Sean PrestonProf. ZimdarsMay 2016

Corporations Controlling Public Opinion

The main overlying problem with central ownership of the media is that very fewcorporations control what we watch and see everyday. This changes how we view the world,helps viewers establish a set of beliefs and morals, etc. This allows space for propaganda toflourish, and whoever is at the top of the chain dictates what happens. There are basically sixdifferent companies that control 90% of the media. These companies are GE, Newscorp,Viacom, Disney, CBS, and Time Warner. GE owns Comcast, NBC, Universal Pictures, andFocus Features. Newscorp owns Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post. Disneyowns ABC, Pixar, Miramax, and Marvel. Viacom owns MTV, BET, Nick Jr., CMT, andParamount Pictures. Time Warner owns CNN, Time, HBO, and Warner Brothers. Lastly, CBSowns the Smithsonian channels, Jeopardy, NFL.com, Showtime, and 60 Minutes.If you take the time to think, chances are your favorite shows are affiliated with one ofthese six corporations. The problem with these corporations owning all of the media is that theycan force whatever messages they want onto the world subtly. Their rhetoric through programchoice, storyline, language, and themes can be directly related to propaganda being pushed.This is not the first time propaganda has been used by corporations, for example the movieRocky was an anti-soviet film but chances are you did not know this. When he fought ‘Drago’ aclean cut Russian in Rocky IV, it portrayed him in a gritty, American hero way while it portrayedDrago as a steroid injecting villain.1 Time Warner worked on the Rocky movies, and along withthe American government they pushed anti-soviet propaganda in these films. While this mayhave arguably been for the better at the time of the Cold War, it just goes to show the powerthat these corporations have over the media and on the masses. “The Dune affect,” is a term coined after the movie ‘Dune,’ which explains that those whocontrol and have access to media have access to and potential control of public opinion.2Propaganda is so powerful because everyone is susceptible to it, there is no avoidance.Everytime you turn on the TV, read an advertisement in Time magazine, or let your kid watchNick Jr. you experience it. When put into perspective, 232 Media Executives control the mediadiet of 232 million Americans. We leave responsibility on these people to provide the world withhonest content that is not laced with political messages and rhetoric. The media focuses onshifting the focus from something bad to something good when it serves the ideology they wishto spread. 3Are these corporations evil and trying to destroy the world? No, for the most part theyhave provided us with quality family entertainment across the globe. However, the hiddenmessages that lay into plots, characters, themes, dialogues, etc. are undeniably there. We

1https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-movie-Rocky-IV-act-as-anti-Soviet-propaganda-How-did-it-support-the-Ronald-Reagan-administration2https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/war_peace/media/hpropaganda.html3https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/war_peace/media/hpropaganda.html

have to blame both these corporations and the government for putting pressure on them tocomply. Amber Lyon, a three-time Emmy award winning journalist at CNN, who said that theyare routinely paid by the US government and foreign governments to selectively report and evendistort information on certain events. She has also indicated that the government has editorialcontrol over content.4 Lyon exposed that CNN International never aired her documentary,iRevolution, on an uprising in Bahrain. Lyon accuses the network of censoring the documentarybecause the Bahrain regime is a paying customer at the network. The article also exposes that thegovernment of Bahrain, as well as other governments throughout the world, are paying CNN forspecial content casting their countries in a positive light.5 This is just another example of the mediacontrolling what we watch or how we form opinions on the world.

4http://www.infowars.com/top-german-journalist-admits-mainstream-media-is-completely-fake-we-all-lie-for-the-cia/5http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/04/cnn-international-documentary-bahrain-arab-spring-repression