Chris Hedges On the Power of the Modern Media and Fox News

“The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned.

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.

With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”

Henry A. Wallace

Hedges specifically discusses Fox News, and deservedly so,  because it has set the tone for the modern news programs. There were never more ironic words than their slogan, 'fair and balanced.'  But he could have included a few other corporate copycat channels as well, including the financial channels which have become little more than infomercials for Wall Street and the one percent.

Most 'news shows' in the states have become extended op-ed's where paid professional hucksters and 'strategists' spout slogans and sound bytes at one another, with a fairly cavalier attitude towards an intelligent exposition of the facts. 

Emotions are more powerful than facts in the modern mass media. Frighten the people, anger them, give them an object for their fear and anger, and in their rage you can move them in whatever direction you wish.

And you can look to the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, the weakening of the FCC, the proliferation of cable channels with hours of programming to fill, and the concentration of the media in the hands of a few corporations, or perhaps more correctly global conglomerates, for the cause of this terrible decline in what is lightly these days called journalism, and thereby also the deterioration in public and political discourse.

They think they can control it, but the madness serves none but themselves.