The common denominator of the “mainstream media” is their censoring or downplaying stories that would lead viewers to conservative conclusions, and their use of photo bias, placement bias and other forms of deception to mislead viewers into drawing incorrect liberal conclusions. The term mainstream media usually refers to how the majority of commercial-based or taxpayer-funded news reporting and commentary consist of liberal bias, while falsely pretending to be objective providers of information. In addition to promoting forms of censorship, the mainstream media has increasingly promoted or condoned the violence of the Antifa and other left-wingers.
Echoing the official narrative of its more highly funded, longer established bedfellows,Wikipedia refers to the large news conglomerates with their preferred self-description, the “mainstream media” (MSM). The Wikipedia page references a 1997 article by Noam Chomsky, stating that “Mainstream Media” (MSM) “both reflect and shape prevailing currents of thought”. This is an uncomfortable fit with a September 2016 poll finding that found only 32% of US adults trusting big media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.” (Wikispooks)
Wikipedia experienced a professionalization around 2007 which moved it firmly in the direction of the commercially controlled media. This is most clearly understood through the “Reliable Sources” policy in particular which means, more or less, that if a subject hasn’t been reported on by commercially controlled media or by those in established positions of social power and influence, then Wikipedia doesn’t want to know about it. These policies do in fact lead to a credible and useful encyclopedia on whole swathe of topics (i.e. technical, non-political topics) no doubt giving many readers the misleading impression that Wikipedia articles are reliable even for politically sensitive topics.
In 1987, the Federal Communications Commission voted 4-0 to revoke the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine mandated that if any opinion considered “controversial” were ever discussed on the public airwaves, the station over which that opinion aired was required to give equal time to any person wishing to reply. However, the FCC never set a standard about interpretations of current events that might be disputable, or even examined that issue. With the revocation of the Fairness Doctrine, radio and television stations were now permitted to air any opinion or interpretation of the news, no matter how “controversial,” without regard to the giving of “equal time.” (Conservapedia)
Western Mainstream media impose a huge burden of fake news on Western societies through entrenched and pervasive lying by omission. Indeed the most egregious and pervasive Mainstream media lie of omission is suppression of reportage of such lying by omission. The unimpeded, remorseless, corporate-dominated Mainstream media politicians and pliant intellectuals are now going further, and variously threatening residual effective free speech and Alternative media on the basis of asserted fake news (source)
Internet censorship is of necessity more complex and varied where many users can post. Covert censorship is generally preferred, but sometimes overt censorship is resorted to. Wikipedia has its own censorship practices. Reddit is subject to censorship and control. In November 2016 Reddit banned a group which was investigating top level pedophilia in US society to prevent a “witch hunt“. The group continued their investigate at voat.co, an alternative platform not owned by Conde Nast. The group has compiled a list of dozens of corporate media outlets which removed related content.
Propaganda
In their book Manufacturing Consent – The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Pantheon, 1988), Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky set out their “propaganda model of media control”. In a subsequent article written in 1996, Edward Herman explains the genesis of the model:
“We had long been impressed with the regularity with which the media operate within restricted assumptions, depend heavily and uncritically on elite information sources, and participate in propaganda campaigns helpful to elite interests. In trying to explain why they do this we looked for structural factors as the only possible root of systematic behavior and performance patterns.”
In identifying these “structural factors”, Herman and Chomsky list five news “filters” through which “money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public”.
- the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms
- advertising as the primary income source of the mass media
- the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and “experts” funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power
- “flak” as a means of disciplining the media
- “anticommunism” (more recently, “anti-terrorism”) as a national religion and control mechanism.
The media-industrial complex/media-entertainment complex is not a conspiracy theory The trail of influence and money which both directly and indirectly weighs on the content put out by Hollywood and the US mainstream media is very real. It is both historical fact and sadly it is also part of the present reality.
Operation Mockingbird was a CIA initiative wherein US journalists at organizations like the New York Times and CBS were fed propaganda stories to send out to their then virtually monopolized share of American readers and viewers. Many journalists were paid by the CIA to promote such stories. In other cases, naive journalists were simply given the information and put it out as real news, when in fact it was what today we would call ‘fake news’.
Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, a prominent German journalist and editor for more than two decades, is one example of how the CIA. He blew the whistle on public television, stating that he was forced to publish the works of intelligence agencies under his own name and that noncompliance with these orders would result in him losing his job. (source)