The New American | June 26 2012
Actress Angelina Jolie speaks during a symposium on international law and justice at the Council on Foreign Relations, Oct. 17, 2008 in New York: AP Images
With the 2012 political season heating up, many people are calling for a ban on the SuperPacs created in the wake of the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision. A few on the left have even called for a constitutional amendment to ban corporations from making political advertisements, for fear that corporations have come to dominate elections in the United States.
In one sense, they are right. But it’s not the SuperPacs. The corporations that have been dominating the public debate for decades are the media empires. Right now, six corporations control most of the television, radio, and print publishing networks that Americans see on a daily basis. They drive the debate, and the social issues behind the debate.
- ABC/Disney runs ABC News, as well as a large number of local and cable television stations, theme parks, and movie studios.
- Time-Warner owns CNN, TNT, and a whole slew of cable television stations, Warner Brothers movie studios, plus a large number of magazines, including Time, People, and Sports Illustrated.
- NewsCorp runs Fox News, a radio news network, 20th Century Fox movie studios, and dozens of newspapers and book publishers.
- NBCUniversal is jointly owned by Comcast and General Electric, one of the largest corporations in America. It runs the NBC network, MSNBC, a large selection of cable channels, Universal theme parks, and digital media.
- Viacom owns a variety of cable television channels and Paramount Pictures movie studios.
- CBS Corporation owns CBS television network, Showtime, a number of cable television stations, and a radio news network.
Even the Left admits that a few corporations control the message most Americans see.
What they don’t talk about is that these few corporations are associated with each other in the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, and that they have a tight relationship with government and establishment corporate leadership across the country. The Council on Foreign Relations has only 4,500 members, out of a national population of some 300 million. But they boast some of the most powerful media personalities and media corporate leaders in the country.
Corporate Members include:
NewsCorp, Google, Time-Warner, Verizon, Microsoft, McGraw-Hill (publishing), General Electric (49 percent of NBC), and Thomson-Reuters (publishing/news network). And many of the personalities that Americans see every day on television are CFR members.
For example:
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