Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Controlling the Lens: The Media War Being Fought Over Ukraine Between the Western Bloc and Russia

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, March 27, 2014

Controlling the Lens: The Media War Being Fought Over Ukraine Between the Western Bloc and Russia

Click here to access article by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya from Global Research.

The aims of information warfare are to use discourse to influence populations across the world and to establish a total monopoly on the flow of information, the perceptions of audiences, and the discursive processes shaping the modern world. At its basis power and relationships are being realized through mass media communication.

The messages and ideas that the mass media transmit through mass communication are constructed by those that control the media and, in succession, used by them to construct the perceptions of audiences. Since what the majority of people in most modern societies know is heavily shaped by the mass media, the mass media is used to lead audiences into forming certain opinions and to make their decisions on the bases of those opinions.

Nazemroaya provides an excellent examination of the appearance of (non-NATO) competing sources of information provided especially by Russia Today (RT) and to a much lessor extent by Iran's Press TV and Chinese Central Television (CCTV).

I've long argued that control of media by capitalist directors is a major factor in their self-serving class rule and all the associated problems ranging from social injustice to wars. The news coverage and analysis from these alternative national media are very helpful in breaking down the propaganda-fueled news reports from Western mainstream media. However, what is crucially needed is news media run by ordinary working people. Media representing various sections of the capitalist world can be helpful in contests between rival capitalist gangs, but they still represent interests of the One Percents.