I am not saying that nothing they report is true, or that they get together once a week in a big conference and decide what propaganda theme is going to be played up in the next week's news. It is obviously much more subtle than that. The power of the paycheck goes a long way to keep the media whores on track in that they know what stories are "sensitive" and to be avoided or de-emphasized from the point of view of their corporate bosses and advertisers and which stories it is safe to play up and promote. That is, if they want to keep their jobs and get raises and promotions. I'd suggest heart warming stories about an abused Iraqi dog who tracks his soldier benefactor over 70 miles of desert falls into the latter category.
Brainwashing Americaby Dr. Norman Livergood.
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In an earlier article, I reviewed the varied aspects of personality profiling and simulation. While serving as Head of the Artificial Intelligence Department at the U.S. Army War College, 1993-1995, I conducted studies on profiling, psychological programming, and brainwashing. I explored and developed personality simulation systems, an advanced technology used in military war games, FBI profiling, political campaigning, and advertising. Part of my discovery was that:
* unenlightened human minds are combinations of infantile beliefs and emotional patterns
* these patterns can be simulated in profiling systems
* these profiling systems can be used to program and control people
Personality simulation systems are being used to create political campaigns that apply voter profiles to control their voting behavior. TV commercials and programs use personality simulation to profile viewers to control their purchasing and viewing behaviors. And sophisticated propaganda and brainwashing techniques are being used by the Bush junta to keep American citizens under control.
http://www.hermes-press.com/brainwash1.htm Propaganda in the Free PressAn Interview With Edward Herman
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The second filter is advertising. The media depend on advertising as their funding source. Newspapers probably get 70 percent of their revenue, on average, from advertising. Television gets over 95 percent from advertisers. The TV stations and networks all have people who go around and try to sell advertisers on their programs. They have to convince them of the merit of the programs in which they want to advertise.
What do the advertisers want? They not only want a large audience, they want an elite audience-the more money the audience has the better. They don't want to upset the audience. They want what is called "a favorable selling environment" for their products. So the advertisers have to be competed for, and they're the underlying funding source. There's no question that they influence what the media will do. They don't interfere all the time. They don't call the media up and discipline them; that's not the main way they work. The main influence they have is that they have to be competed for by the media, and the media has to convince them that their programming meets advertisers needs.
Some advertisers actually have explicit conditions on programming. For example, Proctor and Gamble, one of the biggest advertisers, has an advertising rule that's written down. It will not support programs that insult the military, or that suggests that the business community is not a good and spiritual community. Ben Bagdikian's excellent book, The Media Monopoly, has citations from Proctor and Gamble directly. He also shows that other companies have instructions stating that they will not advertise in media that does not meet "certain standards" which really are political standards.
So, if you're a radical paper, if you really have messages that are going to upset the business community, you're not going to get advertising. This filter limits who will be able to get advertising, and therefore, who can afford to spend a lot of money putting up a quality production. It also influences how the media will approach programming and news because they do not want to offend and chase away advertisers.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=3563 The more time spent on heart warming puppy dog tales means makes it easier to avoid spending time on other stories like this
Risk of cholera multiplied by sewage collapse in BaghdadBy Oscar Grenfell, snip:
General Dorko told the February 3 press conference that the “large capital investments” needed meant it could take “two or three or four years” to fix the lack of sewage treatment. In many parts of Baghdad, the situation today is just as bad as it was following the 2003 war, when every aspect of Iraq’s basic infrastructure was in complete collapse due to more than a decade of United Nations sanctions and the impact of US bombing.