Over the last couple weeks of following the Occupy Protest, I have noted some very disheartening facts about the so-called "mainstream media". We tend to think of media as being either slanted to the left or to the right. However, we never really consider who precisely is behind our favorite websites. Most people, when they think of massive control of news reporting outlets immediately think of Rupert Mordoch and News Corporation. Yes, News Corporation has engaged in some of the most blatant offenses of biased reporting and, at times, outright misinformation but really, they aren't alone. They're just the most obvious. So let's take a look at the ever so tangled web that has been woven, some of which is so snarled that who exactly is in control of some of these news outlets is next to impossible to tell.
Let's start out with NBC. NBC turns out to be owned by General Electric. GE owns the various NBCs, CNBC, and has a stake in MSNBC among a very long list of other media related holdings such as Oxygen, the History Channel, SyFy, and Bravo. In the accounting industry, they also own the "world's greatest tax accounting firm" for being able to pull off such extreme tax avoidance strategies like last year's $14 billion in world wide net income and paying $0 in taxes.
Everybody knows who Bill Gates is. He's the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft as well as being the second wealthiest man in the world. He, too, has a stake in MSNBC but, to his credit, MSNBC has probably been the fairest mainstream news outlet in regards to the Occupy protest that I've seen so far. Good on you, Bill! That might be the only nice thing I say about you.
Sumner Redstone should possibly be as familiar a name as Rupert Murdoch. Redstone has a decidedly majority hand in CBS, Viacom, and MTV networks through familial majority stock ownership and positions of the boards of these entities. His net worth is $3.8 billion. I think that makes him part of that 1% that Occupy is complaining about.
Now it's CNN's turn. CNN, as a whole, is a subsidiary of Time-Warner (merger of Time Inc and Warner Bros). CNN US is operated by Turner Broadcasting. I couldn't find anything on who is on the board. These guys aren't very transparent at all and, in fact, all you Fox haters should take a look at CNN's track record. These guys have been subject to as much bias controversy and in a weird way. Oddly enough, they rapidly go back and forth from a left bias to a right bias and have been a subject of studies. Even Ted Turner has questioned what has happened to his old baby over the last few years. When he's questioning it, we should.
ABC is owned by Disney. Disney is an interesting company with their hands in a variety of areas. They actually built a town in Florida called Celebration, which they tightly control. It looks a little bit like a scene from the Stepford Wives. Not creepy at all, Disney.
The connections action run pretty deep and pretty tangled. For instance, the brother of Jon Stewart of The Daily Show happens to be the COO of the NYSE. Then there's the Moynihan of New York Times and the Moynihan who is the CEO of Bank of America. Are they related because "Moynihan" doesn't seem to be that common of a name. I couldn't find a connection but it's kind of weird. Even the so called "little guys" of news reporting have bizarre ties. For instance, The New York Observer is owned by Jared Kushner, who is the son of Charles Kushner and married to Ivanka Trump, daughter of Donald Trump.
What we're looking at is our media being a potential tangled mess of ties with each other and what it always seems to come back to is very powerful and wealthy billionaires. Is it really that surprising that we had a media blackout on the subject of the protests until something happened that could no longer be ignored? Thousands of protesters backed by the likes of Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Dr. Cornel West and more? Nah, that's not a story though it definitely caught the attention of the Guardian--a British news company whose other claim to fame is the revealing of the News Corp International scandal. Young girls getting maced in the face by NYPD for no apparent reason was enough of a story for MSNBC to start really looking at the protests. The rest of them? It wasn't a story until over 20,000 people watched in horror as 700 US citizens were trapped and arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. And then, well, let's just pick the stupid and bizarre out of the crowds, why don't we?
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