By Maxwell C. Bridges
[Tweaked from the original for emphasis...]
"The real power to persuade and dominate a public remains with corporations and the government through control of the airwaves and domination of most publications by corporate advertisings, while news is restricted to reporting facts, to "objectivity and balance." The public is bombarded with carefully crafted images meant to confuse propaganda with ideology and knowledge with how we feel."
This indeed has been an issue with 9/11.
Every time a government spokesman or agency wanted to speak to 9/11, they could pretty much present their full argument in the corporate media with nary a dissenting or questioning commentator to offer a comprehensive opposing point of view. On the rare occasions when someone from 9/11 Truth was given air time, observe how they were treated:
- They were often marginalized by the "objective" host as early as their introduction, and certainly in loaded adjectives used in the questions and descriptions (e.g., nutty, loony, kooky).
- They rarely appeared alone, but always with someone representing the government's view. Because the host in many cases was not impartial, they were outnumbered.
- The discussions were steered into truly fringe areas of the movement, and the attention-deficit host jumped from one topic to another.
- After the small talk, commercial breaks (lead-out, lead-in), other side rebuttals, fast topic-hops, and detours away from the most solid arguments, the total airtime to present a case dissenting with the official 9/11 view was tiny.
Treatment of the 9/11 Truth Movement in the printed media may have been worst of all. Has Time Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, or the New York Times ever devoted a special issue to this topic from the 9/11 Truth Movement's point-of-view? Have they even ever published an in-depth article (or series of articles) presenting faithfully the 9/11 Truth Movement's case without undermining it in the very same article, not to mention accompanying ones?
Whereas hometown newspapers retained their names, consolidation turned them into mini-McGannetts always drawing on the same pool of articles. The first hurdle is whether local editors would even run the story. The second hurdle is how much hacking they'd do prior to publication. The third hurdle is where they'd run it (e.g., bury it) and split it to make it more difficult for a reader to find and follow.
"The public is bombarded with carefully crafted images meant to confuse propaganda with ideology and knowledge with how we feel."
Government spokespeople (and its agencies) wanted the public to "charge forward" into Afghanistan and Iraq [and into neo-con policies provided by PNAC] on the basis of how the United States was attacked 9/11. You were un-patriotic, un-American, and even treasonous if you didn't want pre-emptive war to protect the homeland... and if you didn't want fewer taxes on the wealthy, privatized social security, bail-outs...
Yet whenever someone said, "Okay, let's look at 9/11 in detail" so that we can be sure we're hunting the right witches, those same government spokespeople and agencies said, "Move along, sheople. Nothing to see here."
Whenever 9/11 is discussed in this forum, the unofficial (?) government spokespeople are talented at kicking sand into our eyes with pseudo-science, quasi-definitive official reports, rehashed debunked claims, straw man discussions, and outright lies, and at distracting us into flame wars with their insults.
We have many examples of cover-ups in how government commissions and (scientific) agencies were manipulated to limit the scope and conclusions of their investigations. Adequate and overwhelming evidence has been provided to caste doubt on the government's 9/11 version, such as these three, which are solidly based on the laws of physics:
* WTC7 in Freefall
No Longer Controversial
* Downward Acceleration of the North Tower
* WTC7: Nist Finally Admits Freefall (Part III)
The above should really shut-up all defenders and trolls of the governments 9/11 version and turn them into true believers of 9/11 Truth. But it won't. Why?
Fear.
They are afraid of what it will mean to our republic. They're afraid that it will mean massive civil unrest, total chaos, and the attempt at destructive overthrow of all institutions of power. Because those in power will use all in their power to remain in power, they fear the loss of power and stature, if not the oppressive response of government on its people.
I believe that this argument is just more fear-mongering and Kool-Aid for the weak-minded to manipulate patriots and Christians.
The real unspoken fear is the massive reduction in power of the federal government transferred, if not to the states, than to the regional countries that banded together to succeed from the old union in the hopes of forming a more perfect (smaller) union.
States Rights and gaining some autonomy from the (proven misguided) Federal Government and corrupt corporate influence can't be achieved today. So we are left with flag-waving in support of illegal wars, failed drug wars, and other draconically federal policies.
Just like mammoth corporations often require divisions to be spun off into their own businesses, lest the aims of the corporation and of the division become at odds with one another, the United States of America as we know it is also in need of having various regions (one or more neighboring states) with shared cultural values spun off into their own nations.
Thomas "Tip" O'Neill once declared, "All Politics is local." Politics needs to be brought more local. Although such spin-off regional nations sound radical, it would really be pretty much business as usual for you and I and for the governments of our community, town, county, and state.
"It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little." ~ Sydney Smith
Pages
▼
2009-06-30
The Corporate Media State Has Deformed American Culture; Time to Fight Back
By Chris Hedges
The ability of the corporate state to pacify the country by extending credit and providing cheap manufactured goods to the masses is gone. The pernicious idea that democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the freedom to accumulate vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others has collapsed. The conflation of freedom with the free market has been exposed as a sham.
...
American culture - or cultures, for we once had distinct regional cultures - was systematically destroyed in the 20th century by corporations. These corporations used mass communication, as well as an understanding of the human subconscious, to turn consumption into an inner compulsion. Old values of thrift, regional identity that had its own iconography, aesthetic expression and history, diverse immigrant traditions, self-sufficiency, a press that was decentralized to provide citizens with a voice in their communities were all destroyed to create mass, corporate culture. New desires and habits were implanted by corporate advertisers to replace the old. Individual frustrations and discontents could be solved, corporate culture assured us, through the wonders of consumerism and cultural homogenization. American culture, or cultures, was replaced with junk culture and junk politics. And now, standing on the ash heap, we survey the ruins. The very slogans of advertising and mass culture have become the idiom of common expression, robbing us of the language to make sense of the destruction. We confuse the manufactured commodity culture with American culture.
How do we recover what was lost? How do we reclaim the culture that was destroyed by corporations? How do we fight back now that the consumer culture has fallen into a state of decay? What can we do to reverse the cannibalization of government and the national economy by the corporations?
...
The corporate domination of the airwaves, of most print publications and an increasing number of Internet sites means we will have to search, and search quickly, for alternative forms of communication to thwart the rise of totalitarian capitalism.
Stuart Ewen, whose books "Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture" and "PR: A Social History of Spin" chronicle how corporate propaganda deformed American culture and pushed populism to the margins of American society, argues that we have a fleeting chance to save the country. ... He attacks the ideology of "objectivity and balance" that has corrupted news, saying that it falsely evokes the scales of justice. He describes the curriculum at most journalism schools as "poison."
"'Balance and objectivity' creates an idea where both sides are balanced. ... In certain ways it mirrors the two-party system, the notion that if you are going to have a Democrat speak you need to have a Republican speak. It offers the phantom of objectivity. It creates the notion that the universe of discourse is limited to two positions. Issues become black or white. They are not seen as complex with a multitude of factors."
Ewen argues that the forces for social change -- look at any lengthy and turgid human rights report -- have forgotten that rhetoric is as important as fact. Corporate and government propaganda, aimed to sway emotions, rarely uses facts to sell its positions. And because progressives have lost the gift of rhetoric, which was once a staple of a university education, because they naively believe in the Enlightenment ideal that facts alone can move people toward justice, they are largely helpless.
"Effective communication requires not simply an understanding of the facts, but how those facts will take place in the public mind," Ewen said. "When Gustave Le Bon says it is not the facts in and of themselves which make a point but the way in which the facts take place, the way in which they come to attention, he is right."
...
The control of the airwaves and domination through corporate advertising of most publications restricted news to reporting facts, to "objectivity and balance," while the real power to persuade and dominate a public remained under corporate and governmental control.
...
The public is bombarded with carefully crafted images meant to confuse propaganda with ideology and knowledge with how we feel. Human rights and labor groups, investigative journalists, consumer watchdog organizations and advocacy agencies have, in the face of this manipulation, inundated the public sphere with reports and facts. But facts alone, Ewen says, make little difference. And as we search for alternative ways to communicate in a time of crisis we must also communicate in new forms.
...
The battle ahead will be fought outside the journalistic mainstream. The old forms of journalism are dying or have sold their soul to corporate manipulation and celebrity culture. We must now wed fact to rhetoric. We must appeal to reason and emotion. We must not be afraid to openly take sides, to speak, photograph or write on behalf of the disempowered. And, Ewen believes, we have a chance in the coming crisis to succeed.
"Pessimism is never useful," he said. "Realism is useful, understanding the forces that are at play. To quote Antonio Gramsci, 'pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.' "
The ability of the corporate state to pacify the country by extending credit and providing cheap manufactured goods to the masses is gone. The pernicious idea that democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the freedom to accumulate vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others has collapsed. The conflation of freedom with the free market has been exposed as a sham.
...
American culture - or cultures, for we once had distinct regional cultures - was systematically destroyed in the 20th century by corporations. These corporations used mass communication, as well as an understanding of the human subconscious, to turn consumption into an inner compulsion. Old values of thrift, regional identity that had its own iconography, aesthetic expression and history, diverse immigrant traditions, self-sufficiency, a press that was decentralized to provide citizens with a voice in their communities were all destroyed to create mass, corporate culture. New desires and habits were implanted by corporate advertisers to replace the old. Individual frustrations and discontents could be solved, corporate culture assured us, through the wonders of consumerism and cultural homogenization. American culture, or cultures, was replaced with junk culture and junk politics. And now, standing on the ash heap, we survey the ruins. The very slogans of advertising and mass culture have become the idiom of common expression, robbing us of the language to make sense of the destruction. We confuse the manufactured commodity culture with American culture.
How do we recover what was lost? How do we reclaim the culture that was destroyed by corporations? How do we fight back now that the consumer culture has fallen into a state of decay? What can we do to reverse the cannibalization of government and the national economy by the corporations?
...
The corporate domination of the airwaves, of most print publications and an increasing number of Internet sites means we will have to search, and search quickly, for alternative forms of communication to thwart the rise of totalitarian capitalism.
Stuart Ewen, whose books "Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture" and "PR: A Social History of Spin" chronicle how corporate propaganda deformed American culture and pushed populism to the margins of American society, argues that we have a fleeting chance to save the country. ... He attacks the ideology of "objectivity and balance" that has corrupted news, saying that it falsely evokes the scales of justice. He describes the curriculum at most journalism schools as "poison."
"'Balance and objectivity' creates an idea where both sides are balanced. ... In certain ways it mirrors the two-party system, the notion that if you are going to have a Democrat speak you need to have a Republican speak. It offers the phantom of objectivity. It creates the notion that the universe of discourse is limited to two positions. Issues become black or white. They are not seen as complex with a multitude of factors."
Ewen argues that the forces for social change -- look at any lengthy and turgid human rights report -- have forgotten that rhetoric is as important as fact. Corporate and government propaganda, aimed to sway emotions, rarely uses facts to sell its positions. And because progressives have lost the gift of rhetoric, which was once a staple of a university education, because they naively believe in the Enlightenment ideal that facts alone can move people toward justice, they are largely helpless.
"Effective communication requires not simply an understanding of the facts, but how those facts will take place in the public mind," Ewen said. "When Gustave Le Bon says it is not the facts in and of themselves which make a point but the way in which the facts take place, the way in which they come to attention, he is right."
...
The control of the airwaves and domination through corporate advertising of most publications restricted news to reporting facts, to "objectivity and balance," while the real power to persuade and dominate a public remained under corporate and governmental control.
...
The public is bombarded with carefully crafted images meant to confuse propaganda with ideology and knowledge with how we feel. Human rights and labor groups, investigative journalists, consumer watchdog organizations and advocacy agencies have, in the face of this manipulation, inundated the public sphere with reports and facts. But facts alone, Ewen says, make little difference. And as we search for alternative ways to communicate in a time of crisis we must also communicate in new forms.
...
The battle ahead will be fought outside the journalistic mainstream. The old forms of journalism are dying or have sold their soul to corporate manipulation and celebrity culture. We must now wed fact to rhetoric. We must appeal to reason and emotion. We must not be afraid to openly take sides, to speak, photograph or write on behalf of the disempowered. And, Ewen believes, we have a chance in the coming crisis to succeed.
"Pessimism is never useful," he said. "Realism is useful, understanding the forces that are at play. To quote Antonio Gramsci, 'pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.' "