Mic Check Radio

This week, in our continuing series taking a look at the multiple corporate and government influences on our media, we focus on public relations firms.  In this episode we focus on Ketchum, Qorvis and Edelman and their use of video news releases, sponsored content, native ads and paid content slipped right into news programs. [Click to Listen]

In part three of our Corporate Media series we take a look at the known influence of the CIA's Operation Mockingbird on the media.  The New York Times, Time/Life, CBS, NBC, Newsweek, the AP, UPI, Reuters and even all the way down the publishing hierarchy to The Louisville Courier-Journal were actively working with the CIA.  And just when you thought it was safe to say that all of this CIA influence of the corporate media was in the past, we have the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 (NDAA) which allows the use of government produced propaganda on the US public (previously made illegal-at least on paper-by the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948). [Click to Listen]

After World War II, the proven power of propaganda and the TV boom coincided so beautifully that the CIA invented an infrastructure to exploit/manipulate/guide/control the media, and by extension the public.  And Operation Mockingbird is just one program that we know about.  From just one of the government agencies who are spying on us all.  Who knows what craziness lurks in the classified archives at the National Clandestine Service offices? [Click to Listen]

In the first part of our Corporate Media series we take a quick look at the history of US government's attempts to regulate (and eventually deregulate)the media over the past hundred years.  What is the end result of all of these bills and laws that have been passed?  The greatest consolidation of corporate media power (also known as: propaganda) the world has ever seen. [Click to Listen]

Activist Cinema Episode 5 - Network (1976) is simply one of the best American films.  Period.  It also happens to be a satire that ended up being so prophetic that the satire has fallen away in the decades since it was initially produced.  Giant, international corporations buying up the TV airwaves and forcing the News Divisions to turn a profit by mixing in more and more entertainment at the expense of the public service they were originally intended to serve.  Sound familiar to anyone?  This film predicted media consolidation, the rise of reality TV, corrupt news broadcasts and so much more. [Click to Listen]

Five years after the 2008 economic collapse, how are we as a civilization doing?  All of those new Wall Street regulations are keeping the banks in line.  All of the 'too big to fail' banks have been broken up.  Community banking has taken over as the dominant banking system.  The nationwide moratorium on home foreclosures kept millions of families off the streets.  The SEC has been bringing law suits of major banks and investment firms by the hundreds to the court system.  Bankers have been going to jail in record numbers and paying appropriately high fines for their criminal acts.  It's exactly the world that President Hope and Change promised the voters five years ago. [Click to Listen]

It's been a long, long two years since OWS started up in the heart of the financial district in NYC. The ripple effects of this movement are too diverse and too numbered to fully catalog in a short podcast.  Instead we take a look at the arithmetic of protests attendance.  The corporate media dismisses protests and movements (like the coverage of OWS Year One) when they say the numbers are too low, but what do these numbers actually represent?  At what point are the assemble more powerful than the elected?  This episode ends with a reading of the Declaration of Occupation. [Click to Listen]

On this anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 attacks, we take a look at the events of the day from a different point of view.  The wonderful folks over at CrimethInc have a poster titled "The Shadow of the Past Holds the Future Hostage".  This is a "Story Time with Mic Check Radio" episode where we read this thought provoking analysis in full. [Click to Listen]

This is it!  The one and only episode where we take a look at the climate change "debate".  It's caused by humans, it's not caused by humans, it's getting hotter, it's getting colder...it's enough to keep us humans busy yelling at each other and not addressing the facts behind all of these accusations.  Earth's climate is changing and it doesn't care if humans survive.  So start prepping people!  The governments of the world aren't going to help. [Click to Listen]

Who says that drones have to fly thru the air?  Why not float?  Why not drive?  Why not walk?  Or better yet run!  Or how about little tiny drones the size of a cricket?  Maybe we could put a small camera and microphone on one?  Maybe put some weapons on another?  The possibilities are nearly endless...what will this police state look like in 10 years? [Click to Listen]

Activist Cinema Episode 4 - How to Survive a Plague (2012) is a time capsule documentary that uses archival footage and interviews to take the viewer back to the late 1980's and early 1990's when ACT UP took to the streets (including Wall Street) to protest the insanely slow response from the Government, pharmaceutical companies and the medical community to the AIDS/HIV epidemic. [Click to Listen]

Way back in 1987 a government funded study, Perception of Risk, was published in the journal Science.  While the study is officially a look at how the general public evaluates and perceives risk, it also reads as a manual for the manipulation of the public's fear and the unrealistic desire to live in a "zero risk society". [Click to Listen]

Mickey Z has written a fine column over at World News Trust in which he asks “With the stakes never higher than they are now, why aren't activists ramping up the pressure and looking beyond tactics that are allowed by those in power?”.  He answers that question with 5 fantastic observations about protests in the United States. [Click to Listen]

In this episode we take a look at FEMEN, a feminist activist group that started in Kiev, Ukraine and has made headlines throughout the world. [Click to Listen]

1 Skyscraper. 6 Women. No permission.  What would you do to save the Arctic? [Click to Listen]

Activist Cinema Episode 3 - The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (2009) is a documentary told in Mr. Ellsberg's own words that traces the events leading up to and after the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. [Click to Listen]

In part 2 (of 2), we take a look at activist groups that have a "left-wing" political ideology.  In doing so we also take a look at how the corporate media portrays the political ideology of activist groups in the so called "wings" and what catalyzing events push those groups to take direct action (both violent and non-violent) against their declared enemies. [Click to Listen]

In part 1 (of 2), we take a look at activist groups that have a "right-wing" political ideology.  In doing so we also take a look at how the corporate media portrays the political ideology of activist groups in the so called "wings" and what catalyzing events push those groups to take direct action (both violent and non-violent) against their declared enemies. [Click to Listen]

As this years G8 (Gang of 8) meeting takes place in Northern Ireland, we take a look at the Stop G8 network and the Carnival Against Capitalism that has been organized in London's West End. [Click to Listen]

In a follow up the the What is Terrorism? episode from two weeks ago, we take a look at several cases where the FBI found, coached, armed and then arrested "terrorists".  [Click to Listen]