When Correspondents Came Home
This is the first of a two-part series examining the collapse of foreign coverage in mainstream media.
{Patrick Lawrence is an often contributor to Consortium News also which I've posted his work from on multiple occasions.}
I have never gotten over a story The New York Times ran in its Sunday magazine back in May 2016. Maybe you will remember the occasion. It was a lengthy profile of Ben Rhodes, the Obama administration’s chief adviser for “strategic communications.” It was written by a reporter named David Samuels.
These two made a striking pair—fitting, I would say. Rhodes was an aspiring fiction writer living in Brooklyn when, by the unlikeliest of turns, he found his way into the inner circle of the Obama White House. Samuels, a freelancer who usually covered popular culture celebrities, had long earlier succumbed to that unfortunately clever style commonly affected by those writing about rock stars and others of greater or lesser frivolity.
Rhodes’ job was to spin “some larger restructuring of the American narrative,” as Samuels put it. “Rhodes is a storyteller who uses a writer’s tools to advance an agenda that is packaged as politics.” A professional flack straight out of Edward Bernays, in plain English. A teller of tales trafficking in manipulable facts and happy endings. “Packaged as politics:” a nice touch conveying the commodification of our public discourse.
In the last paragraph there you find text book indications of the manufacturing of narrative designed for MSCM to use. Whether that be especially the 6 major MSCM TV news programs or the dozens of MSM magazines and online sources. Where 80% of what we receive form them is manufactured by public relation firms or a variety of think tanks and NGOs. It is a systematic development to manage our perceptions. Virtually anything that goes against the narrative the ruling class doesn't want exposed is suppressed. Anything that challenges the capitalist system.
Which for example within the importance of the Ukraine issue and its history since 2014 RT was banned in the US making it difficult to access. Let alone the Nazi fascism within Ukraine of WWll which even more people know none of that plays a part in today. Falsely villainized even more than before with intent to suppress anyone from observing and discovering multiple other sides of the entire story.
On the RT international news coverage there is an array of multiple political specialist, former military, professors, and advocates of all sorts from around the world who give great wider insight to not just the Ukraine issue, but all issues facing the world population. People who are purposely suppressed and wouldn't be allowed on our media sets to challenge their narrative coverage. It's virtually the same suppression that goes on within social medias when it comes to multiple journalist and new sites that expose opposition also. There was a reason some of the best went to RT to get their work out into public. It was basically the only platform outside the Internet that provided a means to do talk shows and one on one discussions with pertinent members of society of various backgrounds that went against the grain of the fake news being thrown at us 24/7.
Edward Bernays is considered the father of modern propaganda. Which a number of sociologist and academics correlate this advancement of propaganda beginning during the build up to WWl. A discussion with Mark Crispin Miller and Abby Martin can be found on the 2nd pinned page about him.
{After the US entered the war, the Committee on Public Information (CPI) hired Bernays to work for its Bureau of Latin-American Affairs, based in an office in New York. Bernays, along with Lieutenant F. E. Ackerman, focused on building support for war, domestically and abroad, focusing especially on businesses operating in Latin America.[21][22] Bernays referred to this work as "psychological warfare"} [en.wikipedia.org]
How many times does it take for us to expose this nature of their perpetual warring agendas before we can manage to convince the citizenship to say enough!?! It has been over a century of needless death and destruction against ourselves. When is enough enough!?! Take back your perception---Step out of their illusion.
{Rhodes and Ned Price, his deputy, were social-media acrobats. Price, a former CIA analyst and now the State Department’s spokesman, recounted without inhibition how they fed White House correspondents, columnists, and others in positions to influence public opinion as a fois gras farmer feeds his geese.
We went from sheep to geese. Does this not have you feeling it yet!?! Maybe he felt if he used the word sheep it might strike a nerve?
{There are sort of these force multipliers. We have our compadres. I will reach out to a couple of people, and, you know, I wouldn’t want to name them…. And I’ll give them some color, and the next thing I know, lots of these guys are in the dot-com publishing space and have huge followings, and they’ll be putting out this message on their own.}
Symbolic to the social media conditions related to Ukraine. When you attempt to provide more clarity to the issue than what our medias are spewing, all most can do is repeat the controlled narrative pumped into their thoughtless brains as they refuse to observe the multiple sources of the other side. Provide a source that provides more factual based information, even video showing facts and personal testimony, the puppets cry Russian propaganda on cue denying themselves of gaining a sense in intellect. The sad part about this is that the documentaries that RT is posting aren't of Russian development. The makers are primarily of various backgrounds made up of various journalist from other countries, amateur video taken by citizens of the Donbass regions, local militias, along with footage taken from Azov and Ukrainian army filming from Youtube. Essentially none of it is of Russian origin. You can only find that on their International news coverage.
{All the newspapers used to have foreign bureaus. Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what is happening in Moscow or Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.}
That's simply admitting they can tell the reporter anything they want and that reporter will reiterate to us the false information they want to manage our perception on of the world. And for the most part that's exactly what is happening in Ukraine. The reporters are based in a cozy hotel in Kiev being fed fake news from the multiple news sources that George Soros and various think tank groups funded into development leading into the 2014 protest. Then they relay that fake news back home and or post it online. And I assure you that the more experience reporters, as Robert Parry exposed long ago, have a nice cozy lucrative income having fallen in line with suppressing the entire factual conditions of issues and aren't going to rock that boat.
As he goes on to explain the changes in media I found it sad he neglected to mention Robert Parry and Consortium News founded by Bob in 1995. As Bob also lived and exited through the same atmosphere.
You can find Parry's experience here told by Nate Parry, Bob's son, after Bob's death. There isn't many investigative journalist like Robert Parry left today. I have to fight back the tears every time I come to this recognition as I view the insanity of a profoundly sickening society I live in today due to this injustice of our society. And witness the vast amount of people trapped in the delusional reality that has been created. [consortiumnews.com]
Posted by William_MaryIt rarely never fails.
Posted by William_MaryIf You Wish Someone a Happy Memorial Day, You Fail to Understand Its True Meaning The mythology perpetuated at Memorial Day benefits no one save the militarists and war profiteers.
Posted by LufahyuMedia Sources; people from all walks and ideologies peruse a variety of source material available on the Internet, some more reliable than others.
Posted by joy2loveThe Neuroscience of Illusion - Scientific American
Posted by CherokeemanBlessings y'all.
Posted by Archeus_LoreA good meme for religious people to see . . . .
Posted by William_MaryIt has been questioned if Einstein actually made this statement.
Posted by William_Mary“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.
Posted by William_MaryHowever we have an escape-------[wsws.org]
Posted by William_MaryKeep people from their history, and they are easily controlled.
Posted by William_MaryThis fairly explains our political woes within our citizenry when it comes to the voting process that's managed within only 2 parties with their perceptions managed by propaganda designed to support ...
Posted by William_MaryI can pretty much apply this thought to just about everyone who has attempted to challenge my agenda here in this group, and my comments on social media in regards to our political arena.
Posted by William_MaryBy Apr.
Posted by William_MaryThe working class holds the strength to change the world for a better society for everyone. We just need to refuse to remain indoctrinated into their manufactured delusional reality.
Posted by William_MaryWhen the state is controlled by corporations and the ruling class.
Posted by of-the-mountainHas sanity and respect for all female, male, and children’s healthcare been suspended by these obstructionists republican fascists with their overt agenda against the people of this country!!! Are ...