HERE (ME) - Imagine if Goebbels
was alive and was controlling today's media. Would he be modest, or would
be brag about his powermonering as "[taking] great
vision and courage,''and
"The most daring yet" and "an aggressive bet" on "the wave of the future"?
Would he quote himself calling it "the next revolution" and go on
to describe his depotism as "a major turning point in the media industry,
providing irrevocable proof of the massive...value" that he can offer?
Nazis were infamous for their
bragging, but I'm not sure if he'd get that carried away.
Would he justify his monopolizing
by saying that competing media companies are "a natural fit"?
Well, all of the quotes I've
used here are from a news site called "My AOL.COM" describing the purchasing
of Time-Warner by - guess who - AOL!
One thing Geobbels never
thought of was to include four or five small paragraphs
from opponents to give the
illusion of balance. (Interestingly, articles from CNET and Reuters
at the same site had no mention of the existence of customers. Yahoo was
brave enough to include some links on antitrust issues and AOL critiques.
)
He wasn't that much of an evil genius - but then, he didn't have $350,000,000,000 (according to CNET news) worth of propaganda power to corrupt him! He didn't own Netscape, (Which includes the default page for unknown masses of internet users - it is within the 27 most visited sites on the web and is linked to from over 500,000 sites) AOL and its "compeditor" Compuserve, as well as CNN, Sports illustrated, People, TNT, Warner Bros. and HBO - to see how many "competing" industries that are owned by Time-Warner Alone click Here
Their own press release gives these threatening statistics:
20,000,000 million AOL members
2,200,000 CompuServe members
3,400,000 international
members
50,000,000 AIM users
50,000,000 ICQ registrants
20,000,000 Netcenter registrants
1,400,000 simultaneous online
users
1,000,000,000 with access
to a CNN service
35,000,000 HBO U.S. subscribers
120,000,000 magazine readers
13,000,000 cable subscribers
Astounding - Goebells has been dead for 55 years yet I can still hear him drooling.
`It makes a lot of sense" Says another article from at my AOL.com, which is titled "Record Nasdaq Gain; Dow Has Record" but is just more self-congradulation about the "the biggest story" which is their own "bold move" which is described as a "quest".
Some quest - this dansel in distress would rather be saved from monopoly and brainwashing, not conquered by them.
Oh, and did I mention the whole mess is tax-free? [Cnet again]
Hey, it's not all bad - AOL
is into philanthropy - annually they give out "Five to ten grants...in
values ranging from $25,000 - $100,000" mainly for connecting rural folks
to the internet - (no self interest there!). So if they give the maximum
possible of one million dollars, that means they're donating one penny
($0.01) for every $3,500 they own! How generous!
Another Article, at ZNET