Blog 9 - Responding to McGowan's claim

I think McGowan’s claim that the “media machine has become a propaganda organ of the state,” is very factual and true. Although I think the sentence in the syllabus is different than what he was actually saying in the text. To me, after reading this, it seems that the media is a complete joke. And that the Free Press is not actually “Free”, but rather pre-ordained views on issues that have little relevance to us as concerned citizens of the U.S. McGowan hits right on the nose. There are so many different things that we do not even get to hear about, because it is the news station that chooses which stories are to be considered “newsworthy” as to promote their company and beat their competitors for the better story. If this is the case, then the news media or any medium cannot be trusted, to a certain extent. We as Americans are being brainwashed to think certain ways because television is such an important part of our lives (as sad as that may be). It is a deadly disease and authoritarian way of getting Americans to think a certain way. Are we really free? Everything and everyone is trying to bombard us with pre-planned thinking to get us to believe them. The saddest part of it all is that we are blinded to this illness. It is a cancerous cell that has gone undetected and slowly but effectively destroying our country. We might ask why there is so much violence going on. Could it be the fact that everyone is just confused by conflicting messages by political propaganda, promoting a certain partisan viewpoint? Anyways, I think it is a scary thought having corporate owned news stations, who are not giving us the whole story to a particular case or an entire important story not being aired at all.