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Saturday, March 29, 2003
Manufactured Consent 2003 :: from Herman & Chomsky The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters," fall under the following headings: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) "flak" as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns. Free at last:: '. . . Edward Gibbon reminds us in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that Rome slid almost imperceptibly from republican self-governance to imperial rule because Augustus sensed that "people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom." ' Jim Sleeper, WaPo Too Much in Love with Apocalypse Now :: This juvenile, boastful spirit was epitomised last week by the US navy’s Vice-Admiral Timothy Keating, aboard the USS Constellation. Vice-Admiral Keating waved his arms about and told his ship’s company, ‘It’s hammer time!’ to the accompaniment of Queen’s ‘We will rock you’ played at maximum decibels. Adult cultures think war deserves reflection and seriousness of purpose. This war seems to have been imagined and designed by spiritual teenagers. Will the next begin to the obscene rattle and boom of gangsta rap? I do not know, but there was an ugly hubris about the bombardment of Baghdad which followed soon afterwards. --Peter Hitchens Speaking of Drama :: The CNN effect. Since the advent of global, instantaneous news coverage, war has become an endeavour the public can follow in real time. Despite Pentagon controls on information and White House spin, information is getting back to the American people and allowing them to form opinions of the war very quickly. The American people have been conditioned by Gulf War I, Kosovo and Afghanistan to expect instant positive results and no negative results from warfare. This time around, as President Bush warned, things may be different. However, the public's not used to that, and thus every setback (e.g. the taking of American POWs) results in a blow to public morale. Historically, our military has always suffered a few initial setbacks in war as it adjusted to the realities of this particular theater. Iraq is no different. --IntelDump
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