I really seriously would have thought that before I read 1984 that the media, and news agencies of the sort would actually try to help people out. Yet, it seems to me that 1984 is becoming less and less fiction and more and more of a reality. Ever since I've read 1984 I've always been looking at the news media with a skeptical frame of mind. I don't believe everything that I hear unless that I know that it's the truth. Yet, as we've seen, throughout a lot of this campaigning, we've seen a lot of tactics being used, from 1984, such as the media trying to paint one candidate with one image, and the other candidate as another image. And then, with the Gregorian Russian conflict, originally the media was trying to convince all of us that Russia might be showing its old ways again, and, it might be more like the Soviet Union. At that time, the media was talking about the olympics, and praising the Gregorians, and only now with the current ceasefire and with the current peace treaty negotiations under way, the Russians halting their military activities... now the media is reporting a different story than it did when they were trying to make it seem like Russia were the aggressors.

What do we have to make out of all of this? The media is trying to trick Americans (I'm American myself-- so I would be one of those that is trying to be tricked-- fortunately the government doesn't have me looking through its rose tinted glasses) into being sheep again. Regardless of what President runs the country the media will always try to convince the population to be ignorant of the reality of what's really going on.

Why is this? Why does the media like to try to put a blindfold over what's really going on? I can certainly see in the near future that there will indeed be a time when we will have a ministry of truth or something like it. It seems like the media is always changing their story and correcting it to be more true when something positive like this happens (like the peace treaty) so people will forget about how they tried to instill fear in us to make us think that we would be going to war.

Political expediency would be one reason . This war for example. You wont see any pictures of the refugees or whats left of Tskhinvali. You won't see the dead and the dying and the homeless that others got to see outside the US . Because it doesn't fit the agenda , this is the actions of a so-called democratically elected government supported by the US that went ahead and sent Katyusha rockets into a town as they slept .

People would ask too many questions when given information the government doesn't want you to have . I suppose , although china is critized so heavily over it's cover up on tiananmen square , you aren't really very much far removed from that kind of censorship .

But , of course, without giving you actual information at the start to make your own deductions , you'll get people that will make them for you . Analysts and experts , think tank groups giving their esteemed projections and interpretations . They know best of course , don't they ? . Most don't realize it's a slanted misrepresented BS fitted around an agenda , so they end up swallowing it, hook line and sinker.

And this is what you'll get right up to the Elections on this war , commentary, opinions and theories ... but no facts . Because they want you believing in a new kind of terror , a new cold war, and they want you voting accordingly .

Why is the main stream media trying to brainwash American viewers? That's easy...they are directed to do so by the government. The feds have a huge, giant say in what will or will not be reported on MSM. The so-called "reporters" (tv personalities) are given a theme for the day. These same "reporters" are not to deviate from the prevailing theme. If you notice they will drone on and on about the same topic for hours (or days or weeks...Anna Nicole Smith for example) until you are totally brainwashed into believing what ever they are spewing. Forget the fact that 99% of it is pure speculation, opinion or flat out lies (FOX) with no real proof. Everyone has an opinion...but in the end what will be will be. These personalities just take up air space. And if the "personalities" spewing doesn't get the ratings...they're gone. Stop watching MSM it's bad for your mental health. If you want real, unbiased reporting...find it online at some of the finest news sites in the world. Get the real facts...but NOT from tv!

Well, with mainstream television news, I think it's mostly because they're trying to get you to buy in. Yes, there are also agendas, but consider this:

The news is not the product. YOU are the product.

Television makes money off their advertisers. Advertisers pay more for opportunities to get their messages out, in ways that will be more effective to their ends. They will pick and choose, from a variety of different places they can buy time to air their ads, and find a 'package' that suits what they want to achieve. That means finding an audience they think they can target with their message.

Broadcasters know this. Their job is to make a homogeneous, predictable audience. With opinions that the advertisers can rely on them having, when crafting their pitches. With known dichotomies in their outlooks, with a reliable common culture of importance.

And with known 'emotional triggers': teach the audience to fear enemies, in the news, and you can better rely on the emotion of fear, when used to convey advertising messages. Or create uncertainties about the economy, and those offering 'financial services' will be able to capitalize on that 'need'.

The more 'focused' the audience niche, and the more reliably the effect of advertising can be predicted, the more money the broadcaster can charge for access to that person's attention.

And pliability matters. Advertisers want a receptive audience. That means, establishing accepted authority. Teach someone to think independently about the news, and they're going to be skeptical of advertisers' claims. But if they're taught that accepting what the TV feeds as 'truth' leads to a comfortable worldview, they'll also be more open to accepting advertising as true, without question, increasing its effectiveness.

That is how broadcasters 'improve their product'.

The question is , what can you do about it . You don't want to be under government controlled propoganda , I honestly think people in the US many years from now will be livid when they look back to see the amount of control you were subjected too . It isn't right .. it's orwellian and sinister .

The dumbing down of society via MSM, advertising etc is all part of a concerted effort to ensure that people do not question but accept things as offered to them.
We accept the daily erosion of all of our civil liberties and the very fabric of our societies are subtly changing day by day to ensure obedience and acquiescence.

This is most definately not unique to the US, it is occuring here in the UK and in every society throughout the world.

The objective; control.


[Edit: to add 'not'.]

[edit on 14/8/08 by Freeborn]

Originally posted by Gun Totin Gerbil
You won't see the dead and the dying and the homeless that others got to see outside the US .

Personally I find the censorship of the dead to be extremely annoying. Americans scream like little girls these days if a body is shown on tv, and since we are involved in a WAR not showing the realities of war is just wrong. The rest of the world can handle those images, but we can't?

Originally posted by Sonya610

Originally posted by Gun Totin Gerbil
You won't see the dead and the dying and the homeless that others got to see outside the US .

Personally I find the censorship of the dead to be extremely annoying. Americans scream like little girls these days if a body is shown on tv, and since we are involved in a WAR not showing the realities of war is just wrong. The rest of the world can handle those images, but we can't?

The irony is how often you see pseudo-violence and deaths, even whole shows along the CSI lines centered around it. Muder is entertainment, yet we can't show pictures of our own war dead.

What men like me try and do is tell some of the truth about North Western Canada and Southern Ontario province of Canada .

My people the coastal have Souix , they are registered dual citizens and they live with Southie at 1 point in Evrit and 2 point in the cotton . I cant speak for teh North Prarie but i can speak for South Ontario and all of lake Ontario our ancient lands . We have FLA dual resident there , Florida Indians like Wayne Gretzky and Mowhawk Indians and Huron Indians and Cree which includes Misouri . They are dual residents , these people know they are dual and they live in Clarkson michgan but guys you know these are all small numbers but those are traditionally our women , the Souix and ther weirdoes dont like it in the Souix nation .

An example of bad media is your media lying in the United States about gangs like the Outlawz and the Outlawz enemy the mongolians . The Outlawz must live in the american free target feather metis country , that must be thier base I geuss watch it Burn .

South Ontario is Outlaw bacause North Western Canada is cause we say so . WE only have Grim reapers in the Prarie and the two clubs are usually just here in spirit . The Hells Angels are not allowed in Canada , nor are the Satans Choice or Loners or those gay guys from Seattle . Sorry your weird KKK clubs start fires . They like our Legal weed strains , too bad we dont sell the seeds to them .

If there is such as thing as an NWO , the media coverage of this war is one of the greatest indicators of it's existance so far . The way it slipped into gear right at the same time across the western world, all telling the same version of that story , not a deviation anywhere . I'd expect to see variations on an absolute truth, but to see a total lie perpetrated across the spectrum with no deviation at all.. it just looks orchestrated and planned. By some agency whose influence spans continents .

Even if people were to say ... but Russia lulled them into a trap etc, it's Russia fault , the point im saying is that there is not even a debate on that in the western media. Anything proir to the movements of those Russian tanks moving south to Ossetia is completely whitewashed. It's a cover up, and it's a sychronous cover up at that .

[edit on 15-8-2008 by Gun Totin Gerbil]

The manipulation expertly practiced by mainstream media is the direct result of human nature and social evolution. Television and radio were both fields pioneered on advertising dollars, so the mediums, as they became standards for output, grew around the desperate need to sell sell sell.

As such the answer you're looking for is: money. I've thought long and hard about this particular topic and I've determined that if the men in charge of what we read, see, and hear were smart enough to plot to control our moods and lives with well-placed images and meticulously crafted messages than they'd have more common sense about what they waste their money on making popular. It wouldn't be such a crapshoot, because executives wouldn't be talking down to people. They'd understand what people wanted.

No, the people in charge are motivated solely by money. Making more of it, spending more of it. Most of them don't follow the media the same way we do, most of them don't watch TV, and I'd wager most of them don't even go see movies. Music they like is limited to what they liked when they were 20, and there's a very safe bubble they've made which isn't often stepped out of.

However, and this is a big however and the other side to my thinking on your earlier thoughts: this shallow existence led by these men created the space necessary for genuine social movement. That's why the images created (to make money) were overfed to our brains (to make money) and became mythic figures in our subconscious (which is actually what makes the money).

This horrible consequence, which has steadily sunk our country into a cultural mire since it really revved up during the 1950's, is a movement the only way human beings can now: socially, mentally, inwardly, and towards one another.

This has just one root cause: greed. Greed empties a person out and when a person is empty the universe guides them entirely. When the universe guides an entire class of men, then we are at it's whim, for better, or worse.

Originally posted by Gun Totin Gerbil
If there is such as thing as an NWO , the media coverage of this war is one of the greatest indicators of it's existance so far . The way it slipped into gear right at the same time across the western world, all telling the same version of that story , not a deviation anywhere . I'd expect to see variations on an absolute truth, but to see a total lie perpetrated across the spectrum with no deviation at all.

Yeah, the war has had a few BIG stories of that nature. I recall the female soldier that was captured and anally raped on the battle field, only to be slapped around in the Iraqi hospital while she lay there helpless.

A year later she comes out and says none of that happened, she was not raped and she was not slapped around in the hospital. Same thing with the "babies being killed in incubator" stories from the first gulf war.

They are such shameless liars.

Originally posted by joecamel
As such the answer you're looking for is: money.
...
This has just one root cause: greed.

I think you're on the right track with this; there is truth in your reasoning. However, I'd like to point out a possible danger.

The danger is the dichotomy between thinking 'there's one root cause' and 'there's many, multifarious causes'.

With the first line of reasoning, the allure is of a constant 'explanation' that makes sense -- explains motives, categorizes evidence, predicts direction, presents insight. Such benefit stands within the context of the explanation, as valuable in itself.

With the second line of reasoning, the allure is of 'covering all the bases' -- explaining each topic or event individually, with the reasoning and explanation that best fits and makes sense of the specific topic.

The danger is thinking that one or the other of the approaches must be the 'correct' one.

If we start thinking 'it's all about the money', then the speculative bounds of reasoning can be curtailed. How might we consider other possible motives, such as a lust for non-affecting control, or theories of a confounded altruism? Such ideas don't immediately fit within an economic model. They might, eventually, with enough understanding, but I think that's not currently the best apparent path for such theorizing.

If we postulate an ecology of 'evil motives', the problem becomes conflicts between those motives. When does it become not about money, and instead about control, or a hidden idealogical agenda? And what is behind that difference? Is there a limit to the number of possible motives we could theorize upon, by evidence of specific events? How much conflict is acceptable, in individual explanation?

A system of explanation, such as 'it's all about the money', may be complete and consistent, but that does not make it exclusive. In fact, one could also build a system of explanation, 'it's all about control', or 'it's all about a better world', that is as complete and consistent, but not identical in specifics.

So, here is the danger, and false dichotomy: Those 'whole cloth' explanation are not necessarily exclusive, nor does their utility imply any unification of motives.

In absence of concrete interactible evidence of the 'inner workings' of this 'conspiracy', we cannot assume logical or didactic closure on any particular set of explanations -- it cannot be said: "if it's all about the money, then it can't be about A, B, X, or Y". The reasoning doesn't intersect.

This is why there's many 'conspiracy theories', and many of them often seem correct or useful in different, unreconciled ways. Unfortunately, it's more complex than a single explanation can completely convey. There's a human urge for a 'single truth', but it seems the journey of understanding does not presume a single road.

"It all makes perfect sense, expressed in dollars and cents" != "It only makes perfect sense, expressed in dollars and cents".

Please excuse the cursory and slightly scattered nature of this reply; I feel this topic is a deep one.

You make marvelous points.

I have to speak for the nature of boiling it down, as it were, and trying to identify root causes. While it's truer than anything else that every conspiracy to cross these boards was the result of a network of people making choices which aligned with other choices to produce a specific result of unique social makeup, common themes I think are pervasive and can be singled out for specific observation.

To say it's about greed is to say that for these people, greed has become the method by which they seek the control, or twist their intentions, or misdirect their deeds. A man may want nothing more than control, and he seeks it via money. How much he makes or has means nothing: all that matters is he has more. Or a man, who's sense of righteousness is completely out of whack, sees personal victory in obtaining the most.

However their motives are reached, greed is the feeling that births them all. Let me not be misunderstood as a critic of finances: greed with money is only how they claim it today. Knowledge, God, food, all of these have replaced credit as our most wanted object, but the sheer lust for more of it has always driven the people in power.

I have a slightly irrational viewpoint, this I know. But I figure this as well: it's true a myriad of factors contribute to any theory of a conspiratorial nature, but the fact that it can so easily be attributed to a single source counts for something. At the very least, 30 people citing 6 places it came from raises more awareness for the six places that helped bring the thing into being.

Like the previous posters have stated, the "news" is nothing more than propaganda these days. I mean, Im sure some stations was run like this before as well, but with the centralization of power in a globalized world, we get it on a massive scale.

I recommend using the Internet for news and to include sources that you think are not "credible" while researching, because every source you think IS credible is owned by one of the major players with their own agenda. And that agenda is probably not "bringing truth to the public".

If you think about it, its actually the less credible sources that should be the most honest, because nobody tells them what is suitable for publishing.


[edit on 23-8-2008 by Copernicus]