Is "Western" media propaganda? - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14559711
It is often said you can have all the free speech you can buy, but even that is false. A case in point is the propaganda put out by the Energy Tomorrow group, an astroturfed offshoot of the American Petroleum Institute. Their slick ads, featuring former soap actress Brooke Alexander, promote fracking in an ingeniously subliminal fashion - they are ubiquitous on American television, part of the daily fabric of Joe Sixpack's consciousness. NoEnergy Tommorrow put together an add to counter this. Their ad was rejected by commercial networks, even though they had the money to pay for air time. The reason given was that the add was too political. Perhaps this makes no sense to you, but it actually does make sense in context (see my sig quote below).
#14560077
The Propaganda Model (of capitalist media) was described by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman.

They describe how the money-dependence of capitalist media creates a bias (pro-consumption, pro-capitalism propaganda) in five ways:

1. Advertising dollars (bribes)
2. Anti-communism (anti-Islam) bad-guy creation
3. Flack (smearing, rumors)
4. Ownership (the extremely rich)
5. Sourcing (always pro-capitalist)

So yeah. Virtually all commercial media is propaganda.
#14560133
Are Russian in American films are bad and vile or wild?

Probably not to the degree you might think. Older films did of course during the Cold War. The US has over 3 million citizens of Russian descent who are totally accepted as Americans. This tempers the effects of any propaganda from the media.
#14594845
kobe wrote:Isn't all news media, and possibly all media in general, propaganda? Here's how I see it: at any one time there are an uncountable amount of things going on. Whoever gets to choose the 10-15 stories that are reported controls the dialog. For example, the Vietnam war stands as the prime example of a war that certainly could have been won and essentially was won militarily. However it was the media that essentially lost the war because of the way they presented it. Sometimes perception can be more powerful than reality. Another example, the Iraq war. Even though the war was completely unnecessary and extremely destabilized the region, many will still defend it to this day because the media constantly juxtaposed that war to the Afghan conflict, the insurgency to the Islamic extremists. Even though there is little to no evidence of that, it is the story that drives forward the dialog and not the facts.

...


We - the US - could have destroyed VN altogether, if we had been willing to use nuclear weapons, or nerve gas on a massive scale, or other weapons of mass destruction. The political fight for VN was lost by the French & events in the real World before we ever showed up there. See Embers of war : the fall of an empire and the making of America's Vietnam / Fredrik Logevall, 1963- , c2012, Random House.
Subjects
• Indochinese War, 1946-1954.
• Indochinese War, 1946-1954 -- Diplomatic history.
• Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- Causes.
Summary
• A history of the four decades leading up to the Vietnam War offers insights into how the U.S. became involved, identifying commonalities between the campaigns of French and American forces while discussing relevant political factors.
Length xxii, 839 p. : index, chapter notes, further reading, photos, maps,

The history behind France & then the beginning of the US war in VN. Incisive, covers the West, East, Ho Chi Minh. An excellent read.
#14594854
kobe wrote: (blackjack21 quote): The media and the Democratic Party--which is to say, the political left. Communism hadn't yet imploded and the political left was quite sympathetic to communism.

(kobe): Inconsequential, and also a total lie. The Democratic Party started the war. So please spare me the liberal partisan rhetoric.


Perhaps you can fault Pres. Wilson, for not meeting with Ho Chi Minh (under the pseudonym that Mihn was using @ the time) @ Paris @ the peace talks that followed WWI. TMK, Pres. Wilson never even responded to Ho's letter, asking for a meeting to discuss the future of Vietnam.

Pres. FDR was certainly opposed to propping up France in VN. He wasn't willing to spend US lives nor money for UK's empire's sake, & he was even less willing to do that for France, either. But FDR died in office, & Pres. Truman was talked into backing France's overreach for its old empire by State Dept., Defense Dept. & other officials who thought France's support for US efforts in Europe would be important.
Last edited by southwest88 on 29 Aug 2015 18:37, edited 1 time in total.
#14594860
Decky wrote:Freedom of speech in any capitalist nation is the freedom for the rich to talk and the poor to be talked to. You can publish anything you please in a national newspaper as long as you have the money to own one.


Correct in every word.
#14595103
What Qatz said.

There are some sources that offer a more well balanced view of issues, but the main stream media seems to have a special branch who's sole purpose is to wage a sort of psychological assault on their views.
#14595115
Decky wrote:Freedom of speech in any capitalist nation is the freedom for the rich to talk and the poor to be talked to. You can publish anything you please in a national newspaper as long as you have the money to own one.


True, but even money won't get you anywhere if it's not the right message. For instance, in the US an environmental group tried to buy television time to counter the slick commercials put out by an API astro-turfed group promoting fracking. They were turned down by all the major networks on the grounds that the ad was 'political.' The political nature of the original ad was invisible to them, it's part of the water they swim in.
#14595138
Well no shit, the capitalists own the media, they are not going to allow it to be used to publish anti capitalists propaganda. That is the nature of "free" speech.
#14595431
Decky wrote:Well no shit, the capitalists own the media, they are not going to allow it to be used to publish anti capitalists propaganda. That is the nature of "free" speech.


Yah, but media in the West is a huge enterprise. It's not necessary to absolutely control each & every instance of comms, just riding general shotgun on the bigger herds is more than enough (& even that takes some finagling, I'm sure). Western media aren't based on shortage of comms, quite the opposite.

& so the fringe sites - the conspiracy theory & UFO sites, for instance - are probably left to their own devices. There may be monitoring there, I'm not sure if there's a scram plan in place in case some kind of ultimate sanction is needed - blow the power, fry the uplinks? It would have to be plausible.

Are all media guilty of propaganda? It seems unlikely - all media have some bias built in, in that they will contain or @ least allude to a POV or a set of POVs. & yah, absolute objectivity is more of an aspirational goal than anything else. But careful writers could approach even-handedness in treating their subject material. I suppose the only real test would be to take in your favorite media over time & try to triangulate what their preferences are. Then you can make allowances, pro or con - to balance out whatever favoritism you detect. It's not an easy task.
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