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Articles on the Corporate media

Index:

The fairness doctrine

Soviet / American analogy

Other articles on the Corporate media

What our sanitized corporate media never shows us: photos of injured and dead in Iraq war.

Authors

About the author Robert McChesney

About the author Walter Lippmann: "The news and truth are not the same thing."

About the author Walter Karp

The fairness doctrine

PBS's NOW

FAIR.org: The Fairness Doctrine How We Lost it, and Why We Need it Back

"Until the late sixties...the standard criticism of the press that one heard in America was newspapers tilted to the right, serving the interests of the capitalists who published them and the capitalists who advertised in them."
--What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank
page 129




Soviet / American analogies

"I have the greatest admiration for your propaganda. Propaganda in the West is carried out by experts who have had the best training in the world -- in the field of advertizing -- and have mastered the techniques with exceptional proficiency ... Yours are subtle and persuasive; ours are crude and obvious ... I think that the fundamental difference between our worlds, with respect to propaganda, is quite simple. You tend to believe yours ... and we tend to disbelieve ours."
--Soviet correspondent based five years in the U.S.

When I first visited Russia, in 1986, I made friends with a musician whose father had been Brezhnev's personal doctor. One day we were talking about life during 'the period of stagnation' - the Brezhnev era. 'It must have been strange being so completely immersed in propaganda,' I said.

'Ah, but there is the difference. We knew it was propaganda,' replied Sacha.

That is the difference. Russian propaganda was so obvious that most Russians were able to ignore it. They took it for granted that the government operated in its own interests and any message coming from it was probably slanted - and they discounted it.

In the West the calculated manipulation of public opinion to serve political and ideological interests is much more covert and therefore much more effective. Its greatest triumph is that we generally don't notice it - or laugh at the notion it even exists.

--Lessons in How to Lie About Iraq August 17, 2003 by the Observer/UK



Other articles on the Corporate media

FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting):
Right-wing think tanks are often quoted, rarely labeled

Christian Science Monitor: Bush Administration Propaganda Bears More than Passing Resemblance to the Soviet Brand

Seattle Times: Why Media Ownership Matters

TomDispatch.com: Faking Civil Society How Neo-Conservative think tanks are using successful CIA tactics to control and manipulate Americans and undermining democracy.

Now: Media consolidation



What our sanitized corporate media never shows us: photos of injured and dead in Iraq war.

Graphic pictures every American should see:


More photos of the deaths: BBC news

From the site the www.thememoryhole.org:

Military Personnel Wounded in Iraq & Afghanistan


Video of American Contractor Being Decapitated in Iraq


Images of Executed American Paul Johnson


Iraqi Mob Desecrates Americans' Bodies Why are these normal Iraqi people so happy?

Photo and video web pages of the war:

Northeast Intelligence Network videos that will never be shown on television.

Thousands of graphic photos of Iraq deaths

About the author Robert McChesney

Section 1: Introduction and the origins of professional “unbiased” journalism

Section 2: The Commercialization of Journalism

Section 3: But Wait, Don’t the Media Have a Liberal Bias?

Footnotes

McChesney article has rich footnotes, one footnote mentions a book which expands on the history of where the entire idea of "unbiased" journalism got its origins:

Just the Facts: How "Objectivity" Came to Define American Journalism by David T. Z. Mindich

About the author Walter Lippmann: "The news and truth are not the same thing."




Sep. 27, 1937

Biography of Lippmann


Lippmann's most famous book is Public Opinion:

"Written by one of the most influential men of his times and one of the greatest journalists in history, Public Opinion is an incisive examination of democratic theory, the role of citizens in a democracy, and the impact of the media in shaping thoughts and actions. It changed the nature of political science as a scholarly discipline and introduced concepts that continue to play an important role in current political theory...

...Through the book, Lippmann talks about how there is no real public opinion, how most people have a very limited view of the government, and how the government synthesizes complex views into either-or issues (i.e. "pro-life" v.s. "pro-choice"). The journalists, who should help the American people understand the issue, end up doing little at all. Lippmann offers no real solutions in this book, but for anyone who wants a wake-up call for what's wrong with the government, they should spurn Michael Moore and Ann Coulter and turn to this book."

Quotes from Walter Lippman (1889–1974):

The news and truth are not the same thing.

There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.

The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opposition than from his fervent supporters.

The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.

No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.

It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most

Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.

Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.

Successful politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.

The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.

Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.

The first principle of a civilized state is that the power is legitimate only when it is under contract.

The great social adventure of America is no longer the conquest of the wilderness but the absorption of fifty different peoples.

When all men think alike, no one thinks very much.

When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.

Lippmann's quotes on religion:

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.

When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.

Lippmann is often quoted by the far-left intellectual Naom Chomsky (this is how I first heard of him).

About the author Walter Karp

"Fifteen years ago, the essayist Walter Karp observed:

'The news media in America do not tell the American people that a political whip hangs over their head. That is because a political whip hangs over their head.'

Writing in the July 1989 edition of Harper's magazine, he offered an assessment that is no less relevant -- and no more palatable -- today.

'In the American republic the fact of oligarchy is the most dreaded knowledge of all, and our news keeps that knowledge from us," Karp wrote. "By their subjugation of the press, the political powers in America have conferred on themselves the greatest of political blessings -- Gyges' ring of invisibility. And they have left the American people more deeply baffled by their own country's politics than any people on earth. Our public realm lies steeped in twilight, and we call that twilight news.'"

--From FAIR: "The Limits of "Man Bites Dog" Stories"

More on Walter Karp...

Wow, Walter Karp sounds like a facinating author:

Links to articles by Walter Karp and about him
Including the article which states: "Writing American history is a harmless occupation, but teaching it to American schoolchildren is a political act with far-reaching consequences."

Books by Walter Karp:

Indispensable Enemies: The Politics of Misrule in America

Reviewer:
"I learned more from this book then I did in all the classes I was required to obtain my political science degree. The main premise of the book is that the Republican and Democratic party leaders collude to keep power, often by not contesting elections that could easily be won with any money or effort expended. A quick example from 25 years after the book's publication should suffice to verify Karp's thesis.In the state of Florida in 1998, half of the congressional seats were not even contested (several other "contests" simply have write-in candidates with zero chance of winning). This was despite the fact that both parties knew winning an extra seat or two might well determine who controlled the next Congress. Unfortunately, this fact is overlooked by not only the public, but all of the so-called experts on TV."

The Politics of War

Reviewer:
"This book is most provocative in its treatment of the generally revered Woodrow Wilson and the story of how (according to Karp) he cynically engineered our entry into WW I, motivated by Anglophilia and a messianic (and in Karp's view delusional) conviction that he could bring a new era of peace and justice to the world...Karp also discusses Wilson's suppression of free speech and his aggressive use of propaganda in favor of the war effort...It's also worth studying if you want to understand better why U.S. public opinion was so resolutely isolationist up until the attack on Pearl Harbor. Wilson got his war, but the experience left a very bad taste in the mouth of the American public."

The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars Which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic 1890-1920

Reviewer:
"Part I
is a history of the Spanish-American War and here Karp shows how both parties colluded to bring on an unnecessary war. ...

Part II
...another unnecessary war, World War I. Karp shows how Wilson drags the country into war, while all the time talking of peace.

Once again the motivation is the same: thwart reform at home. Once the war has begun, Wilson uses the fake threat of German treachery to suppress the press and free speech of the American public.

The last chapter is particularly chilling, as Karp gives the example of a woman jailed for saying the government is for the profiteers."

You can purchase 4 of Karp's books at Harper's magazine for $30