Glenn Greenwald has a new post up this morning telling us what the Corporate Owned Media (COM) won't: John Edwards experienced a national surge that the other Democratic candidates didn't until the last two days.
As but one example, consider this new daily tracking poll today from Rasumussen Reports. At least according to this poll, it is true that there has been one candidate who has been genuinely surging in the last week or two among Democratic voters nationally -- John Edwards
More after the flip.
This is not unexpected or even unpredicted (check out Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky's "Propaganda Model of the Media" from Manufacturing Consent, which turns 20 this year). But it is intolerable in anything approaching a democracy, which I really don't think we have in the US anymore, apart from formal and symbolic trappings, which are important and can be a starting point for restoring democratic substance to our corporate-dominated land and world. Some call the US a "polyarchy". But I digress. Returning to brother Greenwald:
Edwards -- who, just one week ago, was 10 points behind Obama nationally among Democrats -- is now only two points behind him. Less than a month ago, he trailed Clinton by 29 points. Now it's 13 points. He is, by far, at his high point of support nationwide. Apparently, the more exposure Democratic voters get to Edwards and his campaign positions -- and that exposure has been at its high point during his surge -- the more they like him. By contrast, Obama is more or less at the same level of support nationally, even having decreased some since his Iowa win (for most of mid-Decemeber, he was at 27-28 points).
Yet to listen to media reports, Edwards doesn't even exist. His campaign is dead. He has no chance. They hate Edwards, hate his message, and thus rendered him invisible long ago, only now to declare him dead -- after he came in second place in the first caucus of the campaign.
Now, I'm taking Glenn's claim that only Edwards is surging with a grain of salt. I also saw Kos post this yesterday. These are fresher numbers showing the national situation beginning to move and in Obama's favor. But that's Glenn's point too:
But I'm not focusing on the accuracy of horse-race predictions here, but instead, on the fact that the traveling press corps endlessly imposes its own narrative on the election, thereby completely excluding from all coverage plainly credible candidates they dislike (such as Edwards) while breathlessly touting the prospects of the candidates of whom they are enamored. Their predictions (i.e., preferences and love affairs) so plainly drive their press coverage -- the candidates they love are lauded as likely winners while the ones they hate are ignored or depicted as collapsing -- which in turn influences the election in the direction they want, making their predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Sister and brother Kossacks, it's time we recognized that WE are the free press (along with Indymedia, Group News Blog, ZNet and everyone else carrying out First Amendment duties), not the slave press run by corporations and conglomerates, and staffed by zombie stenographers who avoid cognitive dissonance by checking their frontal lobes at the door when they show up for work everyday.
Chomsky has a great quote which I think provides foundation to Glenn's post:
QUESTION: You write in Manufacturing Consent [(Pantheon, 1988)] that it's the primary function of the mass media in the United States to mobilize public support for the special interests that dominate the government and the private sector. What are those interests?
CHOMSKY: Well, if you want to understand the way any society works, ours or any other, the first place to look is who is in a position to make the decisions that determine the way the society functions. Societies differ, but in ours, the major decisions over what happens in the society -- decisions over investment and production and distribution and so on -- are in the hands of a relatively concentrated network of major corporations and conglomerates and investment firms. They are also the ones who staff the major executive positions in the government. They're the ones who own the media and they're the ones who have to be in a position to make the decisions. They have an overwhelmingly dominant role in the way life happens. You know, what's done in the society. Within the economic system, by law and in principle, they dominate. The control over resources and the need to satisfy their interests imposes very sharp constraints on the political system and on the ideological system.
I can't top that. Let's start moving the Overton Window about the true nature of the COM. I demand a truly public media, accountable only to the people and our democracy.
Hat tip to Avedon Carol posting at Eschaton.
UPDATE: fayeforcure in the comments provides a link to Ian Welsh at the Huffington Post, who has more on Glenn's post and points.
UPDATE II: Phoenix Woman beat me to the punch with Glenn's post. Show her the love.
UPDATE III: Two great quotes critical of the press, one by Albert Einstein and one by old time newspaperman John Swinton. Enjoy!
The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them.
-- Albert Einstein, letter to Sigmund Freud (30 July 1932)
Quote from John Swinton, pre-eminent New York journalist, editor and publisher, in reply to a toast to the "Independent Press" around 1880:
"There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the small towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that they would never appear in print.... The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread. You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an 'Independent Press.' We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
from Labor's Untold Story, Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, pp. 80-81.