The Guatemalan peasant lady and Rupert Murdoch

I once saw an interview with a Guatemalan peasant who was a political activist undertaking direct action in support of indigenous Indians.

She made a very strong impression on me.

In the interview with some well-known TV network this humble woman gave a remarkable analysis of the pernicious role of the mass media in the world.

She said there were in the world two views of every place.

Simply put, there was the media image of a place and the reality of the place itself.

Both were important she said because both were often different and decisions were made about these places based on which view the political decision-makers had.

As an example she talked of the the media image of her little village in the mountains and compared it to the reality of it.

Both were very different.

I couldn't agree more.

Everywhere I have lived has been totally dfferent to the media image-including my home towm of Belfast.

Nowhere is as I expected it to be with all my 'Education'

But there is a Rupert Murdoch in every country.

Many of the places I have lived in have suffered from their media image.

Cali, Colombia is a good example. A media image of drug cartels and violence. The reality for us was very different when we lived there. It was a peaceful and happy place.

Now, twenty five years later I no longer even believe my own lived experience of Cali.

Such is the power of the media it has it has supplanted my own view of Cali with the violent media image.

That is how powerful the media is. The Guatemalan lady was right

It suits the media to portray Cali as a violent place because people want to read that. It makes them feel good about themselves–so we buy the newspaper and Rupert makes a profit.

Rupert and his friends are not fools.

The truth about Cali is not important in all of this.

It never is for the media. Fox news, after promoting their investigative reporters as 'intrepid truth gathererers' sacked them due to pressure from Monsanto corporation lawyers, after the journalists tried to publish the story of Monsanto's poisoning of milk for Americans.

No-one gives a flying fuck about the truth, least of all Rupert, his readers or Fox News.

People want to feel good about themselves.

Rupert wants his profit–and the rest of the world outside Cali wants to believe that Cali is the most violent place on the planet because it makes them feel good about their their own sordid little patch.

That is why people like Rupert Murdoch, Fox the and other private media magnates must be  neutralized.

They can not be trusted with monopoly ownership of Newspapers and Television stations. Such organs of communication must be forcibly rested from the hands of these monopolists who appeal to the lowest common denominator in human nature in order to make a profit.