Right Wing Built the Mass Media Long Ago to Manipulate the Masses

[Kid Berwyn]

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.” — Edward L. Bernays, “Propaganda,” published 1928.



Here’s the history. First, details and a GOP legal memo from a guy Nixon later tapped for SCOTUS:

The Lewis Powell Memo: A Corporate Blueprint to Dominate Democracy

Additional important history to know...

Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda

The Attack on Democracy

The 20th century, said Carey, is marked by three historic developments: the growth of democracy via the expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy. Carey wrote that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. And, in his manuscript, unpublished during his life time, he described that history, going back to World War I and ending with the Reagan era. Carey covers the little known role of the US Chamber of Commerce in the McCarthy witch hunts of post WWII and shows how the continued campaign against "Big Government" plays an important role in bringing Reagan to power.

John Pilger called Carey "a second Orwell", Noam Chomsky dedicated his book, Manufacturing Consent, to him. And even though TUC Radio runs our documentary based on Carey's manuscript at least every two years and draws a huge response each time, Alex Carey is still unknown.

Given today's spotlight on corporations that may change. It is not only the Occupy movement that inspired me to present this program again at this time. By an amazing historic coincidence Bill Moyers and Charlie Cray of Greenpeace have just added the missing chapter to Carey's analysis. Carey's manuscript ends in 1988 when he committed suicide. Moyers and Cray begin with 1971 and bring the corporate propaganda project up to date.

This is a fairly complex production with many voices, historic sound clips, and source material. The program has been used by writers and students of history and propaganda. Alex Carey: Taking the Risk out of Democracy, Corporate Propaganda VS Freedom and Liberty with a foreword by Noam Chomsky was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1995.

Source: TUC Radio

Part 1: https://tucradio.org/podcasts/newest-podcasts/alex-carey-corporations-and-propaganda-part-one-of-two/

Part 2: https://tucradio.org/podcasts/newest-podcasts/alex-carey-corporations-and-propaganda-part-two-of-two/

Here’s what political reporters care about, and it’s not you

By Dan Froomkin
Press watchers.org - November 17, 2022

It’s a mystery to a lot of folks how political reporters who seem so smart and accomplished consistently get the big things wrong.

The reason is that political reporters are human beings. Human beings respond to incentives. And in the case of the elite Washington press corps, those incentives are skewed.

These reporters respond to four core constituencies: Their editors, their sources, their peers, and right-wing trolls.

SNIP…

Your Editors

You will never get scolded by your editors for talking trash about Democrats. That proves your independence. By contrast, if you express an even slightly negative common-sense view about the Republican Party, that is liberal editorializing that sets off alarms throughout the newsroom’s glass offices. You get rewarded for scoops – incremental tidbits of no lasting significance – not edification. Your safest place is always in the middle, pointing fingers at both sides. You are rewarded for unflappability, and looking like you care too much about something is the quickest way to lose your job.

Your Sources

If your sources don’t return your calls, your editors will find someone else to do your job. Democrats will never cut you off, no matter what you write. Democratic operatives will even admire how you play the game. Republicans will cut you off if they conclude you’re biased against them. As long as you don’t stray from the conventional wisdom, you’ll be OK.

CONTINUES…

https://presswatchers.org/2022/11/heres-what-political-reporters-care-about-and-its-not-you/

When Plausible Deniability infected the news room.

THE CIA AND THE MEDIA

How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

BY CARL BERNSTEIN
Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.

The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception for the following principal reasons:

■ The use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence‑gathering employed by the CIA. Although the Agency has cut back sharply on the use of reporters since 1973 primarily as a result of pressure from the media), some journalist‑operatives are still posted abroad.

■ Further investigation into the matter, CIA officials say, would inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships in the 1950s and 1960s with some of the most powerful organizations and individuals in American journalism.

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.

By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.

Continues…

https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-stone-10-20-1977

The Right has been at war with Democracy in the USA since FDR introduced the New Deal. They have been defeated many times, but not destroyed. Why? You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.

[underpants]

1. 10 minute video about Bernays. Very interesting

[Kid Berwyn]

5. Bernays was Sigmund Freud's American nephew.

Bernays helped define the methods for the rich and powerful to manipulate the masses.

By satisfying people’s inner selfish desires, industry could make people “happy and docile.”

Thank you for the great video, underpants. Love the old BBC.

[underpants]

6. Unfortunately threads sink like a stone in GD

If I have a post as good as this or this we’ll researched I often cross post it in Op Ed’s forum.

[Dustlawyer]

20. It is a shame!

They don’t talk about the Big Donors to politicians also being the big advertisers. They use the power of their ad dollars to leverage the type of stories they want and don’t want. I saw first hand how BP did this during the Gulf oil spill and the McDonalds coffee case.

[Martin68]

31. It depends on what you mean by the "mass media." There have always been conservative papers,

news programs, and other forms of media. There have also been very reliable sources of responsible and professional journalism. It has always been up to the consumer to be aware of the reliability and bent of each source of news and information.

[Ligyron]

44. And there, in your last sentence, lies the problem.

[Martin68]

55. That's right. Stop blaming the "mass media." Start blaming the education system. Start blaming a

system that allows blatant lies to be broadcast in the media without balance. Restore the FCC Fairness Doctrine: the bugaboo of the right wing.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

59. Each successive Republican administration has bent the FCC to work for corporations.

This is why most of the media 'consumed' by the American public is owned by 6 conglomerates. The FCC was supposed to ensure competition, not rubber-stamp mergers.

[Caliman73]

71. Nope. Systems are ALWAYS more powerful than the individual.

That is just a fact of human psychology.

Not to say that individuals can reject systems and systemic values, but when you are raised by your family, which in turn is influenced by culture, community, and society, then you grow up already primed to accept certain things.

In fact, the ideas of "rugged individualism" and "caveat emptor" are ideas that are put into society for the purpose of creating feelings of isolation and powerlessness. One of the reasons that Capitalists HATE Unions so much is that Unions take the power of one person and multiply it by thousands. There is a saying, "One person begs while many people bargain".

You are saying that it is up to each individual person, to figure out the bias and whether each media source is even telling the truth, when our education system barely teaches critical thinking skills, let alone "source validation" because those concepts are considered "Liberal Indoctrination".

There is a coordinated Conservative Media, then there is the Mainstream Media, which is owned and operated primarily by large wealthy corporations, then there is a tiny, struggling leftist media. Mass Media is media that is able to be broadcast widely with far reach, that is promoted to large markets, so basically the corporate and Conservative media. That is mass media.

Sorry but a systemic problem requires systemic solutions.

[blm]

2. Young Dems need to know these basic truths.

[RKP5637]

3. K&R!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! n/t

[Kid Berwyn]

7. Especially with all this "Both Sides Do It!!!!" rot.

Washington Moonie Times prints it.

Wall Street Urinal repeats it.

Fox Noise Nutworks runs with it.

CNNBCIABCBS Mighty Wurlitzer repeats it ad nauseum.

The ownership profits from it.

From the old Wiki:

David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy—what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: "If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."

[appalachiablue]

17. ++

[Aristus]

4. Nice analogy about the smoking.

"Smoking will make you look glamorous and sophisticated. Sure, it looks bad, smells bad, tastes bad, and leaves ash and nasty butts everywhere. But trust us on this: Glamorous and sophisticated."

[Kid Berwyn]

8. My wife's mom looked a lot like Katherine Hepburn.

Brilliant, too, teaching foreign languages at University.

She was a smoker who died from lung cancer.

[Farmer-Rick]

9. Seems corporations are following in the foot steps of religion.

Religion uses all the same manipulative tools to drag you into imaginary, magical beliefs. Religions' manipulative tactics start as a baby. Corporations use many of the same tools developed by Religions.

[Kid Berwyn]

11. Exactly. The "Rule You's" "Fool You" Departments.

That’s why so many are OK with their kids’ minds getting filled with White Supremacy and other fascist ideas. The Ownership Class knows the drill:



FTR: I’m a Roman Catholic, who also appreciates the wisdom of other religions, philosophies and beliefs — and, in many cases, the lack thereof.

[Farmer-Rick]

47. That's a great image

Where did you get it from?

There's another image involving a horse carriage that is very similar.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

[Kid Berwyn]

57. Cleveland 1911

"Pyramid of Capitalist System", issued by Nedeljkovich, Brashick and Kuharich, Cleveland: The International Publishing Co., 1911.

http://www.laborarts.org/collections/item.cfm%3Fitemid=428.html

Throughout the empire projectors played Ayn Rand into the night.

[treestar]

10. Explains why it is more entertainment than information

One would think the internet would get around it, and maybe it does some, but it also allows for extremists to find each other easily and create their own realities.

[Kid Berwyn]

15. Filling up minds with "useless information" robs minds...

…from processing what’s important information. That’s why the Nation’s Founders — We the People — created the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Democracy needs a free press to survive.

Consider the corporate press coverage of Pisswig in 2016:

Wall-to-wall 24/7 coverage about what he said, “Low Energy Jeb” and “Whatabout her emails?” Every freaking speech, it seemed, was covered live. And when he hadn’t gotten to the stage, the talking heads opined at length on Trump Steaks, Trump Wine, Trump Casino, Trump Airlines, noting in passing that they were bankrupt, but not mentioning the bankrupt character who owned them. Of course, there was near-nothing about Trump’s policies and no mention of his ties to organized crime.

Once I hoped the Internet would become a tool for Democracy. It has largely devolved to become another commercialized cesspool for the well-off, except for those places that give a damn about the truth, DU being one. Let’s work to expand the reach.

[ancianita]

29. I highly recommend that you read books that show the war for democracy on the Internet,

Maureen Webb's book




and Doctorow's newest book

[Kid Berwyn]

33. Thank you!

From MIT Press, Webb’s publisher:

Hackers as vital disruptors, inspiring a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens take back democracy.

Hackers have a bad reputation, as shady deployers of bots and destroyers of infrastructure. In Coding Democracy, Maureen Webb offers another view. Hackers, she argues, can be vital disruptors. Hacking is becoming a practice, an ethos, and a metaphor for a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens are inventing new forms of distributed, decentralized democracy for a digital era. Confronted with concentrations of power, mass surveillance, and authoritarianism enabled by new technology, the hacking movement is trying to “build out” democracy into cyberspace.

Webb travels to Berlin, where she visits the Chaos Communication Camp, a flagship event in the hacker world; to Silicon Valley, where she reports on the Apple-FBI case, the significance of Russian troll farms, and the hacking of tractor software by desperate farmers; to Barcelona, to meet the hacker group XNet, which has helped bring nearly 100 prominent Spanish bankers and politicians to justice for their role in the 2008 financial crisis; and to Harvard and MIT, to investigate the institutionalization of hacking. Webb describes an amazing array of hacker experiments that could dramatically change the current political economy. These ambitious hacks aim to displace such tech monoliths as Facebook and Amazon; enable worker cooperatives to kill platforms like Uber; give people control over their data; automate trust; and provide citizens a real say in governance, along with capacity to reach consensus. Coding Democracy is not just another optimistic declaration of technological utopianism; instead, it provides the tools for an urgently needed upgrade of democracy in the digital era.

Source: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262542289/coding-democracy/

On Doctorow:

THE FIGHT FOR A HUMAN FUTURE AT THE NEW FRONTIER OF POWER
BY SHOSHANA ZUBOFF ‧ RELEASE DATE: JAN. 15, 2019

An argument that Google and other internet-based firms are creating a new form of capitalism based on the monetizing of human experience.

“Digital connection is now a means to others’ commercial ends,” writes Zuboff (Business Administration/Harvard Business School; In The Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power, 1988). In a 2014 essay, the author first described the “profoundly undemocratic social force” she calls surveillance capitalism. In this exhaustive, often repetitive elaboration, the author defines the concept as “a new market form that claims human experience as a free source of raw material for hidden commercial practices.” Later in the book, she elaborates: “Every casual search, like, and click [becomes] an asset to be tracked, parsed, and monetized by some company.” This relentless search for and use of personal data is not happenstance or an inevitable result of digital technology. Rather, it is a “calculated,” little-noticed pursuit by commercial interests—acting under the guise of a utopian vision for the internet—to create “prediction products” that “anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later” and are traded in the marketplace. Invented by Google, adopted by Facebook and Microsoft, and with evidence that Amazon engages in it, the “unprecedented” market form is poised to become the “dominant” shape of capitalism, abrogating “the peoples’ right to a human future.” The shift from “serving users to surveilling them” occurred at a time of diminished government oversight and regulation and the post–9/11 emphasis on security over privacy. Based on research and interviews, the author thoughtfully examines the economic and philosophical implications of surveillance capitalism; warns that our children, in their ceaseless quest for connectivity, are harbingers of what lies ahead; and urges public outrage over the theft of our humanity. Other topics include Pokémon Go and behaviorist B.F. Skinner and his acolytes.

A big, sprawling, and alarming case for “the darkening of the digital dream.” This will appeal to specialists; general readers will wish it were much shorter.

Source: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/shoshana-zuboff/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism/

Personally, I love reading: Big Book. Big Ideas.

[ancianita]

35. Pleasure! MIT Press keeps up with this democracy issue on the nets.

You might also like some videos on the subject you're covering here.

And his books, which I've been on a tear reading:

Big Brother & Homeland, combined in a paperback,
Walkaway
Attack Surface

Each story takes place in the not-too-distant future, but the last one is the most scary -- where a Global Personal Identity is set up across the G20 from birth. Anyway, each novel warms you up for the next more dramatic one. I learned a helluva lot about hacker skills and ethos, with references to the Chaos Computer Club in Germany, EFF, Burning Man, etc.

Here's an additional video on the youth and hacking politics.

This is all meant to make you and the rest of us understand that there's a real war for democracy happening on the nets.

[Kid Berwyn]

36. Very much obliged.

Democracy depends on truth.

I noticed both Webb and Doctorow want to discuss economic Justice, a subject long dear to me.

The Banksters who Stole Uncounted Trillions Should PUT IT BACK.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10025093415

When the rich are the only ones with a voice worth hearing, that spells problems for the rest of us. America, We the People have a problem:

Our democracy to exist requires freedom of the press and the free and open exchange of ideas.

The government is using its powers to prevent that. And what powers they are.



"About this wanting to be a reporter, don't ever change your mind.
It may not be the oldest profession, but it's the best." -- Humphrey Bogart as Ed Hutcheson in Deadline U.S.A.

The AP Seizures and the Frightening Web They've Uncovered

The Government’s War on the Press

by ALFREDO LOPEZ
CounterPunch, MAY 16, 2013

EXCERPT...

There, in a nutshell, is the problem. For the corporate media, there is such still a thing as “no conceivable right to know”. Up to now, part of Obama’s information policy has been that mainstream media qualifies for First Amendment protection but “alternative” journalists and the news organizations they work for, as well as bloggers, activists, writers and others who work independently of major news organizations and who use the Internet as the free vehicle of communications it was invented to be have absolutely no protections. Since 2009, this government is known to have taken action against Internet activists and truth-tellers: seizing servers, email records and virtually all forms of on-line communications and then prosecuting people in over a dozen cases based on some of those seizures. There’s been very little action taken against the corporate press, which for its part has largely ignored or blacked out any reporting on the government attacks on its smaller media competitors.

This “favored status” commercial media has enjoyed has now been trashed. The “protected press” is as exposed as the rest of us. In answering Pruit’s letter, the Justice Department said as much. “We must notify the media organization in advance unless doing so would pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation,” U.S. Attorney’s Machen spokesman William Miller explained, in a remark that went way beyond the traditional exemption for protecting lives. He added, “…we are always careful and deliberative in seeking to strike the right balance between the public interest in the free flow of information and the public interest in the fair and effective administration of our criminal laws.”

SNIP...

Where is the limit? Without a court hearing, there is none. If an AP reporter called your phone or emailed you from a targeted cell phone, the government now knows it and your phone number (and possibly email address) is now part of the investigation. That gathered information now includes your name, address, phone number, calls you received and calls you made. If they got to the email, all of that is theirs. No matter what those phone calls or email messages from your cell phone are about, they are a part of a government investigation into a major security leak.

SNIP...

Does the Obama Administration deserve that trust? Its stated position is that the government can collect and use any information of this type if there is a security reason to do so. The issue is what is a “security reason” and, since courts have been effectively removed from the process, that definition is completely in the hands of the Justice Department, Homeland Security, the FBI and the National Security Agency. If one of those agencies says you have no right to privacy, you don’t.

CONTINUED COINTELPRO...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/16/the-governments-war-on-the-press/

The moment freedom of the press is gone, freedom itself is gone extinct.

[ancianita]

37. Re "The moment freedom of the press is gone, freedom itself is gone extinct," that's why hackers

are the vanguard of information transparency and protection, with or without any old school corporate for-profit "free" press. As long as they fight, the free press has a shot at informing.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

12. Taking one's political cues from an anti-liberal like Noam Chomsky is a very poor idea.

For anti-liberals to prevail, undermining the role of the press in a liberal democracy is job #1.

Nothing could be further from the liberal traditions of the Democratic Party.

[reACTIONary]

13. +100! Right On!

[Kid Berwyn]

21. The post really isn't about Chomsky, though.

The post is about the role of mass media in shaping human beliefs and actions.

Calling attention to Chomsky — and inferring the OP is infused with his “anti-liberal” views — serves to deflect readers from considering the role of propaganda in their own lives.

Chomsky is Chomsky, an academic who advanced the study of linguistics.

Why do you call Chomsky, “anti-liberal”? Please share.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

50. No, we should worry about propaganda in our lives, and Chomsky's propaganda

is among the worrisome sort.

[Farmer-Rick]

48. He considers himself a liberal

And stated that not voting for Biden is a vote for Trump.

"Noam Chomsky describes himself as an anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian socialist, and is considered to be a key intellectual figure within the left wing of politics of the United States."

I like the guy he makes me think.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

49. Tip: "anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian socialist" and "liberal" are not congruent terms.

[Farmer-Rick]

51. Never said they were.

Never assume.

[Farmer-Rick]

53. No you assumed

Those descriptors of his political stance were not liberal.

It just requires thinking.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

54. Well, that's for sure.

It doesn't take a political science degree (which I have) tpo know the difference between "anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian socialism" and liberalism.

Thanks for the laugh.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

60. It is quite possible for you to have the degree you claim and for you to be wrong.

There's a formal name for such an argument.

[Wild blueberry]

14. Thank you for your thoughtful post

Will listen to Carey podcasts this afternoon.
Thank you.

[Kid Berwyn]

42. You are most welcome! Please let us know what you think.

The program’s host, Maria Gilardin, is a remarkable human being. Her TUC Radio stands for “Time of Useful Consciousness,” an aeronautical term for the time between oxygen-deficiency and the loss of consciousness, the brief moments in which the pilot may save the plane.

[Wild blueberry]

45. Two-part podcast is riveting and very important

As good as Maddow's Ultra, less flashy. So much I didn't realize while living through second half of 20th century.
I don't learn well through listening, so now I want to read Carey's book.
Thank you very much for bringing this vital study to our notice.

[JT99]

16. Bookmarking...

Excellent post! Thank you!

Bookmarking to read more later.

[Kid Berwyn]

43. Thank you!

I try to post on stuff that’s under-reported. From 2013:

Mass Media ignoring 'RFK Believed in Conspiracy' shows corrupt nature of America's Press

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10022416498

Corporate McPravda is yet to talk about any of that, for some reasons.

[90-percent]

18. well what do you know?

frank zappa wrote a song about this!

-90% Jimmy

[Kid Berwyn]

41. Don Pardo and Terry Bozio.

I’m so old I remember that amazing SNL broadcast.

I hope you enjoy John Mayall’s “Television Eye,” created in a similar spirit:

The late great Johnny Almond and Mick Taylor kick some jams.

[appalachiablue]

19. TY, vy impt. info that many people, esp. younger need to know about.

[Kid Berwyn]

58. For some reason, the text books missed this story.

The manipulation of the American mind: Edward Bernays and the birth of public relations

The Conversation, July 9, 2015

“The most interesting man in the world.” “Reach out and touch someone.” “Finger-lickin’ good.” Such advertising slogans have become fixtures of American culture, and each year millions now tune into the Super Bowl as much for the ads as for the football.

While no single person can claim exclusive credit for the ascendancy of advertising in American life, no one deserves credit more than a man most of us have never heard of: Edward Bernays.

Snip…

Drawing on the insights of his Uncle Sigmund – a relationship Bernays was always quick to mention – he developed an approach he dubbed “the engineering of consent.” He provided leaders the means to “control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it.” To do so, it was necessary to appeal not to the rational part of the mind, but the unconscious.

Snip…

What Bernays’ writings furnish is not a principle or tradition by which to evaluate the appropriateness of propaganda, but simply a means for shaping public opinion for any purpose whatsoever, whether beneficial to human beings or not.

This observation led Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter to warn President Franklin Roosevelt against allowing Bernays to play a leadership role in World War II, describing him and his colleagues as “professional poisoners of the public mind, exploiters of foolishness, fanaticism, and self-interest.”

Today we might call what Bernays pioneered a form of branding, but at its core it represents little more than a particularly brazen set of techniques to manipulate people to get them to do your bidding.

Continues…

https://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american-mind-edward-bernays-and-the-birth-of-public-relations-44393

Put the phone down, Serling. They’re almost here.

[CaptainTruth]

22. Messaging. It's all about effective messaging.

Effective messaging, especially in the form of pervasive propaganda, can manipulate & control large portions of the public.

[Kid Berwyn]

63. Thus the rise of "Narrative."

Dr. Bauer says we use two approaches to convey knowledge: Maps and Stories.

Two Kinds of Knowledge: Maps and Stories

HENRY H. BAUER
Chemistry & Science Studies
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
Blacksburg, VA 24061 02/2

Abstract—The most reliable knowledge is map like: "If you do this, then that will always follow." But such knowledge carries little if any inherent human meaning. Most meaningful is story like knowledge, which teaches about morals and values; but about that, agreement cannot be forced by demonstration. Failure to distinguish between the meaningfulness and the re¬liability of knowledge helps to make arguments intractable. It would be very useful always to ask about a bit of claimed knowledge, "Is this more like a story or more like a map ?"

PDF to full article:

http://www.henryhbauer.homestead.com/2kndsweb.pdf

So, to make something memorable requires a good story. Think, "Hansel and Gretel." Parents can't afford to feed their two kids and are forced to abandom them in the forest. Being “unadulterated” humans, the kids don't want that and leave bread crumbs to get back home. Next day, frustrated adults do the same thing, but check their pockets for bread. Kids now get lost and find witch's cottage...etc." The details may not be the same on each telling, but the basic elements are the same.

Complicated things require maps: Owners manual for a car; operator’s manual for a camera; a map showing the location of towns, roads, bridges, etc. Almost no one can memorize all the details required, hence they must be written down and referenced. The thing is, until the advent of smartphones, no one could carry around a reference library with them.

OTOH: Hear a good story ONCE -- as a kid or as an adult -- and we don't forget. That's why today’s Republicans are so quick to lie. Majorly Traitor Greede, for instance, explained to a crowd recently that Democrats were planning to kill Republicans and have actually started their plot. It’s gonna take hundred times the ink and air time of truth to counter that Little Lie. Before then, though, they’re already on to the next one.

[Hortensis]

23. Its use by Bernays is an excellent argument against the word "masses."

Justice Felix Frankfurter described him and his colleagues as “professional poisoners of the public mind, exploiters of foolishness, fanaticism, and self-interest.”

Tobacco companies are one thing, but -olitical groups really should be afraid to cross the citizens of democracies.

* Never act like a "mass." You have a mind of your own and the vote.

* Refuse to be treated like a mass. You have a mind of your own and the vote.

* Insist on being regarded and spoken of as an individual person and citizen. You have the vote!

Yeah, that word pushed my button again. But just look at what he and other users DO with that attitude!

[Kid Berwyn]

64. How the Elite Talk in Code

It's almost an ENIGMA, what the rich and powerful say. It's to hide what they do.



Case in point: One Neil Mallon Pierce Bush, son of then-president George Herbert Walker Bush and caught with his hand in a billion-dollar S&L cookie jar called Silverado Savings & Loan. Here's what Poppy did for his Number 3 Son:

How the Elite Talk in Code

EXCERPT...

A perfect example of code talk comes from a true master insider, George H.W. Bush, when his son, Neil, was caught red handed in the middle of the S&L crisis as a director of Sliverado Bank.

Did Bush lay out his cards and call in his operatives and say pull some strings, get my son out of this investigation (Remember Bush was president at the time.) No. Bush is too smooth. In his published collection of letters, All The Best, George Bush, he shows us how the heat is delicately taken off Neil. On page 449, there is this letter to Thomas Ludlow Ashley.

Ashley is a Yale University grad, and member of the secret society Skull and Bones along with Bush. Here's the letter:

The Honorable Thomas Ludlow Ashley
Association of Bank Holding Companies
Washington, D.C. 20005

Dear Lud,

Thank you for your good memo December 8th.

I would appreciate any help you can give Neil. He tells me he never had any insider dealings. He got off the Board early--long before I was elected President. The Denver paper apparently ran a very nice editorial about him on that. He is an outside director, and thus I guess has liability, but I can't believe his name would appear in the paper if it was Jones not Bush. In any event, I know that the guy is totally honest. I saw him in Denver and I think he is worried about the publicity and the "shame". I tell him not to worry about that but any advice you can give as this matter unfolds would be greatly appreciated by me. If it turns out there has been some marginal call, or he has done something wrong, needless to say there will be no intervention from his dad. But, I'm quite confident this is not true...

Warm regards,

George

Notice how smooth & dulcet. No talk about getting Ashley anything for taking care of the matter. The nice touch about if Neil "has done something wrong", but the clear finish, he didn't.

CONTINUED...

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2009/07/how-elite-talk-in-code.html

When it comes to money and power, it really is a small world. We'd hear it more often, if only we were privy to the conversation.

When it comes to democracy, justice and freedom, We the People should be in on the discussion. And we should be fully informed. That leads the nation to make sound decisions.

[Hortensis]

67. Yes. Nearly 250M of us are eligible to vote. If even 10% more

insisted that those we give power to (and can take it from) respect OUR power, they would be rightly afraid to cross us.

[Prairie_Seagull]

24. Good post Kid Berwyn. My saying that and 10 bucks will get you a cup of coffee.

Bookmarking.

[Kid Berwyn]

65. Thanks! With prices these days, I appreciate the sentiment.

An example of important news that got lost in a buy-partisan manner by the News:

When 9-11 happened, Sneering Dick Cheney, Smirking Duhbya Bush, Trent Lott and the rest of the GOP leadership got ushered to safety where they could continue governing, no matter what. The problem was, they left out the Democrats.

'Shadow Government' News To Congress

Dem Leaders Say They Weren’t Told; GOP Staffers Not Sure

White House Casts Light On 'Shadow'

WASHINGTON, March 5, 2002 (CBS)

Quote: “This is not the kind of thing you tell 10, 50 or 100 senators. If you do, you might as well tell the world." Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss.

(CBS) After lawmakers complained that they were kept in the dark, White House officials on Tuesday briefed top members of Congress about the "shadow government" that President Bush set up outside Washington as a safeguard against terrorism.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said two top Bush aides briefed Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D. on Tuesday, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., "had been previously informed."

But House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., was not part of Tuesday's session. His spokesman Erik Smith said Gephardt did not know about the meeting until it ended. He said he did not know why Gephardt was not invited.

"We're disappointed, we don't understand why they would choose not to invite Mr. Gephardt," Smith said.

Fleischer told reporters that Gephardt's absence was "a scheduling matter," but when pressed on whether Gephardt was invited, Fleischer replied, "I don't make all the invitations here at the White House.”

CONTINUED…

DU2 OP BUSTED LINK: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/05/politics/main503014.shtml

Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20050405160553/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/05/politics/main503014.shtml

Guess it really wasn’t a different time.

[ancianita]

25. Brilliant post, Kid. Thank you!

[Kid Berwyn]

66. You are most welcome, ancianita!

“The Mighty Wurlitzer.”

Journalism and the CIA: The Mighty Wurlitzer

Alongside those Greek morality plays and Biblical injunctions, we are also reminded by history itself that the use of unethical means to achieve a worthy end can be self-destructive. Power, by definition, is isolated from the correcting signals of external criticism. Or perhaps the feeling of fighting evil fits so comfortably, that it's difficult to shed even after objective circumstances change.

The history of U.S. intelligence since World War II follows both patterns. The Office of Strategic Services, the CIA's predecessor, had jurisdiction over wartime covert operations and propaganda in the fight against fascism. OSS chief William Donovan recruited heavily among social and academic elites. When the CIA was launched in 1947 at the beginning of the Cold War, these pioneers felt that they had both the right and the duty to secretly manipulate the masses for the greater good.

OSS veteran Frank Wisner ran most of the early peacetime covert operations as head of the Office of Policy Coordination. Although funded by the CIA, OPC wasn't integrated into the CIA's Directorate of Plans until 1952, under OSS veteran Allen Dulles. Both Wisner and Dulles were enthusiastic about covert operations. By mid-1953 the department was operating with 7,200 personnel and 74 percent of the CIA's total budget.

Wisner created the first "information superhighway." But this was the age of vacuum tubes, not computers, so he called it his "Mighty Wurlitzer." The CIA's global network funded the Italian elections in 1948, sent paramilitary teams into Albania, trained Nationalist Chinese on Taiwan, and pumped money into the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the National Student Association, and the Center for International Studies at MIT. Key leaders and labor unions in western Europe received subsidies, and Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were launched. The Wurlitzer, an organ designed for film productions, could imitate sounds such as rain, thunder, or an auto horn. Wisner and Dulles were at the keyboard, directing history.

SORRY TO SNIP...

The combined forces of unaccountable covert operations and corporate public relations, each able to tap massive resources, are sufficient to make the concept of "democracy" obsolete. Fortunately for the rest of us, unchallenged power can lose perspective. With research and analysis -- the capacity to see and understand the world around them -- entrenched power must constantly anticipate and contain potential threats. But even as power seems more secure, this capacity can be blinded by hubris and isolation.

CONTINUED...

Busted DU2 OP link http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8425/CIAPRESS.HTM

Internet Archive:

https://web.archive.org/web/20050304171604/http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8425/CIAPRESS.HTM

Screenshots saved a good read. Corporate McPravda won’t.

[DownriverDem]

26. They sure did

I remember when we had progressive talk radio on our AM dial. Then a rich rightie bought the station and turned it into a Spanish speaking station (No offense to anyone).

[Kid Berwyn]

68. Hate Radio

A big part of how we got to the Great Divide o’ Today:

ABC and the rise of Rush Limbaugh

The following brief history of ABC offers a perfect snapshot of everything that has gone wrong with the media. This remarkable story includes ABC's takeover by a conservative parent corporation, the demise of the Fairness Doctrine, the rightward shift of the evening news, the rise of conservative talk radio, and the cozy relationship between a state and a press that are supposed to be separate.

In 1985, ABC was taken over by Capital Cities, a conservative, Roman Catholic media organization with extensive ties to the CIA.

(If you think we're making this up, you should know that the Capital Cities takeover of ABC is one of the most analyzed in history, and the subject of many books by Wall Street experts and scholars. Especially recommended is Networks of Power, by Emmy Award-winner Dennis Mazzocco.) (1)

Capital Cities was born in 1954, and rapidly prospered. Many of its founders had previously worked in the U.S. intelligence community and had a great amount of wealth, social contacts and influence in government. Yet they opted to keep the company's actions out of the public eye -- they did not flaunt their wealth with private planes and lavish offices the way so many successful companies do. Just exactly how well-connected Capital Cities was to the CIA is unknown, but it is clear that the CIA concerned itself with the company at various times. The fact that the CIA has often used private businessmen, journalists and even entire companies as fronts for covert operations is not only well-known by historians, but legendary. (Recall Howard Hughes and Trans-World Airlines...)

One of Capital City's early founders was William Casey, who would later become Ronald Reagan's Director of the CIA. At the time of Casey's nomination, the press expressed surprise that Reagan would hire a businessman whose last-known intelligence experience was limited to OSS operations in World War II. The fact is, however, that Casey had never left intelligence. Throughout the Cold War he kept a foot in both worlds, in private business as well as the CIA. A history of Casey's business dealings reveals that he was an aggressive player who saw nothing wrong with bending the law to further his own conservative agenda. When he became implicated as a central figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, many Washington insiders considered it a predictable continuation of a very shady career.

Another Capital Cities founder, Lowell Thomas, was a close friend and business contact with Allen Dulles, Eisenhower's CIA Director, and John Dulles, the Secretary of State. Thomas always denied being a spy, but he was frequently seen at events involving intelligence operations. Another founder was Thomas Dewey, whom the CIA had given millions to create other front companies for covert operations.

Capital Cities prospered from the start; its specialty was to buy media organizations that were in trouble. Upon acquisition, it would improve management and eliminate waste until the company started turning a profit. This no-nonsense, no-frills approach, as well as its refusal to become side-tracked with other ventures, made it one of the most successful media conglomerates of the 60s and 70s. Of course, the journalistic slant of its companies was decidedly conservative and anticommunist. To anyone who believes that the government should not control the press, the possibility that the CIA created a media company to dispense conservative and Cold War propaganda should be alarming. Rush Limbaugh himself calls freedom of the press "the sweetest -- and most American -- words you will ever find." (2) Apparently, he is unaware of the history of his own employers.

By the 1980s, Capital Cities had grown powerful enough that it was now poised to hunt truly big game: a major television network. A vulnerable target appeared in the form of ABC, whose poor management in the early 80s was driving both its profits and stocks into oblivion. Back then, ABC's journalistic slant was indeed liberal; its criticism of the Reagan Administration had drawn the wrath of conservatives everywhere, from Wall Street to Washington. This was in marked contrast to the rest of the White House press corps, which was, in Bagdikian's words, "stunningly uncritical" of Reagan. Behind the scenes, Reagan was deregulating the FCC and eliminating anti-monopoly laws for the media, a fact the media appreciated and rewarded. The only exception was ABC. Sam Donaldson's penetrating questions during press conferences were so embarrassing to Reagan that his handlers scheduled the fewest Presidential press conferences in modern history.

CONTINUED...

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-libmedia.htm

Thus today Flush’s followers don’t read much or know much, but they sure do three things they’re told: Fear Change and the Other, Hate Democrats and Liberals; and Vote for the GZP.

[Initech]

27. Yup it's right wing brainwashing.

Imagine if we had a media that was used for good instead of evil... where we would be.

[Kid Berwyn]

69. The thought brings tears to my eyes.

Ours would be a better world.

What is ignored:



Bell Book Says Officials Told Racist Jokes : Reagan Aide Says He Doubts Claim by Ex-Education Secretary

October 21, 1987|Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Reagan's first secretary of education says mid-level Administration officials made racist jokes and other scurrilous remarks during civil rights discussions, but Reagan's chief spokesman said Tuesday he does not believe it.

Terrel H. Bell, in a memoir of Reagan's first term, said the slurs included references to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as "Martin Lucifer Coon" and calling Title IX, a federal law guaranteeing women equal educational opportunity, "the lesbian's bill of rights."

SNIP...

Bell did not identify those who made the racist or scurrilous comments. He could not be reached for further comment.

In his book, he says the jokes about King were made as Reagan was deciding whether to sign or veto a bill establishing King's birthday as a national holiday. He eventually signed it.

Bell said: "I do not mean to imply that these scurrilous remarks were common utterances in the rooms and corridors of the White House and the Old Executive Office Building, but I heard them when issues related to civil rights enforcement weighed heavily on my mind."

Bell added: "It seemed obvious they were said for my benefit, since they often accompanied sardonic references to 'Comrade Bell.' "

CONTINUED...

http://articles.latimes.com/1987-10-21/news/mn-9912_1_racist-jokes

Who saw it coming:

“No one reads anymore.” -- Allen Dulles, on the possibility the public would examine the Warren Report

[7wo7rees]

28. Always the best info! Thanks!!

I've been trying to explain this to a friend, this info is just what I needed to share with her and you put it a nice post!

Always the best, Kid!



Ms7wo7rees

[Kid Berwyn]

70. Coming from you, that means the world. Thank you!

Someone else who inspires me:

Angus Mackenzie: "Secrets: The CIA's War at Home"

EXCERPT...

A month later someone at the CIA leaked the news of MHCHAOS to Sy Hersh at the New York Times. The story, while sparse, made public the fact that the agency was spying on its citizens. Gerald Ford, in office for less than five months, directed William Colby to issue a report on MHCHAOS to Henry Kissinger. As Mackenzie writes, evidently Ford was not informed that Kissinger was well aware of the operation. He adds:

Because of MHCHAOS and Watergate, Congress began to investigate the CIA. On September 16, 1975 Senators Frank Church and John Tower called Colby to testify at a hearing about CIA assassinations. Colby showed up carrying a CIA poison dart gun, and Church waved the gun before the televison cameras. It looked like an automatic pistol with a telescopic sight mounted on the barrel. Producers of the evening news recognized this as sensational footage, and just as surely Colby recognized his days as director were numbered. He had not guarded the CIA secrets well enough.

Colby was fired on November 2, 1975. His successor was George Herbert Walker Bush.....

Mackenzie's account of Bush's rise and and his fall when Carter assumed office is brief, but intriguing. There is much, much more in Secrets about CIA efforts throughout the years in guarding their work from the public in this under-recognized work. The epilogue is entitled "The Cold War Ends and Secrecy Spreads." Mackenzie closes by writing:

Only recently in the history of the world's oldest republic has secrecy functioned principally to keep the American people in the dark about the nefarious activities of their government. The United States is no longer the nation its citizens once thought: a place, unlike most others in the world, free from censorship and thought police, where people can say what they want, when they want to, about their government. Almost a decade after the end of the cold war, espionage is not the issue, if it ever really was. The issue is freedom... Until the citizens of this land aggressively defend their First Amendment rights of free speech, there is little hope that this march to censorship will be reversed. The survival of the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights is at stake.

Succumbing to brain cancer before he turned fifty, Mackenzie sadly did not live to see the meteoric rise of the internet, nor did he live to see 9/11 and the current Bush Administration and their obsessive devotion to secrecy.

This work has relevance to the current situation regarding the agency's efforts to keep JFK assassination records secret, including those having to do with George Joannides.

SOURCE: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=10617

Thank you for caring, my Friend.

[FakeNoose]

30. K & R Thanks for this post

It proves that this mess didn't start with Rupert Murdoch and Faux Noise.

[erronis]

32. Absolutely wonderful post. Very thought-provoking.

[Viz]

34. Dynamite post! KR

THIS post connects the dots! The Powell Memo laid out their plans and the Media Control was the method.

[malaise]

38. Great OP

Thanks

[ShazamIam]

39. We only have to note how the media, all of it including entertainment, during the 70s were busy

unifying us, the goal being to create a nation where we were all truly one nation of many versus the 80s when it was decided that to oppress and wage suppress us, division was needed. The media goal changed from unity to division.

The goal has been obvious since the late 90s and notably beginning with the election of Obama in 2008. Division will break us up.
Why do the powerful want to destroy democracy? Don't think you can't hide ideas and rewrite history, it is a centuries old trick of authoritarians. You can't eliminate the ideas but if you control all media, including books, and entertainment. It was easy, ignore the anti-trust laws and allow monopolization of control. The ideas can be buried and that is what ihas been done, is being done.

One of the ways during the 80s was for the ALEC corporations to withhold advertising from liberal publichsers and publications, if you changed your messaging you got to stay.

Authoritarians are busy trying to bury the idea of democratic governments.

[GoodRaisin]

40. K&R, excellent post.

[kentuck]

46. And the phrase "liberal media", with all its negative connotations...

...would never have been created by liberals.

[PufPuf23]

56. Thank you for the concise reminder. kr

[barbaraann]

61. I came across this web page--Tools That Fight Disinformation Online--a few months ago.

Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to go through it, but if anyone has any comments about one or more of these tools, it would be appreciated.
https://www.rand.org/research/projects/truth-decay/fighting-disinformation/search.html

[Martin Eden]

62. Bookmarked for later n/t

[Hermit-The-Prog]

72. k&r for all the info