News Media “Bad Barrels” And the Parable of the Frog in Boiling Water

Professor Phillip Zimbardo, who conducted the Stanford Prison experiment in his younger days and has since written about what he’s learned, The Lucifer Effect – Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, coined the phrase “bad barrel.” A bad barrel is an authoritarian system, in which the participants are coerced into doing bad things – think Abu Ghraib in Iraq. This reality was also demonstrated by the Milgram Obedience Study.

In an email exchange with professor Zimbardo, I suggested a national bad barrel and he agreed to the concept. That bad barrel is what has led to the growing support of DJT. It’s composed of individuals chosing to surround themselves with just two news sources: Fox News, which is the only ‘news’ source that is part of basic cable – no extra fees like for CNN or MSNBC, and the ubiquitous Hate Radio.

To expand on that, I suggest that most who oppose DJT are in our own, not as bad, bad barrel. It’s consists of NPR, PBS, CNN and MSNBC, that we have to pay extra for, and some of the ‘left’-leaning print media that is mostly controlled by right-wing executives. I’ve gradually stepped outside of that bad barrel to see what’s coming.

For decades, I was a loyal, annual contributor/supporter, of NPR, almost $6,000 over the decades. This lasted until 2013 when I finally tired of the conservative worldview creeping into their national and local programs. I complained often, to no avail. That recognition of the red-shift came from the books and other news sources which are not funded in any way by corporate donors/influencers.

What really cinched my divorce from NPR was when they changed how they raised funds. What I noticed first was a drop in their fund-raising goals. This contrasted to previous decades of continuously increasing fund-raising goals associated with increasing numbers of listeners. To replace the reduced income from local listeners, they contracted with a third-party to reach out to large donors. Large/corporate/Koch donors who will probably want to influence programming in a way that would increase the red shift.

This national, slow, move to the right (as the right becomes more extreme and draws the rest of the country with it – and this includes profit-centric media that must grow its annual revenue to maximize the wealth of its right-wing authoritarian CEOs) reminds me of the parable about the frog in boiling water. If you change one’s environment slowly enough, it will be too late to reverse the end of the good that was. Until that frog gets out of the slowly warming water, it can’t see what’s coming.

And that’s why I prefer nonprofit left/progressive media. It gets me out of the fast/slow, red-shifting, media bad barrels.

I remember back before Reagan’s FCC killed the Fairness Doctrine when the news was non-profit and legally required to support the common good. The situation worsened in 1996 when Clinton and Gingrich passed a new telecommunications law that enabled the new right-wing authoritarian and left-leaning, but red-shifting, bad barrels.

Yes, the less bad, bad barrel of the left-leaning profit-centric media provides useful information. However the nonprofit media is necessary for what the profit-centric media will NOT cover in any great detail without creating a false equivalency. For example, Comcast owns MSNBC. Comcast has recently gotten its wish to end Net Neutrality. When has MSNBC ever gone into detail about the value of Net Neutrality. And if they have, did they create a false equivalency by giving equal time to the profit masters who put profit before fully informing citizens so they can make better decisions.

What MSM coverage is there of the ongoing poisoning of citizens in Flint, MI? How about the devastation being ignored in Puerto Rico? Or the decades-long GOP efforts to suppress the vote of people of color – far more massive than Russiagate? What about the privatization/destruction of Social Security and Medicate that Congress is pushing hard now as we are all in shock of immigrant abuse by ICE? How about the recent lynching of two black men in OK. What coverage was there of the massive, and uniting, efforts of the Water Protectors in ND and their abuse by local authorities and vigilantes following the orders of the corporation and committing injustices in the name of that corporation?

The public good far outweighs the need to enrich the one percent. America’s MSM is more and more putting profit before people as it continues its red-shift – in our bad, and not so bad, bad barrels.

Profit alone is not the problem. Putting it before all else is the problem. I grew up when profit had limits. People were protected, more then than now, from corporations externalizing their costs to maximize profit and abuse citizens. Nixon signed the clear air and clean water acts into law and created the EPA and OSHA. Now that’s all a facade controlled by corporate hacks and MSM is not reporting on this destruction in any meaningful way.

The people in the streets today, who feel the impact of America’s growing inequality, are there in spite of profit-centric MSM, not because of it, and I don’t think that’s why the free press has its position of high regard in our Constitution. Overall, MSM is shirking it’s responsibility to adequately inform citizens. They are more into entertaining than informing.

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“There will come a time in your life when you have the power within you, as an ordinary person, as a person who is willing to take a decision, to blow the whistle, to take action, to go the other direction and do the heroic thing.” Professor Phillip Zimbaardo