February 2002 Archives (2 posts)

Where do you get your news?

Where do you get your news? If you’re in the U.S., chances are that you get your news, movies, books and CDs from one of six corporations. The Media Reform Information Centre indicates that now a handful of companies control most of the media in the U.S.

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called “alarmist” for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly. In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote “in the U.S., fewer than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass media” — controlling almost all of America’s newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. He predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies. This was greeted with skepticism at the time.

Six corporations own and control most of the mass media in U.S. 1 in 4 people in the States connect to the Internet via AOL Time-Warner, the largest media corporation in the world. Are you’re tired of hearing about how many Americans have won medals at the Winter Olympics? Have you heard reports recently on NBC that the number of Afghan civillians that have perished U.S. bombs now equals the number of people that died on 9/11?

These are sensitive subjects and I don’t mean to be bashing our neighbours to the south but if want news, real news, don’t watch CNN or read the national newspaper. Turn to your web browser link to some of the international news outlets around the world to get the big picture.

Posted in News at 9:11 PM | Comments (0)

American Pie 2

I watched American Pie 2 last night. It ticked me off that Blockbuster is carrying the fullscreen version on DVD. I didn’t see anything on the DVD case to indicate that I was renting the fullscreen version and couldn’t be bothered driving back to get a widescreen version (if they carry one). The movie is just as funny as the first one and end up laughing all the way through. Stiffler rocks!

I also rented The Ghost and the Darkness (1996). Yeah, I know. Talk about change of pace. I’ve seen everything that’s recent so I usually walk up and down the rental aisles for 20 minutes trying to find something decent that I somehow missed. The Ghost and the Darkness is a good movie that IMDB describes as:

Set in 1898, this movie is based on the true story of two lions in Africa that killed 130 people over a nine month period, while a bridge engineer (Val Kilmer) and an experienced old hunter (Michael Douglas) tried to kill them.

Thanks to Mr. Kerr, I now have a DVD of The Rock. He picked up the Criterion Edition 2-disc set last week and gave me his ‘inferior’ copy. Maybe I’ll watch that tonight.

Posted in DVD Reviews at 8:58 PM | Comments (0)