Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Huffington Post-AOL's Black Voices Are Just More Corporate White Noise

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Huffington Post-AOL's Black Voices Are Just More Corporate White Noise

Click here to access script and/or 4:28m audio by Bruce Dixon from Black Agenda Report. (Audio access is at the end of the script.)

I was curious about the sale of Huffington Post website, which is known for its environmental coverage, to AOL, which is an aggressive corporation, for a large sum of money.

If you have been noticing the proliferation of ads, and ads relating to your interests on your favorite sites, then you already have some evidence to support the excellent explanation that Dixon provides for the sale of Huffington Post.

His explanation and anecdote about prison abuses illustrate how we can expect AOL to use this site more to increase profits than to enlighten us on environmental issues.

This is also a larger illustration of how corporations insert themselves and their interests everywhere in our society where they see prospects for profit in order to accumulate more wealth for the less than 1% of our society. Their large impact has the unfortunate side effect of marginalizing or diminishing the impact of influences that can sustain and enhance the lives of the rest of us--the vast majority of the population.