According to A.C. Nielsen Co. which studies consumer behavior, the average U.S. Citizen watches TV more than four hours a day. This means that we spend one sixth of the day listening, and in a passive way, to the opinions of some characters that are the spokesmen of those who decide what has to, and what has not, to be said in their channel. In other words,during a 65 year life, we would spent 9 years in front of the tube.

What’s more is that during the time we watch television, we acquire the vulgar manners that some characters use on those comfortable sofas in the TV sets. We pick up on the fictional use of counterproductive verbiage in a jungle where law is established by the one that shouts most.

But my intention is not to criticize  this sensationalist programs, nor the unbiased loose of this media, since they are in their right of expressing their points of views even when boorish. Plus, no one forces us to consume these programs.

However, until that point, aren’t we forced to watch those things that just a few people from the elites want us to consume?

Ten mega corporations, including the  OL/Times Warner, Gannett Company, and the Rupert Murdoch conglomerate, News Corporation, share and control the biggest information medias from the United States. This means that what seems like a plural market is no more than a group of ten huge companies, where there is not a place for any type of individual voice.

Logically, these companies move around benefiting their own interests. In this profitability race, there is a place for every type of trick from hiding what does not benefit them to informing to exhaustion about what it does. For instance, let’s take the Spanish actual media case.

One month ago, the miners in northern Spain have cut several of roads to protest against the subsidies that were promised at one point by the government, and are now denied. Despite its importance, there is a clear news blackout about this topic.

On the other hand, we have soccer. Spain has reached the Euro Cup final. This is something historic, but it still does not deserve the treatment it receives. For hours and hours, many different channels chew any information related to the Spanish national team, while, in the meantime, the risk premium and the unemployment rate go higher and higher. A perfect example of bread and circus. McCombs already said in his 1968 Agenda Setting theory that news media have the power to influence the salience of topics on the public agenda. In other words, media influences society and determines which stories are newsworthy for them. 

There is an abuse because these carriers of information, which are an authority in the information field, use their medias to promote and to seat the ideas that benefit them. As an example, we just have to take a look at the role that most televisions took disseminating Iraq war propaganda. The different TV companies from different countries presented the war quite diversely according to where they came from. For example, when things went very bad at for U.S. forces, a story originated from a reporter that supposedly found a huge chemical weapons production facility. This story was quickly spread through the U.S. media, and after was discovered it was not true.

Also consider the Jessica Lynch case, a clear example of manipulating a story.

Whether forced by higher spheres such as the government, or maybe due to the profitable war, these companies constantly repeat their ideas and thoughts every time we read a newspaper or watch TV.

Think about it. A passive and frivolous society, that does not know the intentions of those who manage the world. Scary, is it not?

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This weekend, five more journalists from a Rupert Murdoch-owned British tabloid were arrested as part of an ongoing bribery investigation. The arrested journalists, all from The Sun, were later released, and have yet to be charged with any crimes. (As The Wall Street Journal explained last summer, arrests in the U.K. are often made early in a criminal investigation, and may not be followed by any charges.)

But the arrests have once again raised questions about whether Murdoch’s News Corp. might face prosecution for bribery in the U.S. under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Reuters reported last week that U.S. authorities are “stepping up investigations” of the possible bribery by Murdoch employees. An FBI spokeswoman told ProPublica, “We’re aware of the allegations, and we’re looking into it.”

As we noted during the unfolding of the phone hacking scandal last summer, the U.S. has stepped up prosecutions of companies for bribery of foreign officials in recent years, and the fines for these violations can be steep. Companies can face prosecution by the Justice Department if they record bribery payments, or be pursued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fake record-keeping if they falsify documents to conceal the bribes.

The statute of limitations on civil Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges is five years. The New York Times reported Saturday that it was not clear when the allegations that led to the Sun arrests had taken place, “though some of those arrested have told friends that they were questioned on events from almost a decade ago.”

Those arrested at The Sun included the paper’s chief reporter, chief foreign correspondent and deputy editor. Last month, four other current and former Sun journalists were arrested, including the paper’s crime editor and former managing editor. A police officer, a member of the armed services and an employee of the Ministry of Defense were also arrested this weekend “on suspicion of corruption,” broadening the scope of the investigation from its original focus, bribery of police officers by journalists, to bribery of other officials as well.

The arrests were based on information provided by News Corp.’s Management and Standards Committee, an internal unit created in response to the phone hacking scandal last summer. The committee reports to Joel Klein, a former U.S. assistant attorney general and New York City schools chancellor who is now a News Corp. executive.

Our request for comment from News Corp. this morning was not immediately answered. In a January news release following the earlier arrests, the company reiterated its pledge “that unacceptable news gathering practices by individuals in the past would not be repeated.”

The latest arrests, which were accompanied by police searches of the journalists’ homes, have prompted anger and frustration from some British journalists, directed at the police and politicians driving the investigation, and at News Corp. executives. ”Once again, Rupert Murdoch is trying to pin the blame on individual journalists, hoping that a few scalps will salvage his corporate reputation,” the general secretary of the National Union of Journalists told The Guardian.

The Sun’s associate editor, Trevor Kavanagh, called the investigation “a witch-hunt” that threatens press freedom, and said there was “nothing disreputable” about paying for stories. ”Sometimes money changes hands,” Kavanagh wrote in The Sun. “This has been standard procedure as long as newspapers have existed, here and abroad.”

Last summer, the phone-hacking scandal resulted in the closure of another Murdoch-owned publication, the 168-year-old British tabloid News of the World, but News International executive Tom Mockridge reassured staff this weekend that Murdoch had pledged his “total commitment” to continuing to own and publish The Sun.

Murdoch will reportedly fly to London this week.

The publisher of the shuttered News of the World has paid hundreds of thousands of pounds in phone-hacking settlements to celebrities, celebrity employees and politicians, including at least $200,000 to actor Jude Law and at least $63,000 to Guy Pelly, a friend of Prince Harry’s, according to the Guardian.

by Lois Beckett, ProPublica, Feb. 13, 2012, 2:46 p.m.

Image Courtesy of   stocklight / Shutterstock.com

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The scandal shaking Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in the United Kingdom has crossed the waters to the United States.

U.S. authorities have acknowledged that they are looking into a report by Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper that reporters with The News of the World offered to pay a New York police officer for private phone records of some 9/11 victims.

U.S. officials explained that News Corp. employees sought to hack into the phones of victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and tried to bribe law enforcement officers for information.

The Daily Mirror‘s report, citing an unidentified source, has yet to be independently verified but has already fueled U.S. emotions over the phone hacking scandal that has taken over Britain and shaken Murdoch’s company.

Legal experts say the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) is ordinarily used against companies accused of paying bribes to win contracts. But some U.S. lawmakers and experts have suggested it could be used against News Corp. because News of the World journalists allegedly bribed police officers to gain information.

New York attorney, Normal Siegel, who represents Sept. 11 family members in three legal cases, sent letters on Monday, July 11 requesting meetings with FBI Director Robert Mueller, Attorney General Eric Holder and Representative John Conyers, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.

“We will, of course, provide an appropriate response to any letter from representatives from the 9/11 victims,” said Bill Carter of the FBI’s national press office.

It was not immediately clear whether federal prosecutors in Manhattan were involved in the case. They would most likely have jurisdiction over any prosecution because the 9/11 victims and their cellphones were in Manhattan when they died.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, democrat of West Virginia, was the first to issue a statement on the matter, saying on Tuesday, July 12 that the U.S. government should hold investigations to “ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated.”

He was also joined by the two New Jersey senators, Robert Menendez and Frank R. Lautenberg. Sen. Menendez asked the Justice Department to investigate the claims involving 9/11 victims, saying in his letter that the “large scope” of the hacking in Britain made it “imperative to investigate whether victims in the United States have been affected as well.”

It appears that it is not enough that U.S. citizens remain scarred over what took place on that dark day of Sept. 11 since, overseas, the tragic phone calls are being taken without permission, violating the rights of those families.

These revelations have critically damaged Murdoch’s British operations, leading to the withdrawal of his $12 billion offer for the country’s largest satellite television operator, British Sky Broadcasting. They have also created a major political test for British Prime Minister David Cameron over his close personal ties to News Corp. executives.

Media analyst, Claire Enders said News Corp. might be tempted to sell its other British newspapers — The Sun, The Times and the Sunday Times. This is an outcome favored by some analysts and shareholders.

“The politicians want the Murdoch’s role in public life to be greatly diminished,” Enders said. “They would like them to move to New York and stay there.”

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