Learn about Externalizing Costs, Planned Obsolescence, and Perceived Obsolescence. If you are smart, this video will change the way you live everyday.

The Story Of Stuff

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Capitalism and consumerism are quickly becoming the religion of the American masses. Television programs in which people do increasingly immoral and insane acts for large sums of money have become wildly popular. Spurred on by television, both in commercials and in the values held by the characters in the programs themselves, happiness is rapidly being redefined as buying power. The major corporations, more than happy to take the public’s money in exchange for ‘happiness,’ gleefully egg on this paradigm shift. Corporations resort to sub-subsistence wages in third world countries while cooking the books at home in order to make greater and greater profits while supplying the public’s insatiable thirst for new material goods. This god of currency is a dark and evil one, serving only to cheapen life while shackling America to the false hope of material happiness.

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On television and in print both the news media and politicians take great pride in the appearance of truth, honesty and lack of bias. Nothing could be further from the truth. The mass media exists for one reason only; to turn a profit. While their business is indeed the dissemination of current information, every facet of their operation, from which stories are covered to the editorialization of said stories, is designed to increase their profit. Stories of rape, murder, child abuse, conflict, all of these make entertaining television spots and engrossing blurbs in a newspaper. For this reason these types of stories are included in far higher proportion to ‘happy’ news stories, thereby altering the public’s view of the world and their own safety. The media also puts a spin on current politics, showing the government and the president in the best light possible. This is especially true since 9/11 and the ‘war on terror.’ While this may or may not be patriotic, it is not unbiased coverage of events and decisions that affect us all as citizens. Politicians themselves are no better. While the goal of the media is increased revenues, the politicians strive for broader voter bases and election or reelection. Their solutions and stances are modulated to be as bland and middle-of-the-road as possible. No question is answered straightforwardly when it can be avoided. By making every statement and stance as vague as possible, politicians avoid decisively eliminating anyone from their voter base. While the tactics of the media are excellent for making a profit, and the tactics of the politicians are superb for keeping a broad voter base, they both fail miserably at the jobs they profess to be doing; those of informing the public of current events in the world and in political thought. As Americans we need to take these ulterior motives into account before accepting politicians and the news media at face value.

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These days people are constantly bombarded with information from every direction. Television and radio stream news clips and sound bytes, interrupted only by commercials and political advertisements. Even those shows that appear informative have their own agendas of increased viewership and the associated ratings and profit. Swimming in this sea of skewed information, spin-doctored accounts, and blatant propaganda it is easy to lose ones way and jump to the wrong conclusions. It is even easier to simply succumb to the constant outflow of data and accept everything your mind takes in as fact at face value. In today’s age of global interconnectedness and world politics such lapses of critical thought are increasingly dangerous. It cannot be left to those few at the top to dictate what is correct and incorrect for the vast majority of society. It is even more criminal to restrict or alter the information necessary for those masses to make an informed decision. Yet that is exactly what our government, mass media, and corporate society are doing. Only by detaching ourselves from our preconceptions and the media outlets and taking an educated, informed look at the world around us can we hope to make the correct decisions in this ever changing world. Those who have educated themselves are far harder to manipulate with propaganda and half-truths.

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In our society, a person’s worldview is increasingly based upon events that were not physically experienced but dictated to him or her by the various media. Though the media is an effective tool for communication, one must remember its actual purpose. A television news program, like any other television program in this capitalist system, exists to make a profit. It makes this profit by selling advertising time and it sells advertising time by getting high ratings. It is not designed to simply tell you the news, but to tell you the news in a way that will keep you from changing the channel. The same applies to radio news programs, while newspapers are written to sell the newspaper itself. They are all designed to tell the news, but more importantly they are designed to tell the news in a manner that will generate a profit. To some this may seem like a minor distinction, but this difference determines which news stories are covered, the amount and visibility of coverage, and the manner in which they are editorialized. A society that accepts this edited information as the whole and unbiased truth subscribes to a worldview based upon popular opinion rather than fact and subjects itself to the will of the information providers. Without objective sources of information our society cannot make informed decisions concerning world events, or homeland politics. Such a state puts us in grave danger in this time of international power struggles and global corporations.

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As Chairman and CEO of FOX/NewsCorp, the world’s third largest media conglomerate, you have the ears and eyes of the world at your disposal. Your 124 newspapers, eleven film studios, 77 TV stations, five magazines, one major book publisher (with subsidiaries in four countries), and 22 other assorted media companies reach literally billions of people on six continents.

What have you done with this embarrassment of riches, Mr Murdoch? Well, with your xenophobic, tabloid sensibilities and your mercenary approach to truth, you’ve certainly lowered the journalistic bar.

But its much more than that. Your flashy, hysterical, fear-mongering coverage of complex world events -9/11, WMDs, the invasion of Iraq, and now Iranian nukes- has served to obscure political reality and to bring the planet a few big steps closer to the brink.

Its nothing personal, Rupert. You’ve just pushed too hard. We need to take back what’s rightfully ours: a diverse media, and the healthy democracy that comes along with it. So sit back and watch our campaign unfold.

www.mediacarta.org

From Adbusters #71