The Global Media Dictatorship
By Manuel E. Yepe

A CubaNews translation by Mary Todd.
Edited by Walter Lippmann

Nobody should believe that the enormous collection of secret documents about brutal actions that the U.S. troops engage in on a daily basis in their war against Afghanistan—evidence that Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old U.S. soldier, supplied to the WikiLeaks website—will have a serious effect on the course of the United States’ war policy.

The U.S. Government may apply its powerful apparatus of silence and lies to this situation, using the resources with which, to cite just one of the many acts of media sleight of hand in the history of that country, it has kept people from demanding that the lies in the official version of what happened in the United States on September

11, 2001—that served as the pretext for launching a “war on terrorism” which has really been a war against “dark corners of the Third World”—from being cleared up.

History shows that, time and again, the United States has employed pretexts for its wars against weaker opponents.  In the 20th century, alone, these included the North-South conflict (for the Korean War), the Tonkin Gulf incident (for the Vietnam War), weapons of mass destruction (for the war against Iraq), and Osama bin Laden and the Taliban (for its war against Afghanistan), all of which were trumped up.

How can the U.S. Government control what is said in the mass media of that country, which claims to be a mecca of freedom of the press?

It isn’t very hard.  Articles in the alternative press and other media that don’t form part of the large corporate machine—and to which the majority of the people have little access—make frequent reference to the techniques and resources that are used to control information in the United States.

Six large conglomerates make up what is called the mainstream media. They control 90 percent of the actions of the large media corporations—that, in turn, produce 90 percent of what U.S. citizens read, see and hear.  The U.S. power elite uses the mainstream media to maintain systematic, effective control over information, not only inside the United States but on a global scale.

According to data published by Global Outlook, a Canadian magazine, six conglomerates control information and entertainment in the United States and in a good part of the rest of the world.  These six are

DISNEY, which owns ABC; Touchdown Pictures; Buena Vista; Hollywood Pictures; Caravan Pictures; Miramax Films; the company that produces A&E documentaries; the History, Discovery and Disney TV channels; and other media;

AOL/TIME WARNER, which owns CNN, HBO, Warner Brothers, Castle Rock, Time, Sports Illustrated, People, Fortune, Entertainment, Money, Netscape and other media;

VIACOM, which includes CBS, Paramount Pictures, Simon & Schuster, Pocket Books, Blockbusters, Showtime,MTV, The Movie Channel & Nickelodeon, BET, etc.;

GENERAL ELECTRIC, which owns NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo and Universal Pictures, and 13 TV stations and is closely linked to the arms and aerospace industries;

RUPERT MURDOCH'S NEWS CORPORATION, which owns Fox TV, DirecTV, TV Guide, The New York Post, The Weekly Standard, 20th Century Fox, MySpace and other media; and

BERTELSMANN one of the largest media corporations in the world, which owns RTL-TV Europea, Random House, Bantam Dell, Doubleday, Alfred A. Knopf, Vintage Books, etc.

The first five are registered as U.S. companies, and the last, as German.

It would be very wrong to assume that these giant consortia take orders from the U.S. Government and, therefore, obey directives from the White House.  In implementing its world tyranny, this power elite controls not only these information giants but Washington, as well.

The media conglomerates don’t have to be controlled by the government, because they themselves are part of the supreme power.  In fact, the government controls only a relatively small number of newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations, movie and video companies, recording companies, etc., that, together with the alternative media, influence—at most—10 percent of the population.

However ineptly the superpower has been led by that mysterious supreme government which nobody elected but that, like satanic gang, which directs its destinies, riding roughshod over Constitutional powers, and which is now top dog in the world capitalist system.

Controlled by that dark elite, whose selfish essence is ever more incompatible with the survival of the human species, the United States is trapped in a tricky, dangerous position in which it seems destined to lose everything because of its pigheadedness, that is leading up to what may well be the destruction of mankind.

August 2010.