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Octafish

(55,745 posts)
Mon Jan 5, 2015, 04:32 PM Jan 2015

War by Media and the Triumph of Propaganda

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Secrecy, Surveillance and Censorship

War by Media and the Triumph of Propaganda

by JOHN PILGER
CounterPunch, Dec. 5-7, 2014

Why has so much journalism succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do the New York Times and the Washington Post deceive their readers?

Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity? And why are they not taught that the essence of so much of what’s called the mainstream media is not information, but power?

These are urgent questions. The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps nuclear war – with the United States clearly determined to isolate and provoke Russia and eventually China. This truth is being turned upside down and inside out by journalists, including those who promoted the lies that led to the bloodbath in Iraq in 2003.

The times we live in are so dangerous and so distorted in public perception that propaganda is no longer, as Edward Bernays called it, an “invisible government”. It is the government. It rules directly without fear of contradiction and its principal aim is the conquest of us: our sense of the world, our ability to separate truth from lies.

SNIP...

The most effective propaganda is found not in the Sun or on Fox News – but beneath a liberal halo. When the New York Times published claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, its fake evidence was believed, because it wasn’t Fox News; it was the New York Times.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/05/war-by-media-and-the-triumph-of-propaganda/

15 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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War by Media and the Triumph of Propaganda (Original Post) Octafish Jan 2015 OP
In war, truth is the first casualty. Aeschylus Tierra_y_Libertad Jan 2015 #1
''He who learns must suffer...'' Octafish Jan 2015 #4
Thanks! Added to my collection. Tierra_y_Libertad Jan 2015 #5
Stopped reading at "...determined to isolate and provoke Russia and eventually China..." Blue_Tires Jan 2015 #2
That does jump out at you doesn't it el_bryanto Jan 2015 #3
Like the time ''the USA'' wanted to attack Iraq? Octafish Jan 2015 #6
The large liberal want people who will help them get more readers. Jim Beard Jan 2015 #7
Murdoch, Scaife and CIA Propaganda Octafish Jan 2015 #10
I cannot think... sendero Jan 2015 #8
My experience here is people condenming me for my feelings the same as the C. S. Monitor Jim Beard Jan 2015 #9
It's their job, missing the point. Octafish Jan 2015 #11
I totally get all that... sendero Jan 2015 #12
It's why we post on DU, sendero. Octafish Jan 2015 #13
Thank you! RiverLover Jan 2015 #14
Rupert Murdoch, the CIA, Nugan Hand Bank & Crimes of Patriots Octafish Jan 2015 #15
 

Tierra_y_Libertad

(50,414 posts)
1. In war, truth is the first casualty. Aeschylus
Mon Jan 5, 2015, 04:44 PM
Jan 2015

Replaced by flag pins and "Support the Troops" bumper stickers.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
4. ''He who learns must suffer...''
Mon Jan 5, 2015, 05:06 PM
Jan 2015

"He who learns must suffer, and, even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." -- Aeschylus

Who Robert F. Kennedy quoted upon hearing of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Blue_Tires

(55,445 posts)
2. Stopped reading at "...determined to isolate and provoke Russia and eventually China..."
Mon Jan 5, 2015, 05:00 PM
Jan 2015

Pilger is letting his mask slip by spewing propaganda while calling out other journalists for propaganda...

el_bryanto

(11,804 posts)
3. That does jump out at you doesn't it
Mon Jan 5, 2015, 05:06 PM
Jan 2015

The larger point is worth considering, but Pravda made some good points now and again too.

Bryant

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
6. Like the time ''the USA'' wanted to attack Iraq?
Mon Jan 5, 2015, 05:21 PM
Jan 2015

The War Party pulled out all the stops to get their war on to build public support. For instance...

"I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," Nayirah said. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where ... babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."



Turned out the "15-year old hospital volunteer" Nayirah really was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington when she testified to Congress.

"If I wanted to lie, or if we wanted to lie, if we wanted to exaggerate, I wouldn't use my daughter to do so. I could easily buy other people to do it." -- Kuwait Ambassador

That was 1990. Here's the story:

http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html

I don't recall Brian Williams bringing any of that up in 2002 when helping lead the run-up to Iraq War II.

 

Jim Beard

(2,535 posts)
7. The large liberal want people who will help them get more readers.
Mon Jan 5, 2015, 05:47 PM
Jan 2015

They pay more to their reporters not for their quality of work but their social connections for sources. They like privileged people who they know will write what the owners like. The internet is cutting into their income and it will continue. As I see it, our press is becoming freer. The problem with that is it gives the money people much more power. Its been downhill since reagan did away with the fairness doctrine.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
10. Murdoch, Scaife and CIA Propaganda
Mon Jan 5, 2015, 06:27 PM
Jan 2015
Special Report: The rapid expansion of America’s right-wing media began in the 1980s as the Reagan administration coordinated foreign policy initiatives with conservative media executives, including Rupert Murdoch, and then cleared away regulatory hurdles, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry
ConsortiumNews, December 31, 2014

The Reagan administration pulled right-wing media executives Rupert Murdoch and Richard Mellon Scaife into a CIA-organized “perception management” operation which aimed Cold War-style propaganda at the American people in the 1980s, according to declassified U.S. government records.

Although some records relating to Murdoch remain classified, several documents that have been released indicate that he and billionaire Scaife were considered sources of financial and other support for President Ronald Reagan’s hard-line Central American policies, including the CIA’s covert war in Nicaragua.

A driving force behind creation of Reagan’s extraordinary propaganda bureaucracy was CIA Director William Casey who dispatched one of the CIA’s top covert action specialists, Walter Raymond Jr., to the National Security Council to oversee the project. According to the documents, Murdoch was brought into the operation in 1983 – when he was still an Australian citizen and his media empire was much smaller than it is today.

Charles Wick, director of the U.S. Information Agency, arranged at least two face-to-face meetings between Murdoch and Reagan, the first on Jan. 18, 1983, when the administration was lining up private financing for its propaganda campaign, according to records at the Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, California. That meeting also included lawyer and political operative Roy Cohn and his law partner Thomas Bolan.

The Oval Office meeting between Reagan and Murdoch came just five days after NSC Advisor William Clark noted in a Jan. 13, 1983 memo to Reagan the need for non-governmental money to advance the project. “We will develop a scenario for obtaining private funding,” Clark wrote, as cited in an unpublished draft chapter of the congressional Iran-Contra investigation.

Clark then told the President that “Charlie Wick has offered to take the lead. We may have to call on you to meet with a group of potential donors.”

The documents suggest that Murdoch was soon viewed as a source for that funding. In an Aug. 9, 1983 memo summing up the results of a Casey-organized meeting with five leading ad executives regarding how to “sell” Reagan’s aggressive policies in Central America, Raymond referred to Murdoch as if he already were helping out.

CONTINUED...

https://consortiumnews.com/2014/12/31/murdoch-scaife-and-cia-propaganda/

PS: Thanks for seeing the Big Picture, Jim Beard. Nixon-Reagan-Bush message man Roger Ailes would be hand-picked by Mr. Murdoch to run Fox News. Taking the lead in branding the Peaceniks as communist sympathizers from Nicaragua and El Salvador to helping lie Smirko into office in 2000 and the USA into Iraq, again, in 2003. The only real counter is...us...on DU and throughout the Internet.

sendero

(28,552 posts)
8. I cannot think...
Mon Jan 5, 2015, 05:56 PM
Jan 2015

.... of a news source I consider reliable and unbiased, including NPR. The last good journalism I heard was the Christian Science Monitor back when I had access to them.

Newspapers, TV, they all have an agenda. Some of them lie outright but most of the time they just tell part of the truth, that works as well as a lie for their purposes.

If you want to have a clue what is really going on in any sphere, you have to spend a lot of time on the internet, and plenty of what you'll find there is bullshit also, but sometimes you can glean out something like the facts.

 

Jim Beard

(2,535 posts)
9. My experience here is people condenming me for my feelings the same as the C. S. Monitor
Mon Jan 5, 2015, 06:06 PM
Jan 2015

Read this and I am not a troll as I have been accused....

Disrupting Ron Wyden?????

[link:http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/0105/Protesters-disrupt-ceremony-for-100-year-old-Navy-vet.-Is-uncivil-disobedience-rising|

Protesters disrupt ceremony for 100-year old Navy vet. Is 'uncivil' disobedience rising?

On Saturday, a ceremony honoring US Navy veteran Dario Raschio was held up for 15-minutes after more than 100 protesters burst into the room shouting "hands-up, don't shoot!"

snip...

Civil disobedience is built on the premise of defying authority. And Americans have a Constitutional right of free speech. But in a few recent cases, protesters are likely harming to their own causes by being inconsiderate and disrespectful of innocents caught in the emotional cross-fire of their actions. says Patricia Napier-Fitzpatrick, president of The Etiquette School of New York in a phone interview.

Recommended: Race equality in America: How far have we come?

“This is such a difficult issue,” Ms. Napier-Fitzpatrick says. “Yes, protest, by all means. Make your voices heard, but there is a time and place and that may not be when people are grieving or someone not at all involved with the issue is being honored.”

On Saturday, a ceremony honoring U.S. Navy veteran Dario Raschio, age 100, was held up for 15-minutes after Sen. Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon was interrupted at Portland Community College's Southeast Campus, Oregon Live reports.

More than 100 protesters burst into the room shouting "hands-up, don't shoot!" in reference to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., last fall. Others cried, "I can't breathe" in reference to the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who died in July following a chokehold by a New York City police officer.

Other protesters outside the room beat on the windows and held up signs until the centenarian finally silenced them by crying into a microphone in a shaky voice, “Just give me a chance! Show some respect for the occasion.”

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
11. It's their job, missing the point.
Mon Jan 5, 2015, 06:50 PM
Jan 2015

To protect capital and its global empire, Corporate Owned News media omit, distort, fabricate and whatever else may be needed.



Shocking:

Did Rupert Murdoch Push Tony Blair on Iraq War?

Rupert Murdoch took part in an "over-crude" attempt by US Republicans to push Tony Blair into action before the invasion of Iraq, the former British prime minister's ex-media chief claimed Saturday.

Alastair Campbell said the News Corporation media baron warned Blair in a phone call of the dangers in delaying signing up to the March 19, 2003 invasion, as part of an attempt to speed up Britain joining the military campaign.

SNIP...

"Both TB and I felt it was prompted by Washington, and another example of their over-crude diplomacy. Murdoch was pushing all the Republican buttons, how the longer we waited the harder it got."

The following day he added: "TB felt the Murdoch call was odd, not very clever."

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/970894/shocking%3A_did_rupert_murdoch_push_tony_blair_on_iraq_war/



There was a time I wondered why Corporate McPravda failed to follow-up on all this. It turned out they were part of the coincidence.

Do you know about the late Alex Carey, Sendero? An expert on propaganda, Carey said:

"The 20th century is marked by three historic developments: the growth of democracy via the expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy."

The guy was on to 'em. Here're links to a pair of great webcasts Time Of Useful Consciousness Radio:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022862898

sendero

(28,552 posts)
12. I totally get all that...
Mon Jan 5, 2015, 09:56 PM
Jan 2015

..... and who and why they serve. But I think things would be so much better in America if everyone understood these things. And right now, maybe 10% do, at best.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
13. It's why we post on DU, sendero.
Tue Jan 6, 2015, 08:58 AM
Jan 2015

The Internet is about the best tool Democracy has, after word-of-mouth.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
15. Rupert Murdoch, the CIA, Nugan Hand Bank & Crimes of Patriots
Tue Jan 6, 2015, 09:12 AM
Jan 2015

Real news that's shaped our world, from the great DUer MinM:



http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021255207#post40

PS: You are most welcome, RiverLover! We go to history to change the future.

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