Bill O’Reilly, Brian Williams & The Corporate Media Phantasmagoria

by Eric Draitser, via RT.com : 

The scandals that have erupted around the exposure of Bill O’Reilly and Brian Williams as having lied about their wartime experiences provide us with a glimpse into the nature of corporate media.

These revelations demonstrate just how easily “facts” and narratives can be manufactured to serve a personal and, more importantly, political agenda.

Let’s begin with the obvious: it’s selfishly satisfying to see two of America’s leading corporate media mouthpieces exposed as liars. Undoubtedly, there are many (myself included) who smile with delight at seeing the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Brian Williams squirming under the spotlight of media scrutiny.

O’Reilly in particular has made a career of spewing venom at all the “pinheads” and “liberal liars” who he accuses of “deceiving America” with their “secular progressive” agenda, or some such nonsense. So, one can’t help but revel in seeing him have to defend his obvious lies – they are lies, not exaggerations or memory lapses – on national TV and in the press.It is akin to seeing a crooked cop go to jail for corruption, or a parasitical bank executive imprisoned for money laundering.

But of course, those of us who are interested in global issues, and how propaganda works in the service of the political and geopolitical agenda of powerful actors, have much more to take from these stories than simply the vicarious pleasure we get from watching these debacles. Rather, it is our responsibility to examine the larger significance of these stories. Specifically, what do O’Reilly’s and Williams’ humiliations tell us about the nature of media in America? And how do we translate that understanding into a broader structural critique of the propaganda matrix that passes for “news media” today?

The truth in the lies of liars

The media has been in a feeding frenzy in recent weeks, with seemingly every columnist, political analyst, and blogger chiming in with their opinion about the O’Reilly and Williams stories. But what is conspicuously missing from nearly all of these analyses is the fact that these two scandals reveal the extent to which the corporate media is one big spin factory, producing news and opinion that only provides the mere illusion of disagreement and conflict. It is now an inescapable reality that the news itself is manufactured to fit the agenda of the ruling establishment.

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