Wanna Know Why We the People Really Don't Know Squat?

[Octafish]

53. Hadn't heard that. Do know that it's no conspiracy theory. It's a war.

One can call it a class war or a war for minds, I don't give a damn. The information environment in which we live is most polluted by those who can most afford to make noise.

METHODS OF MEDIA MANIPULATION

by Michael Parenti
Media Alliance

We are told by media people that some news bias is unavoidable. Distortions are caused by deadline pressures, human misjudgment, budgetary restraints, and the difficulty of reducing a complex story into a concise report. Furthermore, the argument goes, no communication system can hope to report everything. Selectivity is needed.

I would argue that the media's misrepresentations are not all the result of innocent error and everyday production problems, though such problems certainly exist. True, the press has to be selective--but what principle of selectivity is involved? Media bias does not occur in a random fashion; rather it moves in the same overall direction again and again, favoring management over labor, corporations over corporate critics, affluent Whites over low-income minorities, officialdom over protesters, the two-party monopoly over leftist third parties, privatization and free market "reforms" over public-sector development, U.S. corporate dominance of the Third World over revolutionary social change, and conservative commentators and columnists like Rush Limbaugh and George Will over progressive or populist ones like Jim Hightower and Ralph Nader (not to mention more radical ones).

The corporate mainstream media seldom stray into territory that might cause discomfort to those who hold political and economic power, including those who own the media or advertise in it.

SNIP...

Labeling. A label predefines a subject by simply giving it a positive or negative tag without the benefit of any explanatory details. Some positive labels are: "stability," "the president's firm leadership," and "a strong defense." Some negative ones are: "leftist guerrillas," "Islamic terrorists," and "conspiracy theorists." In the June 1998 California campaign for Proposition 226, a measure designed to cripple the political activities of organized labor, union leaders were repeatedly labeled "union bosses," while corporate leaders were never called "corporate bosses." The press itself is falsely labeled "the liberal media" by the hundreds of conservative columnists, commentators, and talk-show hosts who crowd the communications universe with complaints about being shut out of it.

A strikingly deceptive label is "reform," a word that is misapplied to the dismantling of social reforms. So the media talked of "welfare reform" when referring to the elimination of family assistance programs. Over the last 30 years, "tax reform" has served as a deceptive euphemism for laws that have repeatedly reduced upper-income taxes, shifting the payment burden still more regressively upon middle- and low-income strata.

CONTINUED...

http://mediaalliance2.live.radicaldesigns.org/article.php?id=510

Something else I know: For Democracy to function, let alone survive, it requires an informed electorate. Personally, I believe that should include the entire populace. But, hey, that's just me. I'm a Democrat of the Old School.