Proof the Media is converging Natural Disasters with Terrorism to elicit "Conditioned Reflexes"

Observe here how MSNBC converges the the left/right versions of terror doomsday.

Google Video Link

First it's hurricane Dean, then it's the Deutsche Bank next to the WTC site burning down (don't forget to mention the more than 700 human remains from 9/11), then it's the earthquake disaster down in Peru (2nd to the more "obviously caused by global warming"), and last but not least a aircraft hijacking supposedely done by Al Qaeda.

This is classic 'training' in Conditioned Reflexes. The idea is you learn to subconsciously associate one thing with another to elicit combined responses.
Learn more about Conditioned Reflexes, which can be found in any Psychology textbook and applies to humans:
en.wikipedia.org...
www.google.com...
Also see Operant Conditioning & Cognitive Behaviorism:
en.wikipedia.org...

This piece was the first thing I clicked on at the MSNBC site. I don't watch TV, but I'm sure if you pay attention if you do you might observe this practice quite often with natural-disasters/"global-warming" and terrorism.
This is classic fearmongering in our culture of fear.
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

This month I also observed similar practice in Newsweek's already infamous "Global Warming is a Hoax*" global warming skeptics hitpiece that blasts anyone with a different view as being "Deniers", likening then to insane Holocaust Deniers. The next page after this 9 page section was, you guessed it, "Surge of Suicide Bombers".

Similar practice can be found in Al Gore's An Inconveneient Truth film promotional trailer and TV commercial, where he merges in less than 6 frames of a nuclear bomb blast which is completely out of context with his Global Warming presentation.

www.abovetopsecret.com...'

Look around, the effort to scare us to our core for massive social control is ongoing and has been for some 60+ years with vastly overhyped "threats".


[edit on 19-8-2007 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

it takes at least two to party and such blunt attempts at conditioning will of course be welcomed by all those who clandestinely wish to display agressive and radical actions and reactions.... can't be their fault, after all.

that said, the reason might be much simpler and staightforward: 'news' are usually nothing more than yet another form of entertainment for public consumption, as long as what's reported does not affect you. therefore, lumping together all things scary makes sense, so people can have their 'kick of fear' in a single piece.

a tell-tale sign would be if terror/natural desasters/global warming were displayed in random order, otoh, if there's method to the madness (consistent, predictable spot placement and order), you're probably completely right, though.

Dig.

As a follow up...

It should be noted that MSNBC also ran with the Newsweek story by citing it and retitling it "The Truth About Denial". Nevermind that even one of the Newsweek editors stepped forward blasting the yellow-journalism story, because Newsweek is a direct affiliate of MSNBC.
www.prisonplanet.com...
www.msnbc.msn.com...

Google Video Link

The Establishment controlled "Left" and "Right" parties each use their own batch of terror doomsday to guide their followers to the same indisputable outcome: "Globalization" and social control by means of DARPA cognitive artificial intelligence. Below is a draft version of a portion of the title sequence for my upcoming full length documentary, "An Unholy Alliance", which deconstructs the phoney/overhyped terrormongering that each side uses towards the same ends:


See also:
Dubya and Al Gore's unknown unholy alliance
Redefining Hypocrisy: Al Gore's Assault on Reason & Depleted Uranium
Al Gore used a Nuclear Bomb subliminal in his An Incovenient Truth trailer
www.abovetopsecret.com...
Beyond Conspiracy: Artificial General Intelligence (Newsletter Special)
The Media is Pro-Military-Imperialism Biased
Al Qaeda: "The CI-A Team"
DARPA's iXo Artificial Intelligence Control Grid: 'The Official Version'

[edit on 19-8-2007 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

Lets say I want to develop associative conditioning in a human. A simple and effective method of doing so is by presenting a negative stimulus (eyeblink) with a neutral stimulus (a table). After many trails of association, thoughts or perception of a table will result in a negative emotional reflex.

Alternatively, for associative conditioning, we might have a bell (neutral) associated with food (positive). In this case, perception of the sound of the bell produces salivation, that is, expectation of reward. Pavlov's famous experiment.

In another type of conditioning, I would associate a reward with a particular behaviour. So, this is operant conditioning, the Skinner type of conditioning. So, for example, I would get pigeons to peck at a button three times to get a reward. They learn to peck three times for reward. Then I might abolish this by presenting a punishment or no reward for the same response.

So far so good?

So you have found an example of associating a negative stimulus (a hurricane) with a negative stimulus (a fire in new york), with a negative stimulus (an earthquake), with a negative stimulus (a terrorist group).

This is basically comparable to presenting eyeblink (negative stimuli) with fearful stimuli (negative stimuli). Which will just produce the same conditioned behaviour as pre-conditioning, i.e. a negative response. No change. But in your case you have the association of natural disasters (-ve) with terrorism (-ve).

Unless you want to suggest any of the stimuli are not negatively valenced.

[edit on 19-8-2007 by melatonin]

reply to post by melatonin


Melatonin, you are quite right.
As a psych undergrad. I've had all of this beaten into my head as the fundamentals of the social side of psych. (and its offshoots). I prefer depth psychology, but it's required to learn those things as well...

I took a journalism course once where the teacher told us, repeatedly, that we were to write on a 3rd-4th grade level, to sensationalize everything, that's it's all infotainment. It's the whole 'Man Bites Dog' thing...and, given our cultural disposition (possibly even our nature...I'll have to get back to you with that one), we are more apt to pay attention to something 'sensational' rather than, say, a story on a boy in a town you don't know that helps old women across the street.
Then again, we've also had all of that beaten into us.

It could go either way. It could be the money, the sensationalist aspect...or it could be propaganda.

In my experience, whenever I'm met with a choice that is neither easy nor clear-cut, my answer is always, always, always: both.

Take care, all.

Please don't misunderstand what I'm about to say, I'm by no means poo-pooing your theory of this conditioning, but the example given in the first post appears to me to be almost unavoidable. I mean if your top two stories are negatives, it would almost be ludicrous to drop down to some lesser story just to insert a fluffy feeling between the two, right? I agree with you that the media have for years now been drama whores, but I think the affinity to the negative drama has something to do with profits - not necessarily an intentional attempt to condition. But as I said, I'm not rejecting the idea, just not fully accepting it.

Your assumptions, I believe are correct. the beginning of psycho manipulation started during world war 2 by the Nazi's. here are a couple of links that will give you a little, or a lot of insight into the conditioning of the people.

www.world-mysteries.com...

This one is explains mind control thru the media. very interesting and disturbing at the same time. I have revised my TV viewing after reading this article.

www.world-mysteries.com...

I have to agree with Val here.

Both "sides" do fear monger for their own political ends. Media is a tool by which to condition people (just look at our current health and spending habits). Brainwashing via television and mass media is a reality (they don't call it "programming" for nothing).

BUT...

I don't know how long you've been watching news, or how much you watch, but have you ever heard of an old adage that goes "if it bleeds it leads"? The news has always been one disaster after another. In fact they go out of their way to look for stories of human misery to present to you. Especially the local cheesy news "reporters" that listen to the police scanners and chase ambulances so they can get to every little "event" in your town to report on the late news. It's nothing more than voyeurism of the human condition.

I don't think it's a purposeful plot on anybody's part. It's more an emergent property of the medium and practices of it's providers.
.

Thank you so much for this thread. I am very interested in this topic. I also wonder how often they put out a story or a release information (shock the system) that is strictly designed to gauge our mental state or how far they can push us before we will have had enough.

Here is a web site with some interesting info. Sorry if it does not link or has already been discussed - I am a noob.



www.medusafile.com...

OK, then why doesn't it go natural-disaster, natural-disaster, terrorism, fire (terrorism)?

Due to the nature of our brains, we're all associative thinkers. Our mindsets and perceptions are based on patterns. Why then, didn't they group the subjects together? To not group them based on subject would seem to take near-conscious effort.

Training the public to associate the 2 together makes economical sense, beyond the obvious emotional benefits in regards to the obvious cases like Al Gore's use of these techniques, because conditioned responses between these 2 categories have long term payoffs for the Media Establishment as the more dramatic response to 'normal' issues means the 'better ratings' in general.

We're dealing with 2 different subjects converging into one. Each subject itself has many motives for 'deceptive' bias depending on the person or organization or agency, that we can use to 'rationalize' observed biases and effects, but the end product that we're talking about here exists none-the-less. Even if this example is the result of unwitting subconscious -on the part of the presenters- Culture of Fear it's still a symptom of the problem in general. However, the order of their subject presentation, and their direct affiliation with Newsweek and the rest makes the odds of this all being 'an accident' slim to none. Add to all of that the reporting methods of the WTC site fire andd it becomes harder to excuse all of this. In fact, the entire perception of the fire event as being related to terrorism is due to their choice in how to present the matter. It's not even a simple as they mentioned it just so happened to be next to '9/11', they bent over backwards to ensure the percieved association would occur with the viewers.

[edit on 19-8-2007 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

Well, I guess you can get hold of them and see if they're willing to categorize their news cast. I think this is a case of how you think and perceive versus how others think and perceive. I don't see the problem in two different categories of news being discussed consecutively. And I don't view it as an attempt to connect the two. But obviously, on both points, you do.

Originally posted by IgnoranceIsntBlisss
OK, then why doesn't it go natural-disaster, natural-disaster, terrorism, fire (terrorism)?

Ok, I'll try this from a categorisation POV.

I would suggest that if we were going to categorise this section of news, the weather section would be separate. Then we have news round-up.

The leader in the summary was the new york story. American news, american story. Then we have earthquake, a bit nearer to home, i.e. americas. Then we have terrorism, further from home.

The fact they are all negative, just shows how the news-media works.

Due to the nature of our brains, we're all associative thinkers. Our mindsets and perceptions are based on patterns. Why then, didn't they group the subjects together? To not group them based on subject would seem to take near-conscious effort.

Of course, but how can we categorise a natural disaster with terrorism. Essentially two different beasts. One natural, one human-made. They are both negatively valenced, therefore there is no conditioned behavioural change by presenting one category with the other.

In many ways, you are cherrypicking this stuff. There is a hurricane at the moment, so it's not surprising to see it take a big chunk of the weather round-up. I'm sure at other times, it just a case of 'oh rain here, and sun here'. Then we run into the new stories which do tend to be negative. Not always, but it is attention-catching I guess.

Evolution has ensured that negative stimuli catch attention.

If you want to use such a conditioning approach, I think it might apply better to the Gore trailer. If we take an individual who had never really thought about climate change, we could consider this issue to be a novel and essentially neutral concept. Thus, associating the nuke cloud (-ve) with climate change, could be considered a form of conditioning.

But I would say that conditioning is not so easy under such circumstances. It's pretty hard unless the conditions are well controlled and trials are repeated. Much easier with primary physiological emotional responses (i.e. shocks, food, eyeblinks etc) though.

[edit on 19-8-2007 by melatonin]

If that's the chronical way they apeared, then yes, it is intresting. If this was played in NY, then it makes sense because this is the local news after the major weather.

However, it is NBC, they have an "unholy alliance" with Gore as your banner says. Any further questions? Would you excpect any less from socialists and elitests?

Well, if I'm not mistaken the version of the video first presented is no longer in that format:
link

At about the 30 second marker it changes to different analysis. I'm going thru all of them now trying to confirm...

The one that is titled "Dean gains strength" starts off like the clip I captured last night, but at 30 seconds it switches to another feed. When you click on "Hurricanes projected path" you seem to get the post-30-second-mark found in the captured clip.

So apparently the mashup I found is no longer there. Unless I'm missing something, it's clear that the other clips wont be of much use in looking for parallel examples (looking for such is how I noticed this discrepancy). Apparently it's obvious that we should all keep our look out for this practice. If somebody has a genuine desire to analyze the raw video clip I uploaded I can figure out a way to make that happen.


[edit on 19-8-2007 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

Originally posted by Valhall
I think this is a case of how you think and perceive versus how others think and perceive. I don't see the problem in two different categories of news being discussed consecutively. And I don't view it as an attempt to connect the two. But obviously, on both points, you do.

Well, then I guess it's a a matter of we're all right, any who looks at it and tries to form an opinion.

I'd like to at least point out that playing those clips in such an order can function as what I pointed out regardless of if that was their intentions. To me it seems obvious that the people pulling the newscasting strings would be at least as educated (self-eductaed I am) in the topics I've pointed out and in my view this reality slims the odds of accidental/coincidental clumping as observed.

Originally posted by melatonin
The fact they are all negative, just shows how the news-media works.

At least we can agree on something here. Did you note the over-emotional content of virtually every example? Also, the IF content of the hurricane coverage. IF is the same sort of anxiety-mongering Gore uses in his propaganda film.

Due to the nature of our brains, we're all associative thinkers. Our mindsets and perceptions are based on patterns. Why then, didn't they group the subjects together? To not group them based on subject would seem to take near-conscious effort.

Of course, but how can we categorise a natural disaster with terrorism.

With an ongoing assault in the 2 it'sentirely possible, and that's speaking of terms of even if the subject only believed in one of the issues. It all comes down to whether or not you're consciously aware of these inherent processes, which most people aren't and for 'good' reason.

Essentially two different beasts. One natural, one human-made. They are both negatively valenced, therefore there is no conditioned behavioural change by presenting one category with the other.

There is if you lump them sequentually, which they did. You're right tho, there's no literal connection, therefore, why did they do it like that? O, yeah, because of whatever reason we can use to rationalize it. Considering that's your argument, wouldn't you say that the humanitarian disaster caused by the quite recent Peru earthquake trumps the abondoned building fire in NYC?

In many ways, you are cherrypicking this stuff.

See my above post. That clip was the first thing i encountered when visiting there, and going back to find more exmples was a futile effort as all the clips are now completely seperated into single contexts.

But I would say that conditioning is not so easy under such circumstances. It's pretty hard unless the conditions are well controlled and trials are repeated.

Trials and testing aren't necessary. The associaive concepts I'm underscoring here have been well established for generations now. They would surely know that they dont need to test it, rather they only need to implement it in the most subtle way possible (like any good propaganda), and repeat the paired sequences over and over as much as subtlely possible. It just so happens to turn out that the 2 initial pieces of media I've encountered this week from MSNBC/Newsweek do just this. This all makes me wish I had cable TV, DVD recorders, and the time to analyze the news because I'd be willing to bet this practice occurs quite frequently in the Establishment Media. it all come sdown to if you know how to spot it, I hope that at the minimum people walk away from this thread with such insight...

[edit on 19-8-2007 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

I think we almost agree on much of the rest. I can't but agree that news-media are sensationalising stuff. All about ratings, I feel.

Originally posted by IgnoranceIsntBlisss
There is if you lump them sequentually, which they did. You're right tho, there's no literal connection, therefore, why did they do it like that? O, yeah, because of whatever reason we can use to rationalize it. Considering that's your argument, wouldn't you say that the humanitarian disaster caused by the quite recent Peru earthquake trumps the abondoned building fire in NYC?

I would think that they generally rank news in various ways. I suppose, impact, age, location etc etc are all important. Carrying on the psychological approach, repeating stimuli does lead to lessening of the emotional impact.

Thus, most of the UK news (sky news) today is about a fire in a hotel that killed a few people. Then, we have the hurricane, followed by a climate change protest. No earthquake at all. I suppose you could try to make connections between them as well.

If you just want to say that the news is attempting to keep people in a vigilant and fearful state, maybe...

Could also be a tried and tested approach to ratings.

Trials and testing aren't necessary.

Easy to say, unless you have actually had to develop conditioned responses in people or change pre-existing attitudes

One trial conditioning is easier in with primary reinforcers, even then not always effective.

Conditioning is not so easy with wishy-washy fuzzy concepts and stimuli. I've just watched a section of news about the hurricane. That was followed by the sports news. Man City beat Man Utd.

I still liked that news, and you could mix it with 25 pieces about death and destruction. The footie news would still make me happy

But you're still thinking this would produce a conditioned response, i.e. associating negative with negative. It would just bolster an already conditioned response, producing no real change.

I accept that terrorism and natural disasters are well-established as negative stimuli and concepts. But, you're attempting to go a tad further, no?

[edit on 19-8-2007 by melatonin]

Originally posted by oldone
Your assumptions, I believe are correct. the beginning of psycho manipulation started during world war 2 by the Nazi's. here are a couple of links that will give you a little, or a lot of insight into the conditioning of the people.

www.world-mysteries.com...

This one is explains mind control thru the media. very interesting and disturbing at the same time. I have revised my TV viewing after reading this article.

www.world-mysteries.com...

Thanks for them links..Very interesting but also very depressing. I 100% agree with what the OP is saying about conditioning. I haven't watched The news for 3 months and i only turn the T.V on to watch the football. I feel much better for not knowing what is happening in the world or in my own back garden. Ignorant? yes, But ignorance is bliss.

[edit on 19uSunday07/27/20 by paul76]

The next time I find myself sitting down and attentively watching the news on TV, rather than simply reading it bit by bit as the day goes by online, I think I'll undertake a little study.

I'd like to look at the ordering of the stories and see if sometimes "lesser" stories seem to get a higher billing because of their general subject matter.

Suppose your top stories are a natural disaster, a terrorist threat, and bad news for the Bush administration.

The order makes a big difference in the chain of experiences you go through.

If the disaster is before the threat, terrorism doesn't look scary- something bad is happening right now, compared to oh, they say something bad is gonna happen.

If the threat comes before the disaster though, they told you something bad was gonna happen, then something bad happened. Intellectually there is no connection between the two, but that doesn't matter in terms of association. If that pattern repeats, you will come to expect actual bad things to happen after you hear a threat.

The third factor is important too. If you go threat to disaster, putting bad news for the white house after that can either say, "bush is paying for letting it happen" or "they're attacking our president when we need a strong leader"- depending on context. Whereas putting it up front adds other possible dimensions, depending on context- it can add, "they undermined our president and the terrorists were emboldened so they threatened us and then something bad happened."

Because hey, people are that impressionable. Look around at these people who will try to talk serious politics in terms of Hollywood blockbusters and tell me that people won't subconsciously believe anything that's put in front of them, despite all reason, as long as clear associations are drawn for them to follow.


So it would be really interesting to see if you can consistently find disorder in the prioritization of news which establishes a consistent pattern of associations. I'm guessing the answer will probably be no. Just the fact that bad news is what people will pay to hear is enough to explain it all, and I bet that the lowest common denominator will infact be bad news, and not specific associations of themes or diconnects between newsworthiness and prioritization. But that's not to say I think it's impossible on its face.

Here is an article that will never appear in the controlled MSM. It is from an international newspaper.

www.commondreams.org...

reply to post by The Vagabond


I think that's a more interesting way to view it. You could have a sort of anticipation of threat (could hurt me). Then a sort of relief it's not you (didn't hurt me) from the next item. The ordering could alter the anticipation of threat.

I guess you would expect more threat from the 'not me' then 'could be me' order. Not sure if such studies have been done...

It's certainly true that people are impressionable, I think news-media has a lot to do with parental fears etc, and media in general has much to answer for (anorexia, body image, cult of celebrity etc).