dubmeup wrote:
Google is your friend...Namely if you Google pretty much any news event you find that the majority of the main stream news outlets report events almost identically. The reason for that is that they are not vehicles for journalists, they are vehicles for reporters. Those reporters report what the news agencies like Reuters and Associated Press put out there.
So what appear on the surface to be independent media outlets are in reality just mediums for the dissemination of a very limited view of events. A system like that makes it very easy to shepherd millions of people's understanding of events into a teeny weeny fold.
Imo reporters for the main stream news outlets should be some of the lowest paid employees in our societies, they literally do sweet FA beyond copying and pasting what they have placed in front of them. Strangely though, they're rather well paid and held to be respected citizens in the main.
All totally true. And, of course, we've already got books like "Manufacturing Consent" in which a propaganda model shows explicitly that the media systematically distorts information:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Cons...ass_Media#Criticisms
Editorial distortion is aggravated by the news media’s dependence upon private and governmental news sources. If a given newspaper, television station, magazine, etc., incurs governmental disfavor, it is subtly excluded from access to information. Consequently, it loses readers or viewers, and ultimately, advertisers. To minimize such financial danger, news media businesses editorially distort their reporting to favor government and corporate policies in order to stay in business.
Editorial bias: five filters
Herman and Chomsky's "propaganda model" describes five editorially distorting filters applied to news reporting in mass media:
Size, Ownership, and Profit Orientation: The dominant mass-media outlets are large firms which are run for profit. Therefore they must cater to the financial interest of their owners - often corporations or particular controlling investors. The size of the firms is a necessary consequence of the capital requirements for the technology to reach a mass audience.
The Advertising License to Do Business: Since the majority of the revenue of major media outlets derives from advertising (not from sales or subscriptions), advertisers have acquired a "de-facto licensing authority". Media outlets are not commercially viable without the support of advertisers. News media must therefore cater to the political prejudices and economic desires of their advertisers. This has weakened the working-class press, for example, and also helps explain the attrition in the number of newspapers.
Sourcing Mass Media News: Herman and Chomsky argue that “the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access [to the news], by their contribution to reducing the media’s costs of acquiring [...] and producing, news. The large entities that provide this subsidy become 'routine' news sources and have privileged access to the gates. Non-routine sources must struggle for access, and may be ignored by the arbitrary decision of the gatekeepers.”
Flak and the Enforcers: "Flak" refers to negative responses to a media statement or program (e.g. letters, complaints, lawsuits, or legislative actions). Flak can be expensive to the media, either due to loss of advertising revenue, or due to the costs of legal defense or defense of the media outlet's public image. Flak can be organized by powerful, private influence groups (e.g. think tanks). The prospect of eliciting flak can be a deterrent to the reporting of certain kinds of facts or opinions.
Anti-Communism: This was included as a filter in the original 1988 edition of the book, but Chomsky argues that since the end of the Cold War (1945–91), anticommunism was replaced by the "War on Terror", as the major social control mechanism.
And this is before you go into Operation Mockingbird:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
Operation Mockingbird was a secret Central Intelligence Agency campaign to influence media beginning in the 1950s.
And all of the stuff we know has occurred 100% on the record where the US government has hugely abused its position like COINTELPRO, MK Ultra, the massive sterilisation of black Americans, and as I said previously, we've seen something like Waco on American soil, where the US military was used to murder people completely gratuitously, which we know 100% because the video was played on PBS, but the government lied about it, and the commercial press repeated the government version verbatim, failed to broadcast this video, and failed to investigate the matter any further. And many, many more incidents.
But then we should automatically trust the mainstream press' view, and not be concerned when the FBI say they'll prosecute people who question their version of events!
