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Patricia Hilliard

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Citizen Kane: a reminder
by Patricia Hilliard
Last edited: Friday, May 29, 2026
Posted: Friday, February 17, 2023



     
How the media makes us "think." (Photo: A mural on a building displaying Pres. Bush and Putin. Remember when they were friends?)

CITIZEN KANE: by Orson Welles was fiction, but it had a message. The movie appeared to show the life and attitudes of media barrens William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. These two were similar to our present day Keith Rupert Murdoch and Peter Thiel, including Michael Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos, Brian Roberts, and John Malone. They were and are all media moguls.

In a time when many citizens of the U.S. would tell you that they live in a democracy, the people just named herein, are the ones who dominate the thinking of the average citizen. At times, even independent thinkers have trouble weighing the “facts” against the cleverly phrased sentence that injects doubt, fear, false hope or national pride into the minds of otherwise peaceful, well-meaning activists.

The one experience that cannot be dictated to, the one element that media moguls cannot contrive to control is the every-day experience of the every-day citizen.  If we starve because we cannot find a job and obtain a pay-check, if we are facing homelessness because we are denied the right to housing, if we suffer because we cannot get health care, that feeling of pain will direct our actions, in spite of the world of words that the media babbles to us.

 The big corporations are now in a battle for control of energy: gas, oil, electric. For dominance and power, they will send the rest of us into economic chaos and war.  If we don’t feel like this is the solution to humanities’ problems, we will need to send a message back to the media moguls. Hear us loud and clear, we are not in favor of further suffering, poverty and war. 

 

 

 

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Reviewed by Ronald Hull
Reviewed on February 21, 2023
I have never been able to watch Citizen Kane all the way through, distracted by something or another. Thanks for reminding me to watch it all the way next time.

It is not only the movers and shakers in media, but the undercurrent of carefully crafted lies sent down viral tracks in social media that gives people even more angry and disillusioned rather than focusing on "acting locally to influence widely." Hiding and hoarding does not solve our problems. We all need to remind our leaders of what is important to pursue and what is not, or we succumb to Plutarchy with antiheroes and, worse, anarchy.

Ron

Reviewed by Robert Drews
Reviewed on February 18, 2023
Nice piece, Patricia. The robber barons have always been with us, just with different names, in different forms, and in different industries. How we fight back is our own choosing as long as we do so.

Reviewed by Corrine Ardoin
Reviewed on February 18, 2023
Thank you, for writing this! Speaking the truth is vital in a democracy. It takes informed citizens to see through all the fear-mongering and lies. Complacency is not an option. Your statement, "...injects doubt, fear, false hope or national pride into the minds of otherwise peaceful, well-meaning activists," is key. It shows that it's not about taking sides, but about waking up and taking responsibility for "the every-day experience of the every-day citizen." We have minds of our own and need to use them to protect ourselves and our democracy.


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