Who Powers the Media?
Is the mass media creating a reality that keeps the taxpayer on the hook for billions and billions of dollars in military spending?
The citizens of our country are regularly told that we need massive amounts of military spending from elected officials, news outlets, and political talk radio personalities. The idea is supported by simple lines in speeches like “supporting the troops” and “strong national defense.”
However, the United States spends more than all of its geopolitical competitors combined on the military. The threats that face our country – climate change, rouge states, and terrorism – are unlikely to be addressed by the type of force structure we have now. Rouge states – Russia, North Korea, and Iran – are unlikely to start a major traditional military conflicts because they are not really major military powers, although Vladimir Putin has invaded his weaker neighbors. Putin’s biggest weapons are espionage and cyber warfare, Kim Jong Un uses a possible nuclear arsenal to try and extract concessions out of the world, and Iran has shown a similar tendency with its own nuclear ambitions. With no traditional military, terrorists look to attack targets with a non-traditional military force, and the war against climate change can be fought through innovation and new forms of energy.
This type of thinking carries a price tag – the cost overruns on projects like the F-35 are a case in point. The F-35 went $163 billion over the original budget and was seven years behind schedule. Can one imagine if any other department of the federal government, Commerce, Agriculture, or Labor, engaged in a project with a track record like this?
Citizens in a democratic-republic must make decisions on the direction their country takes through their votes. The decisions they make are sometimes influenced the media that they consume. Who is influencing our media?
Former President Dwight Eisenhower warned of a “large military establishment and a large arms industry.” He also warned of the “acquisition of unwarranted influence, weather sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Media critic Norman Solomon addressed the influence the military-industrial complex holds over the corporate media in this story “The Military-Industrial-Media Complex.” Firms with military ties routinely advertise in news outlets. Media magnates and people on the boards of large media-related corporations enjoy close links – financial and social – with the military-industrial complex and Washington’s foreign-policy establishment.
Solomon critiqued the way in which the media covers various military interventions. Media-owning corporations are sometimes weapons merchants themselves. In the 1991 Gulf War, General Electric – NBC’s owner – designed, manufactured or supplied parts or maintenance for nearly every major weapon system used by the U.S. in the war —including the Patriot and Tomahawk Cruise missiles, the Stealth bomber, the B-52 bomber, the AWACS plane, and the NAVSTAR spy satellite system. During the coverage of the war, correspondents often praised the performance of equipment made by GE, the company that pays their salaries.
In the 2003 Iraq War, less than one percent of the voices on CBS News voiced opposition to the war during the first three weeks. PBS News also rarely featured war opponents. As Solomon points out, PBS rarely features on-the-street interviews and war opponents were mainly confined to the streets in the early phases.
Years ago, the radical philosopher Herbert Marcuse talked about the concentration of economic and media power, relevant to the discussion of the military-media-industrial complex. He said: “with the concentration of economic and political power and the integration of opposites in a society which uses technology as the instrument of domination, effective dissent is blocked where it could freely emerge; in the formation of opinion, in information and communication, in speech and assembly. Under the rule of monopolistic media-themselves the mere instruments of economic and political power- a mentality is created for which right and wrong, true and false are predefined wherever they affect the vital interests of the society.”
Can an effective opposition emerge against such a well-financed machine?
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