Media alternatives: "The problem is illustrated brilliantly in the poet Aryasura's story, The Ruru Deer. Here, Aryasura depicts the mental turmoil of an individual deciding whether he should repay the kindness of a benefactor who saved his life, or betray him for money: "What should I do - follow Virtue or Fortune? Should I uphold the promise to my benefactor rather than the duty to maintain my family? Which is more important, the worldly existence or the heavenly one? Which code should I follow, that of the pious or that of the worldly? Should I taste glory or the modest joy of the anchorite?... Should I strive for riches or the good cherished by the virtuous?

""At last his mind, overcome by greed, came to this conclusion: 'Once I have obtained great wealth, I shall be able to honour my kin and my friends, guests, and beggars; I will gain not only the pleasures of this world, but also happiness in the other." (Aryasura, The Marvelous Companion, Dharma Publishing, 1983, p.253)

"These altruistic thoughts might strike us as admirable. But as Aryasura makes clear, they are a lie, a classic self-deception - in fact the man has been "overcome by greed" and his 'compassionate' thoughts are merely a salve to his conscience. In these few lines, Aryasura - writing many hundreds of years ago - exposes what is completely hidden to many journalists making big money 'trying to change the system from within'- as they try to convince themselves, and us. It is this capacity for self-deception - for lying without consciously realising we are lying - that ultimately lies at the heart of the propaganda system afflicting modern democracies."

"Ideally, the organisation as a whole would be independent of advertisers - it is clearly absurd for a newspaper like the Guardian to be dependent for 75% of its revenue on corporate advertising promoting greed. What could more clearly compromise the honesty of media reporting? Media should be primarily dependent on individual subscribers providing for minimum overheads, perhaps funding from large corporate organisations should be disallowed. This is obviously a problem for large print media as printing and distribution costs are high, necessitating reliance on wealthy owners, parent companies, again firmly tying the media into the corporate system."

"The point being that the internet +does+ constitute a revolutionary change in the mass media - the power of non-corporate journalism has increased by orders of magnitude in the last ten or fifteen years. It is easy to forget just how enormous the change has been.... Now, our inboxes are flooded on a daily basis with instant responses by dozens of brilliant mainstream and dissident journalists all over the world. Informed and articulate posters provide instant commentary on our message boards generating vibrant debates and floods of emails to the likes of David Aaronovitch, Melanie Phillips and Nick Cohen. This, frankly, is the worst nightmare of state-corporate propagandists seeking to control the public mind."

Media alternatives: "The problem is illustrated brilliantly in the poet Aryasura's story, The Ruru Deer. Here, Aryasura depicts the mental turmoil of an individual deciding whether he should repay the kindness of a benefactor who saved his life, or betray him for money: "What should I do - follow Virtue or Fortune? Should I uphold the promise to my benefactor rather than the duty to maintain my family? Which is more important, the worldly existence or the heavenly one? Which code should I follow, that of the pious or that of the worldly? Should I taste glory or the modest joy of the anchorite?... Should I strive for riches or the good cherished by the virtuous?

""At last his mind, overcome by greed, came to this conclusion: 'Once I have obtained great wealth, I shall be able to honour my kin and my friends, guests, and beggars; I will gain not only the pleasures of this world, but also happiness in the other." (Aryasura, The Marvelous Companion, Dharma Publishing, 1983, p.253)

"These altruistic thoughts might strike us as admirable. But as Aryasura makes clear, they are a lie, a classic self-deception - in fact the man has been "overcome by greed" and his 'compassionate' thoughts are merely a salve to his conscience. In these few lines, Aryasura - writing many hundreds of years ago - exposes what is completely hidden to many journalists making big money 'trying to change the system from within'- as they try to convince themselves, and us. It is this capacity for self-deception - for lying without consciously realising we are lying - that ultimately lies at the heart of the propaganda system afflicting modern democracies."

"Ideally, the organisation as a whole would be independent of advertisers - it is clearly absurd for a newspaper like the Guardian to be dependent for 75% of its revenue on corporate advertising promoting greed. What could more clearly compromise the honesty of media reporting? Media should be primarily dependent on individual subscribers providing for minimum overheads, perhaps funding from large corporate organisations should be disallowed. This is obviously a problem for large print media as printing and distribution costs are high, necessitating reliance on wealthy owners, parent companies, again firmly tying the media into the corporate system."

"The point being that the internet +does+ constitute a revolutionary change in the mass media - the power of non-corporate journalism has increased by orders of magnitude in the last ten or fifteen years. It is easy to forget just how enormous the change has been.... Now, our inboxes are flooded on a daily basis with instant responses by dozens of brilliant mainstream and dissident journalists all over the world. Informed and articulate posters provide instant commentary on our message boards generating vibrant debates and floods of emails to the likes of David Aaronovitch, Melanie Phillips and Nick Cohen. This, frankly, is the worst nightmare of state-corporate propagandists seeking to control the public mind."