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Lying by Omission
What is not on the nightly news?
This is the most important question to
ask when consuming mainstream media.
The average hour long broadcast consists
of 48 minutes or less of actual news programming, minus, of course,
the chit-chatting, the expensive motion graphics and the bumpers,
highlights and story recaps.
With a formula like this, full of pomp
and grandstanding, the impression given is that if does not make it
on the nightly news, the it is not of significance.
The most obvious way in which the
mainstream media manufactures consent for policy makers and
advertisers is by omitting from the news reel those stories and
perspectives which may compromise the broadcasters agenda, whatever
that may be.
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Controlling the Debate
Who is arguing, and for what cause?
News programs are businesses just like
anything else, and as such news executives keep a go-to list of
contacts to fulfill any necessary role in a program or segment. If
the government needs credibility, they roll out an ex-president and
remind you that he has 'gravitas.'
If the military industrial complex needs
a voice, then they roll out a familiar think-tanker to interject in
a debate with a common-sense perspective in favor of national
security.
If something is too complicated for
public consumption, then they open the rolodex to the 'experts' page
and shuffle some know-it-all in front of the camera.
The media is laden with groomed pundits,
so-called opinion leaders, and commentators, and each one has a
definite reputation, each one resonates with a specific target
audience, and each one fills a predictable role in a conversation.
Program guests are very well vetted, and
news is a science, a very lucrative science that excels in giving
the impression of a diversity in ideas while keeping the debate
sequestered in a very well constructed box.
The characters in this box make all the
difference.
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Selecting the Right Anchors, Casters and Presenters
Our lives have been pegged to the
dollar, and as such, a 'good job' is valued above many genuine
virtues.
People like to keep their jobs, as do
news anchors and news casters, and since news is, again, a business,
the voices and faces on news programs are hired to perform a role, a
job description, a task. They are not employed to pursue morally
driven journalism for the benefit of society. If they perform as
they are required, they advance and gain more exposure.
If they rock the boat, there are a
thousand other hungry job-seekers chomping at the bit to replace
them and do exactly they are hired to do.
News anchoring is a job like anything
else, and those at the forefront are the best at playing the role.
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Scripting and Synchronizing News
One of the creepier and more blatant
efforts to homogenize thought and manufacture consent is to script
the news at high level, then distribute these scripts to many
different locales and anchors to read verbatim,
while they feign authenticity.
This is partially a result of the
business decision to save money by employing as few actual news
gatherers as possible, but is also a key part of the strategy to
achieve conformity amongst people of different backgrounds and
interests.
The government has also been known to
interject itself into the chain of command for selecting which news
scripts are to be disseminated to the public.
This is the most fundamental
characteristic of propaganda, and is rather embarrassing to witness
once you realize just how disingenuous your local news presenters
are and just how easily duped most people are.
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Politicizing Everything
Language is the greatest weapon of
social control, and with mainstream media, powerfully debilitating
language is pushed into every corner of our consciousness.
And so on. Ad nauseam...
The truth is that ideas and opinions are
as vastly different as grains of sand on a beach, yet the media
intentionally frames every issue in terms of a phony left-right
paradigm that has been constructed to pigeon hole complex ideas and
interests into a cheapened thought prison.
No unorthodox idea or point of view can
reach critical mass because everything is automatically framed in a
'with us or against us' mindset, turning people against each other
for no reason other than to appeal to our desire to be on the
winning team.
The mainstream media is the chief party
responsible for creating the constructs of 'left' and 'right,' which
have been tightly integrated into our social consciousness as a
means of achieving divisiveness and disagreement among the populace.
This is the chief tactic of divide and
conquer, and when people are compelled on any issue to 'pick a team'
and fight the rivalry to it's bitter end, many opportunities for
true progress are lost and the populace is easily goaded into a
position favorable to the elite.
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Using the Language of Separation and Labels
Sometime in the 1990′s, the
mainstream media stopped referring
to people as 'people' or even as 'citizens' and began calling
everyone 'consumers.'
Once again, language is important to
shaping reality, and as 'consumers' our role in the affairs of
business and state are reduced to hapless bystanders whose job it is
to choose and reject, not interject and affect.
We've all heard the label 'conspiracy
theorist,' which is the most popular label used when an
idea or story is unfavorable to the mainstream media and the
interests that back them up.
You are a 'conspiracy theorist' if you
ask questions, assimilate facts in a logical manner, or pursue
justice outside of the main flow of public discourse on a popular
issue.
This type of language is also part of
the process of politicizing everything, and by also labeling people
in accordance with their,
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country of origin
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religion
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skin color
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economic class,
...or whatever else, more wedges of division are driven
into the populace, deflating our inherent power in numbers.
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Asking the Wrong Questions
Press access to 'important' people in
our society is tightly regulated, and the powers that be don't like
to be confronted with unexpected and hard questions.
For this, the mainstream media dutifully
uses its access to people in high places to ask softball, trivial,
nonsensical, ignorant questions about irrelevant and superfluous
issues.
Independent media is winning the long
race against corporate/fascist propagandized media because people
are naturally inclined to resonate with common sense and truth,
which is not at all what corporate mainline media is involved with.
White house correspondents shouldn't
waste our time and insult our intelligence by asking a war time
president about his pet dog or a recent golfing trip.
But they do, all the time.
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Closing the Book Too Soon
Moving an important or complicated issue
from the front page as quickly as possible is a common strategy to
remove touchy subjects from the public conversation.
Sadly, our national attention span is at
an all time low, mostly because we've been trained to move from
issue to issue with lightening speed, never soaking up any one thing
for too long.
With such a short term memory, it is
easy to,
...and so on, just by moving onto
to something new.
Once the media has signaled that a story
has been resolved or adequately discussed, then any after thought,
individual investigation, or further inquiry is labeled as extremist
and ignored.
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Triviality and Distraction
With all of the important decisions
being made daily by powerful people, decisions that genuinely affect
quality of life for many people, the news outlets are steadfastly
devoted to engaging in gossip, entertainment, murders and acts of
violence, car accidents, disasters and other pabulum.
The body politic is kept confused by
celebrity happenings,
endless sports contests and other such
pageantry, and the media uses these many forms of distractions to
fill time and brain space so that important issues are seen as a
drag or as a downer, and never given proper reflection.
This is so ubiquitous in our society
nowadays that there really is no escape.
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Outright Lying
When all else fails,
just
lie, make it
up as you go along, sell your air time to the highest bidder, and
never look back.
In
the Internet age, people are pretty
keen on fact checking, rebutting, arguing, and gathering stats, and
there are enough facts available to prove any side to any story. In
fact, this has become an art form for major media, and the ability
to gather facts in accordance with an agenda is a profitable skill
for the mainstream media.
Lying has always worked, and the bigger
the lie, the more likely it is to be believed.
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Bonus - Eye Candy and Mind Melting
This one is a bonus and part of the new
era of network news.
Rather than employ virtuous gumshoes and
hardcore reporters of truth, mainstream media instead invests in
graphic artists to make each frame of the broadcast an over-designed
motion collage of brain-melting info overload.
Staying focused on what the anchor or
guest is actually saying is impossible. By design, the news is
presented in a mad shotgun blast of competing signals, and your
attention is split in ten directions with tickers, bubbles, stock
footage, gyrating lights and special effects.
The point here is to exhaust the mind
with over-stimulation so that the brain cannot function methodically
and cannot process an issue beyond the shallow surface.
This is also known as hypnotism, or
mind-control.
