Establishment seeks to assimilate or eliminate independent media
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
November 19, 2013
The dinosaur media is in terminal decline but it will not go down without a fight, which is why the establishment is relying on a number of different techniques to remain relevant while strangling its competition.
Recent polls show that trust in mainstream media is hovering at record lows. Print journalism is fast becoming a distant memory as the establishment press rapidly loses its audience to independent media outlets on the Internet.
Far from accepting its fate meekly, the system has rolled out the big guns in a desperate bid to either eliminate or assimilate the burgeoning alternative press.
The latest example is buried within the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) and concerns “intellectual property enforcement.” Put simply, the agreement will mandate ISPs to remove online content without the need for a burden of proof or any kind of legal process, greasing the skids for aggressive and disproportionate censorship-driven takedowns.
“If instituted, the TPP’s IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons,” reads a Wikileaks statement. “If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you’re ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs.”
Another way the mainstream media is trying to strangle alternative voices that might challenge its narrative is by phasing out or banning article comments altogether.
Studies confirm that article comment sections – for better or worse – are heavily swaying public opinion.
Popular Science and BoingBoing.net recently announced their decision to kill comment sections on their website. The New York Times alsorecently indicated that it is scaling back comments and removing them from some articles altogether.
As an excellent Daily Tech piece highlights, Popular Science admitted that its decision to pull the comment section was in order to preach a “scientific doctrine” on global warming without being challenged.
The move to kill off comments altogether comes after a largely failed attempt on behalf of major companies and governments around the world to hire armies of paid employees to troll comments by disseminating pro-establishment positions in a bid to shift popular perceptions.
In 2010, the Canadian government announced it would, “monitor online chatter about political issues and correct what it perceives as misinformation.”
Turkey, Israel, China, are just some of the governments openly hiring paid trolls to steer public opinion, while the Pentagon announced earlier this year that it is stepping up its public relations efforts in order to counter scandals about the U.S. government emerging on huge but non-establishment news outlets like the Drudge Report.
In 2011 it was also revealed that the U.S. government, “contracted HBGary Federal for the development of software which could create multiple fake social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on controversial issues by promoting propaganda.”
Another way the establishment media will look to re-assert itself is by posing as alternative media – funding news outlets that purport to be independent yet are backed by government or corporate cash.
Large mainstream news organizations like ITN are busy creating offshoot platforms that present themselves as “citizen journalism” yet are ultimately bankrolled and controlled by the establishment media itself.
Meanwhile, large news organizations that initially operated somewhat outside of the influence of the establishment media, like the Huffington Post, are being quickly swallowed up by giant corporations like AOL.
The mainstream media will attempt to use all of these methods and more to either supplant or destroy independent voices that are not controlled by the establishment, which is why independent media needs to be more watchful than ever if the Internet is to remain a bastion of free speech and continue to provide a genuine alternative to the corporate press.
Who cares? Most commercial stuff is worthless anyway.
This smells like a red herring. I wonder what’s the real screwing we’re going to get when this stuff passes. I’m thinking $20/million BTU natural gas or something that will really hurt us.
As for ISPs blocking content, the kiddie pr0n sites seem to go on for years, undetected, and no one does a damn thing about them. Lots of laws in place to prosecute trafficking that stuff, yet no one sees anything.
Eric, kiddie porn is something that always raises a bit of disbelief in me that it’s something that’s as replete as they’d have you believe since “they” don’t have a good reputation for the truth. In my entire life I have never seen any in any form. I’ll admit I haven’t looked for it but I never looked for many illegal things that had a way of presenting themselves to me. I often wonder if it isn’t overblown although I realize any is too much. The reason I say this is because so many political dissenter web sites and associated things have been targeted by the FBI who accused the site vendors and others(people who operate servers and domains) of kiddie porn when that wasn’t the case.
I suspect the targets are sites like this one.
If I, for example, reference another article in passing – or link to it – without having first obtained explicit written permission, I suppose I could be accused of a copyright violation.
Mind, as with what Google did to us already, these are likely to be Star Chamber-type proceeding. No specific evidence presented; no opportunity to confront said evidence or any accuser. Just an imperious “guilty” verdict handed down from on high that cannot be appealed.
Is that really a law (Referencing an article without permission being copyright violation?) I mean, I get copyright to a certain extent (Not saying I agree with it, honestly I’ve been too concerned with the violations of real property rights and other freedoms that I really haven’t thought much about IP) but that just seems ridiculous.
Dear Gary,
I saw that many years ago.
Good that they have it online now.
Anyone else notice that the Goog and Yahoo are limiting page listing responses to favored returns on their word searches? It is getting harder to get them to display other then approved content. A default banning of the books now that the world is addicted to their service. All planned in advance I suppose.
A good friend of mine thinks he is well informed and looks daily at major TV and print media. He was shocked when I asked him about the Deming, NM anal probing. He had not seen it.
Dear Gary,
I noticed that.
They are openly ramming only approved content down our throats now.
@Bevin – A blast from the past. 60 minutes of Ayn Rand from the 60’s. After the Kennedy comments she goes on about the FCC and de-facto censorship. What is old is new again.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-works/frontier.html
PopSci and Boingboing eliminating comment doesn’t have any effect on any discussion that matters. I guess the author doesn’t realize that LRC.com never allowed any comment whatsoever until it rolled out its blog. The LRCblog commentary was quickly limited to a few participants, mostly contributing writers.
“What is old is new again.”
With Rand, what was new was already old before she noticed it.
Work-around that I use: Search with Google.de or Google.ru.
Don’t consent to anything. Let the nag box about cookies appear after every search.
If you consent, the memory-hole process follows you to the new TLD and you’ll need to move again to google.co.in and so forth.
Dear Tor,
Thanks for the tip!
Garysco, my best friend, my age, will not do internet because his wife and I have had so many disagreements I just let devolve into us not understanding each other instead of saying she’s a biased bitch. She has come around to being much less statist though. Still, I can talk with him all day about things he’s never heard of. I can’t get it across to him how biased allf the MSM is including his beloved “gun rights” shows. Thankfully they do give him the straight poop on ‘some’ things
Hi Gary,
Yup – and they’re also limiting (if not eliminating) comments. Can’t have the cattle contradicting the message…