While it may seem like a long time ago, it only was earlier this year that the American news media became transfixed to the events unfolding in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo, Egypt. The protests there -- numbering as high as one million or more -- were dubbed the "Arab Spring." Americans crowded around television sets and streaming videos on the web to cheer on Egyptians as they railed against the lack of democracy in their land.
As Michael Moore noted on last night's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, an Arab Spring of sorts is going on in the US right now and the same mainstream media -- who were so enthralled by the events in Cairo -- seem completely disinterested!
Even though the numbers of participants in the #occupywallstreet movement pale in comparison to those in Cairo (as I noted on September 18), many of the issues that have caused them to go out into the streets are quite similar. These issues concern growing poverty among the vast majority and the lack of democracy engendered by elite society.
This lack of coverage should help to dispel a persistent American myth. You know, the one that states that the American press is so liberal? If the mainstream media was as liberal as we've been told, they would be blanketing this growing protest from every possible angle imaginable. The very fact that the ongoing protest has hardly been mentioned at all my the mainstream news media should tell us that they don't want the reasons FOR the protest to be aired.
They don't want more Americans to question how major corporations -- the mainstream media is owned by them literally and figuratively -- are subverting democracy for their own Machiavellian ends.
As Michael Moore noted on last night's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, an Arab Spring of sorts is going on in the US right now and the same mainstream media -- who were so enthralled by the events in Cairo -- seem completely disinterested!
Even though the numbers of participants in the #occupywallstreet movement pale in comparison to those in Cairo (as I noted on September 18), many of the issues that have caused them to go out into the streets are quite similar. These issues concern growing poverty among the vast majority and the lack of democracy engendered by elite society.
This lack of coverage should help to dispel a persistent American myth. You know, the one that states that the American press is so liberal? If the mainstream media was as liberal as we've been told, they would be blanketing this growing protest from every possible angle imaginable. The very fact that the ongoing protest has hardly been mentioned at all my the mainstream news media should tell us that they don't want the reasons FOR the protest to be aired.
They don't want more Americans to question how major corporations -- the mainstream media is owned by them literally and figuratively -- are subverting democracy for their own Machiavellian ends.
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