Corporate Power in the Media

The Propaganda Model in society today constructs social power through corporations. The corporations are the owners of the media and are therefore able to control what media attention is published. The Propaganda Model is based on a set of rules where the news filters through five filters to tell whether information read in the free market is true. These five filters are: 1) Ownership based on who owns the media. 2) Advertising on principle sources of revenue. 3) Sourcing - what is seen as news and what becomes the news. 4) Flack is a way of disciplining or controlling the media overtly or subtly. 5) Ideology - does the story justify political maneuvering and defending corporate interests around the world.

With growing corporations there is an increase in the economy and therefore less interest in maintaining the quality of our environment. The question to ask is whether or not capitalism is sustainable? The environment is unable to keep up to the growing industrial economy and therefore environmental degradation is larger. Noticeable effects include global warming, pollution, deforestation, ozone depletion and species extinction. When corporations neglect the environmental issues taking place they are putting at risk human health. Examples of this as mentioned in "The Corporation" are related to DDT getting into the water system causing birth defects, the paper mills dumping into the river and the Copper Mines in Peru.

I find this topic to be very interesting as it is surprising to see the number of large corporate groups that are fined each year for large sums and it rarely makes it to the media. It is also interesting to think of the number of companies who attempt to cover their effects on the environment by trying to promote through the media, how "green" they are.

Ecological Imperialism in Canada's North

By Liza Piper and John Sandlos
http://www.historycooperative.org.remote.libproxy.wlu.ca/journals/eh/12.4/piper.html

Canada is experiencing ecological imperialism in the North, which suggests colonial environmental change is occurring, culturally and economically. Environmental change of disease, plants and animals, has created a New World environment of ecological imperialism. Canada is experiencing much of the same imperialism issues as that in the United States of America. The traditional culture of the Aboriginal groups both in Canada and the United States of America are the ones experiencing the most impact of environmental change. The ecological imperialism implications for claiming land demonstrates a treadmill of production based on the need of natural resources such as minerals, timber, fish and water (55). In Canada, ecological imperialism has demonstrated to be successful by using nature as a commodity.