How Internet activists allows political Media Propaganda, and don't say anymore than Boo!

[FrenchieCat]

Meanwhile, many froth at the mouth everyday, sometimes about the same things,
no matter what Pres. Obama accomplishes.

Why isn't the media pursued more?
Why aren't there a ton of letters and phone calls and ops here about them?
Why are we not worried that the media is part of what's wrong with America?
Why are there no boycotts of their advertised products.
Why do we lay down and react as though the media lying to us day in, day out is ok?
Why are we mostly silent and act helpless in reference to their fucking bullshit that
they serve us everyday?

Why?

Why The Media Lies

http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq32.html

It was Walter Lippman who coined the phrase “the manufacture of consent”,
enjoining it as a means of population control.
Lippman’s concept may indeed be in effect today.

The mass media is clearly one of the most powerful institutions in society; it is,
for most of the public, the ultimate source of all their information.

All scholars generally agree that the media do have the capacity to set the agenda of public discourse about political affairs....

Nevertheless, the vast extent of the manipulation of the media under the sway of business interests has been harshly revealed in the statement of John Swainton, (former) Chief of Staff of the New York Times. “There is not one of you who would dare to write his honest opinion,”

He Said....“The business of a journalist now is to destroy the truth, to lie outright,
to pervert, to vilify, fall at the feet of Mammon and sell himself for his daily bread.
We are tools, vessels of rich men behind the scenes, we are jumping jacks.
They pull the strings; we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives
are the properties of these men.
We are intellectual prostitutes.”


Herman of Wharton and Chomsky of MIT lucidly document their argument that America’s government and its corporate giants exercise control over what we read, see and hear.

The authors identify the forces that they contend make the national media propagandistic - the major three being the motivation for profit through ad revenue, the media’s close links to and often ownership by corporations, and their acceptance of information from biased sources.

In five case studies, the writers show how TV, newspapers and radio distort world events… Extensive evidence is calmly presented, and in the end an indictment against the guardians of our freedom is substantiated. A disturbing picture emerges of a news system that panders to the interest of America’s privileged and neglects its duties when the concerns of minority groups and the underclass are at stake.”


Former Dean at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, and a winner of almost every top prize in American journalism - including the Pulitzer - Ben Bagdikian, acknowledges the massive control over public life entailed by the increasing concentration in corporate ownership:
“In an authoritarian society there is a ministry, or a commissar,
or a directorate that controls what everybody will see and hear.
We call that a dictatorship.

Here we have a handful of very powerful corporations led by a handful
of very powerful men and women who control everything we see and hear
beyond the natural environment and our own families.
That’s something which surrounds us every day and night.
If it were one person we’d call that a dictatorship,
a ministry of information.”


Lee Bollinger, dean of the University of Michigan Law School, comments that:
“The press can exclude important points of view,
operating as a bottleneck in the marketplace of ideas.
It can distort knowledge of public issues not just by omission
but also through active misrepresentations...
It can also exert an adverse influence over the tone and character
of public debate in subtle ways, by playing to personal biases...
or by making people fearful...
It can fuel ignorance and pettiness by avoiding serious issues altogether,
favoring simple-minded fare or cheap entertainment over serious discussion...
Of course, all these concerns become more serious as the number of those who control the press become fewer.”


"Deception by an omission of the truth is as bad as a lie."
Jennifer Chiaverini


NYP op-ed disappears Bush's politicization of the Justice Department
http://mediamatters.org/research/201007120036

Right-wing media manufacture outrage over Michelle Obama's noncontroversial NAACP remarks
http://mediamatters.org/research/201007130025

BTW, Obama's approval rating is unchanged since Dec., but WashPost doesn't want to say so
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007130022


The Washington Post's rigged stimulus polling
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007130014


Right-wing media smear "African-American Attorney General"
as racially biased in trumped-up New Black Panthers case
http://mediamatters.org/research/201007070034


Hyping possible Dem midterm losses, WashPost forgets about a recent win
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007060014


Has Obama's approval rating been "falling steadily" since the BP spill?
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006230023


USA Today leaves out important midterm election context
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006170040


FLASHBACK: During Exxon Valdez disaster, President Bush got a free pass from the press
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006170007

[jaxx]

1. Creating dissent is what they do now.

It might land them on the teevee. What a way to go.

[FrenchieCat]

3. So then, they are no longer activists? I'd say that would be the case.

[jaxx]

5. I'd call them handlers.

They throw out some red meat and then tell you when to choke on it. News is buried down in paragraph 4 after the bullshit in most articles.

[FrenchieCat]

6. Handlers?

Yep, that makes sense!

[MadMaddie]

2. Howard Dean was right

Right before the MSM took him down...he said all of the mega corporations needed to be broken up for this very reason.

[FrenchieCat]

4. I agree.

But I don't see even the rank and files on the Internet really dealing much with this.
Instead we argue with each other, while the Media propagandizes to the rest.

[patrice]

7. K'd & R'd & re-posted elsewhere

[FrenchieCat]

8. Good to know!

It is important. It's one thing to be emotionally vested in politics,
it is quite another for those emotions to be manipulated knowingly.

[patrice]

12. It's especially nice when re-posting actually leads to discussion as it did this time.

a young person, I think it was, is reading that article.

It's funny that we are turning the RW's "liberal media" meme against them.

[hfojvt]

9. the media isn't pursued more because we are under their spell

THEY do not directly control what we read on DU, but the indirect control is very substantial. For the most part, we post here what we have seen on TV or read in a paper or what we read on an internet paper like TPM, Rawstory, Huffpo or Salon, which are, in turn, getting their stories from the TV and the WaPo or AP. Surprisingly, they do not do lots of stories about their own pernicious effects.

The other part is the fascination with celebrity soap opera. There is this curiousity, this fascination with famous people. What did Angelina Jolie do lately? What did Denzel say about Brian Keith? Who is the greatest Laker of all time? Gosh, we were gonna do a mini-series about defense spending, but there was not time between "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and "Survivor XLII"

[FrenchieCat]

10. Kinda of like the Elephant in the room......

and come to think of it....the folks behind our very own little curtain.

In essence; we are their puppets....They use us, and to a great degree, we let them.

[inna]

11. Excellent link. K&R

"That the mass media therefore amounts to a propaganda system for Western elite interests; its framework of investigation and understanding having been established from the outset by the elite due to their institutional power over the media; is in light of this analysis hardly a very unreasonable or shocking concept, given the very nature of the media’s relation to domestic and international politico-economic structures. It is due to the media’s structural subservience to corporate control in accordance with the institutionally established filters just discussed, that the media becomes generally unable to question the corporate ideology."


Chomsky also stresses that this is more of a uniquely (or originally) American (rather than "Western") phenomenon; corporate propaganda is deeply engrained and perfected to the highest levels in the US.

[shirlden]

13. OK Frenchie

I'm on board. What is your plan of attack??? I know you have some secret method to change all this BS from the MSM. What do I put on my sign and where do we march?

:patriot:

[karynnj]

14. Fabtastic compilation here - K&R nt

[NorthCarolina]

15. With the MSM firmly under conservative control, attention now turns to defeating Net Neutrality. eom

[jesus_of_suburbia]

16. Kick and Rec.... I especially liked the following:

....a news system that panders to the interest of America’s privileged and neglects its duties when the concerns of minority groups and the underclass are at stake.