Monday, October 11, 2010

Propaganda Machine Hard At Work

As Gallup notes, trust in the corporate media is at an all-time low.

Much of the loss of trust is due to the media's selling of Iraq war lies and covering up the severity of the financial crisis.

Here are two essays I wrote - the first from a year ago, and the second from last December - explaining why media is so bad, and why we need to "be the media" ourselves .
Herding the Sheep
Financial insider and commentator Yves Smith wrote an essay last week entitled "MSM Reporting as Propaganda" arguing that the government has been using propaganda to make people think that things are getting better, no one is angry, and - therefore - no one should get upset:

The message, quite overtly, is: if you are pissed, you are in a minority. The country has moved on. Things are getting better, get with the program...

Per the social psychology research, this “you are in a minority, you are wrong” message DOES dissuade a lot of people. It is remarkably poisonous. And it discourages people from taking concrete action.

Is Smith right? And even if she is, isn't "propaganda" too strong a word?

Think Positive
Sure, William K. Black - professor of economics and law, and the senior regulator during the S & L crisis - says that that the government's entire strategy now - as during the S&L crisis - is to cover up how bad things are ("the entire strategy is to keep people from getting the facts").

Admittedly, 7 out of the 8 giant, money center banks went bankrupt in the 1980's during the "Latin American Crisis", and the government's response was to cover up their insolvency.

It's true that Business Week wrote on May 23, 2006:
President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations.
I can't deny that the Tarp Inspector General said that Paulson and Bernanke falsely stated that the big banks receiving Tarp money were healthy, when they were not.

2 comments:

  1. Damn!! I can't keep up with all the info on T.C.D.
    What the hell's wrong with the U.S.A.

    ReplyDelete
  2. All this is too depressing for words. No wonder most Americans feel nothing they do (or anybody they vote for) will make a difference. So back to stocking up on food and jewelry....

    ReplyDelete

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