Caitlin
Johnstone heeft zich over de berichtgeving van de massamedia gebogen
en zet een aantal feiten wat betreft de reguliere (massa-) media op
een rij, waarbij ze tot verrassende inzichten komt.
Als
eerste buigt Johnstone zich over de vraag waarom journalisten van de
reguliere media in 'vrije democratieën' ('een beetje dubbelop') zich gedragen als hun collega's van staatsmedia
propagandisten. Waarom gedragen ze zich als betrouwbare
vertegenwoordigers van de gevestigde orde en waarom wordt elk idee
gemarginaliseerd dat niet past in wat op een bepaald moment als een
correcte gedachte wordt gezien? (en dat kan op zeer grove manier
gebeuren, zie de smerige en uiterst valse berichtgeving over de Britse Labour leider Jeremy Corbyn door de reguliere
media waar ook de BBC deel van uitmaakt, al kan je die
'onafhankelijke zendgemachtigde' als staatsomroep onder een dictatuur zien)
Waarom worden
mensen die de gevestigde orde bekritiseren altijd door de
media veroordeeld? Waarom worden 'fouten' in een land dat
buiten de invloedssfeer en de macht van de gecentraliseerde VS-alliantie valt, zo kritisch
becommentarieerd door de reguliere (westerse) media, terwijl fouten binnen die alliantie worden vergeven, of veelal zelfs niet worden genoemd?
Volgens
Johnstone zijn er maar twee verklaringen voor die unanieme instemming
van de reguliere media op die onderwerpen:
Die
instemming bestaat omdat die media altijd de waarheid zouden vertellen, of
die instemming bestaat omdat er een systeem is ontstaan, waarin de
journalisten van de reguliere media ons voorliegen en een vals beeld
schetsen van wat er gebeurt in de wereld.
Volgens
Johnstone zijn dit de enige mogelijkheden, waarbij ze de eerste
uiteraard afwijst, immers als deze media altijd de
waarheid vertellen, zouden deze media niet de leugens herhalen over bijvoorbeeld de oorlogen in Vietnam en Irak, ofwel dan zou het afslachten van
miljoenen op grond van leugens niet zijn verdedigd in die media.........
Eén en ander betekent overigens niet dat de grote reguliere media alleen maar liegen, immers dan zou men de klanten snel verliezen, nee men brengt natuurlijk ook echt nieuws, naast halve waarheden, verdraaide feiten en de al genoemde leugens.
Lees het
artikel van Johnstone, zij legt deze zaak duidelijk uit, waarna de
conclusie wordt getrokken dat de media inderdaad aan de leiband lopen
van plutocraten of fondsen van aandeelhouders (oké dat was al
bekend, maar Johnstone geeft het geheel handen en voeten). Voorts meldt Johnstone ten overvloede nog eens dat de CIA al sinds de 50er jaren van de vorige eeuw bemoeienis heeft met de reguliere (massa-) media in de VS.......
Nogmaals
lees het artikel en oordeel zelf:
How Plutocratic Media Keeps Staff Aligned With Establishment Agendas
Why
do mainstream media reporters within ostensibly free democracies act
just like state media propagandists? Why are they so reliably
pro-establishment, all throughout every mainstream outlet? Why do
they so consistently marginalize any idea that doesn’t fit within
the extremely narrow Overton window of acceptable opinion? Why does
anyone who inconveniences western establishment power always find
themselves on the losing end of a trial by media? Why are they so
dependably adversarial toward anything that could be perceived as a
flaw in any nation outside the US-centralized power alliance, and so
dependably forgiving of the flaws of the nations within it?
The
way I see it there are only two possible explanations for the
unanimous consensus in mass media on these issues:
Explanation
1: The
consensus exists because the mass media reporters are all telling the
truth all the time.
OR
Explanation
2: The
consensus exists because there is some kind of system in place which
keeps all mass media reporters lying to us and painting a false
picture about what’s going on in the world.
Those
are the only two possibilities, and only one can be true, since any
mixture of the two would result in the loss of consensus.
Most
mainstream westerners harbor an unquestioned assumption that
Explanation 1 is the only possibility. The things they see on CNN,
the BBC and the ABC are all accurate descriptions of what’s really
going on in the world, and the consensus in their descriptions exists
because they’re all describing the same objective reality.
But
what would that mean exactly? Well, for starters if the mainstream
media reporters are telling us the truth all the time it would mean
that the same power institutions which slaughtered millions in
Vietnam and Iraq for no good reason are actually virtuous and honest.
It would mean the positive, uncritical picture that is consistently
painted of those same institutions which wage
nonstop campaigns of bloodshed and
oppression to ensure the profit of economic manipulators and war
profiteers is due to those institutions possessing merits which are
overall so positive that no criticism of them is needed. It would
mean that the status quo of climate destruction, steadily growing
wealth inequality, an increasingly Orwellian surveillance system, an
increasingly militarized police force, increasing internet
censorship, and crushing neoliberal austerity measures are all things
people voted for using the excellent democratic political system the
mainstream media defends, based on the accurate information the
mainstream media gave them about what’s in their best interests.
Explanation
1 sounds improbable in that light. We know that the system is
spectacularly screwed up, and we know that the political
establishment which these mainstream outlets always defend does
unforgivably evil things, so we should expect to see a lot more
critical reporting and a lot less protecting of the status quo. But
we don’t. We see war crimes ignored, oppression justified, the
two-headed one-party system normalized, dissident narratives smeared
as fake news conspiracy theories, and unproven assertions by
government agencies with a known history of lying reported as
unquestionable fact.
But
that leaves only Explanation 2. How could that be right?
This
part of
a 1996
interview between
Noam Chomsky and the BBC’s Andrew Marr describes a foundational
element of Explanation 2: that there is a system in place which
ensures that all the reporters in positions of influence are there
not to report factually on the news of the day, but to sell a
particular narrative that is friendly to the state and the status
quo. Chomsky describes a “filtering system” which ensures
that only those loyal to power rise to the top within the
plutocrat-owned media, to which Marr objects and insists that his
peers are brave truth-tellers who hold power to account.
Subsequently, the following exchange takes place:
”Chomsky:
Well, I know some of the best, and best known investigative reporters
in the United States, I won’t mention names, whose attitude towards
the media is much more cynical than mine. In fact, they regard the
media as a sham. And they know, and they consciously talk about how
they try to play it like a violin. If they see a little opening,
they’ll try to squeeze something in that ordinarily wouldn’t make
it through. And it’s perfectly true that the majority – I’m
sure you’re speaking for the majority of journalists who are
trained, have it driven into their heads, that this is a crusading
profession, adversarial, we stand up against power. A very
self-serving view. On the other hand, in my opinion, I hate to make a
value judgement but, the better journalists and in fact the ones who
are often regarded as the best journalists have quite a different
picture. And I think a very realistic one.
Marr:
How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that
journalists are..
Chomsky:
I’m not saying your self censoring. I’m sure you believe
everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you
believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re
sitting”.
“If
you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where
you’re sitting.”
It
is an obvious fact that mainstream media outlets are
owned by the extremely wealthy,
as has been the case for a very long time. Owning media is in and of
itself a profitable investment, “like having a license to print
your own money” as Canadian television magnate Roy Thomson once
put it.
So when it comes to the news media outlets which form people’s
perceptions of the world, what incentive would a powerful plutocrat
have to platform anti-establishment voices on those outlets and help
sow ideas which upset the status quo upon which said plutocrat has
built his empire? It certainly wouldn’t make him any more money,
and if anti-establishment ideas like socialism, anarchism,
non-interventionism or skepticism of government agencies gained
popular footing in public consciousness, it could upset the
foundation of the plutocrat’s dynasty and cause him to lose
everything.
Plutocrats
have put a lot of energy into influencing government policy in order
to create legislation which ensures the continued growth of their
wealth and power. A whole lot of maneuvering has had to happen over
the course of many years to create a political system wherein
government bribery is legal in the form of campaign finance and
corporate lobbying, wherein deregulation of corporations is the norm,
wherein tax loopholes are abundant and tax burdens are shifted to the
middle class, wherein money hemorrhages upward to the wealthiest of
the wealthy while ordinary people grow poorer and poorer. What
incentive would these powerful oligarchs have to risk upsetting that
delicate balancing act by helping to circulate ideas which challenge
the very governmental system they’ve worked so hard to manipulate
to their extreme advantage? And how many incentives would they have
to keep everyone supporting the status quo?
How
hard would it be to simply decline to give anti-establishment voices
a platform, and platform establishment loyalists instead? How easy
would it be for a wealthy media owner or influential investor to
ensure that only establishment loyalists are given the job of hiring
and promoting editors and reporters in a mainstream media outlet?
Every blue-checkmark MSM journo on Twitter is auditioning for a job. All they're actually tweeting is "Look at me, current or future employer! I will smear Julian Assange! I will help sell the Russia narrative! I'll say Corbyn is an antisemite!" And the MSM bosses pay attention.
If you’ve ever wondered what motivates all those blue-checkmarked corporate media journalists to spend so much time on Twitter defending the powerful and attacking the disempowered, this is your answer. They spend their own free time smearing Jill Stein, calling Jeremy Corbyn an antisemite, attacking Julian Assange, supporting longtime neoconservative war agendas against Russia, Syria and Iran and uncritically reporting intelligence agency assertions as fact not because there’s a CIA officer hovering over their shoulder at all times telling them exactly what to tweet, but because they’re auditioning for a job. They’re creating a public record of their establishment loyalism which current and future employers will look at when weighing hiring and promotion decisions, which is why both journalism schools and journalism employers now encourage journalists to cultivate a social media presence to “build their brand”, i.e. their public resume.
So
it’s very easy to fill mass media jobs with minds which are not
predisposed toward rocking the boat. A pro-establishment consensus is
artificially built, and now you’ve got an environment where someone
who stands up and says “Uh, hey, so we still haven’t seen any
actual hard evidence that Russia interfered in the US election in any
meaningful way” or whatever is instantly greeted by a wall of
shunning and shaming (observe Aaron
Maté‘s
interactions with other journalists on social media for a good
example of this), which can be psychologically difficult to deal
with.
Every blue-checkmark MSM journo on Twitter is auditioning for a job. All they're actually tweeting is "Look at me, current or future employer! I will smear Julian Assange! I will help sell the Russia narrative! I'll say Corbyn is an antisemite!" And the MSM bosses pay attention.
Anyone
who’s ever gone to high school can understand how powerful the
social pressures to seek peer approval and fit in can be, and anyone
who’s ever worked a normal job anywhere can understand the natural
incentives that are in place to behave in a way that is pleasing to
one’s bosses. In any job with any kind of hierarchy, you quickly
learn the written rules, and you pay close attention to social cues
to learn the unwritten ones as well. You do this in order to learn
how to avoid getting in trouble and how to win the approval of your
superiors, to learn which sorts of behaviors can lead to raises and
promotions, and which behaviors will lead to a career dead-end. You
learn what will earn you a pat on the back from a leader, which can
be extremely egoically gratifying and incentivizing in and of itself.
It
works exactly the same way in news media. Reporters might not always
be consciously aware of all the pro-establishment guidelines they’re
expected to follow in order to advance their careers, but they know
how the reporters who’ve ascended to the top of the media ladder
conduct themselves, and they see how the journalists who win the
accolades behave. With the help of editors and peers you quickly
learn where all the third rails and sacred cows are, and when to shut
your mouth about the elephant in the room. And for those rare times
that all these filtration devices fail to adequately filter out
dissident ideas, you see the example that gets made of those few who
slip between the cracks, like CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill for
his defense
of Palestinian human rights or
Phil Donahue for his opposition
to the Iraq invasion.
Last week, CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill delivered a speech at the United Nations in support of Palestinian self-determination and equal rights. Less than 24 hours later, CNN was done with him. bit.ly/2RTa4La
The six words that got Marc Lamont Hill fired from CNN
So
plutocrats own the mass media and platform status quo-friendly
voices, which creates an environment full of peer pressure to conform
and workplace pressure to advance establishment-friendly narratives.
Add to this the phenomenon of access
journalism,
wherein journalists are incentivized to cozy up to power and pitch
softball questions to officials in order to gain access to them, and
things get even more slanted. It’s easy to understand how all this
can create an environment of consensus which has nothing to do with
facts or reality, but rather with what narratives favor the
US-centralized empire and the plutocrats who control it. But all
those dynamics aren’t the only factors going into making sure a
consensus worldview is maintained. Remember that hypothetical CIA
officer I mentioned earlier who isn’t actively leaning over every
journalist’s shoulder and dictating what they tweet? Well, just
because he’s not dictating every word produced by the mass media
machine doesn’t mean he’s not involved.
Secretive
and unaccountable government agencies have an extensive and
well-documented record of involving themselves with news media
outlets. It is a known and undisputed fact that the Central
Intelligence Agency has been intimately
involved in America’s news media since the 1950s,
and it remains so to this day. In 2014 it was a scandal when reporter
Ken Dilanian was caught collaborating
with the CIA in
his publications, but now veterans of the US intelligence community
like John Brennan and James Clapper openly
fill out the line-up of
talking heads on MSNBC and CNN. Just recently the Guardian published
a lie-filled smear piece on Julian Assange which was
almost certainly the resultof
the outlet’s collaboration with one or more intelligence and/or
defense agencies, and when that article caused an outcry it was
defended as the likely result of Russian disinformation in an
evidence-free article by a CIA veteran who was permitted to publish
anonymously in Politico.
The Washington
Post is
solely owned by Jeff Bezos, who
is a CIA contractor,
and who we may be certain did not purchase the Post under the
illusion that newspapers were about to make a lucrative comeback.
Secretive government agencies are deeply involved in the workings of
western news media, in many ways we know about, and in far more ways
we don’t know about.
Taking
all of these factors into consideration and revisiting Explanation 1
and Explanation 2 from the beginning of this article, it should be
obvious to you that the most logical explanation for the uniform
consensus of support for pro-establishment narratives in the mass
media exists because there is indeed a system in place which keeps
all mass media reporters lying to us and painting a false picture
about what’s going on in the world.
This doesn’t mean that these news media outlets lie about everything all the time, it means they mostly provide half-truths, distortions and lies by omission whenever it benefits the agendas of the powerful, which is functionally the same as lying all the time. I sometimes get people telling me “Caitlin! The MSM lies all the time, and they say global warming is real! That means it’s false!” But it doesn’t work that way; if the TV tells you a celebrity has died then it’s probably true, and if they say it’s about to rain you should probably roll up your car windows. If they lied about everything all the time they would instantly lose all credibility, and their ability to propagandize effectively would be lost. Instead, they advance evidence-free narratives asserted by opaque government agencies, they avoid highlighting inconvenient truths, they ignore third parties and dissident ideas except to dismiss them, they harshly criticize the misdeeds of governments which oppose the US-centralized empire while sweeping the misdeeds of imperial members under the rug, and when there’s an opportunity to sabotage peace or support war, they seize it. They distort only when they have to, and only as much as they need to.
In
this way the powerful have succeeded in controlling the people’s
narratives about what’s happening in their country and their world.
This is the system of narrative manipulation we are up against when
we try to sow dissident ideas into public consciousness, and as the
old adage goes, it is easier to fool people than to convince them
that they have been fooled.
And
yet we are gaining ground. The manipulators have been losing control
of the narrative, which is why the mass media have been acting
so weird and desperate since 2016.
The unelected power establishment failed to manufacture support for
its would-be Syria invasion, it failed
to get the publicto
buy into the Russia hysteria, trust in the mass media is at
an all-time
low,
and it’s continuing
to plummet.
More and more people are waking up to the fact that they are being
lied to, which is good, because the only thing keeping them from
pushing for real change is the fact that there are all these screens
in everyone’s lives telling them that real change isn’t needed.
The
liars are against the ropes, and they’re starting to look winded.
A populist
information revolutionis
looking more winnable than ever.
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Zie ook:
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'Jan Kuitenbrouwer ('journalist'): Assange is een charlatan en WikiLeaks heeft beelden van de moord op 2 journalisten gemanipuleerd'
'Julian Assanges vervolging is de genadeklap voor klokkenluiders en (echte) journalisten'
'Chelsea Manning blijft voor onbepaalde tijd in de gevangenis'
'VN heeft eerder de 'detentie' van Assange al als onwettig verklaard'
'Julian Assange gearresteerd, een flagrante schending van de persvrijheid!'
'Arrestatie Julian Assange: een aanfluiting voor internationale regels en een enorme aanval op onafhankelijke journalistiek'
'The Guardian: ondanks een enorme misser (fake news) gaat men door met de valse beschuldigingen t.a.v. Assange......'
'WikiLeaks belooft The Guardian 1 miljoen dollar als het haar leugens i.z. Assange en Russiagate kan bewijzen.......'
'Julian Assange gedemoniseerd door media die hem zouden moeten steunen, waren ze bevolkt geweest door echte journalisten........'
'WikiLeaks toont aan dat VS en GB een gezamenlijke gewelddadige en bedrieglijke buitenlandpolitiek voeren'
'De prijs op het hoofd van Julian Assange: 1 miljard dollar.....'
'Assange kan niet voor spionage worden vervolgd, immers hij is journalist >> aldus Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) in een video'
'Westerse bevolkingen worden bespeeld door regeringen, massamedia, grote bedrijven, financiële instellingen en geheime diensten......'
'Media tonen ware gezicht door weigering Julian Assange te verdedigen'
'Assange is journalist en zou alleen daarom al niet mogen worden vervolgd, een artikel o.a. voor de huidige 'journalisten' van de reguliere media en de gebruikers van die media'
'WhiteHouse: US, Ecuador Coordinating About Future Of Assange Asylum'
'Stop de isolatie van Julian Assange!'
'JulianAssange (Wikileaks) haalt hypocriete Britse regering onderuit voorwijzen op belang van vrije en onafhankelijke media'
'Volkskrant en Nieuwsuur Fake News over 'Russische hacks.....''
'VS waarschuwde regering van Zweden voor Wikileaks in aanloop verkiezingen, Assange 'moest en zou hangen', ofwel de zoveelste VS manipulatie van verkiezingen elders......'
