The Nature of Propaganda

I've been hearing a lot of people say that Michael Moore's movie Fahrenheit 9/11 is propaganda. I've had a few thoughts about that... Noam Chomsky said in his lectures at Harvard, "Rationality belongs to the cool observer but, due to the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason but faith. And this faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which are provided by the myth maker to keep the ordinary person on course. Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to dictatorship. In a military state it doesn't matter what people think because you have a bludgeon over their head and you can control what they do. But when the state loses the bludgeon and when you can't control the people by force and when the voice of the people is heard, you have this problem...it may make people so curious and so arrogant that they don't have the humility to submit to a civil rule...and therefore you have to control what people think. The standard way to do this is to resort to what, in more honest days, used to be called Propaganda. Manufacturing of consent. Creation of necessary illusions. Various ways of marginalizing the general public or reducing them to apathy." That pretty much sums it up I'd say. Almost. But if you distill it a smidge further, it boils down to who's shoveling the propaganda and whether they are doing so for the benefit of a few or for the benefit of the majority. I think liberals are more likely to shovel it for the good of the majority. I believe they are more inclined to increase the quality of life for most of us than to enrich the top 1% and try to tell the rest of us it will "trickle down" to us. They know better. See, the thing about money is, it's so sticky it doesn't trickle. Our country was founded on a bedrock of liberal ideals. Ideals like, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." There is nothing in that about cost/benefit analysis. Liberal thinking peppers all our most important documents, the ones in which we verbalized the vision for our brave new democracy. "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal." Our lease states quite clearly that all tenants here are entitled to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". All tenants, every one, created equal. Conservatives have used their propaganda to make it uncool to care. Their hate mongering has scared many people into submission and reduced the rest of us to apathy. The thing is, though, that we can't let that kind of avarice go unchecked. Those of us who would deny no one their freedoms must deny those who would take advantage the right to take more than their fair share. And we must endure being called "wimps" for trying to do this in a way that doesn't deny our brothers and sisters their dignity. It's a tough row to hoe, I tell ya. But I am adopting the first line of that Noam Chomsky lecture as a mantra. "Rationality belongs to the cool observer." I refuse to be goaded into anger. I turn a deaf ear to intimidation. I will not be bullied into silence. When confronted, I will remember another piece of wisdom(/dialogue I picked up from my favorite Northern Exposure episode), "It's acceptable to feel anger. It is not acceptable to act on anger. Children lash out when they are angry. We are adults. We can talk." And I am talking to everyone I can. I think that's what Michael Moore is doing too. He's using his art to enflame people for the good of the people. He is goading us out of our torpor. And he's been doing it for years while I was s(ubm)itting on my apathetic ass. I'm proud of him, inspired by him and greatly relieved. Michael Moore is conveying his ideals via his art, which brings me to another huge difference between Liberals and Conservatives. It is the difference between Artists and Fundamentalists as summarized by Stephen Pressfield in his book, The War of Art. "The Artist and the Fundamentalist arise from societies at differing stages of social development. The artist is the advanced model. His culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The Artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. He is lucky. He was born in the right place. He has a core of self-confidence, of hope for the future. He believes in progress and evolution. His faith is that human kind is advancing, however haltingly and imperfectly, toward a better world. The Fundamentalist entertains no such notion. In his view, humanity has already fallen from a higher state. The truth is not out there awaiting revelation; it has already been revealed. The word of God has been spoken and recorded by his prophet, be he Jesus, Muhammad or Karl Marx." These are people who follow, not reason, but faith. Trying to convince our fundamentalist/conservative siblings that Bill O'Reilly is no more a prophet than Michael Moore is gonna be tough. We've got our work cut out for us. But we have the courage and right is on our side. And it's for the good of everyone. After all, we can only evolve as fast as the least evolved of us. So let's evolve already...

posted by c -- on Jul 29, 2004 07:59AM

Rupert Murdoch owns 9 satellite TV networks, 100 cable channels, 175 newspapers, 40 book imprints, 40 TV stations and 1 movie studio. His total audience is 4.7 billion people. He is a right-wing conservative who adores Ronald Reagan. He also owns Fox (and I use this term lightly) News. Roger Ailes, who currently runs the Fox Media Corporation for Murdoch, worked as a media strategist for Richard Nixon from 1967-1968, as a consultant for Ronald Reagan in 1984 and on George Bush Sr’s presidential campaign in 1988. The Fox Media Network is the conglomerate these two men are using to brainwash the people of our country. Between them they have eliminated all traces of journalistic integrity from Fox’s newsroom. Every morning Ailes, or his right hand man John Moody, circulate a memo full of edicts to every reporter who works in their organization, telling them what to say and how to say it. There is nothing covert about their efforts. These memos bear a startling resemblance to the “Talking Points” released by the White House each morning. What follows are some of their actual memos to Fox employees. 3-6-2004 Kerry, starting to feel the heat for his flip-flop voting record, is in West Virginia. 4-4-2004 The President goes to Charlotte to talk about job training. Buoyed by the 300k job figure last week, he can boast his policies are working. 4-6-2004 Kerry’s speech on the economy at Georgetown is likely to move onto the topic of Iraq. We should take the beginning of Kerry’s speech, see if it contains new information (aside from the promise to create 10 million new jobs) and see if other news at the time is more compelling. It is not required to take it start to finish. 4-26-2004 Ribbons or medals? Which did John Kerry throw away after he returned from Vietnam? This may become an issue for him today. His perceived disrespect for the military could be more damaging to the candidate than questions about his actions in uniform. 4-28-2004 Let’s refer to the Marines we see in the foreground as “sharp shooters” not snipers, which carries a negative connotation. 5-6-2004 The pictures from Abu Ghraib prison are disturbing. They have rightly provoked outrage. Today we have a picture – aired on al Arabyia – of an American hostage being held with a scarf over his eyes, clearly against his will. Who’s outraged on his behalf? Murdoch is using his immense media power to shape the news to further his interests and those of his allies. Fox News is nothing more than a 24/7 political ad for the GOP. They don’t call it the “news business” for nothing. We have long known that Karl Rove issues “Talking Points” from his office in the West Wing of the White House and that he forwards them to conservative columnists around the country telling them what to say. This is how all the conservative pundits (from Limbaugh to MSNBC) end up saying the same thing every single day, often in exactly the same words! Robert Novak, one of those conservative columnists, is the columnist who “outed” undercover CIA operative Valerie Plume based on one of these “tips from the White House” though he refuses to name the individual who gave it to him. (Plume’s husband, Joseph Wilson, had publicly condemned Cheney’s use of a forged document to bolster support for invading Iraq. This forged document supposedly indicated that Niger had sold enriched Uranium to the Iraqis to build a nuclear weapon. Though that document has since been proven a forgery, no one is asking who forged it. The White House is also not trying very hard to find the person who outed Plume. Hmmmm.) In addition to the daily canned message, Fox employs a number of techniques to influence the public’s perception: They limit the diversity of opinion. For every one democrat interviewed on Brit Hume’s Special Report, they interview five republicans. They present “wedge issues” such as gay marriage, affirmative action, abortion, religion and 10 commandments stories while ignoring the real stories of the economy, the environment and health care. They present of view of Iraq as a happy Iraq and the war as a war we are winning. Brit Hume actually said in one of his reports, “277 US soldiers have now died in Iraq, which means that statistically speaking US soldiers have less chance of dying from all causes in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California, which is roughly the same geographical size. (See what I mean about statistics being easy to misuse?) Fox has made the decision to portray the Iraq war as a success and those who oppose it as traitors. They have chosen to use terrorism as a fear weapon, diverting attention from the economy, medicare and the environment. Christiana Amanpour, the award-winning CNN correspondent who reported from Iraq, is quoted as saying, “My station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News and it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship in my view in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did.” The conservative “experts” on Fox News are some of the most famous people in their fields. The liberal “experts” on Fox News are nobodies. Fox uses misleading banners that roll across the bottom of the screen, banners that say things like, “Kerry’s Secret Meeting” or “Clarke’s Flip-Flop”. (Now that's brain washing!) They regularly engage in character assassination, and never so clearly as when they attacked Richard Clarke after he told the 9/11 Commission that our government let us down. For weeks, they suggested he was “auditioning for a role in the Kerry administration” or that he was “trying to sell his book” or that he was “angry to be passed over for a position in Homeland Security”. This in total disregard for his 30 years of dedicated service dating back through four administrations. The general public’s misperceptions about the Iraq war contributed to support for it. And despite the blatant consumer fraud of their mottos: “Fair and Balanced” and “We report. You decide”, America’s Newsroom gives us headlines like this, “There was further news today that President Bush’s days of absorbing John Kerry’s attacks without counter-attacks are over.” What!?! Instead of providing sources for the propaganda they present, the reporters on Fox News have mastered the art of the, “Some people say…” method of expressing the opinions of their employers. I have actually heard more than one person on that station say, “Some people say that John Kerry looks French.” Carl Cameron, lead political correspondent for Fox, is friends with GW. His wife is working on Bush’s campaign. Whatever happened to “conflicts of interest?” I guess it went by the wayside along with the Fairness Doctrine, which was eliminated during the Reagan administration. Remember the Fairness Doctrine? In the good ole days, we used to be able to expect equal time, to ensure both sides received the same amount of coverage on every television station. Those days are gone now… Where my mother lives in rural North Carolina, she gets four television stations, one of them Fox. She does not have access to high speed internet and trying to read the news from her computer is sheer torture. Even if my mother didn’t watch Fox, she, like all of us, would still be exposed to the echo effect of other stations reporting on their reporting. My mother doesn’t like John Kerry but she can’t give you a single reason for not liking John Kerry other than “John Kerry flip flops”, a statement you can hear trumpeted 24 hours a day on Fox, because in Fox’s black and white world there is no amount of new information that makes it acceptable to change one’s mind. Corporate control of the media is a political issue. Clear Channel Communications, the Sinclair Group and Fox are threatening our very freedom. Conservative pundits are all over the radio but for some reason the propaganda that we have a liberal media continues to thrive. A colleague of mine recently spouted this pap to me to which I responded, “Name one liberal media pundit.” She couldn’t. On the other hand, we have Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Robert Novak, Brit Hume, Chris Matthews on the conservative side…and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. When you see biased reporting (and you have only to look to see it) complain to the outlet. Tell them you will not be watching until they provide balanced reporting that includes progressive viewpoints as well! Furthermore, vote with your dollar. Refuse to buy the products advertised on these programs and tell those sellers why you will not be eating either Cheerios or Total (both real examples). Democracy depends on a free and fair media to function. It is guaranteed in the third amendment to our Constitution. We must stand up for this basic right or our children will be inheriting a democracy that has a lot less freedoms that it had when it was placed in our hands.

posted by c -- on Aug 03, 2004 10:24AM