[]apologies if some of you have already received this - I don't see it coming out on my side, despite sending it out from a different address. Rui]
I am not a conspiracy theorist, but am beginning to believe that there are secret agendas behind some of the major media players on the planet. Not my best piece of writing, but it will do as a rant. Besides the profit motif, the second leg of their enterprises seems to rely on the "keep them stupid" thinking (not to mention that it is easier to feed media rubbish to unthinking couch potatoes) that do cause waves and are easier to sell to controllers (advertisers, politicians etc). Scandals and fanatic sensationalism there is aplenty, but where is the deep thought analysis? My fear is that now the big media corporations have now managed to reach even further, actually gaining control of how journalists and other media professionals are trained. Just this morning, Globo Television (better known for churning out novelas), had two presenters going on about Brazil slipping on the UNICEF rankings. The sheer stupidity of debating world rakings was bad enough (someone has to be first and someone last - even among geniuses, one has to be the least genius), but the worst was that they demonstrated ignorance of how rankings work. Brazilian children ARE BETTER OFF today, but because children in quite a few other countries are also better off (thanks for a few positive developments), naturally, Brazil is placed lower down in the rankings. In this case, perhaps instead of blaming poor journalists' understanding of logistics, we should question the UN's use of rankings and urge the introduction of -year-on-year variance scale. But that is here besides the point. So, while I am on Globo, I'll stay with it. Globo has aired that brain-whittling Big Brother six or seven times. In all this times, it has to my knowledge not bothered informing its sheep where the name Big Brother comes from. Participants are know as "Big Bothers" - "John was a Big Brother in 2004"; "Grazzi was the sexiest Big Brother" etc. I've been writing to Globo for years, never getting the joy of a response, whereas I get such responses from BBC, CNN, UN bodies etc. I've complained of a variety of issues, including their continuing media subservience to US sources or US agencies, without analysing it for the usual US bias. The Israeli attack on Lebanon this year was a case in point: Hizbollah aggressors/ Israeli victims, detailing the Israeli victims etc until - as the casualties grew - it emerged that there is a significant Brazilian-Lebanese community in Brazilian and in Lebanon (which Globo finally after decades of their own citizens referring to them as "Turks", finally decided to publicly explaining where the confusion had arisen) and suddenly the reporting became pro-Lebanon, anti-Israeli. Globo finds it convenient to not complicate information as education is not their job - anything that happens on the African continent is referred to as "Africa" - Lula will visit Portugal, France, Italy and "Africa". Patrons are now beginning to develop a palate for coffees from Colombia, Jamaica, Indonesia and "Africa". Earlier I was looking through this list at some of the postings I didn't open at the time they were posted and came across a post from Leigh Meyers, which I felt it unfortunate it did not get more reaction on this list. The subject line read "[PEN-L] Winning a small battle in the Loon war, the information war", posted on 09/09/2006. I've been curious enough to undertake a study of the relationship between subject line and degree of involvement, but havent so far, but I do believe Leigh's subject lines are counterproductive as they often allude to something instead of saying straight out, which is what I believe busy PEN-L members react to. Anyway, big media or big brother, it is all about big money and we should all be concerned. The fact that big ideas are now being discussed in the fringes as blogs and lists is the equivalent of fighting in the trenches while others dominate the battlefield. Rui ________________________________________________ Rui Correia Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Consultant 2 Cutten St, Horison, Roodepoort, Johannesburg, South Africa Tel/ Fax (+27-11) 766-4336 Cell (+27) (0) 83-368-1214 "Quando a verdade é substituída pelo silêncio, o silêncio é uma mentira" - Yevgeny Yevtushenko "When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie" - Yevgeny Yevtushenko
