Hiding the Truth with Media Censorship

Media and censorship have tremendously inhibited the public political sphere. Corporate ownership of media has limited free speech and censorship limits publicity and shows only partial truths. Carolyn Knox argues that, "corporate ownership of the media allows the information coming to Americans to be controlled much more than it was forty years ago. We rarely see real outlaw, underground journalism that appeals to young/concerned people in a big way. That's true even here in Eugene where the Weekly is as close as we get to an underground paper, and it is not really a true, strong voice of opposition." Mainstream media is centrally controlled and publishes the same stories with the same political bias while claiming to be neutral. CNN and FOX publicize support for the American government while a proven majority is in opposition. Groups such as CODEPINK show up at trials and interviews and speeches and could use the media to publicize their peaceful political aims, but are edited out of news reports. Scenes such as the courtroom scene in which a pink lady activist ran up to Condoleezza Rice with seemingly bloody hands screaming “there’s blood on your hands” are major enough to make national television but instead can only be found on YouTube searches. Political opposition has been increasingly pushed underground by the media. Blogs, YouTube clips, and internet sites are found by specific searches or by accident, and provide great outlets to share and learn about political activism and opposition, but are not mainstream or publicized. Even the statues quo and the mainstream majority may be in opposition to war (both Iraq and Vietnam) but the media continues to broadcast a different view.