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"Capture the press!
Through it everything
will come
to you in the natural course of events."
- Adolphe Cremioux* 1907
"I do not believe the "free press" is free any
more.
The press is saying what they have been told to say." - Major General
Albert Stubblebine,
former commanding general of the
United States Army
Intelligence and Security Command
"Persuasion is often more effectual than
force
and appearances often are
deceiving." -
Aesop
"From brand names to PR slogans to political
codewords,
the language of the media that inundates modern life consists
almost
wholly of subtle lies, misdirection, and manipulation." -
Charles
Eisenstein
"Inverted totalitarianism enforces ideological
uniformity by using mass communication systems to instill profligate
consumption as an inner compulsion and to substitute our illusions of ourselves
for reality."
- Christopher Lynn Hedges
"Our minds are
being impacted through a long standing series of programs aimed at
manipulating public opinion through
intelligence agencies,
think tanks,
corporate media and a host of
non-governmental organizations designed to engender
fear, division and uncertainty in the public."
- Peter Phillips, Lew Brown and Bridget
Thornton
"The role of the media in manufacturing consent
is very well documented. The phrase, incidentally, is not mine. It is taken
from the essays on democracy by Walter
Lippmann, the leading American public intellectual of the 20th century.
Walter Lippmann described
the "manufacture of consent" as an
innovation in the "art of democracy". He recommended
manufactured consent to
control the "ignorant and meddlesome outsiders"
-- the general population -- whose "function" in a democracy is to be
"spectators", not "participants" in making and implementing decisions. That is
a standard theme among elite intellectuals from widely varying sociopolitical
systems."
- Noam Chomsky
"Mainstream
media is no longer about informing the
public but about
personalities and attractiveness.
What's amazing is that highly paid executives still don't grasp why millions
flock to non-mainstream sources to find out
what's really happening; meanwhile, their ratings continue to decline. I
recommend these execs go back and view
Edward R. Murrow,
Walter Cronkite and "The
Huntley-Brinkley Report" to get a grasp of what the
media could and should do to fulfill
their duty of informing the
public." - Matt Giorgi
"Nothing real issues from the
American media. The mindlessness of the
news reflects the
mindlessness of the
government, for which it is a spokesperson.
The American
media does not serve
American democracy or American interests. It serves the few people who
exercise power."
- Paul Craig Roberts,
Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury in the Reagan
Administration
"Inevitably, the
media create a circus,
elevating everything and
elucidating nothing."
- Stephany Yablow
“The mainstream media ignore information they
don't want people to know about.
Television is the modern
weapon. It's better than a
bomb. Whoever controls it controls the people and the people don't even
realize it. This television
fantasy world is what
we are fighting against.” - Eric
HufschmidMass media is
existent today for one
purpose and one
purpose alone; to
market - to sell
product to the
target
audience. That
product may come in a solid
form such as an iPod, a digital form such as the songs sold by iTunes or the
product may come packaged as
an idea, an opinion or a popular 'notion'.
"The first step is to understand that
television is just a delivery system for
ads. The only programming that
really matters to those in power is the
advertisements. The
success of a show is not measured by how
good it is, or who says they
loved it, or even how many people watch. A show is
a success if the people who watched it go and
buy the products that were
advertised." - Dean Batali
The collection of personal information has long been a standard
American
corporate process as that
information has long been understood to equate with the ability to further
'serve' and 'supply' the American
consumer.
The extent of
personal information collection took on dramatic new
dimensions in the 1990s due to
profound improvements in computing and the advent of the internet. Most of this
increase in personal information collection takes place out of the
public's view without the
public's direct consent.
Marketers want to
know their
customers better.
Marketers want to automate the process of
customer relationships.
Marketers ask questions that can only be
answered with more data.
Who is someone really?
What motivates an
individual?
How is someone
likely to behave?
How
can we get a certain type of individual to open his/her wallet?
How do we separate the relatively few
very profitable customers from
the 'herd'?
To answer these questions
marketers are on a data collection binge,
gathering, parsing, and shaping more information about more people than ever
before in history. These include not just
credit bureaus, banks and
telemarketers but each and every
corporation that wants to
know when, what, why and where you purchase
products. Ever had a 'club'
account?
Grocers - do you eat fresh or processed food? what toiletries do you use?
do you drink alcoholic beverages and if so what type and how much?
Pharmacists - which prescription drugs do you use? which over-the-counter
drugs do you use? what medical conditions
apply to you - hemorrhoids? hay fever? femine itch?
Airlines - who
flies where? when? why?
Politicians -
who donates money to who? who 'knows' who?
Publishers - who reads what, when, where
and in what form?
The direct mailer who sold you
sex toys wants
to understand your sexual needs and
desires. (yuk!)
The multitude of corporations give you a toll-free number
to make your life more convenient, give you the no
charge debit card, give you credit card
accounts, provide you with the 'chip' in the card, in your pet cat or
implanted in you which activates your account - and companies you've never
heard about harvest data from surveys,
public records,
credit card applications, warranty
cards, and so many other forms, like
giant combines harvesting wheat.
After the
terror attacks on September 11, 2001,
American aristocracy could not resist the
promise that information
technology could make them
feel safe again.
American aristocracy turned to computers,
surveillance gear, and
mountains of information about
Americans as part of their nascent
war on terror.
If law enforcement could only
know nearly everything about everyone,
American aristocracy reasoned, then
law enforcement would be able to easily identify
potential evil doers. Less would be
unknown.
This
imaginative ideology was foisted on the
military and all levels of
law enforcement.
This
ideological fantasy required a data revolution to make it
feasible on an epic scale and is only now possible due to the profound
improvements in data storage.
After the terror attacks the federal
government wedded itself to the
information brokers and database marketers who had quietly amassed vast
reservoirs of information about Americans and
created tools to track, assess, and predict
individual
American
behavior. The owners of the
vast reservoirs of information about Americans
understand and predict collective behavior better than an average
American
individual can predict his or her
own individual
behavior.
Government and
corporations now use exactly the same
tools to predict and modify collective as well as
individual
behavior.
Government and
corporate
goals have become one and the same -
predict and modify the behavior, collectively and
individually, of every American. (Their
collective goal is to make all
Americans
slap happy,
sensually addicted adherents to the cult of
materialistic consumerism.)
"The myth of the
liberal
media is continually advanced by
conservatives. What drives coverage is corporate ownership, which is increasingly concentrated and
beholden to advertisers, not to
liberal values and ideals."
- Bill DunnThis successful
endeavor,
designed
psychologically to alter common
popular opinion to facilitate
government and
corporate control of the populace, uses
mass media to modify the
behavior of
individual
Americans collectively.
Purveyors of
mass media engage in
psychological operations to
create popular cultural opinions,
expectations and
preconceptions.
Psychological
operations are planned operations to
convey selected information and
opinions to select
audiences to
influence their
emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the
behavior of organizations,
groups, and ultimately individual
Americans. (This is also the definition of
marketing, see
branding.)
Psychological operations became a
standard part of federal government programs when the
Psychological Strategy Board was
established by a Harry S. Truman
Presidential Directive of April 4, 1951. Dwight D. Eisenhower changed the name to
the Operations Coordinating
Board.
Psychological operations,
psychological warfare or
marketing is based on simply
learning every little
thing about your
target
audience, their
beliefs, likes and
dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, and
vulnerabilities. Once you
know what motivates your target, you are ready to begin your
mass media
propaganda campaign.
Psychological operations, the use of
deception, is one of the oldest
weapons in the
arsenal of
man.
Psychological operations,
known as marketing in it's milder form and
propaganda in it's harsher forms, may be
defined broadly as the planned use of communications to
influence
human beliefs,
opinions and
behavior ... to
create in target audience or groups
behavior,
emotions, and opinions that support the attainment of
objectives.
A
psychological warfare or
propaganda campaign is a war for the soul
using deception.
The primary
weapons used are sights and sounds.
Psychological operations can
be disseminated by face-to-face communication, audio visual means (television), audio media
(radio or loudspeaker),
visual media (leaflets,
newspapers,
books, magazines and/or posters).
On the Earth
today it is as easy to
deceive through visual ‘reality' as it is to
deceive with spoken
fallacy. Computer-generated digital imagery
images are easily manipulated making it extremely easy to stage and
invent scenes as propaganda.
The
signature image of the
fall of Baghdad, the toppling of a statue of
Saddam Hussein surrounded by a
large, jostling crowd of celebrating Iraqis, was staged. The crowd was not
the "massive demonstration" that was widely reported, a depiction buttressed by
the dense congestion in the close-up images. A
Reuters long-distance shot
of the entire square where the statue was downed shows the crowd was small, no
more than about 200 people. (Those 200 were all
given asylum in the good old United States of A.)
In February 2004 a
1972 image of Jane Fonda
speaking at a
Vietnam War protest in Miami Beach
was spliced with a 1971 image of John Kerry
preparing to speak at an antiwar
rally in Mineola, New York. The composite image
was designed to suggest that Kerry and Fonda
had been closely allied in the Vietnam
War antiwar effort, which they were not. This image raced around the web and convinced a large
number of individuals of it's
legitimacy.
Faking
or staging photos is not a new
idea. There are many ways to
deceive the eye as any magician will attest to. The stakes in
recent times have been particularly high and many
individuals have been taken in
repeatedly by potent
fictions with serious
consequences.
It is
human nature to
believe your eyes, giving
images a visceral power words can not
match.
Images are often the only thing
individuals will recall.
A healthy dose
of skepticism is needed in
judging the authenticity of
images.
Deceptive images that
appear truthful and speed across the digital
transom will continue to poison our sense of reality
creating a conceptually false reality and
re-writing history.
The fine
point in the weapon of
propaganda is not how the message is sent,
but the message the weapon carries and how
that message affects the recipient.
For instance,
our American
flag, when it goes by in a parade do you feel a sense of
pride?
How about when you
hear our
American anthem played?
Music or sound can
be a major factor in motivating
emotion.
It has long been said that:
"The pen is mightier than the
sword".
That is because, if used properly,
words can be an
inspiration to
motivate others.
Some examples:
"Remember the Alamo"
"Give me
liberty or give
me death"
"I regret I have but one life
to give for my country"
"Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask
what you can do for your country."
For
psychological
operations to be effective, you must carefully plan your
propaganda campaign. You must make sure that you
know every minor
thing about your
audience, that you are
targeting
audience beliefs and not using beliefs the target audience can easily identify as
other than their own.
In a
memo written to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles on 24 October 1953,
Dwight D. Eisenhower defined
psychological warfare as any
thing "from the singing of a
beautiful anthem up to the most extraordinary
category of physical
sabotage."
Persuading rather than
compelling physically,
psychological warfare relies on
false logic,
fear, desire and/or
other emotional factors to promote specific
emotions, opinions or
behaviors.
There are
three ‘colors' of propaganda:
‘white'- truthfully - attributed and
non-attributed messages.
‘gray'- falsely
attributed to a third party messages.
‘black' - nothing less than
a form of
intellectual subversion.
"Propagandists have for a long while realized that a lie is not good
for their purposes, that "truth pays," that propaganda must be based upon
facts." - Jacques Ellul
The giant strides made in the area of
behavioral,
psychological
sciences, which can now enable
us to know
and understand why
humans
behave as they do, combined
with the development and
perfection of
mass media
communications, have greatly multiplied
the capability and intrinsic value of
psychological operations as a means of
achieving objectives.
Historically, the application of psychological
operations in one form or
another has proven to be almost as
essential to the successful waging of war as the use of manpower and
weaponry. Use of psychological
operations as a
force multiplier may be easily
recognized in it's use by warriors and
perceptive politicians.
Alexander the Great of
Macedonia had conquered most of the
known world during
his reign. With each region he conquered he
left behind soldiers to
control the newly
conquered area. At one point Alexander
realized he had stretched his
army too thin and he was now in
of losing to a large opposing force.
Alexander the Great's
only option was to retreat and regroup forces with the armies he had left behind.
To do so would
incite the opposing
force to pursue him and possibly
capture or defeat his now smaller
army.
Alexander the Great instructed
his armor smiths to make several oversized
armor breastplates and helmets that would fit
"giants", men 7 to 8 feet tall.
As
Alexander the Great and his
forces withdrew during the
night they left behind the
oversized armor. The oversized armor was of course found by the
opposing force who then were
deceived into
believing that they had come close to
engaging in a battle with giants.
A
battle that they surely would have
lost.
The oversized
armor coupled with the stories they
had heard from travelers of the
savagery of
Alexander the Great's
army caused enough
doubt and
fear that they elected not to pursue
Alexander the Great's
army.
Sun Tsu, recognized as one of
the greatest military tacticians of all
times,
strongly advocated the use of
psychological warfare as a
force multiplier.
Sun Tsu wrote that:
"To capture the
enemy's entire army is better than to
destroy it; to take intact
a regiment, a company, or a squad is better than to
destroy them. For to
win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is
not the acme of skill. To subdue the
enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence. Thus, what
is of supreme importance in war is to
attack the enemy's strategy. Next best is to
disrupt his alliances by diplomacy. The next best
is to attack his army. And the worst
policy is to attack
cities."
Sun Tzu understood
that given the opportunity,
an
adversary will surrender to a superior commander
prior to conflict.
Mongol leader
Genghis Khan was widely
known for leading
hordes of savage horsemen across Russia and
into Europe. While not totally unfounded, the Mongols'
image of total, barbaric
domination was greatly enhanced
by Genghis Khan's use of
deception, operational security, and targeting his adversaries' decision-making
process.
"Agents of
influence" were sent in advance of his armies to do face-to-face
psychological warfare, telling of brutality and
large numbers in the Mongol army.
Genghis Khan also used
deception to create the
illusion of invincible numbers by using rapid
troop maneuver, making his army
look larger than it really was. Genghis Khan had a network of
horsemen called "arrow riders" to
communicate quickly with his
commanders, and he targeted enemy messengers to prevent
enemy commanders from
communicating with each
other. All these actions caused a
weakness in the
enemy's psyche, and the Mongols were
feared wherever they went.
Adolf Hitler rose to
power by exploiting the
dissatisfaction of supporters of the traditional left and right wing parties, by
dwelling on the failure of these parties to
solve the problems created
by the conditions imposed on Germany under the Treaty of Versailles.
Adolf Hitler then
presented national socialism as the
one movement capable of uniting conservative
nationalists with international
socialists, the professional classes with the
working classes in the service of
the nation. The speeches he delivered urged national pride and unity and placed the blame for all of
Germany's problems on ‘others'.
Sound familiar?
Adolf
Hitler's oratory techniques and use of
propaganda gave him a
truly hypnotic grip over
the German masses. Joseph Goebbels,
Adolf Hitler's minister of
propaganda, practiced the techniques of
psychological
operations both to unite Germany and to
intimidate their enemies.
The most well
known innovative use of
psychological warfare must be attributed to a
radio
broadcast by the British
Broadcasting
Corporation, the BBC.
In 1940,
when the German invasion of England seemed
imminent, a regular BBC
radio program, easily
heard and often listened to by the Germans, began a series of
English language
lessons for the invaders. These
broadcasts of course were
presented in flawless German.
The British announcer stated the
purpose of these
broadcast like this:
"…..and so it will be best if you learn a few useful phrases in
English before visiting us.
For your
first lesson, we take ‘DIE KANAUEBERFAHRT'. The channel crossing."
"Now, just repeat after me:
‘DAS BOOT SINKT.' The boat is sinking. The boat is sinking"
"DAS
WASSER IST KALT. The water is cold. SER KALT.
Very cold"
"Now I will give you a verb
that should be very useful. Again, please
repeat after me. ICH
BRENNE. I am
burning. Du Brennst. You are burning. ER BRENNT. He is burning. WIR BRENNEN. We burn.
IHR BRENNT. You are burning. SIR BRENNEN. They are burning."
This crude
propaganda proved extremly effective. The
phrases about burning in the English Channel
seemed to confirm the intensive rumors already
being spread by British agents on the continent that the British had
perfected an apparatus with which they were going
to set fires in the Channel and on the English
beaches whenever Hitler launched his
invasion.
Although not
true, the rumors were so well planned and cleverly
spread that to this day many Germans still
believe them.
The power of the
subconscious to facilitate
belief should never be
underestimated.Documents found after the
war confirmed that the
German high command believed that the British had a workable
plan to set fire to
the English Channel. Masters of propaganda
were beaten at their own trick! Obviously
they were not in touch with their
subconscious.
Perhaps the most
ambitious and spectacular psychological operations of modern times was the effort of the Allies to convince the
German high command that the upcoming Allied
invasion of Europe would occur across the
beaches near the Pas de Calais.
Psychological operations of the Allies
created the fictitious "Army group Patton," which was poised to strike
across the English Channel at the Germans 15th Panzer
Army defending the Pas de Calais.
Even after the Allied invasion came at Normandy,
Adolf Hitler would not allow for
the deployment of the 15th Panzer Army from
the Pas de Calais. Adolf Hitler was
convinced that the Normandy invasion was
only a prelude to the real
invasion. The 15th Panzer
Army waited in vain at the Pas de Calais for
nearly SEVEN WEEKS for Army group Patton, an
invasion that was never to
come.
General of the army Omar Bradley
later referred to this propaganda
operation as "the biggest hoax of the
war".
The German
army never fully recovered from the reversals
set in motion by their delay in
releasing the 15th Panzer army and Germany
lost the war as a result.
The next example concerns another objective of
psychological
operations, it's use is to promote
cooperation,
unity and morale
within a
target
audience.
With
Josef Stalin's regime reeling under the blows of
the German blitz in 1941, Josef Stalin
sensed that the ideological abstractions and
communist platitudes, which the
communist
party had driven into the
minds of its captive domestic
audience were in
reality barren. Ideological abstractions and
communist platitudes did not have
the emotional and spiritual impact necessary to fortify the Russian
people for their struggle against Hitler's armies.
Therefore,
Josef Stalin systematically set about
identifying the
communist regime with "Holy Russia", "Mother Russia", Russia's ancient heritage and the accompanying
archetypical
symbolism.
The two
Russian institutions with the deepest roots in the
past, the army and the church, were cultivated
by Josef Stalin's
propagandists as never before in the Soviet
Socialist Union's history.
The
historic accomplishments of
Russian armies were glorified. The church hierarchy and
class distinctions were returned to
pre-revolution standards. "PRAVDA," dropped its Marxist motto, "WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE," and substituted the
openly nationalistic slogan, "DEATH TO THE GERMAN INVADER."
The ensuing
struggle became and is still
officially known in Soviet history as "The Great
Patriotic War".
Even Josef Stalin, one of the most ruthless
murdering dictators of the 20th Century,
realized that his conventional
military weapons alone, were not enough to meet the
challenge of the German armies.
Josef Stalin's choice of utilizing
psychological
operations to augment his conventional
military
forces played a major role in
maintaining the survival of his
communist regime.
By this
time radio
broadcasts had become a major
means of passing propaganda and
deceiving the
target
audience.
During WWII Japan
used the notorious "Tokyo Rose" to broadcast
music,
propaganda, and words of discouragement
to allied forces.
The
Germans used Mildred Gillar, better remembered as "Axis Sally".
In
Vietnam "Hanoi Hannah"
broadcasted a daily
radio program where she played
music, coupled with the North's
view of the news and messages of
discouragement to our troops.
Today
Rush Limbaugh, Bill
O'Reilly, Al Franken and Howard Stern are heard throughout
America.
"I submit that as long as folks continue to belly
up to the trough to feed on the slop that folks like Rush Limbaugh are serving daily on talk radio,
despicable lies will still be credited as truth."
- Gary L. PlattAmerican
propagandist's ability to
divide the American people
into ideological
divisions is quite easy to recognize.
A truly effective psychological operations program must have the input of
highly-qualified clinical psychologists " who
specialize in the unconscious dynamics of
human
behavior and
motivation'' (ie
market
specialists) and who are
knowledgeable about the "social and cultural
values of different
target
audiences.''
Through
mass media
communications,
market
specialists have demonstrated ,
time and time again,
that they can appeal to the emotions of the
target
audience to get them to
think and
act as they
desire.
"In order to turn reluctant
consumers with few unsatisfied core
needs into permanent shoppers, consumer product producers must
dumb down consumers by shaping their
wants essentially taking over their lives by
encouraging impulse buying, cultivating shopoholism and manufacturing new
desires." - Benjamin R.
BarberIt should be clear, anyone with
vision will see,
that modern psychological operations in the form of
marketing and
advertising are
embedded
within all
mass media and that
Americans are
exposed to it every day.
As well as corporate interests the
State, which is firmly in the
control of American
aristocracy, uses communications via
mass media to build an
image of reality
concordant with the interests of American
aristocracy.
Psychological operations are a vital part of the broad range
of American political, military, economic and ideological activities used by the
American government to secure objectives of
American aristocracy by the
government's own
admission. (See
Federal Bureau of Investigation and
propaganda, Central Intelligence Agency
and propaganda, the broadcasting board of
governors, the Gulf war,
Gulf of Tonkin and the
Committee of Public Information as
examples)
Psychological operations prevent many
Americans from recognizing the simple
truth that this deception creates a
conceptual fallacy
within which
individual
understanding of the
reality of the Earth is warped,
American's place on the
Earth is
elevated to godlike status and
American notions of
freedom are corrupted along with
popular historical American ethical
beliefs.
As
Americans are begining to awaken to the reality of mass
media's psychological operations and deception they are turning away from
mass media
monopolies as shown in the following
mass media study:
The audience
for most news
mass media outlets is either shrinking
or stagnant, according to a study released by
the Project for Excellence in
Journalism.
The study examined
newspaper,
television, magazines, radio
and internet news
industries, and found that only online
journalism and ethnic or
alternative sources of
news, such as Spanish
language
newspapers, are seeing growth.
"We're in a period of change and
dislocation," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism,
part of Columbia University's Graduate School of
Journalism.
The study
found that English language
newspaper circulation has declined
11% since 1990 and network evening news
ratings are down 34% over the last decade. Despite
major news events such as the
war in Iraq, the median cable
news
audience has not grown since 2001.
The study also found that, overall, trust in news sources
is down. The percentage of people who believe
what they read in
newspapers has declined from 80% in
1985 to 59% in 2003, and the percentage who give high grades in credibility to
network news dropped from 74% in 1996 ,
to 65% in 2002.
"Most of what we, the audience,
thinks is news is just PR that is pitched to
program producers by the publicity department of an entity with a
vested interest in seeing that
person or
idea promoted." -
Nancy Snow
"As a democracy we
extol the virtues of the
free press, but the reality is that our press really is not
free." - Syed Hussani
deception
"The major news
media have failed the
American public for years and are still doing
so." - Darrell WilliamsThe most insidious part of any
deception is not its outrageous claims
but its appeal to the needs of its potential
audience. The real
art of deception lies in
understanding how subtle
touches and
preconceptions can be
twisted in the minds of the audience.
Successful
deception requires a
cooperative
audience. The key is finding smart
people with shared expectations and
preconceptions. These people
are then hired to staff think tanks.
Audiences with shared
expectations and
preconceptions will make
allowances, will reach the 'right'
conclusion and will unwittingly participate in the
deception. This is the case with all
celebrity figures which include
news anchors, talk show hosts, movie stars, well known authors,
corporate CEO's and popular
politicians all of which have an
economic interest in furthering the status
quo.
Deception may require
complicity, but a little disorientation helps as well.
Indian street
fakirs, sleight of hand
artists, have a simple game: Indian street fakirs
get their audiences to laugh, then
tap into another
emotion, fear. Once frightened their marks are ripe to be sold
whatever is promised to soothe their
fear. The need for
emotional comfort will often overrule
reason. The fakir's amulets and rings are
guaranteed to assure an emotionally 'happy' ending.
"The psychology of
deception is not a mature field, and
the neural mechanisms that underlie the ability to intentionally
suppress, distort, or fabricate
information are not yet well understood. Consequently, if the
investment is correct in stating
that confidence in a given technique will require a solid
theoretical base, then a significant research
investment into the underlying
neuropsychological mechanisms of
deception must be made before any
practical system for detecting deception can be developed and employed."
- Intelligence Science Board Study on Educing Information
Deceptions are extremely useful in the
halls of commerce and
politics.
"Deceit fills hearts that are plotting
evil." - Proverbs 12:20
"The idea that
somebody's home-made Internet content can ever have the wide audience and reach
of a big city newspaper, a
television network like Fox or a radio
show like Rush Limbaugh's is merely a variation of the old argument that the
rich and the poor are equally
free to sleep under a bridge.
Under
today's
privatized, hyper-concentrated
American media system, the
views of those with
money and power are disproportionately represented. Those who
oppose American
imperialism and pro-corporate trade
policy, and who advocate labor rights and
serious pro-consumer regulation of
corporations, have to struggle to be
heard at all.
To say Americans don't
need the Fairness Doctrine because opinions censored by private owners of big media
companies can still appear somewhere on the Internet - even though only a tiny
fraction of the public will ever encounter them - is to proclaim the absolute
right to forward only opinions of the
plutocrats and oligarches controlling the
industrial-military-media-corporate complex." - Mark Gabrish Conlan
In the wake of Republican defeats in the 2008
elections right wing radicals fought among themselves over how to revive their
movement. Edwin Feulner of the Heritage Foundation says not to worry:
"If you want to see when (neo)conservatives were in trouble, go back 35 years
to 1973, the year the Heritage Foundation set up shop. We were just a
handful of people in a few rented rooms. At that time there were no cable
outlets like Fox News. There was no (neo)conservative talk radio,
because the Fairness Doctrine was still in effect."From the birth of the broadcasting
industry, the airwaves - from which most
Americans obtain their
news - were regarded and regulated as a
public trust, a communal
resource like the clean
air and clean water, the commons.
The
Federal Radio Act of 1927 required that
broadcasters, as a condition of
their licenses, operate in the
public interest by covering
important policy
issues and providing
equal time to
both sides of public
questions.
Those requirements
evolved into the powerful Fairness Doctrine, which mandated that the
broadcast media has a
duty to maintain an informed
public.
Broadcasters had to set aside time
to air program content that was community-based
and program content made for children. The
rules set were weighted to encourage diversity of
ownership and local control.
The
Fairness Doctrine governed
television and
radio for most of the twentieth
century.
In the 1960s the
Federal Communications
Commission and the courts applied the Fairness Doctrine to require
cigarette manufacturers to include the surgeon general's in their
television and
radio
advertisements, and polluters to
notify the public when
advertising a polluting
product.
Advertisers of
gas guzzling automobiles, for example,
had to provide rebuttal time for
public interest advocates to
debate the impact of wasteful fuel
consumption on our environment and
public health.
The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Fairness Doctrine
in the Red Lion case in 1969, confirming that it is "the
right of the viewers and listeners, not the
right of the
broadcasters which is paramount."
Ronald Reagan
abolished the Fairness Doctrine in 1988 as a favor to the studio heads that supported his
election.A Syracuse, New York,
television station had
broadcast nine paid editorials
advocating the construction of a nuclear
power plant. When the station refused to
air opposing viewpoints an anti-nuke group complained. The
three Ronald Reagan appointees who ran
the Federal Communications
Commission sided with the television
station, applying the same laissez-faire philosophy to the airwaves as the
Ronald Reagan administration did to the
other parts of the
commons.
They
reasoned that the recent proliferation of cable
television allays the Supreme Court's
concern that listeners and viewers have access to diverse
sources of information.
Broadcasters would henceforth be
under no obligation to air
views that opposed their own. Today cable operators carry
C-SPAN which covers
legislative and public
policy issues. The
State and American aristocracy claims that
opposing views are aired on
C-SPAN.
How many
Americans actually watch
C-SPAN?
"C-SPAN is seen regularly by
twice as many men as women. Less well educated individuals and those who do not use
computers most often say they never watch the channel." -
Pew Research Center for the
People and the Press
In January 1995,
C-SPAN launched
Washington Journal, a political talkshow
that C-SPAN now describes
as its “flagship viewer call-in program.” Airing seven
mornings a week, usually three hours
per day, Washington Journal generally
features a host, guests and viewer calls.
Extra! studied Washington
Journal’s guestlist, tabulating all 663 guests that appeared on the
show in the six-month period from November 1, 2004 to April 30, 2005. Guests
were classified by gender, ethnicity, party affiliation (if any) and
profession. The study also looked at the think tanks most prominently represented
on the television
show.
Extra!’s study found Washington Journal skewing
rightward, favoring
Republican and right-of-center
interview subjects by considerable margins over Democratic and left-of-center
guests. The study also found that women, people of color and
public interest
viewpoints were substantially under
represented.
Republicans outnumbered Democrats nearly
two to one. No representative of
a third party appeared during the study period. The American Enterprise Institute
and the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace were the best-represented
think tanks, providing ten guests
each. The Brookings
Institution had seven guests, followed by the Heritage Foundation and
the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, two conservative groups whose
experts each appeared five times. Among
left-leaning think tanks, only the
Center for International
Policy provided as many as two guests.
Citizen-based organizations and
public interest groups accounted
for just nine percent of total guests. Union
representatives,
environmentalists and
consumer rights groups accounted for
just six guest appearances, or one percent of the total.
"No more than
four out of ten [cable viewers] ever watch
C-SPAN.
I took at face value what
people were saying - in the government and in the
mass media and in business over the
years - that all they really cared about was fairness and objectivity.
The closer I got to it, the less I believed they really cared
about was fairness and objectivity.
I
don't want the government to tell me
what I can listen to.
I would
trust the
public at large any
day to make a decision over what is
good and what is evil
and how many choices there are out there before I would a
government based in Washington were
there is a sense that only a certain group of
people should be controlling the air waves,
because they're more responsible
and they have the right kind of
opinions.To put a media industry represenative on the
Federal Communications
Commission and say, "You decide what's fair" is outrageous!
We've
asked to put our own cameras in the chamber of the
House and the
Senate, and have been laughed at. We show
up with our cameras, and they'll have a
public meeting, and then they'll
shut it down and do private
meetings until they get their decisions made, and you'll never see how the
deals are cut.
Telecommunications has been this humongous
tin cup for politicians for a lot of years, and
it's gotten to the point where you've got to watch very carefully to see why a
new piece of legislation is dropped
in the hopper because it could do nothing more or less than generate tremendous
amounts of money into the
political coffers of both parties."
- Brian Lamb, CEO
C-SPAN
Concerns that the loss of
the nation's most popular open forum
diminished American democracy were scoffed at by
Ronald Reagan's
Federal Communications
Commission chairman.
"Television is just
another appliance - it's a toaster
with images." - Mark Fowler
The
Federal Communications
Commission's pro-industry,
anti-regulatory philosophy effectively
ended the right of access to
broadcast
television by any but
moneyed interests. As an unregulated part of
the commons,
television and
radio are
today subject to the same dynamic that is
polluting our other
public trust assets, with behemoths
consolidating
control of the airwaves.
Absent a resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine,
America's
broadcast
mass media, which should include an open
forum for American democracy, will continue to devolve into a
marketplace exclusively for
commerce. It allows
corporations to extend the reach of
their empires into American homes with
customized, interactive multimedia transforming American's into 24-hour-a-day consumers.
The
news and
entertainment is now dictated
by advertisers with personalized
appeals calculated to program
American's to buy, buy, buy.
American civic life,
already invisible on
television, will become an irrelevant
relic to the next generation which will know
little about relevant issues or why
they should participate in democracy.
adapted from Robert F. Kennedy,
Jr., Crimes Against Nature
News Distortion Rule
In 2003, the North
American winners of the prestigious Goldman
Environmental Prize, known as the
"Nobel Prize for grass roots work," were former
Fox television network reporters
Jane Akre and Steve
Wilson. The two investigative reporters lost their jobs when they refused
to change a
news report that had displeased
Monsanto.
The reporters had visited regional
dairies and discovered that
Monsanto's bovine growth
hormone was being injected into cows.
The chemical was present in the
state's milk supply despite commitments by Florida's
supermarkets not to sell milk
tainted by bovine growth hormone.
In various studies bovine growth
hormone has been linked to
cancer and is banned by many countries,
including Canada, New Zealand, and the entire European community.
Jane Akre and Steve
Wilson's report said that Monsanto had been accused
of fraud in
connection with information it had provided to the
Environmental Protection Agency
concerning food safety and had attempted to bribe
public
officials in Canada.
Jane Akre and Steve
Wilson testified that the local Fox television network station manager, David
Boylan, carefully reviewed the investigative reports for
factual accuracy, found no
errors, and scheduled them to run the following
week. Monsanto hired a powerful law firm before
the show ran and threatened to sue Fox television network if the report was run. The
station offered Monsanto an
opportunity to appear on the show
and respond but Monsanto declined the offer.
Jane Akre and Steve
Wilson testified that the local Fox television network station manager, David
Boylan, then ordered the reporters to edit the show in a
way that was
favorable to Monsanto and deceptive. Declining to
cooperate in the
deception both reporters were given a
‘special assignment' with full salaries for their contract period provided
they agreed to sign a confidentiality agreement and provide a report acceptable
to Monsanto. For nine months they worked on 83
different drafts of the story - none of
which satisfied Monsanto.
"For every
fact we intended to
broadcast, we had documentation
six weeks from Sunday. The station's lawyer told us, 'You don't get it. It
doesn't matter what the facts are, we don't want
to be spending money to defend a
lawsuit.'" - Steve Wilson
Jane Akre testified that the station had tried to
force her to say that the bovine
growth hormone milk was safe and no
different from milk without bovine
growth hormone, despite abundant
studies that proved otherwise. "We told them to go ahead and
kill the story," Steve
Wilson says, "just don't make us lie."
They were fired. They sued. They won on
whistleblower statute
law. Overturned on appeal.
The
Federal Communications
Commission's 50 year old News
Distortion Rule which prohibits
broadcast of false reports was
declared to not qualify
under the whistleblower statute
since it had been created over the years in
judicial decisions and was never promulgated in a rule creation
process.
- adapted from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Crimes Against
Nature
Monsanto is a
perfect example of a rogue corporation
that has only one concern, profit. Monsanto does not care about the ultimate effect of its
products on people or how its
products might be detrimental
to humanity as a
whole.
In February 2006
Monsanto agreed to pay $100 million to the University
of California for patent infringement. It seems that University of California
scientists patented the bovine growth hormone that Monsanto pushes. So, apparently, Monsanto has no qualms about
stealing either.
fair
advertising and government
bodiesDairy cows live miserable
lives on over crowded dirt lots. Dairy cows
are artificially inseminated
annually because they do not produce milk
without pregnancies. Dairy cows are
pumped full of hormones, including
bovine growth hormones, so that they
will give 10 times as much milk as they would naturally. Their calves are carted off to veal
crates. Then at about age 5, the 'happy' cows
are turned into hamburgers.
People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals, PETA, filed a law suit that stated that
the California Milk Advisory Board, a State of California governmental agency,
had falsely advertised the condition in which
dairy cattle live in it's "happy cows"
advertising
campaign.
Government
institutions are
free to say whatever they want, even if what is
said is entirely false. And they do so with regularity
in their attempt to forward whatever policy is
now on their agenda.
So the basic truth
comes down to this:
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to
believe anything that a
government employee or agency states
to be a fact as those employees and agencies have no obligation whatsoever to
tell the truth."If you're in
government, you can
lie to your heart's content so long as the
lie is intended to advance your agenda." -
Jonathan Chait
bloggingThink that blog opinion is honest? Think again. Thousands of bloggers are writing
sponsored posts.
"Using a blog to attract and engage customers is fast
becoming a popular marketing strategy." -
Karen E. Klein
Check out PayPerPost Inc. which states on it's web site:
"PayPerPost is the leading marketplace
for Consumer Generated Advertising. The PayPerPost platform
connects
advertisers and
Consumer Content Creators to deliver
compelling marketing messages. The
marketplace is fueled by the
self-expression of bloggers,
videographers, photographers, podcasters and participants in
social networks."
A blogger convention
teaches bloggers how to "monetize your voice."
"Why should you attend
PostieCon '07? Two words: Rock
Star. Bloggers and Internet personalities are the
Rock Stars of the information age.
Bloggers reach millions of dedicated fans on a day to day
basis, it's easy to see why today's humble
blogger could potentially be tomorrow's Rock Star. That's why PostieCon '07's
theme is "You're A Rock Star". We
are here to educate bloggers on how to build
traffic and readership, and use your notoriety and unique
brand to create value and
monetize your voice."
"Advertisers are trying to buy a
blogger's voice, and once they've bought it they own it." - Jeff Jarvis
"PayPerPost versus authentic blogging is like comparing prostitution
with making love to someone you care for deeply." -
Jason MaCabe Calacanis
Other pay per post sites include ReviewMe, Loud
Launch, SponsoredReviews.com.
Here I must disclose all the sponsors for
unique-library. There are no sponsors! And there is only one writer/editor -
me.
Blogging has become just another way for commercial
endeavors to
propagandize.
"Corporate blogs are giving established
companies and obscure brands alike the
ability to connect with their audiences on a
more personal level, build trust, collect
valuable feedback and foster strengthened business relationships. More importantly, these companies
are enjoying tangible returns in their blogging
investment in the form of increased
sales, partnerships, business opportunities, press coverage and lead
generation." - http://www.backbonemedia.com
CEO and exec bloggers include Alan Meckler, Bill
Marriott, Bob Langert, Bob Lutz, Bob Parsons, David Bain, David Sifry, Irving
Wladawsky-Berger, Jonathan Schwartz, Karen Christensen,
Mark Cuban, Richard Edelman, Ted Leonsis
and Zane Safrit.
Alan Meckler = Jupitermedia, Inc.; Bill
Marriott = Marriott International; Bob Langert = Senior Director for
Corporate Social Responsibility at
McDonald's; Robert "Bob" A. Lutz = General Motors Vice Chairman of Product
Development and Chairman of GM North America; Bob (Robert) Parsons = CEO and
founder of Go Daddy; David Bain = 'viral mrketing' PurpleInternetMarketing.com;
Dave Sifry = Technorati; Irving Wladawsky-Berger = Chairman Emeritus, IBM
Academy of Technology; Jonathan Ian Schwartz = President and CEO of Sun
Microsystems; Karen Christensen = CEO Berkshire Publishing Group; Richard
Edelman = CEO Edelman, first to employ the Web in crisis management; Ted
Leonsis = Vice Chairman of America Online; Zane Safrit, CEO Conference Calls
Unlimited.
"Amazon.com runs a side business called Mechanical
Turk ... where people can go, register, and get paid to do little tasks that
computers can't do," explained blogger and film student Arlen Parsa. While on
the site, Parsa saw a request to review Belkin International's consumer
electronics products. The instructions were to "give a 100% rating (as high as
possible)," "write as if you own the product and are using it," and to mark any
negative reviews as "not helpful." The request was posted by Belkin's business
development representative, Mike Bayard, who offered 65 cents for each positive
review. Parsa noted that the product Bayard was paying people to praise "has
consistently gotten bad reviews" from real users. "Bayard has also been paying
people to post fake reviews on Buy.com and Newegg," and posting positive
reviews himself, under different names, along with another Belkin employee.
Belkin responded by saying it "does not participate in, nor does it endorse,
unethical practices like this." - The Daily Background (blog), January 16,
2009
"The single most frightening aspect of our current
national dilemma is the abdication of the
media's responsibility to report
important news." - Steve Cagan 11/26/07
"Our analysis confirms an economically significant demand for
news slanted toward one's own
political ideology." - Matthew Gentzkow, Jesse M. Shapiro,
November 2006
"There is universal distrust of the media by
Americans, because of their notorious
monopoly and bias.
The media unanimously urge higher taxes on working people, more government
spending, a welfare state with
totalitarian powers, close
relations with Russia, and a rabid
denunciation of anyone who opposes Communism." - Eustace
Mullins"Professional journalism had three distinct biases built
into it, biases that remain to this day. First, it regarded anything done by
official sources, for example, government officials and prominent public
figures, as the basis for legitimate news. Second, professional journalism
posited that there had to be a news hook or a news peg to justify a news story.
This helped to stimulate the birth and rapid rise of the public relations (PR)
industry. Surveys show that PR accounts for anywhere from 40 to 70 percent of
what appears as news. The third bias is that professional journalism smuggles
in values conducive to the commercial aims of the owners and advertisers as
well as the political aims of the owning class." - Robert McChesney
"It
is a fact that most editors and newsmen on the staffs of Life, Look, Time,
Newsweek, etc., and most editors, reporters, and commentators at
NBC, CBS, and ABC take their
news and editorial cues from the New
York Times. Technically, it is a great
newspaper; but it reports much of
the news in
conformity with its editorial
policies." - Alice Widener
"Years ago, if I wanted to place
a bad story, I would have to con-vince an
investigative reporter. He'd resist due to journalistic standards. He'd have to
spend weeks, if not months, on the research." -
Eric Dezenhall
"The days
when dignity counted for anything on this continent are long gone. A
society afflicted with an almost
pornographic fascination with
the foibles of the idle rich has no
time to spend thinking about the poor, and, as
a result, the lower classes have largely dropped off the radar screen. The
agenda-setting tendencies of the media
have had much to do with this. A profession once dominated by tough, streetwise
refugees from the working class is now dominated by dainty alumni from our
finest schools, people to whom poverty is not only unpleasant and unhygienic
but totally uncool." - Joe Queenan
Journalism of verification has ceded
ground for years on talk shows and cable to a new
journalism of assertion, where
information is offered with meager attempts independently verify the
informations veracity.
The result is that
stories are sometimes
true and sometimes false.
All this makes it easier for those who
would manipulate
public
opinion - government,
think tanks and
corporations.
Those who distrust the
news media are often heavier
consumers of
news outlets than those who are more
trusting. This is explained by the fact
that there is so much conflicting content.
Journalists need to make significant
changes by documenting their reporting process openly so that
audiences can decide for themselves
whether to trust their reports.
Viewers of PBS will see a different range of concerns from those who
watch cable, where entertainment and
celebrity are a notable part of the
agenda.
On Fox news, the
journalists themselves offer their
opinions,
without attribution to any
reporting, in seven out of ten stories.
That happens in less than one story out of
ten on CNN, and in fewer than three stories out of ten on MSNBC. Fox
news' stories are more deeply
sourced than those of its cable rivals, but are
also more one-sided. PBS's NewsHour, however, is noticeably even more
thorough in its sourcing.
"News organizations often
willingly collude with efforts to censor because
media owners are members of the
political elite themselves and therefore share
the goals and outcomes of government leaders.
Profit ranks higher than
truth telling in the
minds of
media owners and many of their
employees." - Nancy
Snow
"In 2004
magazines, the big new growth area is in
publications that concern not public life at all, but shopping. Beyond the question of
agenda, there are also measurable differences in the nature of the reporting in different
mass media, even under the same
corporate roof. Cable
news, for instance, is a more thinly
reported medium than its rivals. The story
segments include fewer sources, tend to be more
one-sided and feature more opinion from the
journalists.
"Every year after
thanksgiving, the food magazines attack the problem of
leftovers, and every year I clip and save the
recipes with all the self
control of a zombie in the
service of some
evil genius bent on world domination." -
Julie Powell
Newspapers in 2004 continued to be
distinguished for the depth, range and variety of their content. Just 7% of all
newspaper stories, and 13% of
front-page stories, contained anonymous sources.
Among the largest newspapers, 12%
of all 2004 coverage contained anonymous sources, compared to just 3% at the smallest
newspapers and 6% at mid-range
newspapers.
In 2004, more
than half of all network television
stories, 53%, contained anonymous
sources. On the
morning
television programs the figure rose to 79%
of the morning packages. The use of
anonymous sources was rare on cable
television
news. Just 9% of the
stories overall contained any anonymous
sources. Online 19% of the
stories studied contained anonymous
sourcing.
The long term trend is toward investing fewer
resources in original
news gathering. Much of the
investment and effort is in
repackaging, reformulating, redacting, reenacting, thus re-presenting
previously presented "information" in new distracting ways, not in gathering
it. Americans are more likely to
see the same images across multiple
television channels,
read the same wire
story in different publications and
observe the crosspollination the various media outlets such as a television
advertisement that is also played on the radio and, as well, is visually
incorporated into a billboard and print ads venues than they were a generation
ago.
Americans remain
skeptical about the
news media.
A wave of
high-profile scandals involving plagiarism and fabrication at some of
the nation's most established news
institutions confirmed what people
already thought. People have long considered
the press
sensational, rude, pushy, and
callous.
In the late 1970s early 1980s,
consumers of
news began to see the press as less professional, less
moral, more
inaccurate, and less caring about
the interests of ordinary Americans.
Consider just a few statistical changes between 1985 and 2002.
The number of Americans who
news organizations were highly
professional declined from 72% to 49%.
The number who
felt news organizations were
moral fell from 54% to 39%.
Those who
felt news organizations tried to cover up their
mistakes rose from 13% to 67%.
The number who felt the
press got the facts straight fell
from 55% to 35%.
Those who felt
news organizations were biased
politically rose from 45% to 59%.
Americans resent the lack of independence, the
lack of altruistic aspiration and the sense of professional
ethics that defined the quality
journalism of the past." - Project for Excellence in
Journalism
"Our media has collapsed. They've
questioned no one. One of the reasons George W. Bush and
Dick Cheney are so daring is that they
know there's nobody to stop them. Nobody is
going to write a story that says the
war on terror is not a
war, only Congress can declare
war. And you can only have a
war with another country. You can't have a
war with bad temper or a
war against paranoids. Nothing makes any
sense, and the people are getting very confused.
The people are not stupid, but they are totally misinformed.
When you've got a press like we have, you no longer have an informed
citizenry. The press' belongs to
the people who own them. There used to be foreign correspondents in
other countries. There's nobody
abroad now. The New York Times gave up being anything except a kind of
shadow of The Wall Street
Journal. The Washington Post is the court circular. What has the
emperor done
today? And who will be the under-assistant
of the secretary of agriculture? As though these things mattered.
In
America, everybody listens to 19th Century Fox
TV News. In which a bunch of loons just scream
and scream and scream. And with each scream they tell
another lie. How are we ever going to
have an informed citizenry? Which
means then how can we have an informed election?" - Gore Vidal
Americans are increasingly convinced that
news media as a
whole is motivated by the dictates of
wealth generation and that
individual
journalists have been corrupted with
personal ambition.
The long-term trends revealing declining credibility and
believability have been established in scores
of surveys from several different polling operations asking the questions in a
variety of different ways. Those changes deepened the sense that the news media were basically
economicallymotivated while failing to focus on issues of
public interest.
Today, a
host of new forms of communication offer
a way for news
makers to reach the
public. There are talk show
hosts, cable interview shows, corporate web sites,
government web sites, web sites that
purport to be citizen blogs but are really something else,
and more.
True Journalists are
trained to be skeptics and aspire to
speak TRUTH to
power.
True
journalism is the one
source those who want to
manipulate the
public are most prone to
denounce.
If the American news media expects Americans to
respect the value of the news it propagates it must prove that it is willing to
deny the syndicate of the soulless its existing monopoly on the approval of
which "news" items will be broadcast or appear in print.
"Investigative reporting - the kind Jack Anderson used
to do regularly and which was carried in hundreds of papers across the country,
the kind of muckraking, data-intensive work that
takes time and money and ruffles feathers - is dying.
Until there is some official investigation or allegation made by a
prominent politician, there is no
story. Sometimes the media like to cover
the controversy, but riot the substance,
preferring an ambiguous and unsatisfying "he said, she said" report. Safe
reporting, but not investigative.
I know some of the reasons why investigative
reporting is on the decline.
To begin with, investigations take
time and money.
In
America's cash-short, instant-deadline
journalistic world, there's not much room for that.
Are there still
aggressive, talented investigative reporters in America?
There are hundreds. I'll mention
two: Seymour Hersh, formerly of the New York Times, and Robert Parry, formerly
of the Associated Press, who uncovered the Iran-Contra scandal. The operative
word here is "formerly." Robert Parry tells me
that he can no longer do this kind of investigative work within the confines of an
American daily newsroom.
One of the
biggest disincentives to doing investigative journalism is that it jeopardizes
future access to politicians and
corporate elite.
During the
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial, the
testimony of Judith Miller and other American
journalists about the confidences they were willing to keep in order to
maintain access seemed to me sadly illuminating.
Expose the
critters and the door is slammed.
That's not
a price many American journalists are willing
to pay." - Greg Palast
Ever day we are totally bombarded with an endless
parade of messages awakening
us to our
innermost desires. Accepting
our culture as
the enlightened one in every facet is the
same as being a worshiper of the commercial-industrial-corporate-mass media-entertainment
complex that directs
our energy towards fruitless and faulty
solutions for contentment and happiness.
"Television
commentator Armstrong Williams was
paid $240,000 to promote George W.
Bush 's education policies, and syndicated columnists
Maggie Gallagher and
Michael McManus were paid $21,500
and $10,000, respectively, to advocate George
W. Bush's marriage initiatives. This money was provided by
American taxpayers, illegal under the Smith-Mundt
Act of 1948, which forbids the domestic dissemination of
government
propaganda designed to sway
public
policy. Materials that serve "a solely partisan
purpose" are expressly prohibited." -Harry
Brunser
"I don't understand why the Department of Homeland
Security is so bent out of shape about the Federal Emergency Management
Agency's fake news conference last week. What's the difference between that
and George W. Bush holding
bogus town hall meetings, in which
only pre-screened questions were allowed to be asked? Or, perhaps a better
analogy, the White House feeding television stations video clips that it
produced with phony news anchors? Isn't it all part of the
George W. Bush administration's long-standing
manipulation of the media?" - Tom Ogden
11/07
"Have we become so accustomed to our government
lying that faking a news conference is just an "error in judgment"?"- Eric
Werner 11/07
" I have
learned that in
mass media, "truth" is not based on clarity but on repetition. An assumption
repeated three times becomes a
fact."- Tariq Ramadan
"Freedom of the mind
requires not only, or not even especially, the absence of legal constraints but
the presence of alternative
thoughts. The most successful
tyranny is not the one that uses
force to assure
uniformity, but the one that
removes awareness of
other possibilities.
Without freedom of thought, there can be no such
thing as wisdom; and no such
thing as
public
liberty,
without freedom of speech." -Cato
"As an amateur
garage band composer I greatly appreciate the less
discussed benefits of online music. The
complaints of the media companies against Grokster and
other file-sharing networks have
always been about the loss of
profits.
Although
I am sure this is a concern, there is
another, deeper
reason I
believe they fear these new
technologies. Up to now, this
handful of
mammoth media conglomerates have
enjoyed the unrivaled ability to control our
culture, a privilege that is under siege by
consumers threatening to
control their own culture.
The people did not cry out for
Ashlee Simpson. She was foisted upon us, a cultural manipulation that would never be possible in the
consumer controlled, PR less world of online
music." -Andrew
Matthews, North Hollywood
"Four of the largest five entertainment giants
are now run or owned by Askenazi. Murdoch's News Corp (at number four) is
the only gentile holdout - however Rupert is as pro-Israel as any
Askenazi, probably more so."- Los
Angeles Jewish Times 1999
"To keep information from the
public is the function of the corporate
media." - Gore Vidal
"A lie gets
halfway around the world before the
truth has a chance to get its pants on." -
Winston
Churchill
For twenty-three years Sabin Russell, a top medical
writer specializing in global health and infectious diseases, worked at the San
Francisco Chronicle covering subjects ranging from bioterror threats to the
risk of avian flu. Sabin Russell won numerous accolades, including a 2001
Science in Society Journalism Award from the National Association of
Science Writers for his reporting on the flaws of the flu vaccine industry.
On March 30, 2009 Sabin Russell was pressured out of his job just as swine flu
murmurs began to emerge from Mexico. Few reporters were better equipped to
tackle such a difficult yet urgent story.
Sabin Russell even tipped off
his old employer, the San Francisco Chronicle - a subsidiary of Hearst
Communications, Inc., that it might want to get a jump on what was happening in
Mexico City. The San Francisco Chronicle published a swine flu article
on April 24, 2009 by Erin Allday. Erin Allday had written about shootings,
vehicular accidents, drownings, earthquakes, fires, tree sitters, brothels,
rape, murder, beatings, robbery, liter, the disabled and the weather up until
replacing Sabin Russell.
"From 1989 to 2005, the number of US papers
featuring weekly science-related sections shrank from ninety-five to
thirty-four." - Chris Mooney & Sheril Kirshenbaum
See Social Control
See
F. Scott Fitzgerald
See
William Faulkner
See
propaganda_model
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contents
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This web site is not a commercial web site and
is presented for educational purposes only.
This website defines a new religious
ideology to which its author adheres. The author feels that the falsification
of reality outside personal experience has created a populace unable to discern
propaganda from reality and that this has been done purposefully by an
international corporate cartel through their agents who wish to foist a corrupt
version of reality on the human race. Religious intolerance occurs when any
group refuses to tolerate religious practices, religious beliefs or persons due
to their religious ideology. This web site marks the founding of the religion
aptly named The Truth of the Way of Life - a rational religion based on reason
which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme leader, no
church buildings and in which each and every individual is encouraged to
develop a personal relation with God through the pursuit of the knowledge of
reality in the hope of curing the spiritual corruption that has enveloped the
human spirit. The tenets of The Truth of the Way of Life are spelled out in
detail on this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to
their religious beliefs in America is considered a “hate
crime.”
This web site in no way condones violence. To the contrary
the intent here is to reduce the violence that is already occurring due to the
international corporate cartels desire to control the human race. The
international corporate cartel already controls the world central banking
system, mass media worldwide, the industrial military entertainment complex of
America and is responsible for the collapse of morals, the elevation of
self-centered behavior and the destruction of global ecosystems. Civilization
is based on cooperation. Cooperation does not occur at the point of a
gun.
American social mores and values have declined precipitously over
the last century as the corrupt international cartel has garnered more and more
power. This power rests in the ability to deceive the populace in general
through mass media by pressing emotional buttons which have been preprogrammed
into the population through prior mass media psychological operations. The
results have been the destruction of the family and the destruction of social
structures that do not adhere to the corrupt international elites vision of a
perfect world. Through distraction and coercion the direction of thought of the
bulk of the population has been directed toward solutions proposed by the
corrupt international elite that further consolidates their power and which
further their purposes.
All views and opinions presented on this web
site are the views and opinions of individual human men and women that,
through their writings, showed the capacity for intelligent, reasonable,
rational, insightful and unpopular thought. All factual information presented
on this web site is believed to be true and
accurate and is presented as originally presented in print media which may or
may not have originally presented the facts truthfully. Opinion and thoughts
have been adapted, edited, corrected, redacted, combined, added to, re-edited
and re-corrected as nearly all opinion and thought has been throughout time but
has been done so in the spirit of the original writer with the intent of making
his or her thoughts and opinions clearer and relevant to the reader in the
present time.
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