Tuesday, September 4, 2018
The monopolistic firewall against democratic communication in Latin America and the Caribbean
WHOEVER CONTROLS THE MEDIA CONTROLS THE MIND. J. Morrison...
by Javier Tolcachier...We have become media beings, we live online, we are connected, we are between media and very little of what we do has nothing to do with them. In addition, communication has exceeded the limits of time and space today. The digital world of communication is supplanting the old analog world. Everything is immediate and close. The bits of information are introduced to us by all pores. 55% of people on the planet already have access to the Internet. The short time in which the Internet seemed to be what it promised, a fabulous network of knowledge exchange, was over. Today through the network more and more trash travels. It could not be otherwise.
Knowledge is power and power does not want to be shared, that is why it prevents knowledge from being democratized. The control of knowledge is a historical fact. The ancient role of traditions, kings and priests today has been assumed by corporations. Speaking only about the western world, now in decline but still conditioning, the five major Internet corporations Alphabet-Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, but also the producers of Disney content, Time Warner, Comcastlas proprietary communication systems AT & T , Verizon, to name just a few, make up a lot of almost everything you see - and of course, what you should not see. These corporations in turn are controlled by investment funds. Always at the forefront are institutional investors Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors, handling trillions of dollars, the same as the main shareholders of 90% of the companies listed in the SP500 index.
That is, the monopolies are monopolized and the control of the largest communication companies on the planet, are under the control of financial capital through the voting power granted by the stock packages of a few investment funds, whose only logic is the expansion of bussiness.The profit of the investors comes through dividends and the value of the shares, which in turn depend on the profits of all these companies. The vast majority of these profits and the market value depend on the number of users. Therefore, the logic of companies is to snatch users from the competition, until it is liquidated. The one of the investors is to invest proportionally in all, to never lose. The logic of the monopoly is that of the business and the logic of the business, it is the monopoly.
This reveals as complete the lie of "free competition", the "free market" or "free trade", hoaxes, fictions on which all the capitalist ideology is based, which in reality, in its very foundation, is absolutely monopolistic
In what we usually call Nuestra America - which has never been and is not yet "our" - the media groups, those that control most of the media and public opinion are more provincial, although the tendency of an increase is already discernible of foreign participation. In many of them, Clarín, Globo, Cisneros, Santo Domingo-Valorem, González or Telmex, the majority shareholding is family. The few exceptions are Televisa (61% controlled by investment funds and banks) Grupo Prisa (majority shareholder of a US vulture fund, although previously with majority ownership of the Polanco family) or Telefónica (controlled by banks and investment funds). Although all of them disseminate and use the same channels and contents.
That is the order to subvert. That is the firewall, the wall to be demolished so that communication is democratic, made by all and for all.
They have the licenses, the technology, the channels, the laws, the rogue journalists, the invented but deadly money of the bank. They have the censorship, the news and the false stories, they have the algorithms, the propaganda and the confusion. They are the owners of the lie, but also the owners of the truth, as we said, so as not to lose.
And we? How are we going to tear down the wall?
First of all, we have to have clear three possible actions against the acid deluge of the manipulation and control of the monopoly.
1. Consumption. We read, watch, listen, consume information is - to a greater or lesser extent - the main action we perform daily. But where we do it is something else. The monopoly wants us to do it in its millions of branches. We can choose to consume in other places. The more "our" means we consume, the less we consume theirs. It is clear that this has its limits, but it is essential to vary the proportion, to make the emptiness of stupidity, to screw the business in part, denying our collaboration.
Another aspect of consumption to talk about is what we watch, read, listen to and for what?
The monopoly offers to entertain us, although the repetition makes it boring. We all know that the rich protagonist will fall in love with the servant and that some illegitimate child will appear, some wicked witch and so on. Everything foreseeable. In terms of information, it deals with what the payers want. That's why it's disinformation. Even criticism of their agendas is welcomed by them because it installs them.
Finally, how do we look? You have to look at the intention, that is the primary and not the content, which is secondary. Exercising a careful look at what is seen or heard, see who says it and what it says, is a good antibody against manipulation.
Today the slogan is "the means of monopoly are the opium of the people", Nothing with them! The best answer is the emptiness to their themes and ways of posing them. You have to consume your own agendas. And these, what are they? Human rights: peace, the distribution of well-being, freedom, gender equity, diversity, to mention only the main ones.
2. Reproduction: This is the second action on a quantitative scale. We not only consume data, we reproduce it. We share postings, we resend photographs and videos, we talk about certain things. And in this reproduction we can also be collaborators of the monopolistic or revolutionary regime of the causes of democratization. Retransmitting agendas and own sources makes the difference.
3. Production: This is the most beautiful, the most creative part, which allows old barriers between intellectual and manual work to disappear, which makes the artist's dream come true in each one. Content production makes us in actors, subjects, protagonists of the revolution. The new generations, born in the middle of the vortex of communication technology, have their instruments as a permanent prosthesis.
However, the system positively weighs the atomization, the individual, isolated and occasional production, that does not hurt him and adds data and minutes to his coffers. To overcome the firewall, we need production organized, articulated, permanent and in a revolutionary direction.
We need to create and strengthen radios, television stations, news agencies, websites and all kinds of our media, which constitute a real alternative to monopoly.
For that to be possible, we need powerful communication alliances, articulations that can be produced collaboratively and massively share and disseminate content.
The concept is unity in diversity, so that each medium influences its area of real impact and in turn, we can reach large numbers.
We need to serve and use the political change that bets to prohibit the concentration of media and help open the door to a new system, we need the militants of change to use our means, in an alliance of reciprocity.
Our endogenesis is criticized, of speaking for ours, for the convinced, but we do not even reach them as the others arrive.
Talking about what we want is not endogenous if we strengthen its reach and are increasingly "ours for whom we speak". For this, it is necessary: quantity, quality, massive protagonism of young people (that assures styles and narratives according to the time), horizontal and democratic organization, production in all media, perfecting technique, acting in a worldwide network, training. In short, subvert the idea that voracious capitalism, that mortal competition are the only possibility of life in common for the human species and propose and live with the greatest coherence possible the alternatives we propose.
We need to clarify and reach 99% oppressed by a system of sick domination, which prioritizes money as the motor and goal of life. Advance on the lie and demand a new mode of existence. Creating a new world is feasible based on the utopia that is installed as an image and possibility in the consciousness of millions of people, above all, of young people. We have to contribute to this, to create and spread utopia as the only way out of this decadent civilization of buying and selling.
Our means and its growing articulation are the means to do so.
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