their deeds fall five Paramount Parks.

Chair & CEO: Sumner M. Redstone; 127,000 employees; appx. revenues: $13-billion

VIVENDI UNIVERSAL
Operating in over 60 countries, this media cartel owns telecommunications operations, T.V. and film via Canal+ Group, Comcast, AT&T (pending), USA Networks, EchoStar, alcohol (Seagrams), privatized water; MP3, 60 publishing houses, Universal and other studios as well as about 24,000 TV episodes, the SciFi channel and more. Universal Music Group, Decca, MCA, Motown, Polygram are part of their portfolio, as are utilities, Connex (UK train services), mobile phones, Havas press, imprints, and multimedia. Add VivendiNet, Vizzavi, Viventures, Cineplex, United Cinemas International (49% ownership), video distributions, and theme parks, as well as environmental services.

Chairman & CEO: Jean-Marie Messier; revenues of no less than $55-billion

GENERAL ELECTRIC can arguably be considered one of the biggest, or on the second tier of media omnipotence, with its 11 divisions and 15% revenue growth in the last quarter. The Olympics, along with an international folder, fueled GE's holding of Universal, NBC stations, studios, and distribution. They also own Universal Pictures, parks, sports, health care technology, and transportation.

Playing right behind the big guys are more media tiers that consist of Sony, Gannett, Hearst Corporation, Tribune, Community Newspaper Holdings, McClatchy, Advance publications, Pearson, Lee, Copley, Cox, Belo, Cumulus, Clear Channel Communications, and several others.

A Nasty Purpose

The bigwig owners' intent is to converge with every medium and other diversities they can in order to be globally supreme and information-dictatorial. Although the FCC has eased up on its multiple ownership rules ("�the 1995 act removed the national cap on radio station ownership and dramatically loosened it in individual markets"[2]), it is again considering loosening them even though only a few big media firms dominate the world. Consider that AOL Time Warner, Disney, Hearst, and Viacom alone control the top 20 cable channels.[3]

It's easy to see just how much over-lapping of ownership and power there is. Media owners not only manipulate the content of the news, but they also control their distribution, circulation, products and merchandise. These handful of omnipotent producers, through their books, TV and radio stations, have propagated murder, sadism, sex, witchcraft, greed, Satanism, deceit, and a multitude of other immoral commodities and show-n-tells. This worldwide cartel that pedals what we hear, read, think, touch, desire, does so not to help civilization become better citizens - more courteous, considerate, helpful, protective of one another - but rather to rot our minds, destroy our principles and ethics, and line their pockets. On this note, author Ben Bagdikian states, "What is at stake is democracy itself. "[4] A media-consolidated country and world "�without all the �points of view, and [non-biased] information . . . has produced something alarming"[5] which is pretty near an oligopoly.

World-famous author Noam Chomsky tells us, in his article, "What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream,)[6] how the media controls our lives, giving us whatever misinformation or disinformation they deem appropriate. Normon Solomon's article,[7] "Journalists Doing Somersaults," informs us that only a handful of people own the world's media and that they dictate what they want us to know or not know in their preferred versions.

Overall, in the big picture, we need to keep awake us to how the world really fits together as determined by the media moguls and the Elite, many of whom own much of that very same media. To them, our importance is marginal at best and only if we are compliant, and work for their betterment. We are mere peons, laborers, slaves to their global government, the New World Order, not for our benefit, but rather for the almighty, dictatorial wealthy.

By believing the media, and behaving accordingly to their directives, we are consenting to the shredding of our Constitution; the clobbering of our rights; the subjugation of our American sovereignty; the corruption of our government; and the loss of our privacy while allowing ourselves to be tracked and traced. In our minds that they have tainted, we are agreeing to surrender our children to the village to raise them since we are lousy parents, horrible disciplinarians, religiously-oriented, and morally conservative. The media tell us that we must be politically correct, accept diversity, and tolerance of even those dogma we don't believe in, or those people we normally would not chose to befriend. Most notably is that the media has us disbanding Christianity while forcing us to accept soaring of paganism and Satanism; and partake in malevolence, sin and wickedness.

Countless members of the media (some respected and others ridiculed) belong to secret societies that convene purposefully for initiating an agenda that will work for the Elite and for their strides for global governance, and use their possessions as a fulcrum in advancing the New World Order. It is not just an American media coercion but rather a transcontinental collusion for this one-world society, and how we are being duped on just about everything we believe and think.

Chomsky, for example, says,[8] "...the elite media, sometimes called the agenda-setting media...set the frameworks in which everyone else operates....[and] if you get out of line and produce stories that the elite press doesn't like, you' will hear about it." He also claims that universities are non-independent thinkers ruled by the media and the elite: "Those of you who have been through college know that the educational system is highly geared to rewarding conformity and obedience; if you don't do that, you're a troublemaker. So it [media/education] is a kind of filtering device ...for people who are really trying to internalize the framework..." That might explain the lack of creativity in our students. Adds Chomsky, "The media believes that the general population are ignorant and meddlesome outsiders."

Normon Solomon offers correlative views: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.... In 2000, half-a-dozen corporations owned the media outlets that control most of the news and information flow in the United States."[9] Imagine: Only six big corporations internationally own all the media. This is the push for globalization, a one-world federation. The Elite should not dominate media in our republic form of government.

But if Chomsky and Solomon criticize the media, more writers have attacked other underhanded American activities, such as seen in Earl Lee's "School Textbooks" where we're told that what our children are taught is either altered history or cherished mythology, and that the course of religion is seldom treated in textbooks (especially the creation vs. evolution controversy), and many of which textbooks are erroneous.

Is it no wonder, then, that the truth can't emerge in this colossus, international media ownership arena. The selected few determine for us what we should know. It is only through a handful of online radio stations such as The American Voice, online newspapers NewsWithViews.com, and newly positioned TV and print venues, that we can hope to get the facts, realism, and accuracy. Be wary of what you read, what you watch, what you see, and what you hear. You can't believe everything.

Footnotes:

1 Mediachannel.org; "Restriding the World" by Granville William.
2 The Center for Public Integrity, "Captive Audience" by John Dunbar; May 22, 2003.
3 Ibid
4 Bagdikian, Ben. The New Media Monopoly; 2004 www.benbahdikian.com
5 Bagdikian, Ben. The New Media Monopoly; 2004 www.benbahdikian.com
6 Noam Chomsky, from a talk at Z Media Institute, June 1997; also appearing in Russ Kick's You Are Being Lied To.
7 Norman Solomon, "Journalists Doing Somersaults: Self-Censorship and the Rise of the Corporate Media State," as it appeared in Russ Kick's You Are Being Lied To.
8 Noam Chomsky, from a talk at Z Media Institute, June 1997; also appearing in Russ Kick's You Are Being Lied To.
9 Norman Solomon, "Journalists Doing Somersaults: Self-Censorship and the Rise of the Corporate Media State," as it appeared in Russ Kick's You Are Being Lied To.

� 2004 Gianni DeVincent Hayes - All Rights Reserved. Do not reproduce any part of this without the permission of the author.

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