Tag Propaganda

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The mechanisms of propaganda in a “free press”

Sep 5, ’08 7:18 PM

Ben Kuch­era, of Ars Tech­nica, writes about the rela­tion­ship between game soft­ware developers and game review­ers, and the mech­an­isms each have at their dis­posal to manip­u­late the other, namely paid advert­ising and access to information.

It’s a good prac­tical example of some of mech­an­isms that cor­rupt a “free press” in a cap­it­al­ist soci­ety and, of course, sim­ilar mech­an­isms are at play with gov­ern­ments and news media.

The writer says there is no easy solu­tion except for reader beware. He’s cor­rect, there is no solu­tion under cap­it­al­ism, because it’s an inher­ent prob­lem of cap­it­al­ism. The only pro­posed solu­tion I know of is under a dif­fer­ent eco­nomy.

Update, 7 Sep 2008: Here’s a recent example of a politi­cian doing the same thing. i.e. manip­u­lat­ing news media by with­hold­ing access to inform­a­tion, thus ulti­mately lower­ing the abil­ity of the tar­geted new media organ­isa­tion to make profits.

Davis insisted that “there are no strings attached” to media access to McCain. Yet just this week, McCain abruptly can­celed an inter­view with Larry King as pun­ish­ment for a tough CNN inter­view with one of his spokes­men. What’s more, top McCain aide Mark Salter said that “only the good report­ers” would get the best seats in the new cam­paign plane. “You have to earn it,” he said.

Update, 22 Sep 2008: Changed Pare­con link from Wiki­pe­dia to Znet.

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A glitch in the media matrix

Aug 7, ’08 9:37 AM

The NZ Her­ald has pub­lished a remark­able edit­or­ial today which offers rare insight into just how well our “free” media sys­tem serves to under­mine demo­cracy, while the back­ground story offers great insight into how much National Party politi­cians deplore demo­cracy and how deplor­ably dis­hon­est they can be in the lead up to an election.

As an aside: the only politi­cians I know of that don’t deplore demo­cracy are the Greens.

The back­ground story, if you haven’t heard, is that National Party politi­cians have been secretly taped admit­ting that they need to say whatever it takes to get elec­ted, then, once in power, they can get their real agenda through of redis­trib­ut­ing the New Zea­l­and people’s wealth to a tiny minor­ity of rich. Here’s Bill English’s and here’s Lock­wood Smith’s.

What’s remark­able about the Herald’s edit­or­ial isn’t simply that it tries to spin the story by pre­tend­ing National is simply “com­prom­ising on its desired policies,” rather than that National is actu­ally lying about its policies so it can drive them through once it’s in power:

The coun­try now knows, if it did not before, that National has com­prom­ised some of its policy desires for the sake of its elect­oral prospects.

It isn’t simply that uncov­er­ing a party’s real agenda — some­thing of vital pub­lic interest in the run up to an elec­tion — is dis­missed as “par­tisan politics”:

First, it is not fair to release a reporter’s tape or tran­script unless … the record­ing could serve a pub­lic interest some­what more com­pel­ling than par­tisan politics.

It isn’t simply that it admits the means of report­ing on politi­cians is broken:

Second, the pub­lic­a­tion would dam­age the gath­er­ing of fur­ther inform­a­tion. Once bit­ten, a pub­lic fig­ure is twice shy.

It isn’t simply that it admits to keep­ing secrets:

Noth­ing revealed from National’s con­fer­ence sneak so far offers insights to its inten­tions that could not have been obtained by a journ­al­ist trus­ted to use a private con­ver­sa­tion responsibly.

No, what I find remark­able about this edit­or­ial is that by put­ting for­ward this argu­ment it is openly admit­ting that it can be trus­ted by politi­cians but can’t be trus­ted by its read­ers and that it is com­pletely inef­fec­tual in doing the job of report­ing politics.

External links:

Gotcha! | 4 August, 2008
Choos­ing words | 5 August, 2008
Whoops, they did it again | 6 August, 2008
The Her­ald sup­ports secrecy | 7 August, 2008

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Iran is not the belligerent party

Jul 2, ’08 8:08 AM

The media in the West has a lot of blood on its hands already. Is it going to have more blood on its hands in Iran? Iran is not the bel­li­ger­ent party:

When it comes to demon­ising Iran, the US, Israel and Bri­tain have a uni­fied mes­sage and a com­pli­ant media, which has learned noth­ing from its mis­takes dur­ing the run-up to the inva­sion of Iraq, and seems happy to con­tinue to act as a gov­ern­ment pro­pa­ganda arm in some cases.

Thanks to the duti­ful cor­por­ate mouth­pieces, most Amer­ic­ans and Bri­tons have no idea that Tehran is act­ing within its rights under the NPT.

They don’t know that in Decem­ber, a US intel­li­gence estim­ate stated cat­egor­ic­ally that Iran is not cur­rently devel­op­ing nukes or that the nuc­lear watch­dog, the Inter­na­tional Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which mon­it­ors Ira­nian facil­it­ies, has no proof it seeks to do so.

The West’s pro­pa­ganda cam­paign is so effect­ive that the major­ity of West­ern­ers believe that Iran is the bel­li­ger­ent even though the facts sup­port the con­trary argument.

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How the New Zealand media breeds ignorance

Jun 15, ’08 11:39 PM

The other day I pos­ted an example of how the Amer­ican media breeds ignorance.

Today No Right Turn points to an example of New Zeal­anders being sub­jec­ted to much the same thing.

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Photographobia: an irrational fear of photographers

Jun 5, ’08 10:33 PM

A couple of weeks ago I was on the over­land train to Cam­den Town, Lon­don when a tour­ist was tak­ing a photo out the win­dow. Some local got up and har­assed him, telling him he wasn’t allowed to take pho­tos on the train, then went and sat down again. Rolling my eyes I sug­ges­ted he ignore the wan­nabe fink, but he meekly com­plied, not know­ing any better.

Bruce Schneier has a the­ory on why some people think pho­to­graph­ers are a threat: because that’s what the ter­ror­ists do in the movies, right.

He also includes some handy links to wal­let doc­u­ments on photographer’s legal rights that can help you if you get har­assed. Here’s a UK one.

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Why the meaning of “anti-Semitism” has changed

May 29, ’08 7:48 PM

Here’s just another example of why the term “anti-Semitism” has increas­ingly come to mean “mild cri­ti­cism of Israeli gov­ern­ment policies,” rather than “hos­til­ity to or pre­ju­dice against Jews.”

Some­thing I’ve exper­i­enced myself.

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Chomsky on U.S. policy toward Iran

Nov 26, ’07 9:40 AM

Paul Jay inter­views Noam Chomksy on U.S. policy toward Iran:

Sup­pose it was true that Iran is help­ing insur­gents in Iraq. I mean, wasn’t the United States help­ing insur­gents when the Rus­si­ans invaded Afgh­anistan? Did we think there was any­thing wrong with that? I mean, Iraq’s a coun­try that was invaded and is under mil­it­ary occu­pa­tion. You can’t have a ser­i­ous dis­cus­sion about whether someone else is inter­fer­ing in it. The basic assump­tion under­ly­ing the dis­cus­sion is that we own the world.”

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Information War: 85% of U.S. troops in la la land

Mar 1, ’06 11:59 AM

A recent poll of U.S. troops in Iraq shows that 85% say the mis­sion is mainly “to retali­ate for Saddam’s role in the 9 – 11 attacks.”

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Should the Americans invade Oz next?

Oct 7, ’05 10:28 AM

In terms of the war on ter­ror, who should be the next coun­try to invade? Read on to see some of the bet­ter res­ults of “engin­eer­ing consent.”

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