Note
John Pilger har lavet en dokumentar film om mediernes manipulerende rolle i krigs-propaganda. Filmens titel er: “The War You Don’t See”…
Læs noterne jeg har skrevet til filmen her:
Nowadays we often hear in radio and television and read articles where journalists, news editors and media experts use the worn-out phrase that the function of the old and renowned media corporations are and have always been to act as the people’s watchdog in order to keep the political power in check. They say that the most distinguished role of the press is to expose abuse of political power, and corruption, and fraud, and to bring lies, manipulation, and deception out in full daylight for the public to see. The press is the people’s security guard against the emergence of a suppressive power elite. The press is a contributing factor in securing the survival of democracy. No totalitarian regime can erupt if we have a free and independent press.
So according to this, the mainstream press is one of the noblest institutions in our society. This has for many years been a common understanding of the role of the press. But this view has got some serious scratches. Why is that?
The defenders say that it is because of social media, Google and Youtube. They are the ones who spread fake news and discredit the old and tried media institutions. They are the ones who propagate lies and lead people to distrust the mainstream media. They bring all sorts of crazy ideas into people’s minds like for example the that vaccines are dangerous, that manmade global warming is unscientific nonsense and a political tool to control the world population, and also the far-out idea that we never went to the moon.
Well, that might be one reason. I won’t go into that. But I believe there is another reason:
People are fed up with the way the organized, mainstream media operates. The media almost always value news from the so-called 7 news criteria which are: impact, timeliness, prominence, proximity, bizarreness, conflict, and currency. And since the media works in a very competitive environment where the struggle for keeping their readers is enormous, these seven criteria are used all the time since they have been documented to work effectively as bait to hook people. So “keep it simple” is a code word. In other words: complex topics that require background understanding are valued low. What works are news where background knowledge already has been established long ago (in school). So, therefore, the grooming has to begin in school. Here you receive a box full of collective background knowledge. And on top of the box, the mainstream media can pour all kinds of stuff as a kind of spice.
There exist an established value system and framework in a given society. In Denmark for example we have a common idea that we live in a free, and democratic system and that the elected government are working according to deomcratic and open metodes. There also exist a common idea that in denmark we have no hidden power elite. Our socity is open. Thats the basic value syste and thats is the framework wherein the media serves us with news.
But if another value system and framework start to emerge and attact more and more people then it is very dangerous for the establishment. Lets say that this new framework is based on the idea that there IS a very rich and very powerful group of people in Denmark. An elite that is fairly onknwon to the public but it controls most of the economy, business, financial institutions. And lets say that big media is operating to please this power elite by never referring to it as an elite. If that framework of understanding the mechanisms og society becomes more accepted by the public, then they start to look at society with new eyes. The become suspicious to media and to the established power whom the consider as tools in the hands of the power elite
Official sources
Official sources are the must manipulating
to swallow the hook
What we see these years seems to be a mainstream press that is trying to win back its lost territory. People lose faith in them.
In the good old days – before the internet – daddy sad in his armchair smoking his pipe, reading his newspaper about all that was happening out there in the big world. He had no distrust. No suspicion. He trusted his own choice of newspaper. Other papers might be less trustworthy…but suddenly not his. One thing that daddy never questioned and never wondered about was that all the newspapers knit their stories together based on the same sources, the same news agencies. In other words, the so-called “facts” came from the same sources and were thereafter filtered through different news editors with different angels and narratives added and then put to print in different newspapers suited for respectively left or right-wing readers.
Remember, most journalists out in the field are not digging up their own stories. They rely on sources. And most often these sources are never plain objectives. They
. But what a complete lie this is. On the contrary the situation is exactly the opposite. The commercial news media are experts in hidden propaganda and systematic disinformation.
We tend to believe that propaganda and censorship is something that belongs to totalitarian regimes like China and Russia where there is a state monopolistic control over the media. It is far more difficult to discover a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. In democratic countries we tend to believe that the press is free and independent
This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest. What is not evident (and remains undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the huge inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance.