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Thursday, April 22, 2010

Detecting lies and subliminal messages in the Media.

I’m not talking about plots by aliens to take over the world or the Iluminati adding nanobots to your kid’s milk cartons at school.
Less fancy, but very real and something worth taking into consideration.
First, lets start by accepting a few facts. We need this to understand why this is done in most cases.

1)In most cases, the main purpose of a media groups (paper, TV, radio, internet) is to make money.
2) In some others, like state(or politician) owned channels, they are biased by the agenda they are trying to push.
3) An indirect variation of point #2, is the one the Argentine government is trying to achieve now with the “K media law” (Ley de Medios K): Change the law so that they have indirect control over privately owned media groups. They achieve this by making sure channels wont be profitable enough and will need of government advertisement or sponsorship to survive. Either that or direct power to decide what content is allowed or not.

Making money is achieved by having the greatest amount of sponsors and advertisers, and advertisers are interested in the greatest amount of audience. This means, news have to be presented in a dramatic, catchy manner. Everything you see must catch your attention better than the following channel, doesn’t matter if its some bloody image, Janet Jackson’s boob… or a lie.

“Greenville neighbor investigated by the local police: His firearm collection was taken away by the police” doesn’t sell as well as “Greenville survivalist arrested: Hidden Arsenal found at his home”.
Arsenal? What’s an arsenal these days? 2 hunting rifles and a couple boxes of ammo? Hey, that may as well be two high powered, long range sniper rifles and 200 rounds of ammunition, each round capable of killing a polar bear or going through both sides of a car!

If three neighbors say he was a nice guy but one says he didn’t knew him, but that he never caused trouble, some reporter will interpret that as: “Neighbors said he was a man that kept to himself” (implying “weirdo” “looner”), and simply not mention the other three that spoke favorably of him.

“Greenville Survivalist caught: He may have connections with terrorist cells” or “Greenville Survivalist caught: Possible connection with terrorist cells”. This means that after the word “may” you can put anything you feel like writing, your saying it but you are still covering your butt. The reader’s brain registers: –Greenville survivalist-arsenal-terrorist- and makes an unconscious associating, the word “may” or for that matter “possible” is lost.

So, this is all ways in which the media sells more, but its also the way in which type 2) or 3) achieve the political agenda of altering public opinion.
What does the government-owned, “Public TV” channel has to say? It never mentions the economic problems, or crime. Not once. Ever. Doesn’t matter if those two are by far the greatest problems we face. I kid you not, not ONE SINGLE mention ever of the dozen murders, or the thousands of violent crimes that go on each day. Inflation? That word simply isn’t in their vocabulary.

Recognized journalists and public figures also have a role. Many will have a “price” for their point of view, like Argentine journalist Bernardo Neustad, who was known among the political and financial circle for having a favorable or negative opinion about others depending on a brown paper envelope full of money.
If that doesn’t work, there’s always direct threats, but why go there if buying enough positive opinions by celebrities is far less troublesome?
I’ve learned to take everything I see or listen to on the media with a big grain of salt.

Why do I say that the crime situation in Argentina is out of control?
Because you see it in channels that are not yet under the government control, but mostly because you hear it and see it yourself on the street, when talking to store owners and neighbors. Because you can’t listen to a police scanner for a couple hours without learning about dozens of armed robberies, violent muggings, people getting shot or even unidentified corpses to be picked up.
Its more important than ever to know the source of the information, if it can be trusted or not, if its biased.
Its important so as to know what’s really going on all around you, if you should be more careful regarding crime, if the economy is doing worse than you’re being told and you should be taking other measures.
Take care guys,

FerFAL

21 comments:

Steve said...

As a member of the American media, it always gets me that people rant on about this. Most reporters are hardworking, decent people just looking to do their jobs.

You want to take aim, look to the editors (WHO WRITE THE HEADLINES!) or the top brass who place the stories. But the reporters- we break our balls, learning and writing about all kinds of things, often for very, very little pay. Cut us some slack. We're not trying to fuck anybody, and we're certainly not part of the big media machine.

Just_In_Case_The_SHTF said...

You missed your true calling, FerFAL. With your knowledge of how governments distort the news in their favor, you should have no trouble getting a job with a major corporation to help it transform its "company s***" into "company shinola" (and the pay is probably pretty good also). FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) is one of the cornerstones of a successful PR strategy against one's competitors in the business world.

parabarbarian said...

Two ugly fact of life in the fist part of the 21st Century:

1. The government's job is to provide you with service.

2. The media's job is to provide the Vaseline.

FerFAL said...

Ok Steve don’t get all sensitive, I've yet to see a reporter (here or in USA) that doesn’t pisses his pants out of excitement over a good gun bashing story, and the chance to hype it as much as they can with false inforamtion, regarding caliber and destrucitve power of wepaons. You’re the exception to the norm? That's fine, I believe you. But so far I’ve only seen the norm, at least in all media channels. NOT A SINGLE reporter that I've ever seen had the “balls” you mention to say that people kills people, instead of guns.
FerFAL

Anonymous said...

Steve, Ferfal is correct jounalist here in the US are all the same all of you sensationalize.

You just admitted you may be honest and decent hardworking but you're just doing your job (according to the boss). Just like in the Nuremberg trials you were ordered or you won't have a job.

Ivan said...

Hey Buddy,

you should check out the noagenda podcast, those two guys spend a few hours a week doconstructing the media/government lies.

noagendashow.com

BTW, i found your blog/writings from dvorak.org

dc.sunsets said...

This is a quote from a famous book:
"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."

Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union some reporters working for the Soviet Government's official "newspaper" PRAVDA toured the USA with some of their US colleagues. At the end of tour one of the PRAVDA men asked, "How is it done? Your news is more controlled by your government than ours is."

Once the state seized "ownership" of the airwaves TV/Radio stations had to get "licenses" from the gov't to operate and all pretense of independence was gone. We in the USA like to think our news organizations are free, but since 80% or more of "news" is generated by politicians and bureaucrats it is professional suicide for reporters, editors, and media owners to alienate people ruling us. This, even more than the need to sell ad space, is why the official, professional press is always simply a megaphone for the rulers, parroting Big Brother's line day and night.

And yes, the quote is lifted directly from Orwell's 1984, a novel that serves as the template for our modern politically-polluted world.

Welcome to Oceana.

Don Williams said...

Hey, Steve, did Reporter Judith Miller at the New York Times find those WMDs of Saddam Hussein's yet? The families of 4500+ dead soldiers would like to know.

Curious, awkward phrase is "Weapons of Mass Destruction". Ominious and yet so vague that almost anything might qualify. You would almost think it is a term crafted to deceive and instill fear rather than to inform.

Don Williams said...

Hey, Steve, I particularly liked the scam whereby Scooter Libby would leak info to Judith Miller, Judith would print it in the New York Times without naming the source, and Scooter's boss Dick Cheney would then point to the information the next day in political debates, saying "Well, the New York Times says..."

ha ha ha
And all the time without Judith letting the Times readers in on the scam.

And the Times is the PINNACLE of your profession.

I don't say that reporters are whores -- because that would be an unfair insult to some prostitute giving oral sex in a dirty alley somewhere. After all, 4500 men aren't dead from the lies that whores tell.

The one thing that unites both the right and left in America is that we both hate the News Media guts. Because it manages to lie to everyone at some time or other.

Anonymous said...

Yup, not all reporters are bad, most however; are useful dupes.

I cannot imagine a big media machine without reporters, a.k.a. story tellers.

I took a U.S. journalism class once, the instructor said this was the place to be if you wanted to change the world. No mention of the search for truth, just a focus on creating the slant.

Judging from the way the housing bubble was incorrectly presented to the U.S. public by the mainstream media (the editors, the reporters, the whole bunch really) as was so often highlighted in places like thehousingbubbleblog.com from 2004 even up to this day - everything should be verified, and as they say, trust no one.

Aren't there many examples like that?

Sometimes (or a lot?) government is in on the action too, this profound blog post shows a few brief examples of lying and worse that the public the world over is slowly learning of, and they sure as heck aint getting it from the mainstream media:

Earth To Goverment: No More False Flags
http://mindbodypolitic.com/2010/04/22/earth-to-goverment-no-more-false-flags/

Bones said...

Steve: Yes, you are part of the machine if you write the fodder for the editors. You might be the most objective reporter in the world, but if all you do is provide copy for someone with an agenda, there really is no denying it.

The Urban Survivalist said...

Let me read in between the lines Steve. If the top brass place the stories then it's up to the reporter to write a story that will get favorable placement. If the top brass write the headlines then it's up to the reporter to write a story that's worthy of a headline.

Anonymous said...

Here's a documentary showing scientifically what Ferfal is saying is true. Plus Noam Chomsky proves that what Steve is saying is impossible today. "...and we're certainly not part of the big media machine."

The classic Canadian documentary Manufacturing Consent based on the Noam Chomsky/Edward Herman book by the same name. Explores the propaganda model of the media.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5631882395226827730#

Also the BBC documentary. The Power Of Nightmares. Showing facts re: how bad this media model has gotten. That it's absolutely essential we need mythical enemies to humanity and lies reported to us to feel safe as a people, when these myths are defeated by our leaders. Naturally all these mythical battles require vast amounts of real taxpayers money.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2798679275960015727#

dc.sunsets said...

Here's a perfect example of what the "Press" does to people in the USA:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w142.html

Note that inflammatory words like "arsenal" and "cache" are used to describe a collection that many of us would consider modest at best.

The press give the masses what they want. Today the masses want to hear that their god-like protectors are doing god-like things, vanquishing the evil demons walking among them. After all, Americans are constantly told that their neighbors are all closet racists, psychopaths, and terrorists.

And in this story we see the true face of things, where a wife informs on her husband just as it was in Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu.

Anonymous said...

Steve- The American mainstream media is no more than an organized propaganda machine for our socialist government. If you're not aware of that, you should be. You are a significant 'part of the big media machine'- so just own it. Start reading the 'Accuracy in Media' website. I'm sure that a lot of journalism students start out with good intentions, but if you want to make a career out of it, your stories must adapt to the bias of the propaganda editors. Otherwise, start your own internet newsletter if you really want to get your unbiased reporting across.

Anonymous said...

Steve,

You are rationalizing.

I am a tv reporter as well. Recently I have branched out into other fields. But five out of ten days I still pimp myself out to the msm.

Sometimes I can't look into a mirror for days.

And I look forward to the day when I'll be financially able to turn my back on the msm completely.

If you happen to be - as you claim - a reporter and do NOT feel this way you are a)delusional b)dishonest c)stupid or d)all of the above.

"Most reporters are hardworking, decent people" my culo!

Best wishes,

Jan

steve said...

I think most people have a failure of how the media works. I can only speak for newspapers, as I despise TV stations such as foxnews who have a blatant agenda as well.

But I write no stories to appease any editor- I, like most reporters, write the news as it happens. Are there some out there that slant the news? Of course there are. But the people who really report on the day to day news events are pretty objective- and people are so averse to reading long stories that we must keep it brutally short anyway, which allows for a minimal slant even if the reporter did want to.

The fact that we must go on what the politicians, police, or other authorities tell us is just that- a fact. We can't call a cache a "collection" if that's not the words the cops used- that would be interjecting personal opinion on the size into the story.

I'm a democrat, but believe me i'm with you on being pro-gun, so i understand the frustration at painting guns in a bad light when it's people that do the killing.

We do our best with what we can do, and the bashing of the print media is frustrating. I think too many of you think that we are leaned on too heavily to write a story one way or the other, when in reality, journalists don't take well to that. That's why we're journalists- we like authority less than you do, and we are there to expose the best we can. But investigative journalism is much harder to do when your staff is down to the bare bones anyway and you can't keep up with the regular news, forget actually paying someone to sit at a library for eight hours.

Anonymous said...

"The establishment’s protective guild of “court historians” and their compliant enablers in the mainstream news media do not want the full truth behind the epic story of World War II told.

Such revealed truths can prove unsettling and destructive of the deadly illusions upon which State power is built and sustained.

What Harry Elmer Barnes and Murray Rothbard described as “the historical blackout” must be preserved at any cost.

But here is a powerful film, The Soviet Story,

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-6753179241338483263&hl=en&fs=true

which shatters that wall of silence by speaking truth to power. And it’s free on Google Video."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/25738.html

"One always can count on the New York Times to lie about the role of the state, and the Times especially goes bonkers when those lies involve guns. Today, long-time columnist Bob Herbert manages to take a government-caused massacre and lay it at the feet of “right-wing crazies”:

There was a wave of right-wing craziness along those lines during the Clinton administration. Four federal agents were killed and 16 others wounded in 1993 during an attempt to serve a search warrant at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., where a stockpile of illegal machine guns had been amassed. The subsequent siege ended disastrously with a raging fire in which scores of people were killed.

In the aftermath of Waco, the N.R.A. did its typically hysterical, fear-mongering thing. In a fund-raising letter in the spring of 1995, LaPierre wrote: “Jack-booted government thugs [have] more power to take away our Constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us. …”

Of course, as we have seen in the documentary about Waco, it did not exactly occur the way that Herbert says. However, since Herbert did not approve of the Branch Davidians, then they deserved to be shot and immolated. Yes, this is a columnist from that “civil-liberties-loving” NYT where lies abound. From the denial of the Ukraine famine to the predations of Michael Nifong, one can count on the NYT to be out front with the Big Lie."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/27908.html

Anonymous said...

An example of a good reporter is the likes of:

"Welsh journalist Gareth Jones snuck into Ukraine in March of 1933, at the height of an artificial famine engineered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin as part of his campaign to force peasants into collective farms. Millions starved to death between 1932 and 1933 as the Soviet secret police emptied the countryside of grain and livestock.

Jones' reporting was one of the first attempts to bring the disaster to the world's attention."

An example of a bad reporter(s) is the likes of:

"The New York Times' Walter Duranty, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, dismissed Jones' article as a scare story.

"Conditions are bad, but there is no famine," Duranty wrote a few days after Jones' story was published. Other correspondents chimed in with public denials.

With his colleagues against him, Jones was discredited.

Eugene Lyons, an American wire agency reporter who gradually went from communist sympathizer to fierce critic of the Soviet regime, later acknowledged the role that fellow journalists had played in trying to destroy Jones' career.

"Jones must have been the most surprised human being alive when the facts he so painstakingly garnered from our mouths were snowed under by our denials," Lyons wrote in his 1937 autobiography, Assignment in Utopia."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-11-12-ukraine-famine-diary_N.htm

Anonymous said...

At $8 bucks an hour, that's $64 bucks.
The $64 dollar question is, which kind of reporter are you? (Not Steve specifially, just generally.) Being as how the proof of the pudding is in the eating, we'll know from the stories written or the questions asked, and only from that.

However, being a good reporter seems to be a dangerous path to take:

"The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened “critical infrastructure” when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.

Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.

Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC’s Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN’s Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.

Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.

You won’t have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it’s not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can’t tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit."

http://mindbodypolitic.com/2007/04/28/can-it-happen-in-america/#comments

Anonymous said...

A small section of a resignation in March, 2010:

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American "mainstream media."

For the last six years I have been banned from the "mainstream media." My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004,...

But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

The American media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.

http://vdare.com/roberts/100324_truth.htm