Sunday, November 4, 2018
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless
one fundamental principle is born in mind constantly; it must confine itself to
a few points and repeat them over and over.”
This was the advice of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's propaganda
minister of Nazi Germany and it is advice that contemporary media appears to
have taken to heart.
This explains in part why each media outlet seems to repeat the same
message over and over.
Looking at this somewhat lightheartedly, you might speculate as to why
CNN has no trouble finding news – it is because it simply steals it from The
Washington Post.
But since so does everybody else, it isn’t really new news at all, but part
of a pattern of continual repletion Goebbels said was necessary for making good
propaganda.
Goebbels went on to say that you should “think of the press as a great
keyboard on which the government can play.”
Except in this case media does not serve a particular fascist state but
appears to be doing this for its own preservation and the preservation of the
pyramid of power to which media is a part.
So regardless of who wins or loses in the midterm elections this year,
the big loser will be media because it has been exposed as a power player and
something that is out for its own ends caring little about philosophy or
political ideology.
Media tends to support the status quo, a kind of conservatism that is
not conservative except in that it supports a power structure and despises popular
leaders like Trump or Sanders who do not rely on media to get their message out.
This is also the reason why media hates Trump’s use of Twitter, since the
public accesses directly Trump’s thought processes (like them or not) and does
not give media the opportunity to reshape public statements with their own
spin.
If there is one lesson to be learned over the last several years is
that an unbiased media is a myth. Ben Franklin may have started media down that
road but over the last two and a half centuries it has become something else we
call it The Fourth Estate and that is exactly what it is -- a powerful
political entity with an agenda all its own, an unelected, unappointed body
that sells itself as truth-sayers when in fact it has become a political
religion with high priests dictating dogma the public is expected to accept as fact.
Until the rise of radio and TV, print media held a monopoly on truth --
political and other news filtered and shaped through their pages to an
unsuspecting manipulated general public who foolishly believed they had access
to honest reporting.
Since the rise of TV news and now online new sources, print media has
lost its exclusive hold on public opinion. Most people get their news via
websites or TV but still mistakenly believe print media gives a more honest
assessment of reality, when this is far from the truth.
For the most part historically, three major print media divided the
media market up between themselves: The Washington Post for politics, The Wall
Street Journal for business, and the New York Times for just about everything
else.
For the most part other lesser media sources quote these three or take
their lead as to what they should be reporting and what angle they should be
selling to the general public. A few media outlets such The New Yorker will
sometimes try to outdo these in some area, but always manages to screw things
up.
Magazines like Newsweek and Vanity Fair are owned by one of these three
and so echo what the big three cover, giving an almost literal repeat of the
same message, living up to Goebbels’ dictate of selling the same message over
and over.
TV and websites generally simplify the message because they rely on
sound bites, and so help the major media condense the message into talking
points all media then later repeats – such as GOP must be racist or support White
Supremacists, how all white men hate people of color or women, and these
talking points are repeated again and again, often through a variety of mouthpieces
that pretend to be objective.
So when you get a number of news outlets seeking out stories of racism
or sexism, you are basically being fed a message clearly designed to seep down
into your psyche and to get your to react negatively to whomever the media
outlet it attacking or to create a general impression in the public – such as
stories about Watergate brought up before the election to imply a relationship
to the GOP.
While Goebbels claimed that truth is always stronger than a lie, modern
media appears to defy that logic, showing that it can manipulate or edit facts
to come off at half-truth or fallacies that the general public will accept as
fact – such as the Ford attacks on Kavanaugh in the Supreme Court nomination
process.
Goebbels also pointed out that propaganda is good which leads to
success and that is bad when it fails to achieve its desired result. Propaganda
does not have to be intelligent, merely successful.
Unfortunately for main stream media, the last few decades have allowed alternate
media outlets to spring up. Such as Fox News and other conservative outlets. These
had their rise out of conservative talk radio which was extremely successful in
helping Ronald Reagan in the 1980s but has since been overshadowed by the rise
of internet and websites.
Main Street media has done its best to try to discredit these
alternative media sites but has only partial success passing them off as
propaganda but without using the new term fake news.
Unfortunately for mainstream media networks like Fox have become more centrist
and so seem more reliable than the extremely left swing of such publications as
the Washington Post and The New York Times.
Whereas the Washington Post in the New York Times and their parade of
lesser publications have allowed their reporters and their editors to openly
attack the right-wing and especially Trump they make Fox seem more reasonable.
The midterm elections will determine that success or failure of mainstream
media’s propaganda campaign, although it has already done much to expose itself
as a biased power player seeking to flex its muscles in determining who should
run government.
Media’s blatant attacks on the GOP has pulled aside the curtain and
shown just how corrupt mainstream media has become.