the fictitious firewall

D84

Well-known member
I just saw this article on the media lens site which should interest a few of you:

The Mythical Divide Between Journalism And Advertising


Here's a
In its latest annual report on media performance, US-based watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) noted that:

"Most people are aware that news media rely on corporate advertising dollars - though the fact is rarely discussed, and when it is, editors and producers will generally insist that there's no connection between the companies that buy ads and the content of the news." ('Fear and Favor - FAIR's Sixth Annual Report,' Extra!, March/April 2006; www.fair.org/index.php?page=2848)

Thus, here in Britain, Guy Keleny of The Independent claims:

"A free press, run commercially, has to set a firewall between the journalistic writing and the advertising that pays the bills. [...] The journalists do not allow their reporting to be muffled by the interests of advertisers, and the advertisers are free to say what they like in the space they have bought (subject to the law and industry codes) without regard to the newspaper's editorial opinions." (Guy Keleny, 'Errors & Omissions,' The Independent, October 7, 2006)

We wrote to Keleny on October 9, suggesting that the picture he painted of a firewall between reporting and advertising did not pertain to reality:

"For example, are you aware that last year BP and Morgan Stanley both issued directives demanding that their ads be pulled from any edition of a publication that included potentially 'objectionable' content? BP went so far as to demand advance notice of any stories that mention the company, a competitor of the company or the oil and energy industry in general. [FAIR, op.cit.]"

We pointed out that such agreements are not exceptional. We also quoted FAIR:

"While these demands may seem like an egregious intervention into the editorial process, the truth is, as one anonymous editor told [trade journal] Advertising Age (May 16, 2005), there's 'a fairly lengthy list of companies that have instructions like this.'"

it continues...
 
Yes, whether it was the UK media survey analyses of Raymond Williams in the 1960s or similar US analyses by Noam Chomsky in the 1990s, the findings were always consistent and unequivocal:

Whether they're called "liberal" or "conservative," the major media are large corporations, owned by and interlinked with even larger conglomerates. Like other corporations, they sell a product to a market. The market is advertisers -- that is, other businesses. The product is audiences. For the elite media that set the basic agenda to which others adapt, the product is, furthermore, relatively privileged audiences.

So we have major corporations selling fairly wealthy and privileged audiences to other businesses. Not surprisingly, the picture of the world presented reflects the narrow and biased interests and values of the sellers, the buyers and the product.

Other factors reinforce the same distortion. The cultural managers (editors, leading columnists, etc.) share class interests and associations with state and business managers and other privileged sectors. There is, in fact, a regular flow of high-level people among corporations, government and media. Access to state authorities is important to maintain a competitive position; "leaks," for example, are often fabrications and deceit produced by the authorities with the cooperation of the media, who pretend they don't know.

In return, state authorities demand cooperation and submissiveness. Other power centers also have devices to punish departures from orthodoxy, ranging from the stock market to an effective vilification and defamation apparatus.

The outcome is not, of course, entirely uniform. To serve the interests of the powerful, the media must present a tolerably realistic picture of the world. And professional integrity and honesty sometimes interfere with the overriding mission. The best journalists are, typically, quite aware of the factors that shape the media product, and seek to use such openings as are provided. The result is that one can learn a lot by a critical and skeptical reading of what the media produce.

The media are only one part of a larger doctrinal system; other parts are journals of opinion, the schools and universities, academic scholarship and so on. We're much more aware of the media, particularly the prestige media, because those who critically analyze ideology have focused on them. The larger system hasn't been studied as much because it's harder to investigate systematically. But there's good reason to believe that it represents the same interests as the media, just as one would anticipate.

The doctrinal system, which produces what we call "propaganda" when discussing enemies, has two distinct targets. One target is what's sometimes called the "political class," the roughly 20% of the population that's relatively educated, more or less articulate, playing some role in decision-making. Their acceptance of doctrine is crucial, because they're in a position to design and implement policy.

Then there's the other 80% or so of the population. These are Lippmann's "spectators of action," whom he referred to as the "bewildered herd." They are supposed to follow orders and keep out of the way of the important people. They're the target of the real mass media: the tabloids, the sitcoms, the Super Bowl and so on.

These sectors of the doctrinal system serve to divert the unwashed masses and reinforce the basic social values: passivity, submissiveness to authority, the overriding virtue of greed and personal gain, lack of concern for others, fear of real or imagined enemies, etc. The goal is to keep the bewildered herd bewildered. It's unnecessary for them to trouble themselves with what's happening in the world. In fact, it's undesirable -- if they see too much of reality they may set themselves to change it.

That's not to say that the media can't be influenced by the general population. The dominant institutions -- whether political, economic or doctrinal -- are not immune to public pressures. Independent (alternative) media can also play an important role. Though they lack resources, almost by definition, they gain significance in the same way that popular organizations do: by bringing together people with limited resources who can multiply their effectiveness, and their own understanding, through their interactions -- precisely the democratic threat that's so feared by dominant elites.​
 

corneilius

Well-known member
John Taylor Gatto

And for a detailed understanding of why people accept the propaganda read anything written by John Taylor Gatto, who has written the most important historical expose of 'education' to date, wherein he reveals the real agenda behind eductation -

To create populations of self alienated, insecure people whose inner authority has been subverted, whose only sense of power is externalised and comes from consuming or abstract rebellion and who thus will IGNORE the truth to preserve their conditioned bias.

Such a population will support Governments and Corporations without the need for the traditional methods of extreme violence as were used since the days of Empire and Conquest , and current in the times of JP Morgan, Carnegie and Rockefeller......

Only when you KNOW and UNDERSTAND that what has been done to you was harmful can you resolve it.

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
On a slightly different but related "the press is fucked in this country" note:

Did anyone read the stuff on Lenin's tomb about BNP members and the biggest haul of chemical explosives ever recovered in this country? And how it went unmentioned in the mainstream press whilst a story about a man who had no access to weapons, no detailed plan etc made front pages for several days? (he just happened to be a Muslim, of course...). When the guy who runs Lenin's Tomb contacted the Guardian to get an explanation as to why they weren't covering the story, the merely said that "the police initially downplayed it"!!!!

Absolutely shocking stuff.

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/10/bomb-factory-you-wont-hear-about.html
 
Yes, Gek. Since the Oklahoma City bombing, it has been the covert policy of both US and UK governments to downplay terrorist plots by the all-white radical right and militia groups while actively promoting Islamofascist hysteria instead.

Terror From the Right
Almost 60 terrorist plots uncovered in the U.S.

By Andrew Blejwas, Anthony Griggs and Mark Potok

Ten years after the Oklahoma City bombing left 168 people dead, the guardians of American national security seem to have decided that the domestic radical right does not pose a substantial threat to U.S. citizens.

A draft internal document from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that was obtained this spring by The Congressional Quarterly lists the only serious domestic terrorist threats as radical animal rights and environmental groups like the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. But for all the property damage they have wreaked, eco-radicals have killed no one — something that most definitely cannot be said of the white supremacists and others who people the American radical right.

In the 10 years since the April 19, 1995, bombing in Oklahoma City, in fact, the radical right has produced some 60 terrorist plots. These have included plans to bomb or burn government buildings, banks, refineries, utilities, clinics, synagogues, mosques, memorials and bridges; to assassinate police officers, judges, politicians, civil rights figures and others; to rob banks, armored cars and other criminals; and to amass illegal machine guns, missiles, explosives, and biological and chemical weapons. What follows is a list of key right-wing plots of the last 10 years.
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