Our current American moment offers an glaring example of the corporate media’s power to generate, manipulate. and circumscribe public opinion.
If it’s not broadcast on the news, then it does not exist. Corporate editors at CNN, Fox, or whichever newsroom decide what we will care about today.
They only show us what they want us to see, knowing full well that the average American will never look any further than the edited images her favorite news channel shows to her.
The network news room also decides how we will think and feel about the events they have selected for us to see that day. We are all constantly being manipulated by the big business arms of major media outlets.
Tragically, the conservative wing of the Christian church is among the most easily manipulated because we confine ourselves to the most narrow, like-minded sources of information — Fox News and whichever “Christian” TV and/or radio stations we prefer, all of which are promotional arms of the Republican party.
Thus are we manicured, buffed, groomed, trimmed, and made to fit into the preconstructed box of conventional, American nationalism — including Christian nationalism.
This box guarantees that America always wears the white hat while America’s enemies (as defined by the American government and its communication stooges) always wear the black hats.
Yet, that brand of patriotic, nationalistic identity is as far removed from life in the kingdom of God as is the east from the west, or as far as heaven is removed from hell.
Yet, the wisdom available by way of God’s Image within us, an Image with which every human being is equally endowed, still shines brightly in many.
Anyone who has followed this blog knows how much I admire the investigative journalism of Abby Martin. Her program The Empire Files has long provided a wide-ranging, independent, internationalist perspective on world events. The very perspective that US corporate media will never provide.
Abby was recently interviewed by The Real News Network — another independent outlet I highly recommend — to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as the role played by the US and NATO in fostering this conflict.
I suspect that Abby is an atheist or agnostic, although I don’t know for sure. However, her humanistic moral compass points to true north. The following excerpt from her interview provides the most “Christian” analysis that I have yet to hear about America’s relationship to the war in Ukraine.
Abby begins by reminding everyone of the many bombs dropped regularly by the US and our allies around the world every day. The map below was drawn up yesterday. How many Americans are mourning for the brown and black bombing victims in Syria, Yemen, or Somalia?
I’ll tell you: few, if any.
The media ensures that our national heartache is very narrowly circumscribed, limited to only the “worthy victims” that the US government identifies as the victims of “our enemies.”
It also should be noted that these worthy victims are also white Europeans. People who look like us. That is a large part of what makes them “worthy.”
Ukrainians are not like the brown and black “hoards” fleeing as displaced refugees from the homelands that the US and its allies have demolished in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Those poor people are “unworthy victims” who deserve to be turned away at the border.
What condemnable, wicked rubbish is fed to us by our corporate masters under the label “news.”
And oh how completely we condemn ourselves by surrendering our loyalty to the deceitful siren songs of national pride and foreign policy preferences.
Now, please watch as Abby Martin reflects more of the mind of Christ regarding world affairs than I have ever heard from the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN).
