US media interests are today concentrated as never before & deserve the title 'big media' or, even more succinctly, a self-interested 'corporate media' family, rather than the common but misleading tag - 'mainstream media'.

 

An analysis of the boards of the 10 biggest media players in the US reveals that their directors serve on the boards of 288 major national & international corporations, whilst 8 of the 10 share 'common directors'.

 

NBC & the Washington Post have board members who sit on the boards of Coca-Cola & JP Morgan, whilst the Tribune Company, The New York Times & Gannett have directors who are directors of Pepsi.

 

The New York Times has directors from the Carlyle Group, Eli Lily, Ford, Johnson & Johnson, Hallmark, Lehman Brothers, Staples & Pepsi, whilst the Washington Post has representatives from Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola, Dun & Bradstreet, Gillette, GE Investments, JP Morgan & Moody's.

 

Knight-Ridder has directors from Adobe Systems, Echelon, H & R Block, Kimberley-Clark, Starwood Hotels & The Tribune (Chicago & LA Times) board is drawn from 3M, Allstate, Caterpillar, Conoco Phillips, Kraft, McDonalds, Pepsi, Quakers Oats, Schering Plough & Wells Fargo.

 

News Corp (Fox) boasts directors from British Airways & Rothschild Investments, whilst GE (NBC) has directors from Anheuser-Busch, Avon, Bechtel, Chevron/Texaco, Coca-Cola, Dell, GN, Home Depot, Kellogg, JP Morgan, Microsoft, Motorola & Proctor & Gamble.

 

Disney (ABC) has a board drawn from Boeing, Northwest Airlines, Estee Lauder, Fedex, Gillette, Halliburton, K-Mart, McKesson, Staples & Yahoo, whilst Viacom (CBS) draws from American Express, Consolidated Edison, Oracle & Lafarge North America.

 

Gannett boasts representatives from AP, Lockheed-Martin, Continental Airlines, Goldman Sachs, Prudential, Target, Pepsi & AOL-Time Warner (CNN) gets along with directors from Citigroup, Estee Lauder, Colgate-Palmolive & Hilton.

 

Is it any wonder that Americans remain ignorant of world events or are served-up a completely 'sanitized' version of news, that serves the interests of the media's corporate masters & their political 'satraps'?

 

Is the Washington Post going to focus editorial energy & objectivity on Lockheed-Martin defence contract over-runs or is the ABC really going to pursue critical investigative reporting on Halliburton's sole-source contracts in Iraq?

 

And how likely is it that the monolithic 'corporate media' & its collective corporate interests are going to serve the American people, by exposing the lies, deceit & criminality of the Bush White House?

 

No wonder Bush is so arrogant, self-assured & unaccountable.

 

No wonder democracy seems to be dead in America.

 

It would seem that the voice of the American 4^th estate is silent today, whilst George Bush, further empowered by the Patriot Act, stands triumphant as a fascist dictator over the corpse of democracy in what was once known as the 'land of the free & home of the brave'.

 

"Could a media system, controlled by a few global corporations with the ability to overwhelm all competing voices, be able to turn lies into truth?" 

 

Director Robert Kane Pappas’ "Orwell Rolls In His Grave" is the consummate critical examination of the Fourth Estate, once the bastion of American democracy. Asking whether America has entered an Orwellian world of doublespeak where outright lies can pass for the truth, Pappas explores what the media doesn’t like to talk about: itself.

 

Orwell Rolls In His Grave