Michael Parenti Was Far Better Than Noam Chomsky

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Daily Show for March 31, 2025

A daily independent global news hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González. “Obsessed”: Elon Musk Pours $20 Million into Wisconsin Supreme Court Race as Voter Anger Builds; “Taking Down Everything Black”: Fired Kennedy Center VP Marc Bamuthi Joseph on Trump’s Takeover; Remembering Robert McChesney, Prescient Critic of Media Consolidation & Big Tech

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Remembering Robert McChesney, Prescient Critic of Media Consolidation & Big Tech

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> "We are told that this is what the public wants," #AlbertCamus observed in a 1944 newspaper article on #MediaEthics. "No. This is not what the public wants. This is what the public has been taught to want... which isn't the same thing." #ScottSherman provided this quotation from the French newspaper #Combat to #RobertMcChesney
> When people consume from.. options provided, the media giants.. [say] they.. [satisfy] audience demand.. the offerings [are] imbecilic.. because the people are morons.. But.. there is no proof that.. [the] range of choices conforms to something innate to the audience.
#RobertMcChesney in #CorporateMedia and the #ThreatToDemocracy p.50
There was a Dinosaurs(?) show that dealt with the limits of TV? The crane operator went from too stupid to too activating and had to quit producing.
> #McChesney points out, "the criticism of out-of-control #technology is in large part a critique of out-of-control #commercialism. The loneliness, #alienation, and unhappiness sometimes ascribed to the #Internet are also associated with a #marketplace gone wild."
Discourse about the Internet often proceeds as if digital technology has some kind of mind or will of its own. It does not.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/digital-disconnect_b_2971464
#NormonSolomon on #RobertMcChesney #DigitalDisconnect
Digital Grab: Corporate Power Has Seized the Internet

We have a profound, far-reaching fight on our hands, at a crossroads leading toward democracy or corporate monopoly. The future of humanity is at stake.

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.. the case for commercialized communication relies upon the ideology of the infallible #marketplace.. civic religion in the United States.. the world in the 1990s.. This pro-#market argument..[is] infallible only to the extent that it is.. based on faith, not a political theory..[for] inquiry and examination.. The..[argument] often rests upon a mythological presentation of pure #competition.
#RobertMcChesney in #CorporateMedia and the #ThreatToDemocracy (997) p. 44 #OpenMediaPamphlet series
> .. when the #Internet began, and this is—it seems like ancient history now—in the ’80s and ’90s, when we first people became aware of it, it was seen largely as a non-commercial oasis. It was a place where people could go and be equal and be empowered as citizens to take on concentrated economic and political power, to battle #propaganda, and there was no #advertising, there was no #commercialism. That was off-limits.
https://www.democracynow.org/2013/4/5/digital_disconnect_robert_mcchesney_on_how
#RobertMcChesney 2013 #DigitalDisconnect
Digital Disconnect: Robert McChesney on “How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy”

Longtime media-reform advocate Robert McChesney looks at how the future of American politics could be largely determined by who controls the Internet in his newest book. “'Digital Disconnect' talks about the difference between the mythology of the Internet, the hope of the Internet, that it would empower people and make democracy triumphant, versus the reality, which is that large corporate monopolies and the government, working together, are taking away the promise of the Internet to suit their interests,” says McChesney, the co-founder of Free Press and the National Conference for Media Reform. His book begins with a simple claim: “The ways capitalism works and does not work determine the role the Internet might play in society.” [includes rush transcript]

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