Trading on fear (Analysis of US War Propaganga-Psyops Nation)

[DUreader]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,995669,00.html




From the start, the invasion of Iraq was seen
in the US as a marketing project. Selling
'Brand America' abroad was an abject failure;
but at home, it worked. Manufacturers of 4x4s,
oil prospectors, the nuclear power industry,
politicians keen to roll back civil liberties - all
seized the moment to capitalise on the war.
PR analysts Sheldon Rampton and John
Stauber explain how it worked.

Saturday July 12, 2003
The Guardian

"The United States lost the public relations war in
the Muslim world a long time ago," Osama Siblani,
publisher of the Arab American News, said in
October 2001. "They could have the prophet
Mohammed doing public relations and it wouldn't
help."

At home in the US, the propaganda war has been
more effective. And a key component has been
fear: fear of terrorism and fear of attack.

Early scholars who studied propaganda called it a
"hypodermic needle approach" to communication,
in which the communicator's objective was to
"inject" his ideas into the minds of the target
population. Since propaganda is often aimed at
persuading people to do things that are not in
their own best interests, it frequently seeks to
bypass the rational brain altogether and
manipulate us on a more primitive level, appealing
to emotional symbolism.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. A psyops in every programming office !

That's what it appears to be anymore. Funny, it used to be a breach of public confidence to do so.

[NYC]

2. The Virtue Myth by Renana Brooks

I was reading an excerpt today. I think the URL is renanabrooks.com

It was about using negative emotions rather than words to communicate with us. Manipulative and abusive.

[NJCher]

3. fear as a motivator

I've never been one to be motivated by fear and I've always found it puzzling how many people are. Do you ever notice how many people say, "Aren't you afraid that..." or "I'd be afraid...." Around here, people won't even drive in certain areas for fear their car will break down and they will be at the mercy of the locals. Fear of breakdowns is even a motivator for the purchase of cellphones. I have friends who never use their cellphones but pay the fee for one every month just because of that fear of a breakedown. I think this is absurd.

This country has always used fear as a motivator because the defense industry profits from it.

I can remember many of the appeals when I was a child. Baby boomers will almost all tell you about the Red scare. As a child, I remember being genuinely frightened of The Bomb. I just knew the Communists were going to take over our system and force us all into totalitarianism. Now I look back on that and think about how absurd that fear was.

This is one of the most despicable aspects of our system--when such messages hit the immature mind. No child should have to grow up that way.

Anyway, highly interesting article and one of a number I've seen lately that analyze *'s use of fear as a tactic.


Cher

[NYC]

5. There's a communist under every bed.

That was the saying when I was a child. Fortunately, I had a very realistic grandmother who always told me the truth.

[teryang]

6. Cell phones definitely enhance security

...and are a more reasonable response than firearms. If you've ever been the victim of road rage, you know the value of the ability to contact police. Just dialing 911 will end a lot of confrontations. It also is useful during breakdowns. IMHO.

[MaineDem]

9. I remember that fear

I vividly remember the story about the Communist children who were sent to spent the day with a state-run babysitter while Mom and Dad went to work. At the time it scared me to think children wouldn't be brought up by their parents. My, how times have changed.

Seriously, this was a scary thought and I'm sure my teachers - good nuns that they all were - played it up more than was necessary.

[NYC]

4. Link to Brooks:

www.renanabrooks.com

Excerpt:

Once a present and future negative framework is installed, the abusive personality has a much easier time convincing the audience of the severity of the problem at hand. George W Bush has been known to utilize abstract passive construction to suggest that some terrible force outside our control is threatening our survival. He tends to describe these threats or problems as beyond our control, totally overwhelming and lacking any specific solution. An example of abstract passive construction is the administration's color-coded terror threat alert system, which is issued without any specific guidance to the American people other than being vigilant -- and afraid.

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. Americans need to wake up to the fact

That the biggest threat to their safety and national sercurity is not al Qaeda, it is the Bush administration.

Everything they say and do, puts us in more danger, not less.

[UpInArms]

8. this article truly highlights the complicity of

the media in the crimes committed in our names -

what the corporations and their executives (that are using our airwaves) seem to forget is that those airwaves belong to the public and each of them should lose their licenses and be replaced by entities that actually serve the public, not manipulate it.

[RainDog]

10. media whores revealed

"At MSNBC, a cable TV news network, meanwhile, a six-month experiment to develop a liberal programme featuring Phil Donahue ended just before the war began, when Donahue's show was cancelled and replaced with a programme titled Countdown: Iraq. Although the network cited poor ratings as the reason for dumping Donahue, the New York Times reported that

*****Donahue "was actually attracting more viewers than any other programme on MSNBC, *****

even the channel's signature prime-time programme, Hardball with Chris Matthews". Further insight into the network's thinking appears in an internal NBC report leaked to AllYourTV.com, a website that covers the television industry. The NBC report recommended axing Donahue because he presented a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war ... He seems to delight in presenting guests who are antiwar, anti-Bush and sceptical of the administration's motives." It went on to outline a possible nightmare scenario where the show becomes "a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity".

At the same time that Donahue was cancelled, MSNBC added to its line-up Michael Savage, who routinely refers to non-white countries as "turd world nations" and who charges that the US "is being taken over by the freaks, the cripples, the perverts and the mental defectives". In one broadcast, Savage justified ethnic slurs as a national security tool: "We need racist stereotypes right now of our enemy in order to encourage our warriors to kill the enemy."

In addition to restricting the number of anti-war voices on television and radio, media outlets often engaged in selective presentation. The main voices that television viewers saw opposing the war came from a handful of celebrities such as Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Janeane Garofalo and Susan Sarandon - actors who could be dismissed as brie-eating Hollywood elitists. The newspapers and TV networks could have easily interviewed academics and other more traditional anti-war sources, but they rarely did. In a speech in the autumn of 2002, Senator Edward Kennedy "laid out what was arguably the most comprehensive case yet offered to the public questioning the Bush administration's policy and timing on Iraq", according to Michael Getler, the Washington Post's ombudsman. The next day, the Post devoted one sentence to the speech. Ironically, Kennedy made ample use in his remarks of the public testimony in Senate armed services committee hearings a week earlier by retired four-star army and marine corps generals who cautioned about attacking Iraq at this time - hearings that the Post also did not cover.

Peace groups attempted to purchase commercial time to broadcast ads for peace, but were refused air time by all the major networks and even MTV. CBS network president Martin Franks explained the refusal by saying, "We think that informed discussion comes from our news programming." "

...in other words, vast numbers of American people, the MAINSTREAM, it seems to me, do not find themselves represented by the US media via the public airways.

Do we have recourse? Are there legal ways to demand fairness since Reagan overturned the fairness doctrine?