March 5, 2004

Third Rail News

by Gregg Brazel

The Great American Media Blackout:

Sleeping through the Global Debate on GE Foods

To illustrate the vast critical black-out and complicity of our mainstream press, one example of many can be found in the world of genetically engineered foods.

ADM (self-described "Supermarket to the World") and Monsanto do not worry much about democracy as they unilaterally make profit-driven decisions that impact everyone, in ways they and we don't yet understand. 

As the food & chemical giants tamper with our food chain, many wonder what the effects will be.  Animal testing proved to be inhumane, costly, inconvenient, and time consuming.  Alas, a solution was found ~ cut out the middle man, control the media and oversight agencies, and take the testing straight to an unwitting human population.  What will the effects of GE foods be?  We'll find out as the results appear in our population.  Welcome to the Brave New World.

As major ad contributors to mainstream media, agri-giants are comfortable that their decisions - and the entire issue - will remain largely out of the public domain.  A complicit, for-profit media machine would be foolish to expose the truth.  Would CBS, for example, risk the ad revenues by exposing the potential dangers of GE foods?  Their silence on the matter speaks volumes.

Europe, and now Mendocino County, California, are not willing to allow their populations to be lab rats for agri-business.  Hopefully, the rest of us will follow their lead and require these companies to prove this practice to be safe, or not, before proceeding to dump these products into our food supply.  Needless to say, the testing agencies must be free from corporate control and influence (i.e. funding).

The media solution?  Support and rely on public television and radio (though also in the grip of commercialism), get real news from the Internet and independent papers, and boycott the consumer-driven propaganda of network/cable news (Jon Stewart's Daily Show contains more truth than all the other mainstream news sources combined).  Only a drop in ratings and revenues will convince the purveyors of information to act responsibly.