by Phillip Schneider, Waking Times
There is an information awakening taking place right now, and mainstream media is being outed for what it really is: corporate and government controlled propaganda.
People are turning to alternative news sources more swiftly than ever now, and as a result, the old guard of media is collapsing at free-fall speeds.
Here are 6 positive signs of the collapse of mainstream media:
1. Mainstream Media is Owned by a Handful of Corporations and the People Know It
It’s no secret anymore that nearly everything we see, read, and hear comes from just a handful of mega-corporations. Thanks to the alternative media, it has become a widely known fact that just six corporations control 90% of the media we consume.
These big six have the ability to make key decisions and delegate the news to their lower subsidiary companies by cutting out important stories or alternative points of view. People recognize this and are moving over to the indy media as a result.
2. Fox Stops Disclosing Live Viewership Ratings
Fox News, a subsidiary company owned by Rupert Murdoch of News Corp and top mainstream media outlet has just announced that it will stop disclosing its ratings for live TV viewership.
They argue that these statistics are no longer relevant because of how many record their television shows, but it is also being seen as a way to hide a decaying audience. Fox will now be repackaging statistics on a weekly basis to make even the most modest results appear positive.
3. 98% of Young Adults Do Not Trust Mainstream Media
A recent poll shows that only 2% of young adults trust the mainstream media to do the “right thing” on a regular basis. This poll, which was conducted at the Harvard Institute of Politics on over 3,000 18-29 year olds, shows that only 2% of young adults trust the media to “do the right thing” “all of the time.”
Furthermore, 10% said that they do the right thing “most of the time”, while 49% said “some of the time” and a whopping 39% said that the media “never” does the right thing.
4. Mainstream Media is Hog-Tied by Corporations and the People Know It
An excerpt from the documentary The Corporation illustrates in their own words the story of two journalists working for Fox News in the mid 1990’s.
Here is an excerpt from the film, of an investigation of the “human health implications” of injecting Bovine Growth Hormone into the cows which were used for producing milk:
“With Monsanto, I didn’t realize how effectively a corporation could work to get something on the marketplace,” said journalist Jane Akre. Before the story aired, a letter was received from Monsanto saying that there would be “dire consequences for Fox News” if it does.
“After receiving the letter, the general manager at Fox in Florida called them into his office and demanded that the story be altered. The next thing that he said was “We just paid three billion dollars for these television stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is… if you refuse to present this story the way we think it should be presented you’ll be fired for insubordination (defiance).”
You can tell by the amount of protesters at “March Against Monsanto” protests that the corporate controlled media does not have a stranglehold on information like they once did.
5. Mainstream Media is Literally Lying to Us So Blatantly that Nobody Pays Attention Anymore
A recent analysis conducted by PunditFact revealed that, according to this study, over half of all statements made by Fox News are false.
Now this is not surprising, but what might be is that NBC/MSNBC is right up there at 46% of their statements being anywhere between “Mostly False” to “Pants on Fire.” CNN and ABC rated better, but national new shouldn’t be a race to the bottom.
6. Independent Media More Successful than Ever Before
The positivity that comes out of this is simple: people are waking up to this madness. No longer are we in a situation where the media controls the narrative like they once did, because the new media is there to pick up the ball and roll out the stories that the mainstream media refuses to get into.
The alternative media is making such enormous waves now that the older media is actually starting to listen to alternative voices and stories that are being published by new media outlets.
The fact that Kevin Folta, a University Professor at the University of Florida, was receiving large unrestricted grants from Monsanto to promote GMO’s and round-up was even reported on by the New York Times thanks to alternative media making it such a big story that if they hadn’t they would have lost credibility:
“If the Times is telling us the truth, then why didn’t they tell us about Kevin Folta?”
As long as the independent media keeps moving, there’s nothing that can stop the truth from getting out.
References: http://www.iop.harvard.edu; http://www.bloomberg.com; http://www.politifact.com; http://www.truthwiki.org
