The Illusion: life is like a game of chess

I would like to think that my thoughts are my own, that my actions are my own and that my decisions are my own. Most would probably agree with me. But, I find it harder to draw the line between what is really mine and what I have been programmed to believe is mine. As I look around, there are subliminal messages everywhere I go, some more obvious than others. A billboard for McDonald’s on the freeway may catch my eye just long enough for me to respond by all of the sudden wanting a juicy burger. A commercial for a new, must-try mouthwash may not come as immediate, but next time I’m in the hygiene aisle I may grab that mouthwash instinctively. Even though I thought it was my idea to want the burger and the mouthwash, really my interest in them is because of a prearranged plan. Corporations are deciding what I want, and within them are a small group of people calling the shots. Not only does that group facilitate the means to manipulate us through the media, but they also gain power as they collect our money. We buy their items and we buy their ideas, jumping on the bandwagon of hot-button topics that the media shoves in our faces from week to week. Ideals and ideas are being bought and sold; do this, don’t do that, this person is bad, this person is good, that is wrong, this is right. Even when we think we are free to decide on our own, most likely our decisions are based on what we’ve been told. Behind all of it are people with money and power. And we are giving it to them without blinking an eye. As the rich are getting richer they are taking control, deciding what the layman sees, hears, buys and thinks. Life is like a game of chess, and the have-nots are playing the part of the pawns.
Let’s put this in perspective with some numbers.

According to Forbes’ 2015 list of the world’s billionaires there are 1,826 of them, with a combined wealth of over $7 trillion (Le). Of the billionaires, 526 of them are in the U.S., making them the largest group of billionaires of any country in the world (Le). If we include America’s less rich but still rich citizens, about 1% have assets totaling $5 million or more (Morath). That 1% are the people making the biggest moves in the game. Based off Forbes’ data, the richest 20% of the world’s population holds 94.5% of the world’s money (Phillips). This means that the rest of the world shares just over 5% of the cash that the upper crust has not captured in their web of wealth.

It’s been about two centuries since John Jacob Astor became the world’s first multimillionaire, and just under a century since the world saw its first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller. Astor and Rockefeller changed the meaning of wealth, showing that money was plentiful if you could figure a way to make it. They changed how the economy works by expanding their business ventures into multiple avenues and gaining power both politically and socially. Today, this process has not changed much. Except now there are more people in the pool of elite, with far more money, and they are monopolizing companies that influence the masses. The days of domination may have come a bit easier to Astor and Rockefeller because society in general was far less educated and literate than today. It may have been easier for them to make business decisions behind closed doors that wouldn’t have the transparency of today because of the Internet and mass media.

Today it seems that people have access to far more information than ever before. Many of us have dozens of channels on television to choose from, and have access to countless printed and digital news sources. What we may not realize is that our daily dose of information comes primarily from a small group of executives controlling most of them. The truth is, despite all of our choices, the media has never been more consolidated than it is today. Back in the ‘80s there were 50 media companies (Frugal Dad). Today, roughly 90% of the news and entertainment provided to our nation comes from six corporate giants referred to as “the big six” (Frugal Dad). Although television channels may have the same name as they did in the ‘80s, that’s only part of the illusion. Most of them have been through merging and acquisitions, consolidating them into a group controlled by 232 executives in the big six (Frugal Dad). This is hardly what I think our forefathers intended when they included in the First Amendment that there shall be freedom of the press. How free is a press that only tells people what 232 people deem important for them to hear? To put this in perspective, of the 318.9 million people in the nation during the 2014 census, those 232 executives make up less than a millionth of a percent of the population. Their values, perceptions, beliefs and interests are reflected in everything they choose to air or publish, essentially cultivating the minds of the masses.

With that in mind, consider how the web of ownership weaves through some of the biggest news corporations in the world. When broken down we start to see an oligopoly, with the big six cross-owning television, film, newspapers, magazines and digital news. Time Warner, part of the big six, includes assets such as HBO, TNT, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, CNN and Cinemax. Also part of the big six is Disney owning ABC, Marvel Entertainment, Pixar, History Channel, A&E and ESPN. Comcast is a new-comer to the group, and not only has over 22 million Internet subscribers, but they also own NBC, E!, Bravo, USA Network, SyFy, and Telemundo. CBS also finds itself in the big six with Showtime, The Smithsonian Channel, NFL.com, and publishing giant Simon & Schuster. Viacom joins the big six owning Paramount, MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, Comedy Central, Spike, CMT and BET. And the last of the big six, but certainly not least, is News-Corp with assets such as FOX, 20th Century FOX, and among their hundreds of news outlets worldwide are The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Time Magazine. All of this matters because these six companies and their many subsidiaries control all but 10% of what we see on television, read in the news, watch in movies and view online. Whether we like it or not, they have the power to manipulate us. If they don’t want us to know something then one of the 232 puppeteers can pull some strings, and poof, the information is gone from the public’s potential reach.

The big six aren’t the only ones making the decisions. Of the people that hold most of the world’s money, a large portion of them make their fortunes in pharmaceuticals, healthcare and financial businesses. Those businesses are synonymous with the big six because they rely on the media to advertise their products and ideals, and the media relies on them for advertising money to sustain their empires. For example, the Federal Reserve has had rumors surrounding its power for decades. Although its name implies it’s a government branch, it’s actually privately owned and controlled primarily by seven people (Federal Reserve Education). The Federal Reserve is responsible for domestic and international financial conditions including banking laws, monetary policy and e-commerce. The seven people in charge hold the majority vote on how the nation will respond in financial situations. Considering that, it makes sense why rumors of their control isn’t discussed in most mainstream media. If the media relies on advertisers and the advertisers rely on access to money, surely it wouldn’t be the right business move to tell the truth about the Reserve’s extremely unproportionate authority. Another example comes in the concept of preventative healthcare. As it is now, healthcare is designed for people after they are sick. One might think the media would hammer-home the importance of taking care of ourselves before the point of needing medical assistance, but healthcare is a booming business that makes money off of the unhealthy. If those companies need people sick in order to continue to make money, surely the media won’t suggest that society is becoming overloaded with drugs. Instead, they will saturate their advertising pages and commercials with the many drugs that can help with just about any problem. The drugs may cause side effects of more pain or symptoms, but hey, they have another drug or procedure for that in which to sell.

All of this is not to say that we don’t need media. I would be going against my own declared major of journalism if I was to say that. What I am saying is the amount of control put into the hands of a very small portion of society with a very big bank account is alarming. Let’s use Comcast as an example. In the last few years we’ve heard a lot about net neutrality, the concept of uncensored access to all content regardless of the source. The idea behind net neutrality is to allow free thought and free “surfing” of those thoughts with the information at our fingertips. Comcast holds the top spot for number of customers by almost twice as many as the second leading provider, Time Warner (Video Nuze IQ). We would be naive to think that, as the provider, they don’t have the ability to sway the information we see. For example, people that remember the tragic events of 9/11 may recall real-time video footage being posted on the Internet as events unfolded. I recall seeing such videos that were there one minute and gone the next. Someone decided to pull the plug on them, the reasons debatable, but the point is that it happened and is happening all the time.

Keeping in mind the concept of net neutrality, we must consider what the algorithms programmed into our computers are doing to sift the information a search engine presents us. Last year Google held the #1 spot in the market with almost 68% of all searches going through them (comScore, Inc.). Bing came in a far second with under 19% (comScore, Inc.). Some may say that the Internet is the First Amendment coming to life, however, every time we use a search engine there are about 60 things a computer analyzes to tailor the search to you. It considers location, interests based on past searches, and demographics. It essentially filters an information bubble for you to choose from subjects in which your computer, or the search engine, has chosen for you. While this may seem helpful to get to the things you want to see, how about all the things that the algorithm has decided not to show you? If you generally click on more liberal links, for example, then your computer will provide you more and more liberal links to further convince you of your beliefs. But what about the opposing side? Is it not important that you also have a chance to see the other side of the argument to cultivate a more well-rounded and informed point of view? Should it be left to the people at Google to decide what you will or will not see based off their calculations? These are questions we should consider when selecting links a search engine provides, potentially stopping our search before it has reached its greatest impact on our opinions. Food for thought: Larry Page, founder of Google, was #17 on Forbes’ 2014 list of the world’s billionaires and #9 on their most powerful people list. He is without a doubt one of the public’s puppeteers.

With all this being said, I’m not advocating to not use the Internet or read the news, because that would be unrealistic in the world we live in today. I am saying, however, that we consider where news is coming from, who is choosing it, and what affiliation they have. Instead of assuming that because it was on FOX or CNN, for example, consider that both of those entities are well documented as conservative in their beliefs, or shall we say that their executives are conservative in their beliefs. ABC or NBC, for example, are more liberal. But as we already discussed, all of these companies are owned by players in the big six. Getting news from only these outlets or from outlets like them according to the algorithms in our computers, is not giving us the big picture. We are, in actuality, getting information that has been selected for us. For this reason, people should consider getting news from a variety of places over multiple platforms to try and reach a place less biased than the realm of reality the big six has spawned. If we better educate ourselves on the many different sides to every story, it will hopefully uncover some truth that gives us a better perspective of how the world really works, not just how society’s elite wants us to think it does.

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Citations

“April 2014 U.S. Search Engine Rankings.” comScore, Inc. (2014). Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

Frugal Dad. “Media Consolidation: The Illusion of Choice.” Chart. Business Insider [New York], 2012. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

Le, Vanna. “The World’s Largest Media Companies 2015.” Forbes. Forbes.com, LLC.22 May 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

Morath, Eric. “Where are America’s Millionaires?” Wall Street Journal [New York]. Dow Jones & Company, 21 Jan. 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

Phillips, Michael M. “Very Rich Get Very Richer: Wealthiest 20% Hold 94.5% of World’s Money.” Wall Street Journal [New York]. Dow Jones & Company, 19 Jan. 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

“The Structure and Functions of the Federal Reserve System.” Federal Reserve Education.  Federal Reserve. 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

“Top U.S. Broadband ISPs Add Another 2.6 Million Subscribers in 2013.” Video Nuze IQ (2014). Broadband Directions. LLC. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.