How Mainstream Media Censorship Works

A lot of people ask "How come the mainstream media never presents a critical analysis of the Federal Reserve and income tax? How come there never is a discussion of whether government is needed at all? How come free market alternatives to the State are never discussed?"

Duh! When you have all the money, you buy up all the newspapers and televisions!

For example, Sumner Redstone controls CBS and Viacom. Even though they are publicly traded corporations, Sumner Redstone has special supervoting shares that give him control of the company, even if all the publicly traded shares vote against him. Sumner Redstone acquired his control of Viacom in a leveraged buyout. In other words, a group of bankers picked Sumner Redstone to lead Viacom. If he stops following orders, or one of his heirs don't follow orders, then it's a simple matter to push down the stock's price and arrange for another leveraged buyout.

Most/all mainstream media businesses are publicly traded corporations. This makes them subject to control by the bankers.

There are other "market forces" at work (by "market forces", I mean "communism"). A news organization gets as a perk "access" to interviews with the President, members of Congress, and other bureaucrats. If they were overly critical, then they lose this perk. Most/all of a large media corporation's income comes from advertising. This provides an incentive for them to not rock the boat, because a controversy would make advertisers feel uncomfortable.

As the Mike Savage incident indicated, if a mainstream media personality doesn't toe the Statist party line, then advertisers will drop him and pressure the corporation to fire him. This censorship process is so efficient that it only rarely needs to be invoked. Normally, self-censorship is sufficient. You don't get promoted as a mainstream media personality unless you have the right sort of pro-State brainwashing. An actor/journalist/comedian must spend many years proving that he has the "right" pro-State brainwashing, before he is allowed to assume a high profile. Unwilling to risk his cushy job, the mainstream media personality can't rock the boat.

Most corporations are controlled by a handful of insiders. Most media corporations are incorporated with special supervoting shares, so that insiders control the business even though it's publicly traded. Once the vast majority of mainstream media personalities are pro-State trolls, it's very easy to perpetuate the brainwashing even though almost nobody is consciously aware of it. People adopt a culture of self-censorship. When someone slips up and stops conforming with the Statist party line, they are reprimanded. This process is so efficient that explicit censorship almost never occurs. If necessary, some pretext can be invented for firing the free thinker that is unrelated to the actual reason for his firing.