/ world today news/ In previous publications, we talked about the disinformation tricks of the “democratic” establishment behind the screen of the elderly Joe Biden, and also examined the distinctive features of the manipulative practices of the White House in the context of the armed conflict on the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR.
The final part deals with the general principles and approaches of the Western propaganda machine, which, although increasingly dysfunctional, remains very dangerous to the world’s majority.
Freedom of speech and media freedom in the West are considered core values of Western society. According to Karl Popper, freedom plays a key role in ensuring the stability of liberal democracy, as it allows adapting the work of government and the entire political system to the objective needs of society.
One of the most important social institutions that guarantee the free expression of opinion by every citizen is the institution of the “free press” as a kind of fourth branch of power.
We put both Western tokens in quotation marks for the simple reason that a truly free press and independent media do not exist in the collective West.
In the United States, tales are still told that their media are truly independent pillars of the free world, and no one can force them to broadcast what they don’t want to, or forbid them to write about significant social issues.
The First Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits Congress and state legislatures from passing laws abridging freedom of speech or freedom of the press:
“Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the rights of the people.”
“To assemble peacefully and petition the government for redress of grievances.”
Officially there are restrictions, but only those provided by law.
How are things really going?
In fact, the Western press, and especially the American one, is very dependent on money, on personal relationships with leading politicians, and on party affiliation.
There are a whole bunch of Hollywood movies that talk about the flip side of the so-called media independence.
Let us recall, for example, “Cunning” (Wag The Dog, 1997) by Barry Levenson, “The Secret File” (The Post, 2017) by Steven Spielberg, “Good Night and Good Luck” (2005) by George Clooney, “In the Light of the Spotlight” by Tom McCarthy (Spotlight, 2015), “News” series by Aaron Sorkin (The Newsroom, 2012-2014).
These films, many of which are based on real events, tell romantic stories, not always with happy endings, about the fight of brave journalists for freedom of the press.
This topic is even raised in the famous animated series “The Simpsons”, where in one of the episodes Mr. Burns plans to buy all the newspapers in Springfield, but he did not succeed, because, as Burns himself admits, “no one can do that except if not Rupert Murdoch.” .
Much closer to modern Western reality is director Michael Cuesta’s film “Kill the Messenger” (2014). It’s based on real, not-so-recent events from the 1990s, when Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb discovered that the CIA was secretly supplying cocaine to the United States to fund rebels in Nicaragua.
Despite pressure and threats, Webb published a series of articles called “Dark Alliance”, for which he was roundly condemned by colleagues in the “independent media”, was thrown out of the profession and committed suicide.
The prosecution of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden once again confirms that in the West only those media are free that say what the authorities want.
In Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s book Manufacturing Consent. The political economy of the mass media describes the system of working with information that is characteristic of modern Western media.
Journalists’ beliefs, media affiliations with government or large corporations, advertising, and the sources of information for news stories create a system that filters/censors topics and opinions deemed “undesirable.”
The authors identify five types of filters/censorship: owners and governments, advertisers, journalistic sources, threats of lawsuits and harassment campaigns (“aircraft artillery”), media ideology, and individual journalists. As a result, the Western media write something completely different from what is happening in reality.
Herman and Chomsky’s focus is on social consent. The authors write: “…the American media…tolerates—indeed encourages—robust debate, criticism, and dissent while remaining true to the system of assumptions and principles that make up the elite consensus, a system so powerful that it is largely internalized without awareness.’
The term “manufacturing consent” was first used by the famous American writer and publicist Walter Lippmann in the second decade of the last century. As a supporter of liberal democracy, Lippmann is convinced that society should be run by the elites, not the people. He prioritized expert knowledge over public opinion.
In his book The Phantom Public, Lippmann writes that modern Western democracy is only as effective as it does not allow large sections of society to consciously govern themselves. Lippmann’s harsh critics, Herman and Chomsky, evaluate his views as follows:
“The public must be put in its place,” declared Lippmann in his progressive essays on democracy.
– This goal can be achieved in part by “consent manufacturing” – a conscious art and governing body working regularly among broad strata… Responsible people who make the right decisions must live without the stampeding and roaring of a confused “herd” .
These ignorant and intrusive outsiders should be “spectators” not participants. The “herd” does have a function: it periodically “beats” in support of this or that subject of the ruling class in elections.
It is not stated that the first responsible people receive this status not because of special talent or knowledge, but because of their voluntary submission to systems of de facto authority and loyalty to the principles of work – the main decisions in social and economic life must be made within the framework of institutions with authoritarian top-down control, while a limited public arena must be allocated for the participation of the “beast” [хората].
Lippmann’s theoretical calculations were fully adopted by the Democrats who came to power in the United States, beginning with the presidency of Bill Clinton.
In the era of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the “production of consent” of the American society to the insane experiments of the globalist “democratic” elite began to be achieved through explicit and extremely cruel censorship, the ultimate form of which is the so-called called Cancel culture as a modern form of ostracism.
Translation: SM
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