It’s hard getting the word out w/o the media…

YouTube Video!!! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQcLRIwSXZU

What do you do when the one thing you’re fighting against is the only thing that will help get your word out to the public? There are hundreds of millions of blogs on the internet, it’s the latest crazy. Everyone wants to be a journalist, a writer, and have their opinions out in the cyber-world for others to hear, agree with and even fight against. But these blogs that about the media reform movement are new to me and probably to most people. Maybe it’s because I’ve never really been interested in the topic or maybe it’s that this topic, media reform, isn’t broadcasted on the news or on the radio or the magazines I read. It’s hard getting the word out about a topic when the thing you’re fighting is the media that can help get your word/passion out.

All these blogs have one thing in common; the media reform movement. The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), Project Censored, and the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) have set up websites as a place for them to voice their concerns about the biases and inaccurate reporting going on in the mass media. Founded in 1993, CMD’s mission is to “promote transparency and an informed debate by exposing corporate spin and government propaganda and by engaging the public in collaborative, fair and accurate reporting.” They do the dirt-work for the public, investigating to make sure that they uncover any corruption by the government as well as public corporations. While Project Censored’s objective is to train students in the fields of media research and First Amendment issues, all with the goal of protecting the free press rights of the country.

The main reason why so many blogs with the goal of highlighting the issue with the mass media have sprung up in the past few years is because of one startling fact; since 1983, the number of corporations controlling the vast majority of all news media in the US has dropped from 50 to FIVE in 2004. Today, the control of most of the media industry in the US lies in the hands of five huge corporations – Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS). – Media reform information center

It’s an obvious problem; power, especially the power to control the public opinion cannot lie in the hands of so few people. It’s a problem that is being brought to light by organizations such as the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), Project Censored, and the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA). However, I don’t think they are doing a very good job, because so few people actually know about this problem and never a fewer number of people care about it.