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Post by Admin on Sept 18, 2019 9:11:24 GMT
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Post by Admin on Sept 27, 2019 13:38:00 GMT
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Post by Admin on Oct 6, 2019 9:45:15 GMT
"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it. Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government." ~Edward Bernays, "Propaganda" (1928) more: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons [...] who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world. Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government. Governments, whether they are monarchical, constitutional, democratic or communist, depend upon acquiescent public opinion for the success of their efforts and, in fact, government is government only by virtue of public acquiescence. Industries, public utilities, educational movements, indeed all groups representing any concept or product, whether they are majority or minority ideas, succeed only because of approving public opinion. Public opinion is the unacknowledged partner in all broad efforts. The public relations counsel, then, is the agent who, working with modern media of communications and the group formations of society, brings an idea to the consciousness of the public. If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass psychology. Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences." All quotes from "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays (1928): en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
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Post by Admin on Oct 15, 2019 9:39:49 GMT
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Post by Admin on Oct 24, 2019 19:10:58 GMT
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Post by Admin on Oct 26, 2019 9:14:45 GMT
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Nov 25, 2019 8:03:59 GMT
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Post by Admin on Nov 30, 2019 7:57:21 GMT
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Post by Admin on Dec 4, 2019 9:53:06 GMT
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Post by Admin on Dec 5, 2019 11:57:55 GMT
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Post by Admin on Dec 9, 2019 13:50:33 GMT
Is Another BBC Possible? "Streams of reports point out the bias at work in BBC’s politics coverage. As it edges ever closer to Britain’s Conservative Party this election campaign, it’s clear the public broadcaster needs radical reform if it is to be saved. As Britain faces a crucial general election, its second in two years, one of its most venerable institutions has been busy demolishing what’s left of its reputation. The BBC has long been admired internationally for its well-resourced drama and documentary programs, and respected for the professionalism of its journalism. But its hollowing out by a series of neoliberal governments looks to have finally caught up with the once august institution. Whatever the merits of the BBC’s educational and cultural output its political journalism, which is at the heart of its public service remit, has failed in the most important test it faces. The BBC’s failure to secure an interview with the prime minister ahead of broadcasting politically damaging interviews with opposition leaders is a major political scandal, not a slightly unfortunate mishap. But what is more, the whole sorry episode is revealing of a systematic failing at the BBC. Here is a state broadcaster subjecting the opposition to relentless and damaging political interrogation, while seeming unable or unwilling to do the same when it comes to the government. In November, the Media Reform Coalition published an analysis of the BBC’s election reporting undertaken by Justin Schlosberg, of Birkbeck College, University of London. It noted a number of areas where the BBC has failed in its impartiality obligations during this election campaign. One very revealing example is the response to the manifestos. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a respected think tank given enormous prominence in the British media, produced a critical response to both parties’ manifestos, yet its response to Labour’s was covered fifteen times in the two days following its manifesto launch, compared to just once in the two days following the launch of the Tory manifesto. There were similar imbalances in television coverage of allegations of racism in both parties. The research also noted the pejorative language BBC reporters used to describe Corbyn, his team, and his supporters. Many journalists find Johnson objectionable, and one reporter who stands out in particular is Peter Oborne, a conservative critic of political 'spin' in the Blair era who resigned from the Telegraph over its dropping of an investigation into a major advertiser, HSBC. Early on in the election campaign, Oborne raised concerns that the British media as a whole were not holding Johnson or his ministers to account, and were too often relaying unsubstantiated claims from anonymous government sources. Not only did Oborne point in particular to the role of the BBC’s most senior political reporter, Laura Kuenssberg, he also revealed that senior BBC executives had told him they thought it would be wrong to expose lies told by Johnson, since it might undermine trust in politics. In reality, the BBC has always been close to being an arm of government, perpetually kept in a grey area somewhere between genuine independence and direct political control. The changes the BBC underwent in the wake of Thatcherism are a major focus of my book, 'The BBC: Myth of a Public Service', and so I won’t recount them in much detail here, but the net effect was, in essence, a form of elite capture. Over the course of several decades, the BBC was radically restructured along neoliberal lines, with its news journalism brought much more under centralized editorial control and its program-making integrated into the market and its reporting restructured around the new economic orthodoxies. The vision shared by the Conservative government and the BBC’s managerial elite is of a BBC that acts as a quasi-official news service, a source of revenue and resources for private profit, as well as a prestigious British brand and distribution system that can give UK-based media companies a competitive edge in the international market. The result has been a broadcaster that remains publicly owned, and which on paper remains committed to a distinct set of public service values, but which, as we have seen in this election, is plainly not fit for purpose. Is Another BBC Possible? Given the BBC’s record, many on the Left now hope for the abolition of the BBC. I find this to be completely understandable under the circumstances. Last year, a working group of the Media Reform Coalition I chaired developed a set of proposals for the radical reform of the BBC, arguing that it should become a modern, democratized public platform and network, fully representative of its audiences and completely independent of government and the market. A radically reformed BBC would have to be barely recognizable compared with its current incarnation, and we should be in no doubt that any such change would be strongly resisted by the BBC executive class. Perhaps the greater barrier to effective reform, though, is that so many people on the Left will now regard the BBC’s journalism as having been so obsequious in its treatment of an unscrupulous ruling party, and so negligent of its public service duties, that they see little much of worth to defend or to salvage." www.jacobinmag.com/2019/12/bbc-media-bias-boris-johnson-uk
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Post by Admin on Dec 15, 2019 9:48:51 GMT
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Post by Admin on Dec 15, 2019 15:29:56 GMT
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Post by Admin on Dec 19, 2019 14:23:23 GMT
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Post by Admin on Dec 19, 2019 19:21:17 GMT
Some illusions are good to lose, and this election has been revelatory in destroying the illusion of media impartiality or responsibility, especially at the BBC, and its deference to power: "The real revelation of this election has been the BBC, the most well concealed of all those illusion-generating machines. The BBC is a state broadcaster that has long used its entertainment division – from costume dramas to wildlife documentaries – to charm us and ensure the vast majority of the public are only too happy to invite it into their homes. The BBC’s lack of adverts, the apparent absence of a grubby, commercial imperative, has been important in persuading us of the myth that the British Broadcasting Corporation is driven by a higher purpose, that it is a national treasure, that it is on our side. But the BBC always was the propaganda arm of the state, of the British establishment. The BBC’s managers were drawn ever more narrowly from the world of big business. And its news editors were increasingly interchangeable with the news editors of the billionaire-owned print media. To take one of many current examples, Sarah Sands, editor of the key Radio 4 Today programme, spent her earlier career at the Boris Johnson-cheerleading Mail and Telegraph newspapers. In this election, the BBC cast off its public-service skin to reveal the corporate Terminator-style automaton below. It was shocking to behold even for a veteran media critic like myself. This restyled BBC, carefully constructed over the past four decades, shows how the patrician British establishment of my youth – bad as it was – has gone. Now the BBC is a mirror of what our hollowed-out society looks like. It is no longer there to hold together British society, to forge shared values, to find common ground between the business community and the trade unions, to create a sense – even if falsely – of mutual interest between the rich and the workers. No, it is there to ringfence turbo-charged neoliberal capitalism, it is there to cannibalise what’s left of British society, and ultimately, as we may soon find out, it is there to generate civil war. A rigged political system We on the left didn’t lose this election. We lost our last illusions. The system is rigged – as it always has been – to benefit those in power. It will never willingly allow a real socialist, or any politician deeply committed to the health of society and the planet, to take power away from the corporate class. That, after all, is the very definition of power. That is what the corporate media is there to uphold. The media’s job is to serve as the propaganda arm of big business. Even if the Sun makes an economic loss, it has succeeded if it gets the business candidate elected, the candidate who will keep corporation tax, capital gains tax and all the other taxes that affect corporate profits as low as possible without stoking a popular insurrection." via The Political Mind www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/17/corbyns-defeat-has-slain-the-lefts-last-illusion/
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