LEGACY MEDIA AS PROPAGANDA OUTLETS
Feb 24, 2024
John Locke, an English Philosopher, wrote about the necessity of offering proof “other than by often repeating it, which among some men, goes for argument.” So as not to be guilty of deserving that reproach, I need to define and explain the collusion of government and media interests that I feel has reached the threshold of propaganda, an accusation I’ve made repeatedly.
Over my lifetime, the news media has transitioned from being respected as the “Fourth Estate” of government into a conglomerate of untrustworthy entities that parrot whatever government narrative is being flogged.
This essay will describe the sequences of events and market forces that lead to the collapse of a previously independent minded media. However, it is more important to understand why the current manifestation of the media represents an existential threat to our freedom.
In his 2022 book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, renowned clinical psychologist, Mattais Desmet explains a process by which we voluntarily surrender our freedoms. Using the Covid Pandemic as an example, he explains how the phenomena of “Mass Formation” works to our detriment.
It is well worth the time spent reading it. If you’re pressed for time, then his interview on Jay Bhattacharva’s podcast, “The Illusions of Consensus”, will give you the basic points.
For this essay, the cliff notes will suffice. The process proceeds along the following lines: social isolation –loneliness – anxiety – frustration – anger. These emotions can be amplified by Technology, Social Media, and the Internet, which can then be used by a government to induce a climate of fear that leads to a collective psychosis.
This “Mass Formation” is then used to persuade citizens to act against their own best interests. Totalitarianism doesn’t form in a vacuum. It follows a predictable path, and it requires the acquiescence of the media in all its forms. During a Mass Formation, a government controlled media can exacerbate the problem. An echo chamber of deliberate misinformation which increases fear and anxiety creates an ideological blindness making compliance of totalitarian dictates more likely.
Individual freedoms are surrendered without a whimper. This is what occurred during the Covid Pandemic. The only defense against mass formation and that collective psychosis is sincere speech that speaks the truth, and free speech requires an independent media. How do you wake up from the matrix, if you don’t know you’re in the matrix?
An independent media is the “Red Pill”.
I think it would suffice at this point to keep it simple, and merely list as bullet points the course of change:
- CNN establishes a twenty four hour news format requiring an increase of both financial expenditures and personnel.
- Competition and pressure to achieve profitability resulted in expanded programing and new prime time offerings.
- A proliferation of choice eventually instigated an era of consolidation to rein in costs and increase market share.
- Five conglomerates control 90% of media markets.
- Ten companies own half of all daily newspapers.
- Corporate suits, not Journalists, now control the news media.
- Ethical conflicts of interest suppress investigative journalism.
- The Internet changed how citizens receive their news.
- The Internet switched from being a vehicle of free speech to one of selective censorship.
- Advances in Artificial Intelligence allow data mining and more effective censorship on social media venues.
The mechanisms for a conjunction of media and government were now in place, and all that was required was a catalyst which came in the form of a Pandemic.
Analyzing the events which occurred during the Pandemic illustrates in the clearest possible way how the government suborned the press. Initially, the only thing we knew about SARS-CoV-2 was what the press reported. Having lost their investigative moxie, the press reported what the government told them. The government told us lies to manipulate behavior.
The mainstream media repeated that propaganda without question, but always in a manner to induce fear and anxiety. That fear induced a Mass Formation and collective psychosis that enabled the government to induce compliance. Intelligent people, who might otherwise have questioned the narrative, where caught up in that collective psychosis. They became convinced that they were doing the right thing, even when telling “Noble Lies”, or pushing mandates they knew were wrong.
It is not my intent to deconstruct each of the lies that I’m going to list. Four years after the start of the pandemic there is near unanimous acceptance among independent scientists that these statements were in fact deliberate lies.
Others have written whole books with copious documentation proving them as lies, as have numerous peer reviewed papers. If you still believe them to be true, then either you have a severe case of cognitive dissonance, or you only get your information from the legacy media. The following list of deliberate lies is not exhaustive: just one that makes the case for what I’m trying to illustrate:
· It was a Highly Lethal Virus
· It was Not a Wuhan Lab Leak
· The Vaccines are Safe & Effective
· Vaccinations will prevent Transmission
· Masks, Lock-downs and Social Distancing will stop the spread
Each of these narratives were initially presented by the FDA and CDC as fact.
Each lie was then repeated ad nauseam by the media in a manner that was almost identical; as if some other entity was writing a universal script to be parroted.
The government also spent 1 billion dollars paying comedians, commentators, social influencers and talk show hosts to repeat these lies. A fully fledged Mass Formation event is characterized by two disparate groups: one who believes and one who doesn’t. When members of the latter group began to question the government narrative they were attacked by the media, censored, canceled, gas lighted, disparaged, subjected to ad hominem attacks, and/or fired. These dissidents were people of character who persisted in speaking truth to lies using various internet platforms.
The government censorship establishment, a product of the cold war, applied intense pressure to social media companies to use their Artificial Intelligence Algorithms (AI) to either moderate, throttle, censure or de-platform anyone posting content contradicting the approved narrative.
After purchasing Twitter (now X), Elon Musk released copious documentation proving that the government coordinated censorship with Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Google Searches, Linkedln, and other platforms. The Attorney Generals of Missouri, Louisiana, and the lawyers for Robert Kennedy’s Third Party Candidacy have all won court cases concerning that government sponsored censorship.
The Pandemic crisis has since been replaced by other crises in a continuous succession; Climate Change, the Ukraine War, Illegal Immigration, the Palestinian attack on Israel, etc. Our government continues to spin their preferred narrative with lies. Having once been complicit, the legacy media continues to act as the official propaganda voice for the government.
The Freedom of Speech enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights is the cornerstone of our Constitutional Republic. The collusion of censorship between government and the media is a serious internal existential threat to a free America. We are farther along the road to Totalitarianism than many of us realize.
