Prensa Latina

WHO'S REPORTING WHAT AND WHY? With the advent of the Internet and other alternative media conduits, the citizenry has become more aware, if not more informed. Protests were once focused mainly on people and issues. But now the attention has turned to the media as well. Have we become arbitrarily cynical, or are the mass media and the politicians less capable of selling propaganda to the masses? Photo: Fred Askew

wenty-five years ago, writing about the US media, Noam Chomsky noted that a well-functioning propaganda system presents a picture of the world that has only the remotest relation to reality.

His assessment is even more accurate today as our major news sources have become indistinguishable except for differences in vocabulary and syntax, while what they uniformly report becomes narrower and narrower, the huge omissions and distortions, "spins" on reality giving us less and less true and necessary information on which to base our ideas and opinions.

Our media icons: the NY Times, The Washington Post, and such like class of information agencies, package "news" as popcorn. These co-opted corporate news outfits take kernels of reality, heat them with disinformation, and explode them to present us with air as news. A little salt added in the form of "exposés and scandals" gives flavor and helps us believe these are investigative reports from truth-tellers.

The truth kernel is sometimes there, but it takes more patience and time to find it than most people have, and besides, it isn´t as tasty; so instead we consume the air and think we are being nourished by a free press.

Moving to CNN, USA Today, and almost all of the other sources of our "news" in the United States, we are no longer even fed popcorn, but are handed a media Cracker Jacks box. [Cracker Jacks, for those too young to remember, is caramelized popcorn with a cheap, tiny plastic present hidden within, most often sold at baseball games.] The caramel coating -- the infotainment of astrology forecasts and movie idols´ doings [What did Brad and Angolina have for breakfast?] -- makes it even more difficult to remember there is supposed to be a corn kernel in there. Searching for the plastic present -- the "in" phrases, the latest style to imitate -- distracts us from even thinking about looking for it.

Europeans are fond of disparaging US-Americans as politically naïve and uninformed, but they get precious little more reality in their news; it is only that European media has less experience in popping corn.

To find the kernel, we need to access other sources of information with which to compare and contrast, analyze and criticize the product messages from corporate and political power fonts; in other words, to eat a well-balanced diet of information.

Fortunately varied foodstuffs exist as an alternative or nourishing supplement to our fast-food genetically modified media.

We have small portions of health-food presented by such progressives as Amy Goodman with Democracy Now and, to a lesser extent, some of the programming of public television.

With the Internet we can access honest spices and learn of demonstrations and protests around the world from IndyMedia, for example, and many other sources to find out what other people are really thinking and doing. Simply by hitting an indymedia link or googling alternative media we can find mind foods that suit us.

And for a wholesome, well-balanced diet of straight news, there are excellent fonts of non-genetically modified sustenance from foreign news agencies such as Prensa Latina. PL, the international news agency based in Cuba, has an anti-war, pro-people, pro-unified Latin America and pro-Cuba point of view of course, but if its truth in news you need and want, this is an excellent food source.

We may not be able to change our McDonald´s of the news, and we don´t need to do so-a little junk food can be fun after all- but our minds, like our bodies, need something better as a steady diet, and fortunately, it´s available.