Stop and think about it. Do you believe those who have close access to the White House and other top level contacts, government and corporate, are reporting the real news? Absolutely NOT! To maintain those top level connections they just spew forth political spin. Otherwise they would loose their close ties and possibly their jobs. So, are there any real investigative reporters left today? VERY FEW!!! Then we have corporate control that has taken over the news media.
White House Correspondents Association
The WHCA represents the White House press corps in its dealings with the administration on coverage-related issues.
MediaActionCenter.org
This website is designed as an information-exchange and networking center for people and organizations who are challenging the corporate-driven media through activism, education, research, organizing and policy advocacy.
Our goal is a system of diverse, independent media that represent public interests against powerful institutions. We support efforts to forge policies and infrastructures that allow all people to freely communicate within and beyond their communities, tell their own stories, express their cultures and access the information they need.
We have produced this website to help groups across the U.S. and around the world working for better media to find allies, access tools, share practical wisdom and build collaborative strategies.
Media Reform Information Center
In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called "alarmist" for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly . In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote "in the U.S., fewer than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass media" -- controlling almost all of America's newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. He predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies. This was greeted with skepticism at the time. When the 6th edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market. More than 1 in 4 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world's largest media corporation.
In 2004, Bagdikian's revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly , shows that only 5 huge corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC is a close sixth.
Democracy's Oxygen: How Corporations Control the News by James Winter
"Few trends so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society as the acceptance by our corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money for their shareholders as possible" -- Milton Freedmn