Unlimited power?

The Global Spin. The corporate assault on environmentalism by Sharon Beder inspires...

It almost forces you to start thinking, to question, to investigate...

On very first page we read David Edwards's comment on, as he claims, 'real environmental crisis' - 'the one that consists not of decaying eco system, ozon depletion and global warming, but of the corporate domination of what we are able to hear, see, know and think' (Beder, 2002). Edwards, a co-editor of Media Lens - Correcting for the Distorted Vision of the Corporate Media (www.medailens.org), dares to claim as follows: 'The crisis lies in the fact that modern mass media system is not a medium for the 'free' discussion of ideas and viewpoints, but is deeply embedded in, and depend on, the wider corporate status quo, and on the related capacity of corporate communications and economic power to boosts facts, ideas and political choices that are conducive to profit maximization and stifle those that are not (ibid).

So what does it really mean? Are we only mindless toys that take a part in global play where rules are dictated by those more powerful? Are big corporations responsible for amplitude manipulation? Do they have enough power to influence every-day media? Can they twiddle the information that is forwarded to us by newspapers, TV, radio etc. and which shapes our public, social, political, environmental awareness? And finally do we have enough evidence to talk about ‘global spin’? Or is that rather one more fascinating story created by conspiracy theories’ supporters that tend to read between lines to trace deception, lies, plots in contemporary world? Are we in a process of constant ‘brainwashing’? And who is ‘brainwashing’?