I have made no bones about what I think of the MSM…..I have been watching the news out of Ukraine and I have seen very little that was actual news but rather propaganda to make all the waste by government acceptable…..but I am not alone….
Perhaps another potential title for this article might that be of Journalism “as” Propaganda, since a large section of what we perceive to be journalism – such as, the gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting of news and information – have become mere propaganda. Worse, in recent years, reporting the truth has been slowly converted into the production of mass deception and mass ignorance.
What we see as “the news” can boil down to the so-called Pseudo Events manufactured by a sophisticated global PR industry. It is called Public Relations (PR) to avoid the ugly word “propaganda”. PR/propaganda present global news stories – some of which have proven to be rather fictional like the infamous but non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction. Many of them are generated as new machineries of international propaganda.
A good example is the UK paper, The Daily Telegraph when it published an event “before” it had happened. Six hours before it actually happened, The Daily Telegraph reporter Toby Harnden described the hanging of Saddam Hussein. While The Guardiancalled such journalists as Media Monkeys, there is a system behind things like these – they are by no means individual mishaps.
Rather, falsehoods, distortions, and outright propaganda – as the Ukraine war shows almost every day – seem to run through global media outlets – an industry which is supposed to be dedicated to the very opposite: truth telling.
War Propaganda, Pseudo-Events and the Global Village Idiot
Just a few of my thoughts on how the media helps spread misinformation….
Ukraine And The Media
There is more……
The Pro-War Media
And even more…..
Is The Media Failing Us?
Allowing corporations to own the distribution of news was the worse idea of the Clinton presidency….and this is the outcome…..
Far too often, the elite U.S. press has been a reliable mouthpiece for Washington’s dubious foreign policies. That was true during the Cold War, except for a brief period of disillusionment and dissent once the Vietnam War became such an obvious debacle. That period of more vigorous scrutiny and skepticism did not last long, however. When George H. W. Bush launched his drive for U.S. military intervention in the Persian Gulf to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other elite outlets were fully on board with that agenda, as their shamelessly biased treatment of the relevant issues confirmed. That pro-interventionist bias became even more flagrant during the Balkan crises of the 1990s, the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Washington’s subsequent campaigns for forcible regime change in Libya and Syria. There was very little daylight between the official U.S. government positions on those issues and the dominant media narratives.
A similar pattern has emerged with press coverage of the war in Ukraine. Once again, pro-interventionist accounts dominate the airwaves and the leading editorial and op-ed pages. That was especially true of the first weeks of the war, when the media overwhelmingly supported the argument that America must “stand with Ukraine.” The imbalance has eased slightly as concerns about the costs and risks of the Biden administration’s policy of lavishing military and financial aid on Kiev mount. Nevertheless, hawks still provide the vast majority of commentaries on the war in top-tier establishment forums.
The Elite Press Remains the Handmaid of War
And since most people do not have the ability to look for confirmation of the crap the MSM spread…..propaganda is the best tool for societal control.
So the truth has become fluid…subjective if you will….disinformation is the rule for the news these days…..
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has an article out titled “‘Disinformation’ Label Serves to Marginalize Crucial Ukraine Facts” about the way the mass media have been spinning that label to mean not merely the knowing distribution of false information but also of information that is true but inconvenient to imperial narrative-weaving.
“In defense of the US narrative, corporate media have increasingly taken to branding realities inconvenient to US information goals as ‘disinformation’ spread by Russia or its proxies,” writes FAIR’s Luca Goldmansour.
Online platforms have been ramping up their censorship protocols under the banner of fighting disinformation and misinformation, and those escalations always align with narrative control agendas of the US-centralized empire. Just the other day we learned that Twitter has a new policy which expands its censorship practices to fight “misinformation” about wars and other crises, and the Ukraine war (surprise surprise) will be the first such situation about which it will be enforcing these new censorship policies.
Turn The Page!
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
In Saner Thought 
In my lifetime I have been closely associated with Journalism at various times and so I am going to offer some ideas for you and your readers to consider.
First of all let me explain my experience with Journalism. I have been a paid reporter for at least three local newspapers with circulations ranging from 1,500 to 30,000 issues per week.
I have edited a military newspaper at a large base in the state of Washington, I received the Strategic Air Command “Best Newspaper” for that one.
I have edited a handful of “House Organs” for various business firms.
I have had some experience as a radio announcer on a small local station.
I actually owned a small local hometown newspaper at one time before selling it out to competitive forces.
In the “News” business it is paramount to present “The News” in a manner that will grab and hold the attention of an audience that tends to have a short attention span to begin with. This means there is a strong temptation to sensationalize every possible detail to the greatest possible degree while maintaining some credibility with your focus market.
This is one of the reasons that what most people consider to be “News” also intrudes on the ground of “Entertainment” as well. The idea is to publish things written in a manner to “Keep them talking and keep them laughing ..or keep them in a state of shock and disbelief.”
I have to mention here also, that “News” is a business for profit and the “News” has to do everything in its power to feed the bottom line of whoever owns the particular media. Every grain of published “News” is weighed and counted against standards proven to generate the most profit per word, sentence, phrase, paragraph or entire story. Anything that does not fit the paradigm is either “Enhanced” or watered down or rewritten entirely using a mechanism called in the trade, “Editorial License.”
Editorial License in this case means that whoever is responsible for preparing the text for publication is allowed (Within the standards set by the publisher) to deviate from some norms and invent or create little things to add into the mix … so long as those things pertain somehow to the discussion being considered and do not fall into the realm of general disbelief. So as long as the “News” can be made to appear entirely credible in all its respects, then there is great freedom and latitude to “Change it up a little bit” to make it more captivating to the audience.
There is a manual that all editors in all media use called “A Style Book” and this book defines the acceptable parameters established by each organization that deals with disseminating the news. Almost every News organization has its own “Style Book” and sometimes the standards are strict and sometimes they are looser. I suspect that places like Fox News must have pretty loose standards when it comes to enhancement but are still tightly regulated as to seeing to it that all who handle their “News” follow the bias of the publisher.
All News is more or less privately or corporately owned these days so the News must adhere to the Biases of the Board of Directors or the owners of the Media. The news must absolutely always be presented in a way as to increase profits for the publishers, to attract advertisers, to sell products and services and to adhere to the agenda of the owners of the media.
There is little profit or interest in presenting news in an objective, plain, easy-to-understand, non-controversial, unbiased, independent manner like was once the universal requirement in days long since gone.
Basically, today’s news is a manufactured product directed to appeal to a target audience and to please and serve the interests of whoever owns the particular media.
So yes, news today is more PR and propaganda than anything.
But the “Kernel” of today’s news is always a seed of Truth. You just have to dig, to compare, to analyze to find the “Reality” of the story.
Sometimes a highly observant reader of news can get the entire reality of the story just by reading the headline and the sub headlines. Common sense can fill in the blanks and give a more accurate result than relying on the articles published with all their embellishments.
Thanx for your insights chuq
I used to trust some news sources. But now even the BBC is just issuing ‘government broadcasts’ so I have to take most reports with a pinch of salt. The irony is that today they accused the Chinese government of ‘controlling the news’ in Hong Kong. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
Yeah we get some of that here….accusations….it is just silly chuq
Reblogged this on NEW BLOG HERE >> https:/BOOKS.ESLARN-NET.DE.
Agreed, Chuq! I am just investigating the way of media published photos. Also here in the rurality they take photos of events, photopgraph the same bulk of pepole from different directions, and headline the whole gallery with “Thousands of people have taken part of the event!” In real there only this group of approximately threehundred people was involved. Lol xx Michael
Corporate media is nothing short of the propaganda wing of our society. chuq
Thanx Michael for all the re-blogs….I appreciate it very much. chuq