Government controls the media but who controls the Government?

Go back into history to the earliest dawning of civilisation and you see an interesting pattern emerging. To see it though you need to go back even further to the familial groups of hunter gatherers before the dawn of agriculture. In these groups you had a leader who was the strongest member of the family, the one most able to provide consistent sustenance to the family, and best able to protect the family from attack. This is a system that works well for small groups, because dissent is inefficient and waste times. It has been suggested by some anthropologists that this is the ideal community size and type for humanity, but of course that isn't possible today with the levels of overpopulation. So, we moved as a species from small groups led by a single individual, to early civilisations were large groups were ostensibly led by a single individual, most of the early civilisations being Monarchies. There is a key difference however. One strong individual can control a small group personally, can engage with every member of the group, and can manage the group well. Once you move to a larger group you find that the leader needs to have advisers, and can not know every member of the community, and their fears, wants, needs and desires. This sets up a situation that we still see today, and which brings us to the title of this article.

If a leader needs advisers and support mechanism then that leader is at the mercy to an extent of those advisers. He/she is only as well informed as the advisers allow, and therefore is no longer solely in charge. Coming up to date we see a very similar system in the modern World. Look at the politics of Western society and you see leaders, politicians who appear to be in charge but who are subject to pressure from vested corporate interests. In the US it is impossible to rise to high political office without significant financial strength, campaigning costing a tremendous amount of money. Even within the lower legislative structures politicians are often tempted by offers of support or post-office employment within corporations who demand in return, influence within the legislature. Now, you may be thinking that this is just a problem of a capitalist system where too much power is vested in a few entrepreneurial high financial worth groups, but take a look at China or Russia, still de-facto communist regimes, but here we again see powerful advisers within the regime that exert an influence on the direction of the leaders decisions.

Now, we have, certainly in the UK a rather interesting variant on this strange state of affairs. The government controls the media in the UK. It does this in two ways, firstly by funding the largest broadcaster the BBC through the license fee which is set by government, and secondly by retaining control of the various standards authorities that govern the behaviour of the media. This may not at first seem to be the case, but take a look at some of the information coming out of the current Leveson enquiry. Most of the attention has been on the purpose of the enquiry, to investigate the phone hacking and corruption allegations, but beyond this we have seen inside the way that the government, who controls the media, is in turn controlled by powerful figures in the corporate World who act for their own interests above all else. Who feed stories to the media, and who in turn fund the political parties, exerting control over all aspects of legislature. Can it be too long before even more evidence comes out bringing the true masters of this planet closer and closer to the light. But can that really be allowed to happen? Have a look at how much of the Leveson report never sees the light of day, and then decide.