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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 whats 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 wasnt Fox News; it was the New York Times.
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/05/war-by-media-and-the-triumph-of-propaganda/
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Replaced by flag pins and "Support the Troops" bumper stickers.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)"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.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Pilger is letting his mask slip by spewing propaganda while calling out other journalists for propaganda...
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)The larger point is worth considering, but Pravda made some good points now and again too.
Bryant
Octafish
(55,745 posts)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)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)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 Reagans hard-line Central American policies, including the CIAs covert war in Nicaragua.
A driving force behind creation of Reagans extraordinary propaganda bureaucracy was CIA Director William Casey who dispatched one of the CIAs 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 Reagans 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).... 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)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)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)..... 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)The Internet is about the best tool Democracy has, after word-of-mouth.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)Great post.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)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.