Drove to the market today (Cosentino’s Vegetable Haven on Bascom) when I came across this charming poster:
A Clear Channel poster on a Clear Channel billboard. In case you’re wondering: this is propaganda. It is simultaneously political and commercial propaganda.
What does the sign say? Let’s see: “Working to give local heroes a voice, a stage and a victory.” What does that mean? Nothing, of course. How are they working? And what are they working to do? What are “local heroes”? I know what I’m supposed to think they are, but what specifically does Clear Channel mean?
I definitely like the rhythm of “a voice, a stage and a victory.” Again, totally meaningless, unless you start asking: a victory over what? (Actually, the “victory” thing is definitely the most disturbing tidbit on the poster.) And the first people who go to their local Clear Channel station insisting that they get to use their voice and their stage will be met by the radio engineer, whose sole job is to play whatever signal Clear Channel beams to their “local” broadcast.
The United States as the only landmass on a heart-shaped globe. How many ideas does this single image get across? The heart, indicating warm fuzzies and other soft emotions: check. The United States as sole inhabitant of planet: check.
“Clear Channel cares.” Now, anybody who believes Clear Channel cares about anything besides the bottom line is clearly delusional. But that puts the critic in the position of having to say, “No, Clear Channel is a big meanie corporation!”
I discovered Propaganda Critic, which had some relevant things to say on the subject of modern propaganda:
The information revolution has led to information overload, and people are confronted with hundreds of messages each day. Although few studies have looked at this topic, it seems fair to suggest that many people respond to this pressure by processing messages more quickly and, when possible, by taking mental short-cuts.
Propagandists love short-cuts — particularly those which short-circuit rational thought. They encourage this by agitating emotions, by exploiting insecurities, by capitalizing on the ambiguity of language, and by bending the rules of logic. As history shows, they can be quite successful.
If you peruse the articles on the site, you quickly see that this billboard fits Propaganda Critic’s definition of propaganda. Glittering generalities! Euphemisms! Plain folks!
Christ.
What’s the Clear Channel? Is it better if I never know?
Clear Channel is a mega-conglomerate that owns a gigantic nationwide network of radio stations…and, for some reason, billboards. They are also Westfield, which is the company that is buying and renovating “upscale” malls.
They are fanatically pro-Bush, and they recently fired Howard Stern from the CC stations that carried him ostensibly for “obscene” speech, but more likely because Stern has turned on Bush on a big way.
This is one example of why I get more of my news of late from blogs.
I bookmark a range of pages from the NYT, BBC, and Yahoo. But it’s blogs that provide a sense of authenticity. – local perspective real man on the street information.
The media is too corporate IMO. I stopped watching TV news during the haze of the OJ daze. I’ve seen no reason to return to the Bread and Circuses show provided by CNN and Fox et al.
I hear ya, Diane, but can’t help getting my hackles up about “The United States as the only landmass…” – In talking about Clear Channel’s Amerocentric perspective, you’ve ignored the fact that a handful of countries are represented in that image.
Rebeca
Hi Diane,
Clear Channel also books concerts, and sells tickets (with nasty “service charges”) for those concerts. But is Clear Channel really the same as Westfield, the mall company? I didn’t know that — do you have a reference somewhere? I thought I read that Westfield is an Australian company.
-Scott
This whole Clear Channel Howard Stern situation is ridiculous and even more so when you realize the political connections between them and certain Presidents.
I don’t remember where we saw it–on one of the maps in the mall? On the sign on the way in? But somewhere both Darin and I saw “Westfield Shopping Malls, Clear Channel Corporation.”
Of course, now I go to their site and I can’t find any backup data. But I swear we’ve both seen it.
Are there any radio mainstream radio stations that *aren’t* owned by clear channel anymore in the U.S.?
I imagine there’s a whole lot, just based on the fact that they only removed Stern from a grand total of six stations.
I liked this defaced one:
http://www.fujichia.com/billboards/6a.html