blogs

Try writing to the daily newspaper, or commenting on a Murdoch News Limited newspaper blog or to a Fairfax newspaper blog, or even on an ABC Radio programme blog.

There, feel better? So what have you gained? Well you have perhaps vented spleen, so gained personal gratification. But another day another paper and reader memories are short. Soon the blog comment section will be 'closed' and inaccessible. So what then have you really gained? Has anyone read it? Will what you've written have any impact, even if people did read it? Will your comments contribute in anyway to an issue?

Don't delude yourself! Writing to corporate (mass) media only benefits the media moguls in stymieing dissent. Blog comments in the mass media go nowhere and achieve nothing. The comments quickly get 'closed' and inaccessible. Dissent is thus lured, netted and buried.

The mass media have only recently promoted their blogs in order to distract vocal readers from contributing to free (alternative) media, like the not-for profit CanDoBetter, Tasmanian Times, etc.

This is one reason why I do not contribute any information to corporate media.
Let the moguls wallow in self-serving propaganda, let them continue be more irrelevant to ordinary people, to lose readership and advertising revenue. Their only in it for the money and the influence anyway. Many of the tabloids have become comic books.

Think I'm being unfair on corporate media? Well, an exposé article in the Fairfax-owned Sydney Morning Herald 9th October 2010 by former News Limited editor Bruce Guthrie was entitled 'Falling out with Rupert' (Murdoch). The opening two paragraphs read:

"Within the News empire, talent is one thing but absolute discretion to Rupert Murdoch's world view and various causes is another. And it's far more important than talent.

The most highly regarded people at News are little more than Murdoch robots, programmed to consider him first and the issue second..."

Guthrie further observes:

"Newspaper editors are never far from power or, at least, the people who wield it. This can be quite seductive if you forget one simple fact: it's not you they're really interested in, it;s the machinery you sit atop. Lose the job tomorrow and most politicians will want to cosy up to your successor, regardless of teh circumstances or their qualities."

These extracts are from Bruce Guthrie's new book 'Man bites Murdoch', which I yet to read.