"Our job is to give
people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have." ~ Richard
Salent, Former President CBS News.
“It is the emergence of mass
media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal
scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous,
lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually
unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment. Mass media
provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the
technological society.” ~
Jacques Ellul
``I know the secret of making the average American
believe anything I want him to. Just let me control television.... You put
something on the television and it becomes reality. If the world outside the TV
set contradicts the images, people start trying to change the world to make it
like the TV set images....'' ~ Hal
Becker, media ``expert'' and management consultant, the Futures Group, in an
interview in 1981
"The enormous gap between what US leaders do
in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the
great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology." ~ Michael Parenti, political scientist.
As depicted in the graph above, the number of corporations owning the majority of US media outlets went from 50 to 5 in less than 20 years.
ED: Over the years every form of media has been gobbled up so that now it is controlled by only five or six men all of them Jewish. All of them owned by companies who own the ammunition and military facilities as well. We know this.
To see who owns what, and therefore slants the news in their profit making favour, please go to this site, OWNERSHIP CHART: THE BIG SIX to have your eyes opened. Almost EVERY outlet for media is owned by a major supplier of armaments or items involved in the “art of war”.
ED: as this blog has shown in previous posts, the modern Al-Jazeera serves the
Zionist entity and always has. Perhaps in the beginning those who ran it were
sincere in truth, but as seen in the past few years, it has deteriorated to a
tool to alter perceptions in the Muslim world, serving the agenda of the powerful.
Libya and the uprisings in Egypt exposed their agendas completely.
All the so-called libertarians are anarchists, either in thought or in reality. Every one of them, in hunting for the phantoms of freedom, ends up involved in anarchy, and protests for the sake of protesting...
.
As depicted in the graph above, the number of corporations owning the majority of US media outlets went from 50 to 5 in less than 20 years.
ED: Over the years every form of media has been gobbled up so that now it is controlled by only five or six men all of them Jewish. All of them owned by companies who own the ammunition and military facilities as well. We know this.
To see who owns what, and therefore slants the news in their profit making favour, please go to this site, OWNERSHIP CHART: THE BIG SIX to have your eyes opened. Almost EVERY outlet for media is owned by a major supplier of armaments or items involved in the “art of war”.
This author below does mention some good things but he or she (I
could not find a name) completely ignores the Zionist influence of the media.
What we see today is not news but staged, controlled, scripted material to mold
the minds of the audience whilst also controlling their every thoughts. To that
end, I will throw in a few quotes to bear in mind.
Finally, at the end, from the Protocols of the Learned Elders of
Zion, the chapter on media control and how the perceptions of the people are
handled. I highly recommend reading this. The depth of thought and complexities
contained therein are completely applicable to the world of information we deal
with today. Then, if you have time,
reread the original post from this entirely different viewpoint.
December 18, 2011
‘They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.’ ~ Ernest Hemmingway 1
The technological advances of the post-war era in the machinery
of warfare have made human suffering and death in conflict-zones acutely
brutal. Innocuous sounding weapons used in the public lexicon such as
‘daisy-cutter’ and ‘rocket propelled grenade’ are weapons used in modern
conflict to inflict heinous death and casualty.
However, public perceptions of the reality of war have been
consistently censured by the press ~ in this case the American media
establishment ~ since as early as the American Civil War. While the obvious
reason for this is to maintain public morale and support for life-threatening
conflict, American military intervention since that civil war has been projected internationally.
During the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the
explosion of media communications technology has mirrored military R&D in
that it has allowed instantaneous access to global conflict.
In three case studies that chart American intervention ~ the
Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, and the Second Gulf War ~ I will argue that
the development of communications technology combined with traditional economic
pressures in the Network News medium have reduced public perceptions of
American intervention to a form of ‘entertainment.’
I will contrast the pressures and prejudices of journalists and
producers on the ground with the economic pressures facing competing media
networks to enlarge this debate. Specifically, this will address the ‘rolling
news’ format that the Central News Network (CNN) established during the first
Gulf War. Finally, the relationship between the media conglomerates and their
target audience will be considered in reaction to the ‘entertainment’ label.
The emergence of the CNN Effect can be categorized as ‘the
negative effect on the economy caused by people staying home to watch CNN or
some other news source during a crisis such as a war.’ 2
It would be a misconception to place the ‘CNN effect’ as one
simply referring to ‘rolling news’, a concept adopted by many international
media outlets but pioneered by CNN in the first Gulf War.
If one takes the CNN effect as an amalgamation of these two
definitions, then the overall CNN effect has been to transplant Hollywood
mentality onto a daily level, where producers denigrate genuine human suffering
in favour of securing a wider audience from competing economic media giants
such as CNBC; MSNBC; Fox; ABC; and Bloomberg.
In one example, it is widely held that the presence and
reportage of CNN in Somalia prior to the October 3rd battle ~ where 29 U.S.
soldiers were killed and up to 80 injured ~ pressured President Clinton
significantly to intervene militarily and deploy Special Forces to that region.
CNN knew what images would appeal to the American public’s
conscience and how public pressure could convince an incumbent leader into
intervening in humanitarian crises. So, while the economic benefit to CNN was
an overriding concern, so too was the power to manipulate what in the Somali
example was a highly complex international response to a highly complex
national emergency.
Then Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s policy of ‘assertive
multilateralism’ involved actors and considerations reaching far beyond the
humanitarian dimension of a Somali famine.
Yet, CNN producers and executives chose only to present human
suffering vis-à-vis the humanitarian dimension when presenting that particular
conflict to the American public. In one assessment, the use of human suffering
to influence foreign policy imbued in the Somali context had tragic
consequences:
Even when the Mogadishu tragedy was followed a few days later by the outbreak of massive genocide in Rwanda ~ one that saw from 600,000 to one million men, women and children murdered ~ American public opinion did not criticize or challenge the contortions engaged in by the Clinton Administration to avoid intervening. 3
The U.S. media establishment, in the above, aided U.S.
policymakers to secure public support for non-intervention in Rwanda, a
decision which is universally recognized as irresponsible and an intervention
which, unlike Somalia, could actually have benefited the country in question
and stalled an unprecedented genocide.
The concept of this distinction ~ between journalists as
presenters and journalists as moralists ~ was discussed most ardently after the
U.S. defeat in Vietnam. During the Nixon Presidency, the television and print
media acted moralistically in its presentation of the Vietnam conflict and
questioned the national interest by mobilizing the public:
‘The president couldn’t sleep. Long afflicted by insomnia, Nixon had special reason for distress on the night of May 8, 1970. He was being pilloried in the press and by the anti-war movement, first for ordering the invasion of Cambodia, then for reacting coldly to the killing of four Kent State students by National Guardsmen. Now protesters had descended on Washington and the capital was in a state of siege.’ 4
Nixon’s paranoia and megalomania saw the media establishment
purely in political terms, with a grand liberal conspiracy engaged in
machinations to destroy his Presidency. The Watergate scandal which ultimately
broke Nixon’s Presidency was a watershed in American media history as the media
saw themselves as the purveyors of that society’s morality.
Established journalistic rules regarding political character
attacks which had prevented Clintonian scandals in John F. Kennedy’s era had
now been deemed redundant. The media, in short, had free license to report
anything and everything.
In Vietnam, this became evident in how the media reported the
War. The depiction of violence was no longer censored by the media
establishment; it was sensationalized to mirror the mood of a radical American
public, morally appalled at the legitimacy of the Vietnam War:
Any viewer in the United States who watched regularly the television reporting from Vietnam – and it was from television that 60 percent of Americans got most of their war news – would agree that he saw scenes of real-life violence, death, and horror on his screen that would have been unthinkable before Vietnam. 5
The effect of this on the American public was obviously an
integral tool to the anti-war movement.
Correspondents did not question themselves when taking footage
of self-immolating monks, as in response to President Diem’s pro-Catholic
policies during the Kennedy Presidency.
Appalling images such as those, designed to shock the American
public and enhance the career of a correspondent, would re-emerge during the
height of the war.
De-sensitized to the everyday realities and horrors of a soldier
in Vietnam, Americans such as Norman Morrison effectively questioned not only
the legitimacy of the war, but the media’s representation of it. Morrison
infamously set fire to himself outside Secretary of Defense McNamara’s Pentagon
office in 1965, thereby inviting the American public to compare domestic, as
opposed to foreign, representations of human suffering in conflict zones.
Samuel Huntington, when describing the new world order as The Clash of Civilizations,
also alluded to a domestic media’s perspective when describing foreign
intervention:
A world of clashing civilizations…is inevitably a world of double standards: people apply one standard to their kin-countries and a different standard to others 6
It must also be considered that Nixon’s view of the media as
conspiring against Republicans alone was misguided. The previous Democratic
Presidents involved in Vietnam ~ Johnson and Kennedy ~ both endured a hostile
press.
In Johnson’s case, even Cabinet members defected to the press in
an effort to discredit what they perceived as an unsteady Presidential
leadership descending into chaos.
In Vietnam, the television media establishment recognized the
power of shock tactics to induce the government to relinquish control of
ambiguous foreign policies not clearly in the national interest. However, the
power of the media in Vietnam to influence public opinion has often been
exaggerated, as James Hoge notes:
[As in Vietnam,] public attitudes ultimately hinge on questions about the rightness, purpose and costs of policy ~ not television images. 7
In the Iraq conflict of 1991, CNN established itself as the
dominant American media network.
This was due to the efforts of producer Robert Weiner, who urged
that CNN should stay in Iraq to report the war Live From Baghdad, as the title of the book
chronicling his experience suggests. Due in part to Weiner’s ability to secure
a relationship with then Deputy Minister of Information Naji Sabri Ahmad
al-Hadithi, CNN procured a ‘floor wire’, a device similar to that of a two-way
radio.
The advantage for CNN when air strikes on Baghdad became a
certainty was that the ‘floor wire’ communicated directly to the Atlanta head
office using underground communications cables. Thus, even in the event of U.S.
air attacks striking traditional communications centres, the network would be
able to broadcast live and uninterrupted.
Once direct warnings emerged from U.S. embassy officials warning
of an imminent bombing, the remaining international media networks pulled their
journalists out of Baghdad, a move designed to protect journalists’ lives and
the credibility of President Bush’s bombing campaign.
CNN engineered a historic moment in international broadcasting
when veteran journalists Bernard Shaw; John Holliman; and Peter Arnett were
flown in to report the first wave of U.S. attacks.
‘Rolling news’ had found both a niche and an audience, as few of
us can forget the live images of U.S. air strikes combined with up to the
minute reporting. In addition, the U.S. and global audience were simultaneously
transported to live events and extensions of the Iraqi conflict by journalists
as far as Tel Aviv and Jordan.
Weiner and his team were hailed as journalistic ‘heroes’ and the
envy of the U.S. media establishment. During the first wave of U.S strikes, competing
media networks could only feed directly into CNN’s broadcasting to retain a
minor portion of the market.
Americans tuned in live round the clock to watch the U.S. air
strikes on Baghdad, yet the immediacy of the devastating effects on Iraqis went
unnoticed by the American public.
Additionally, the Executive Branch now had to contend with a
competing information source, as the government was unable to counter military
losses or Hussein’s aggression with pacifying statements to the public: the
media now controlled the distribution and content of information.
Underlying this paradox is the concept that the CNN audience was
becoming de-sensitized to the realities of a Patriot missile strike or Iraqi
Scud launch to the extent that the choice of watching the war on television was
not an exercise in information procurement, but a perverse and horrifying form
of entertainment.
Writing recently in Foreign
Affairs, Secretary of State Powell laments:
These days, it seems that an administration can develop a sound foreign policy strategy, but it can’t get people to acknowledge or understand it. 8
Secretary Powell refers here to reinvigorated U.S. government
public diplomacy efforts to counter anti-Americanism. In the aftermath of 9-11,
the Executive Branch established an Office of Global Communications (OGC) with
the mandate: ‘the Office assists in the development of communications that
disseminate truthful, accurate, and effective messages about the American
people and their government.’ 9
In essence, OGC’s job is to monitor foreign media broadcasts and
cultivate effective counter-attacks to perceived propaganda. However, OGC is
also competing within a larger paradigm that sees CNN and Al-Jazeera as the
principal methods of disseminating ‘truthful, accurate, and effective messages’
related to the demands of their audience.
Al-Jazeera has a pro-Arab and anti-American stance, a position
which invited their broadcasting (in mid 2003) of bloodied Iraqi carcasses
killed by American armed forces.
ED: as this blog has shown in previous posts, the modern Al-Jazeera serves the
Zionist entity and always has. Perhaps in the beginning those who ran it were
sincere in truth, but as seen in the past few years, it has deteriorated to a
tool to alter perceptions in the Muslim world, serving the agenda of the powerful.
Libya and the uprisings in Egypt exposed their agendas completely.
This was not necessarily a ‘shock’ tactic. Al-Jazeera’s defence
of its inflammatory journalism is that it is a network, like CNN, cultivating
its content to the requirements and beliefs of its audience. It is the content
of the message, however, which also reiterates the concept of mass media as
entertainment.
Al-Jazeera tailors its coverage of the current Iraqi
reconstruction to favor its audience, often at the expense of its international
credibility. However, Al-Jazeera also provides a balanced portrayal of events
important to the Middle East region with the aim of countering purely Western
portrayals of Arab conflagrations which include the Arab-Israeli conflict. 9-11
and the ‘globalization’ of mass media also contributed to an enhanced and
increasingly complex relationship between a network and its audience.
When assessing U.S. media presentations of 9-11 and the
subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, one has to take into account
that:
[Thus,] the difference between news coverage of terrorism inside and outside a target country is striking: when terrorists hit their enemies at home, they can inflict greater damage but they lose in the battle over media access and predominant perspectives. 10
In the U.S. media’s haste to assuage the nation’s thirst for
justification and retribution in response to the 9-11 attacks, the legitimacy
of intervention in Iraq ~ and the methods employed to gain that legitimacy ~
were not called into question by the media until too late.
If the media does not exercise control on its moral obligations ~
as it did in Vietnam and Watergate, but only reacts to the government’s supply
of information and their audiences need for military action to counter
unlimited domestic terrorism, the public can only be expected to treat the
media as another form of entertainment in their lives.
Consider CNN’s article of May 8, 2003, reporting President
Bush’s dramatic arrival on the USS Abraham Lincoln:
WASHINGTON (CNN) ~ Several administration officials Wednesday defended President Bush’s flight on a Navy jet to an aircraft carrier last week, saying there was a minimal difference between the cost of the president flying to the ship in a jet versus flying in a helicopter. 11
This extract, and the subsequent article in its entirety, fails
to acknowledge that the true cost of that political maneuver. The event was
‘staged’, much like a theatrical trailer, to enhance President Bush’s image as
a war-time leader with previous combat experience in Vietnam.
International media executives and producers could not simply
exercise a moral high ground and refuse to cover the event: that would be
tantamount to economic suicide. However, CNN et al. are inconsistent in their
coverage of the Iraq war and reconstruction efforts by not pressuring
Administration officials to reveal accurate casualty and death rates, or to cover
with as much zeal and attention items such as President Bush’s visit to the
relatives of deceased combat soldiers.
The latter are not stories of success and triumph, yet for an
audience to comprehend the nature of an all encompassing ‘war on terror’, the
audience must be allowed a balanced portrayal of the realities of American
intervention. In addition, the cost of American national security can only be
understood in a wider context of universal injustices precipitated worldwide in
the name of ‘terrorism.’
Appalling images of suffering in the world are interrupted by advertisements for car insurance: barbarism and banality, cheek by jowl. 12
If the American public becomes increasingly de-sensitized to
violence, policy makers may well become less emotionally attached to human
suffering.
In terms of future American military intervention, this could
prove beneficial when having to make decisive action in delicate operations, as
the recent Haitian example suggests.
However, sensitivity to human suffering ~ epitomized in how
governments react to global conflict and international intervention of any
description ~ is not only a fundamental aspect of participating in
international affairs, but what legitimizes the foreign policies of mature
western democracies.
If continually editorialized media representations of war are
promoted with the same guidelines as those used by producers to market programs
such as ER or Friends, this moral conviction
erodes.
The increasingly belligerent undertone taken by the U.S. media
television establishment in its efforts to secure economic stability should
throw a caution to the prevailing wind that American intervention is always
justified when the national interest is at stake.
War and violent conflicts, however marketed, are not enjoyable
enterprises for any potential actor involved. CNN and the larger U.S. media
establishment may well benefit from this reminder.
CITED
Bunting, Madeleine. ‘Reasons to be Cheerless’, The Guardian
Goshko, John M. ‘Bush, Clinton, and Somalia’, in Abshire, David,
ed., Triumphs and Tragedies of
the Modern Presidency: Seventy-Six Case Studies in Presidential Leadership
(Praeger: Westport, CT), pp. 226-232
Greenberg, David. Nixon’s
Shadow: the History of an Image (Norton: New York)
Hoge, James F. ‘Media Pervasiveness’, Foreign Affairs, July/August
1994, pp. 136-144
Huntington, Samuel P. ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72. No.
3, pp. 22-49
Knightley, Phillip. The
First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker
from the Crimea to Vietnam (Andre Deutsch: London)
Nacos, Brigitte L., Terrorism
and the Media: From the Iran Hostage Crisis to the World Trade Center Bombing
(Columbia University Press: New York)
PROTOCOLS OF ZION
PROTOCOL #12 ~ CONTROL OF THE MEDIA
PROTOCOL #12 ~ CONTROL OF THE MEDIA
1.
The word "freedom" which can be interpreted in various ways, is
defined by us as follows:
2. Freedom is the right to do what the law allows. This interpretation of the word will, at the proper time, be of service to us because all freedom will then be in our hands; since the laws will abolish or create only what is desirable for us according to the above-mentioned program.
3. We shall deal with the media in the following way: What is the role played by the media today?
The output of the media is nowadays a source of heavy expense owing to the necessity of censoring it. We will turn it into a very lucrative source of income to our State by laying a special stamp tax on it and requiring deposits of caution-money before permitting any new media companies from being established. They will then be required to guarantee our government against any kind of attack from their media.
For any attempt to attack us (if that’s still possible) we shall inflict fines without mercy. Such measures as stamp tax, deposit of caution-money and fines secured by these deposits, will bring in a huge income to the government.
It is true that political groups which have money to spare might still attack us for the sake of publicity regardless of these fines. But these we shall shut up at the second attack upon us. No one shall lay a finger on the aura of our government infallibility without being punished.
The pretext for stopping any publication will be the alleged plea that it is agitating the public mind without good reason or at an inappropriate time.
2. Freedom is the right to do what the law allows. This interpretation of the word will, at the proper time, be of service to us because all freedom will then be in our hands; since the laws will abolish or create only what is desirable for us according to the above-mentioned program.
3. We shall deal with the media in the following way: What is the role played by the media today?
It sometimes serves to excite and inflame those passions which are needed for our purpose, and at other times it serves the selfish desires of other parties.It is often bland, unjust, dishonest, and the majority of the public haven’t the slightest idea what purpose the media really serves. We shall saddle and bridle it with a tight chain. We shall also do the same with all other productions of the printing press; for what would be the sense of getting rid of attacks from newspapers if we remain targets via pamphlets and books?
The output of the media is nowadays a source of heavy expense owing to the necessity of censoring it. We will turn it into a very lucrative source of income to our State by laying a special stamp tax on it and requiring deposits of caution-money before permitting any new media companies from being established. They will then be required to guarantee our government against any kind of attack from their media.
For any attempt to attack us (if that’s still possible) we shall inflict fines without mercy. Such measures as stamp tax, deposit of caution-money and fines secured by these deposits, will bring in a huge income to the government.
It is true that political groups which have money to spare might still attack us for the sake of publicity regardless of these fines. But these we shall shut up at the second attack upon us. No one shall lay a finger on the aura of our government infallibility without being punished.
The pretext for stopping any publication will be the alleged plea that it is agitating the public mind without good reason or at an inappropriate time.
I beg you to note that among those making attacks upon us will also be entities established by us; but they will only attack points of our plan which we have already decided to alter.
WE CONTROL THE MEDIA
4. Not
a single announcement will reach the public without our control.
Even now this is being achieved by us due to the fact that all news items are received by only a few agencies, and their offices are a focal point for news coming in from all parts of the world.
These agencies will already be entirely owned by us and will only publish what we dictate to them.
6. Let’s turn again to the future of the printing press.
Every one desirous of being a publisher, librarian, or printer, will be obliged to first acquire a special license for that purpose, which in case of any fault, will be immediately suspended.
With such measures
Even now this is being achieved by us due to the fact that all news items are received by only a few agencies, and their offices are a focal point for news coming in from all parts of the world.
These agencies will already be entirely owned by us and will only publish what we dictate to them.
5. We have effectively taken possession of the minds of the Goy communities to such an extent that they have all come to look upon the events of the world through the colored glasses which we have placed on their noses.Already now there is not a single State which has barriers preventing us from gaining access to what Goyim stupidity call “State secrets”. What will our positions be when we are acknowledged as supreme lords of the world, and have one of our persons as the king of all the world...
6. Let’s turn again to the future of the printing press.
Every one desirous of being a publisher, librarian, or printer, will be obliged to first acquire a special license for that purpose, which in case of any fault, will be immediately suspended.
With such measures
the thoughts of the people will be under the control of our government, who will educate them appropriately, and won’t allow the masses to be led along different paths and by fantasies about the blessings of progress.All of us here know that these delusional blessings give rise to fanciful dreaming which leads to anarchy among the people and towards authority. This is a bad thing because progress, or rather the idea of progress, has brought forth all sorts of ideas about gaining freedom, but has failed to establish its limits...
All the so-called libertarians are anarchists, either in thought or in reality. Every one of them, in hunting for the phantoms of freedom, ends up involved in anarchy, and protests for the sake of protesting...
FREE PRESS DESTROYED
7.
We turn now to the periodical press. We shall impose on it, and on all
printed matter, stamp taxes per sheet and deposits of caution-money.
Books of less than 30 sheets will pay double. We shall classify them as pamphlets for two reasons: firstly to reduce the number of magazines, because these are the worst form of printed poison, and secondly, to force writers to make such lengthy productions that they will be little read, especially seeing that they will also be costly.
At the same time what we shall publish pamphlets ourselves to influence mental development in the desired direction. Our publications will be cheap and eagerly read. This will also bring us some profits.
The tax will bring uninteresting literary ambitions within reach and the risk of possible penalties will make literary men dependent upon us.
And if anyone is desirous of writing against us ~ they will not find any person eager to put their productions in print because the publisher or printer will first have to apply to the authorities for permission to do so.
Thus we shall have advanced knowledge of all tricks being preparing against us and shall nullify them by getting in ahead with our explanations on the subject being discussed.
8. Literature and journalism are two of the most important educative forces, and therefore our government will become proprietor of the majority of the journals.
This will neutralize the injurious influence of the privately-owned press and will put us in possession of a tremendous influence upon the public mind... If we give permits for ten privately-owned journals, we shall establish thirty journals of our own, and so forth in the same proportion.
This, however, must in no way be suspected by the public. For this reason
Books of less than 30 sheets will pay double. We shall classify them as pamphlets for two reasons: firstly to reduce the number of magazines, because these are the worst form of printed poison, and secondly, to force writers to make such lengthy productions that they will be little read, especially seeing that they will also be costly.
At the same time what we shall publish pamphlets ourselves to influence mental development in the desired direction. Our publications will be cheap and eagerly read. This will also bring us some profits.
The tax will bring uninteresting literary ambitions within reach and the risk of possible penalties will make literary men dependent upon us.
And if anyone is desirous of writing against us ~ they will not find any person eager to put their productions in print because the publisher or printer will first have to apply to the authorities for permission to do so.
Thus we shall have advanced knowledge of all tricks being preparing against us and shall nullify them by getting in ahead with our explanations on the subject being discussed.
8. Literature and journalism are two of the most important educative forces, and therefore our government will become proprietor of the majority of the journals.
This will neutralize the injurious influence of the privately-owned press and will put us in possession of a tremendous influence upon the public mind... If we give permits for ten privately-owned journals, we shall establish thirty journals of our own, and so forth in the same proportion.
This, however, must in no way be suspected by the public. For this reason
all journals published by us will be very opposite, in appearance, tendencies and opinions to our official stance. This will create confidence in our journals, bringing over to us quite unsuspicious opponents, who will thus fall into our trap and be rendered harmless.
We will divide our media components into three layers or ranks…
9. In the front rank will be publications of an official character. They will always stand guard over our interests, and therefore their influence will be comparatively insignificant.
10. In the second rank will be the semi-official publications, whose part it will be to normally support us and sometimes criticize us, but only over issues of lukewarm importance.
11. In the third rank we shall set up what looks like our own opposing camp, which, in at least one of its publications, will present what looks like the very enemy of us. Our real opponents at heart will accept this simulated opposition as their own and will reveal their identities and plans to us.
12.
Our newspapers will be of all possible complexions ~ aristocratic, republican,
revolutionary, even anarchical ~ for only as long, of course, as the
constitution exists... Like the Indian idol "Vishnu" they will
have a hundred hands, and every one of them will have a finger on any one of
the public opinions as required.
When an emotive issue arises, these hands will lead opinion in the direction of our aims; for an excited person loses all power of judgment and easily yields to suggestion.
When an emotive issue arises, these hands will lead opinion in the direction of our aims; for an excited person loses all power of judgment and easily yields to suggestion.
Those fools who will think they are repeating the opinion of a newspaper of their own camp will actually be repeating our opinion or any opinion that seems desirable for us.
In the
vain belief that they are following the ideology of their party they will, in
fact, be following the flag that we have hang out for them.
13. In order to direct our newspaper militia in this way we must take special and minute care in organizing this matter. Under the title of Central Department of the Media we shall arrange literary gatherings at which our agents will, without attracting attention, issue the orders and specify the ‘important issues’ of the day which journalists need to cover.
By superficially discussing and opposing, but without touching the essence of the matter, our appointed people will carry on sham fights and arguments with the official newspapers solely for the purpose of giving us a reason to express ourselves more fully than we could have done from the outset in official announcements, whenever of course that is to our advantage.
14. These attacks upon us will also serve another purpose, namely, that our subjects will be convinced of the existence of full freedom of speech and this gives our agents an occasion to claim that all publications which oppose us are empty babblers, since they are incapable of finding any substantial objections to our orders.
13. In order to direct our newspaper militia in this way we must take special and minute care in organizing this matter. Under the title of Central Department of the Media we shall arrange literary gatherings at which our agents will, without attracting attention, issue the orders and specify the ‘important issues’ of the day which journalists need to cover.
By superficially discussing and opposing, but without touching the essence of the matter, our appointed people will carry on sham fights and arguments with the official newspapers solely for the purpose of giving us a reason to express ourselves more fully than we could have done from the outset in official announcements, whenever of course that is to our advantage.
14. These attacks upon us will also serve another purpose, namely, that our subjects will be convinced of the existence of full freedom of speech and this gives our agents an occasion to claim that all publications which oppose us are empty babblers, since they are incapable of finding any substantial objections to our orders.
ONLY LIES PRINTED
15. Methods of
organization like these, which are imperceptible to the public eye but are sure
to work, are calculated as being the best way to succeed in bringing the
attention and the confidence of the public to the side of our government.
Thanks to such methods we shall be in a position, as may be required from time to time, to excite or calm the public mind on political questions, to persuade or to confuse, sometimes printing truth, sometimes lies, facts or their contradictions. We will do this according to how well these messages are received, and always very cautiously feeling the ground before stepping upon it...
We shall have an assured victory over our opponents since they will not have the appropriate access to the media in which they can give full and final expression to their views owing to the above-mentioned methods of dealing with the media.
We shall not even need to refute them except very superficially.
16. Trial shots like these, fired by us in the third rank of our press, will, when necessary, be energetically refuted by us in our semi-official publications.
17. Even nowadays, already, to take only the French press as an example, there are groups which reveal Masonic-like solidarity in acting together on the ‘important issues’: all people of the media are bound together by professional secrecy; and like the priests of ancient Rome, not one of them will give away the secret of his sources of information unless the group agrees upon it.
Thanks to such methods we shall be in a position, as may be required from time to time, to excite or calm the public mind on political questions, to persuade or to confuse, sometimes printing truth, sometimes lies, facts or their contradictions. We will do this according to how well these messages are received, and always very cautiously feeling the ground before stepping upon it...
We shall have an assured victory over our opponents since they will not have the appropriate access to the media in which they can give full and final expression to their views owing to the above-mentioned methods of dealing with the media.
We shall not even need to refute them except very superficially.
16. Trial shots like these, fired by us in the third rank of our press, will, when necessary, be energetically refuted by us in our semi-official publications.
17. Even nowadays, already, to take only the French press as an example, there are groups which reveal Masonic-like solidarity in acting together on the ‘important issues’: all people of the media are bound together by professional secrecy; and like the priests of ancient Rome, not one of them will give away the secret of his sources of information unless the group agrees upon it.
Not one journalist will venture to betray this secret, for not one of them is ever admitted to practice journalism unless his whole past has some dark and disgraceful secret in it... For if he did, these secrets would be immediately revealed.
So long as they remain the secret of a few, the prestige of the journalist
allows him to attack the majority of the country ~ and the mob will follow
after him with enthusiasm.
18. Our mischievous plans are also designed to apply to the rural areas. It is essential for us to stir up there, those hopes and impulses which, at any moment, we could also stir up in the major cities. We shall tell the people of those cities that these expressions are the independent hopes and impulses of the rural people.
Naturally, the source of them will be always one and the same ~ ours. What we need is that, until such time as we have the majority of power, the cities should find themselves stifled by the provincial opinion of the nations, i.e., of a majority arranged by our agents.
What we need at that psychological moment is that the city-capitals should not discuss our position of majority power for no other reason than it has already been accepted by the public opinion of a majority in the rural-provinces.
18. Our mischievous plans are also designed to apply to the rural areas. It is essential for us to stir up there, those hopes and impulses which, at any moment, we could also stir up in the major cities. We shall tell the people of those cities that these expressions are the independent hopes and impulses of the rural people.
Naturally, the source of them will be always one and the same ~ ours. What we need is that, until such time as we have the majority of power, the cities should find themselves stifled by the provincial opinion of the nations, i.e., of a majority arranged by our agents.
What we need at that psychological moment is that the city-capitals should not discuss our position of majority power for no other reason than it has already been accepted by the public opinion of a majority in the rural-provinces.
19. When we are in the period of the new regime, but prior to the assumption of our full sovereignty, we must not allow any revelation by the media to admit to any form of public dishonesty. It is necessary that the new regime should be thought to have so perfectly contended everybody that even criminality has disappeared...
Occurrences
of criminality should remain known only to the victims and to chance witnesses ~
no one else.
jews, juifs, ebrei...
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