Media and Democracy; an evening with Alternative Radio's David Barsamian
6 pm, Friday May 15th, 2015, at the SUB Upper Lounge in the Student Union Building, University of Victoria, 3800 Finnerty Rd Victoria, BC V8P 5C2; Sliding Scale $5-10 donation.
Talk description: The media like to present themselves as objective, balanced and free from any bias or agenda. Reality suggests something quite different. The media function as weapons of mass distraction. Much of what passes as news is sometimes subtle, sometimes crude propaganda. The media are large conglomerates that serve to... mobilize support for the special interests that dominate state and corporate power. In democratic societies populations are not controlled by force. Rather, they are subject to more refined forms of ideological manipulation. Emotionally potent oversimplifications and necessary illusions are created and repeated endlessly. Embedded ideas, such as Washington's right to intervene anywhere in the world, go unexamined and unchallenged. Consent is manufactured. The public, reduced to being spectators, is marginalized. Democracy, such as it is, is eviscerated.
Bio: One of North America’s most tireless and wide-ranging investigative journalists, David Barsamian has altered the independent media landscape, both with his weekly radio show Alternative Radio (www.alternativeradio.org)—now in its 29th year—and with his books, written with Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy and Edward Said. The Institute for Alternative Journalism named him one of its “Top Ten Media Heroes.” He is the winner of the ACLU's 2003 Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism.
regards, Margo
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