Fighting back

Howard Dean used to say, "You have the power!" Once that chant sunk into the consciences of lethargic voters, they got off their butts and starting doing something on their own to make things happen. Well, for a while anyway. But this post is not about Dean's March 2004 implosion. It's about people waking up and realizing the "power" to change the world is entirely in their hands. No longer content to sit around waiting for the official powers that be to make enough improvements in our social atmosphere to have a positive effect on individual lives, they've started taking matters into their own hands. And coming up for 2008, we're about to see how motivating their levels of discontent really are.

Let's take the corporate "mainstream" media as a solid source of this discontent. They've selected the frontrunners of the presidential campaign and annointed them as the only viable choices for the voters. But after repeatedly being discredited for broadcasting their falsehoods all the way back to the beginning of George Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, the people seem to have finally had enough.

And now they, the corporate media, find themselves the topic in more and more discussion about what's wrong with our society. Certainly media-controlled censorship is not a new phenomena by any means, but the extent of it lately appears to be reaching critical mass.

Let's start here with an article about their roles as democratically-subversive kingmakers: Corporate Media Won't Let the Public Pick the Next President.

This example of reality's absence in mainstream media best illustrates the extent of the bias in their coverage of the presidential campaigns: Ron Paul Wins Five Straw Polls, Mainstream Media Remains Silent

Next, Prof. Paul Levinson analyzes the blatant media bias against Ron Paul as a central theme in his recent lectures and interviews:

We discussed the problem of media bias in general - easy to find, it's pervasive - and I even offered my view that the FCC, in daily violating the First Amendment to our Constitution, is treasonous.

(Podcast here, Levinson's blog here)

Now these two fellas have taken a more aggressive approach to hold the media accountable, accusing corporate media of conspiring to censor Ron Paul's campaign to the point of launching RICO criminal charges in their sworn affidavits. Best of luck to them, but after the recent court ruling that says TV news stations can lie with impunity, I'm not going to hold my breath on this one.

The point here is that with the internet's end-run around media's censorship, and by the power of the internet's equalizing effect as Dr. Paul would say, more than a few grains of sand are starting to shift underneath the monolithic establishment's foundation.

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AT&T Webcast censors portions of Pearl Jam concert

Portions Censored From Pearl Jam Webcast
2007-08-08 18:12:42.287,
Story by: Conor McKay

According to Pearl Jam's website, portions of the band's Sunday night set at Lollapalooza were missing from the AT&T Blue Room live webcast. Fans alerted the band to the missing material after the show. Reportedly absent from the webcast were segments of the band's performance of "Daughter," including the sung lines "George Bush, leave this world alone" and "George Bush find yourself another home."

After questioning AT&T about the incident, Lollapalooza was informed that material was indeed missing from the webcast, and that it was mistakenly cut by AT&T's content monitor. Tiffany Nels of AT&T told CMJ that they are working the matter out with the band. "We regret the mistake," she explains. "This was not intended and was an unfortunate mistake made by a webcast editor." She went on to explain that AT&T has a policy for any excessive language, and that it was set up because of its all-ages audience.

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