Correct, Carol. It's a managed and centralized media, owned by a few big players. It is the de facto accomplishment of what Orwell and Huxley warned of in their books, but very different in how it expresses itself...through a corporate free marketing consumer empire rather than a drab, monolithic quasi-communist style regime.

Consumerism is far more clever at enslaving people than drab, authoritarian, boring old communism, because it panders so effectively to all the common human appetites and weaknesses. The monkey is in the cage, but he doesn't realize it's a cage since he never sees the bars, and he's busy eating all the sugary fruit they overfeed him with daily. To enslave a people most effectively, first convince them that they are free!

I never heard so much talk about freedom ("It's a free country.") as when I lived in the USA. I was distinctly aware each time upon crossing back into Canada that Canada was essentially a freer, calmer, safer, more peaceful society...and yet no one had to say so. Find a country where people never stop talking loudly about how free they are, how much freer they are than everyone else in the world, and you will find something lurking behind all the talk. That something is fear.