Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The Obama Administration pays for CNN content

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

Thursday, April 4, 2013

The Obama Administration pays for CNN content

Click here to access article from The Obama Hustle.

It is very unusual to get testimony from a journalist about the management of news reporting. This is very understandable given that media ownership is so highly concentrated, and straying from the "party line" can be hazardous for a journalist's career. But, this is what we see reported here first from a prominent news website in Slovakia (re-posted on a Syrian news website) and confirmed by her, ex-CNN reporter Amber Lyon, in an Alex Jones interview. Such reports, of course, will never see the light of day in US media.

The author at The Obama Hustle seems shocked by such news, like he is uncovering a scandal about Obama, which seems to be the limited focus of his website. The author seems blithely unaware that this is a major function of mainstream media in any class structured society, however it is even more pronounced in the highly concentrated media of the Empire. (See this for an article which supplies some excellent links to other documents detailing the use of journalists to shape US public opinion. Note that the material on Anderson Cooper is very thin.) Nevertheless, we owe him a debt of gratitude for bringing this rare exposé by a former mainstream media journalist and related events about news management in the Empire.

However, in checking out the links in this article, I kept running into dead links. (One can only speculate why this has occurred.) Still, with persistence I managed to track down and verify the essential material, the main one being the interview of Lyon by Alex Jones. I thought the author's comments about Jones was spot-on:

He is wound up tighter than piano wire, and unfortunately much of his truth is diminished because of the hype he places upon it. Alex Jones is easy to disregard as a “conspiracy theorist”, not because of what he says, but because of how he says it. Everything is desperate and dangerous with him.

That said, the words and explanations of Ms. Lyon in the discussion/interview are poignant and vastly informative. So I share the video with you so you can hear from Amber herself exactly what is being described and articulated.