Media Giants Online

The following selection does not claim to present an exhaustive listing, but rather picks some of the company's most important assets. Due to the rapid developments in the world of media giants the list is also subject to changes.

Broadcasting

ABC TV Network with 223 affiliated TV stations covering the entire U.S.

ABC Radio Network, with 2,900 affiliated stations throughout the U.S.

Owner of 9 VHF TV stations

Owner of 11 AM and 10 FM stations

Cable TV Systems and Channels/Networks

Disney Channel

80 % of ESPN cable TV channel and ESPN International

50 % of Lifetime cable TV channel

Internet/Interactive

Disney Interactive - entertainment and educational computer software and video games, plus development of content for on-line services.

Partnership with 3 phone companies to provide video programming and interactive services.

ABC Online

TV Production, Movies, Video, Music

Disney Television Production studios and Walt Disney Pictures movie studio

Buena Vista Television production company

Buena Vista Home Video

Miramax and Touchstone movie production companies

Buena Vista Pictures Distribution and Buena Vista International, distributors for Disney and Touchstone movies

Walt Disney Records, and Hollywood Records

Publishing

6 daily newspapers

About 40 weekly magazines, including: Discover, Women's Wear Daily, Los Angeles and Institutional Investor.

Chilton Publications

Guilford Publishing Co.

Hitchcock Publishing Co.

Theme Parks, Resorts, and Travel

Disneyland

Disney World and Disney World Resort

Part owner of Disneyland-Paris and Tokyo Disneyland

12 resort hotels

Disney Vacation Club

Cruise Lines

International TV, Film, and Broadcasting

50 % owner of Tele-München Fernseh GmbH & Co.

50 % owner of RTL Disney Fernseh GmbH & Co.

23 % owner of RTL 2 Fernseh GmbH & Co.

37,5 % owner of TM3 Fernseh GmbH & Co.

20-33 % stake in Eurosport network, Spanish Tesauro SA TV company, and Scandinavian Broadcasting System SA

20 % owner of TVA

Other

Over 500 Disney Stores, and licensing of Disney products

The Mighty Ducks professional hockey team

25 % ownership of California Angels major league baseball team

Business Connections with Other Media Companies

Joint ventures, equity interests, or major arrangements with Bertelsmann, TCI, Hearst Corp., Kirch, and various other media and telephone companies.

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Movies as a Propaganda- and Disinformation-Tool in World War I and II

Movies produced in Hollywood in 1918/19 were mainly anti-German. They had some influence but the bigger effect was reached in World War II-movies.
The first propaganda movie of World War II was British.
At that time all films had to pass censoring. Most beloved were entertaining movies with propaganda messages. The enemy was shown as a beast, an animal-like creature, a brutal person without soul and as an idiot. Whereas the own people were the heroes. That was the new form of atrocity.
Leni Riefenstahl was a genius in this respect. Her movies still have an incredible power, while the majority of the other movies of that time look ridiculous today. The combination of light and shadow, the dramatic music and the mass-scenes that resembled ballet, had its effect and political consequences. Some of the German movies of that period still are on the index.

U.S.-President Theodore Roosevelt considered movies the best propaganda-instrument, as they are more subtle than other tools.

In the late twenties, movies got more and more important, in the USSR, too, like Sergei Eisenstein demonstrated with his movies. Historic events were changed into symbolism, exactly the way propaganda should function. It was disinformation - but in its most artistic form, especially in comparison to most U.S.- and European movies of that time.

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The Tools of Disinformation and Propaganda

"In wartime they attack a part of the body that other weapons cannot reach in an attempt to affect the way which participants perform on the field of battle." (Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, p. 9)
Therefore the demonstrated tools refer to political propaganda in the two World Wars.

Propaganda has the ability to change a war, a natural evil, into a so-called "just" war. Violence then is supposedly defense, no more aggression.

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Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

b. July 1, 1646, Leipzig
d. November 14, 1716, Hannover, Hanover

German philosopher, mathematician, and political adviser, important both as a metaphysician and as a logician and distinguished also for his independent invention of the differential and integral calculus. 1661, he entered the University of Leipzig as a law student; there he came into contact with the thought of men who had revolutionized science and philosophy--men such as Galileo, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and René Descartes. In 1666 he wrote De Arte Combinatoria ("On the Art of Combination"), in which he formulated a model that is the theoretical ancestor of some modern computers.

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Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero

Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero († 1980) was elected archbishop because he was very conservative. But when he saw how more and more priests and definitely innocent people were murdered, he changed his attitudes and became one of the sharpest critics of the government. He gave shelter to those in danger, never stopped talking against violence and his Sunday sermons on the radio where moments to tell the truth to the Salvadorians, also mentioning the names of the disappeared or killed persons. As Romero got extremely popular and dangerous for the population he was killed by death squads, while reading a sermon.

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SOA

The U.S.-Army School of Americas (= SOA) is based in Fort Benning (Georgia); it trains Latin American and U.S. soldiers in the working-field of counter-insurgency. Some of the nearly 60.000 SOA-Graduates have been responsible for many of the worst human rights abuses and crimes in Latin America. The list of famous dictators and murderers who went through the education of that institution is tremendous. In 1996 the U.S.-Government that always tried to deny the tasks of SOA, had to admit its work - but never closed it.

For more information see the website of SOA-Watch: http://www.soaw.org

http://www.soaw.org/
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