For an example of a modern Hearst, we need look only to the modern newsmedia: huge broadcasting corporations, often with diverse holdings throughout the field of telecommunications. In the last decade alone we have seen such absurdities as MSNBC and AOL-Time Warner. These are newsmedia which are so surreal in their spread -- with holdings in the Internet, computing, all manner of paper media, movies, God knows what else -- that the idea they are even capable of presenting an unbiased viewpoint beggars the imagination. They are conglomerates, corporations first and foremost, and they want to sell.
It is seldom asked what, exactly, they are selling. It's a good question, though, and  the answer? They sell everything money shouldn't be able to buy.
They sell popularity; the media can make a no-talent celebrity into a sensation because he or she is photogenic and bland enough to sell. They adore the raffish outsiders -- the Eminems, the Nirvanas, the new punk rock scene. Rebellion sells. An entire generation has grown up at the social teat of MTV, and now the only difference between the 'conformists' and the 'rebels' is often hair color...
They sell beliefs, prepackaged and ready to move en masse. The media complex brought us The Matrix, the media complex brought us Fight Club, the media complex brings us televangelists and soapbox prophets with hot guitars. They want to move philosophy, the most personal aspect of a man or woman's life, the same way a fast-food joint moves burgers: make it bland and inoffensive, with a hint of something deeper that makes you want more...
They sell politics, a new 21st-century politics. Dead is the progressive era - fighting specific, tangible evils is bad for business. Dead is the era of the Cross of Gold -- what was once the best forum for political discourse in America has become an arena for peppy soundbites that feel good and mean nothing. Dead is the era of Kennedy and Nixon -- making what you really stand for clear is political suicide. The new generation has been trained very well to see the political world as a world of resolve and righteousness, not a world of ideals and progress. Jefferson would declare the American Republic as it exists today a dead thing...
They sell talent; they don't need to find good singers, fresh artists, talented writers... it's cheaper and faster and easier to make who they already have good, fresh, talented. When you hold the culture of a nation like putty in your hands, who's to stop you from changing the rules by which art is judged? Those who object are the minority. The majority want to belong. The majority will spend $70 on a trucker hat, $150 on a t-shirt, $200 on shoes, to belong to the same group as someone famous. Good art is controversial, and genuine controversy is bad for business... the free market media have boiled the life out of art as one hard-boils an egg.
They sell values; watch just about any 'romantic comedy' and you'll see over and over a weak woman being saved by a knight in shining armor, a happy family in the epilogue, and love conquering all. Watch any high-school comedy and most of the humor will be about someone trying to act out of his or her social station; watch any high-school drama and all tragedy will be caused by refusal to fit in 'as you should'. Watch just about any black-white buddy-cop movie and you'll see the black man as a harmless buffoon who lacks civilization -- or the white man as a fop who needs to loosen up, but be wary of too much loosening. A recent study showed that nearly no mainstream films portrayed Arabic characters in a sympathetic or characterized light... they are fanatics or savages, and little in between. In the movies, hard work always wins out against negative circumstances, there are good guys and bad guys, and there's no permanent gray area. It's social conditioning, catering to our most basic and harmful pack-dog instincts for a healthy profit.
They sell the world to us; we don't know anyone from the Middle East or Europe, so we have to buy whatever they throw us about the rest of the world... massacres occur daily, and we don't hear about them. Starvation daily kills thousands, and we don't hear about it. We hear about anti-American terrorism, we hear about the victories of the democratic crusade against the fundamentalist heathens -- with bloodless hands we cut down a faceless enemy. We watch Shock and Awe on television as an early Forth of July, but no one tells us, but in passing, that it causes more casualties than the estimated damage of a nuclear attack... we are Right and they are Wrong, and the majority do not ask questions for fear of becoming an outsider.
They sell history; newspaper stories call into question protest against a failed war, refusal to celebrate a holiday consecrating a mass murderer, 'frivolous lawsuits' demonstrating clear corporate abuse. We are taught through movies that the Bad Guys were the ones who did terrible things, and we fought with great resolve and courage to get rid of the Bad Guys. There is no 'Saving Private Grossmann'. The human cost of the war on both sides is made to elude us, and we continue to stride forward vengeful and indignant to continue history's endless chain of violence.
They sell religion; seen the Passion of the Christ? They sell image; thin is sexy and thinner is sexier! They sell opinions, they sell wars, they sell society, they sell life and death and everything they can get into their grubby hands, polish up, and hock for a good profit.

They are able to do all of this because people, generally, want to be free of two things: stigma and intellectual burden. And since the rise of the media complex, there has been a great stigma in being unique. More and more, movies and television series are paeans to the common man in uncommon circumstances. Because belonging has become vital to social survival, so the masses have more and more shied away from any minority behavior, be it religious, political, ideological, or even preferential. The fear has lead to a society which is, if not homogenized, pasteurized -- all of the elements deemed unacceptably different are separated out of the mainstream and left to settle alone. Intellectual burden is another matter: people don't really want to think that much. They prefer to be told what to believe. While many will recoil at the very idea, it must be recognized that not every man is a philosopher, a thinker, or a questioner. People are happy with the answers they have been given by those they believe know more than them. Any figure, irrespective of knowledge, can pose itself as an authority on any subject using the right language. It's a throwback to our earliest days, when we had to know an authority figure -- our parents, elders, and so on -- when we saw them, not by the content of their words. 'Just like Mama used to make' is a stock advertising phrase, and it's more true than most people can imagine...

While subversive advertisement exists everywhere -- the majority of pop culture, for instance, musicians, sitcoms, movies, all working hard to shape us mind, body, and soul as corporate cash cows -- overt advertisement is even more unsettling. People are generally happy, but can be made unhappy by even the slightest stimulus. The goal of TV advertisement is to create a demand -- this is an industry that makes its income manufacturing a problem and selling a solution! A burger ad will show us delicious, mouth-watering food, make us hungry, and tell us we can buy the product now for the low price of 99 cents. Pharmaceutical companies, on whose research projects we often depend to cure the diseases of today and tomorrow, throw money into hocking Viagra and Prilosec. Advertising is a tremendous, multimillion-dollar industry, and it exists for the sole purpose of convincing the consumer he desperately needs something that he has no immediate use for. Advertising companies will gladly take money from a tobacco or alcohol company and produce a commercial aimed at the underaged. There is no morality or honor in what they do.

The newsmedia are at their most craven when, by reporting world events, they seek to influence them. As Hearst sparked on the Spanish-American war by exaggeration and misinformation, so the ratings-driven media propelled the United States into a war on sketchy premises. Shock and Awe was not a moral plan, but it was a fine plan for ratings. Explosions make for good 11:00 ratings, after all.
In elections, they make great headway for the candidate more friendly towards their massive corporate masters. These are men and women who have a direct cash incentive to see someone in power who will take lives in America and abroad through starvation, crime, and out-and-out war. The loss of American lives and property does not overly upset them, because they have a great bellicose spectacle to run.

We must, as a society, stop the monster. We must be taught to question, to recognize false authority. We must destroy the grasp of the media machine over our culture and nation before it destroys us. As it stands, they have little regulation save those against obscenity, little check save that of the most basic factuality, and little reverence save that to the Almighty Dollar. ABC, CNN, or Fox News? It's like Macintosh, Red Delicious, or Granny Smith. The taste's a bit different, but they're all the same beast. And until we, as a society, learn to block the harmful influence that today bedevils us, we must shut them out entirely. Kill your television, tear out the theater listings, and don't see a thing until you're sure you can watch the world with a critical, cynical eye. The drone of the manufactured crowd is booming louder and louder every day: if we do not act soon, we shall be left with no voice at all.