{"id":189021,"date":"2019-05-29T05:54:17","date_gmt":"2019-05-29T05:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=189021"},"modified":"2019-06-01T05:43:33","modified_gmt":"2019-06-01T05:43:33","slug":"the-mass-media-is-poisoning-us-with-hate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=189021","title":{"rendered":"The Mass Media Is Poisoning Us With Hate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Hedges \u2013 Information Clearing House May 27, 2019<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In \u201cManufacturing Consent<\/strong><\/span><\/a>: The Political Economy of the Mass Media,\u201d published in 1988, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky exposed the techniques that the commercial media used to promote and defend the economic, social and political agendas of the ruling elites. These techniques included portraying victims as either worthy or unworthy of sympathy. A Catholic priest such as Jerzy Popie\u0142uszko, for example, murdered by the communist regime in Poland in 1984, was deified, but four Catholic missionaries who were raped and murdered in 1980 in El Salvador by U.S.-backed death squads were slandered as fellow travelers of the \u201cMarxist\u201d rebel movement. The techniques also included both narrowing the debate in a way that buttressed the elite consensus and intentionally failing to challenge the intentions of the ruling elites or the actual structures of power.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cManufacturing Consent\u201d was published on the eve of three revolutions that have dramatically transformed the news industry: the rise of right-wing radio and Fox-style TV news that abandon the media\u2019s faux objectivity, the introduction of 24-hour cable news stations, and the creation of internet platforms\u2014owned by a handful of corporations\u2014that control the distribution of news and information and mine our personal data on behalf of advertisers, political campaigns and the government. The sins of the old media, bad though they were, are nothing compared with the sins of the new media. Mass media has degenerated into not only a purveyor of gossip, conspiracy theories and salacious entertainment but, most ominously, a purveyor of hate. Matt Taibbi<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, the author of \u201cHate Inc<\/strong><\/span>.<\/a>: How, and Why, the Media Makes Us Hate One Another,\u201d has dissected modern media platforms in much the same way that Herman and Chomsky did the old media.<\/span><\/p>\n

The new media, Taibbi points out, still manufactures consent, but it does so by setting group against group, a consumer version of what George Orwell in his novel \u201c1984\u201d called the \u201cTwo Minutes Hate<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.\u201d Our opinions and prejudices are skillfully catered to and reinforced, with the aid of a detailed digital analysis of our proclivities and habits, and then sold back to us. The result, Taibbi writes, is \u201cpackaged anger just for you.\u201d The public is unable to speak across the manufactured divide. It is mesmerized by the fake dissent of the culture wars and competing conspiracy theories. Politics, under the assault, has atrophied into a tawdry reality show centered on political personalities. Civic discourse is defined by invective and insulting remarks on the internet. Power, meanwhile, is left unexamined and unchallenged. The result is political impotence among the populace. The moral swamp is not only a fertile place for demagogues such as Donald Trump\u2014a creation of this media burlesque\u2014but channels misplaced rage, intolerance and animosity toward those defined as internal enemies.<\/span><\/p>\n

The old media sold itself as objective, although as Taibbi points out, this was more a reflection of tone rather than content. This vaunted objectivity and impartiality was, at its core, an element of a commercial tactic designed to reach the largest numbers of viewers or readers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cObjectivity was when I was told I couldn\u2019t write with voice,\u201d Taibbi told me when I interviewed him on my television show, \u201cOn Contact.\u201d [Part one<\/strong><\/span><\/a> of the interview; part two<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.] \u201cI couldn\u2019t write with a point of view. Objectivity was to write in a dull, flat, third-person perspective. Don\u2019t express yourself. Don\u2019t be too colorful. This actually was, if you pick up The New York Times today, that same writing style. The original idea behind it is you didn\u2019t want to turn off people on the start because they\u2019re trying to reach the widest possible audience. This also infected radio, television. That\u2019s why you have this Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather-style delivery, which was monotonal, flat, unopinionated. A lot of people thought this was some kind of an ethical decision that news organizations were making. In fact, what they were trying to do is reach the greatest number of people to sell the greatest number of ads. That\u2019s how we developed that idea.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The old media rigidly held to the fiction that there were only two kinds of political opinions\u2014those expressed by Democrats and those expressed by Republicans. These two positions swiftly devolved into caricatures on radio and television. The classic example was the show \u201cCrossfire,\u201d in which two antagonists, the stereotypical liberal and the stereotypical conservative, could never agree. The liberal, Taibbi pointed out, \u201cwas always cast as the person who couldn\u2019t punch back. He was always in retreat. The conservative was always in attack mode. A personality like Tucker Carlson<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.\u201d These staged and choreographed confrontations were, in essence, sporting events.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you watch a [\u2018Sunday NFL] Countdown<\/strong><\/span>\u2019<\/a> you\u2019ll see the sets are designed exactly the same\u201d as that of \u201cCrossfire.\u201d \u201cThe anchor on one side. There\u2019s usually four commentators\u2014two that represent each team. They have graphics that tell you what the score is, who is ahead, who is behind. We want people to perceive politics as something they have a rooting interest in. There\u2019s no possibility of any gray area in any of this. Your political identity can\u2019t possibly bleed into any other political identity. You are on one team or another. That\u2019s it. We don\u2019t even acknowledge the existence of people who have different types of ideas. For instance, anti-abortion but also pro-union. Whatever it is. That doesn\u2019t exist in the media.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact that on most big issues the two major political parties are in agreement is ignored. The deregulation of the financial industry, the militarization of police, the explosion in the prison population, deindustrialization, austerity, the endless wars in the Middle East, the bloated military budget, the control of elections and mass media by corporations and the wholesale surveillance of the population by the government all have bipartisan support. For this reason, they are almost never discussed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always presented as two parties that are always in disagreement about everything,\u201d Taibbi said, \u201cwhich is not true.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe [members of the press] are not focusing on the timeless, permanent nature of how the system works,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t think about the central bank. We don\u2019t think about the security state. We don\u2019t think about any of that stuff. We focus on personalities. Donald Trump versus Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. That simplifies everything and allows us to not look at the bigger picture.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Once the old media model imploded with the arrival of 24-hour news networks, Fox-style news and the internet, the monopoly of a few dominant newspapers and networks ended. In the new setting, media organizations tailor their content to focus on specific demographics.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMSNBC, which has gone through some interesting changes over the years, markets itself as a left-leaning network,\u201d Taibbi said. \u201cBut it was so intensely pro-war in 2002 that it had to uninvite Jesse Ventura<\/strong><\/span><\/a> and Phil Donahue<\/strong><\/span><\/a> from the network. This latest thing was \u2018Russiagate\u2019 and the constant hyping of the narrative \u2018If you watch, you might learn any minute that we, along with Robert Mueller, are going to take down the president.\u2019 \u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The media model not only sets demographic against demographic, it mutes and destroys investigations into corporate systems of oppression and genuine dissent.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to make the news up for these people,\u201d Taibbi said of the process of carving up the public. \u201cYou can just pick stories that they\u2019re going to like. You start feeding them content that is going to ratify their belief systems. Fox did it first. They did it well. They started to make money. They were No. 1 for a long time. But this started to bleed into the rest of the business. Pretty soon, everybody was doing the same thing. It didn\u2019t matter whether you were the food channel tailoring content for people who liked food or MSNBC who tailored content for people who leaned in a certain political direction, you were giving people stuff they wanted to hear.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPreviously, you were looking at the illusion of debate,\u201d Taibbi said of the old media model. \u201cYou would see people arguing on \u2018Crossfire.\u2019 On the op-ed pages, there were people who disagreed with each other. Now, most people\u2019s news consumption experience is tailored entirely to their preferences. \u2026 If you\u2019re only reading media that tailor to your particular belief system you\u2019re not being exposed to other ideas. It\u2019s going to be progressively more vituperative.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the first stories that taught the news business you can actually sell anger as a product was the [Monica] Lewinsky scandal,\u201d Taibbi said.<\/span><\/p>\n

MSNBC built its brand and its audience by relentlessly warning that the presidency of Bill Clinton was in mortal peril during the Lewinsky investigation. It repeated this formula by spending two years hyping the story of supposed Russian collusion with the Trump administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they were trying to do was basically create the impression that [a new] \u2018Watergate was going on, you better tune in because at any moment this could all go kaput,\u2019 \u201d Taibbi said of the Lewinsky scandal. \u201cThey got an enormous market share. Fox added a twist to it. Fox took the same concept and openly villainized the characters. They decided to make Bill and Hillary Clinton into caricatures and cartoon figures, aging hippies. They kept running clip after clip of Hillary Clinton talking about how she didn\u2019t bake cookies. They knew their audience was going to react to all these images in a certain way. They sold people stories that make them angry. They told them, \u2018If you keep tuning in, somehow you are a part of the process. You are a part of this ongoing prosecution of this culture enemy that we\u2019re showing you. \u2026 We tell you about somebody you don\u2019t like. We keep telling you about it over and over to dominate the ratings.\u2019 \u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The result, Taibbi argues, is a marketing strategy that fosters addictive and aggressive behavior. The more the habits of readers and viewers on the internet and electronic devices are tracked, the more the addiction and aggression are fed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis creates more than just pockets of political rancor,\u201d he went on. \u201cIt creates masses of media consumers who have been trained to only see in one direction, as if they have been pulled through history on a railroad track, with heads fastened in blinders, looking only one way. \u2026 Even without the vitriolic content, just the process of surfing and consuming the news has a lot of the same qualities as other addictions\u2014like smoking cigarettes or taking drugs. People get addicted to the feel of their phones. They get addicted to the process of turning on screens. You especially get addicted to the idea that you\u2019re going to turn on a news program or read an article and it\u2019s going to tell you something that is going to anger you even more than you were yesterday.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The template for news, Taibbi writes, is professional wrestling.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWrestling was a commercial formula that they figured out worked incredibly well,\u201d Taibbi said of the corporate owners of news outlets. \u201cThere was a simplified morality play where there was a good guy, who was called the baby face, and a bad guy they called the heel. They relentlessly hyped the bad guy. The heel was more important in wrestling and more popular than the face. The amount of tickets they can sell is a direct correlation to how much people hate the bad guy. You have to have a hateable heel in order to make the formula work. This is how news works.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Reporters, Taibbi writes in his book, \u201cnow regularly do the outraged hero, finger-pointing routine whenever they are within a mile of Trump. Jim Acosta<\/strong><\/span>\u2019<\/a>s confrontations with the president, for instance, seemed pulled straight from WWE [World Wrestling Entertainment] outtakes. Trump\u2019s whole presidency has turned into a heel\/hero promotion with Bob Mueller in the face role.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTrump fits like a glove into the commercial formula of all of this,\u201d Taibbi said in the interview. \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s fascinating about it. He actually makes more money for the MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times side than he does for Fox and the Daily Caller<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. He\u2019s a cartoon character who is a perfect heel. You have an utterly simplified political landscape. There are only two ways to be. You are either for this incredibly noxious figure or you are against him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But, Taibbi notes, there is a diminishing return as with any addiction.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou always have to constantly increase the level of the rhetoric in order to get people to keep coming back,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t be narrowly \u2018incompetent\u2019 or \u2018corrupt.\u2019 Sooner or later, you have to get to the point where you\u2019re saying \u2018demagogues,\u2019 \u2018authoritarians,\u2019 \u2018dictators.\u2019 Finally, as Glenn Beck<\/strong><\/span><\/a> discovered, you have to start calling them Hitler. Beck got to the point where he was simultaneously calling people Hitler and Stalin. It wasn\u2019t enough just to be Hitler.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are defining somebody else as that bad, then everything is permissible,\u201d he said. \u201cWe saw this with Russiagate. The same sort of liberal commentators who, ages ago, would have been very concerned about things such as the collapse of attorney-client privilege, or the FISA<\/a><\/strong><\/span> program, any of that stuff. They don\u2019t care about it anymore. They just want to get the person.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The shaping of the public into antagonistic tribes works commercially. It works politically. But it is a recipe for social disintegration. I watched competing ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia seize rival mass media outlets and use them to spew vitriol and hate against the ethnic group they demonized. The poisonous images and rhetoric that were pumped out month after month in Yugoslavia led to a savage fratricide.<\/span><\/p>\n

The United States is already plagued by an epidemic of mass shootings, death threats against critics of Trump, including Rep. Ilhan Omar<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, and aborted assassination attempts, including a Trump supporter\u2019s mailing of pipe bombs<\/strong><\/span><\/a> last year to prominent Democrats and CNN, an effort to decapitate the hierarchy of the Democratic Party, as well as terrorize the media outlet that is the party\u2019s principal propaganda arm.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re constantly winding up audiences and telling them that all of their troubles are a result of this other group that is literally Hitler, that they\u2019re literally Nazis, they\u2019re literally Stalin, sooner or later some people are going to start picking up weapons and do something crazy,\u201d Taibbi said. \u201cThis is why people are correctly upset about Fox News. But they should also be concerned about other forms of media. The formula is similar across the board.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur system of bubble economics is going to produce some kind of a catastrophe at some point,\u201d Taibbi, the author of one of the finest books on the 2008 financial crash, \u201cGriftopia<\/a><\/strong><\/span>,\u201d concluded. \u201cAt which point, if you tell people often enough that their next-door neighbor is literally in the league with Nazis or terrorists or whatever it is\u2014of course Fox pioneered this, going back to the Iraq War, when we were told liberals were terrorist supporters\u2014sooner or later, there\u2019s going to be violence. The inability of society to agree on a common set of facts means the media has failed already. It means we\u2019re just not reaching people. [In this atmosphere] we will never be able to work things out in a civil way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. <\/em>https:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/author\/chris_hedges\/<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Hedges examines the techniques used in the media to foment rancour and further the principle of divide and rule. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42,53,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-controlling-the-news-andor-the-free-exchange-of-ideas-and-information","category-mind_control","category-The_Media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=189021"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":189024,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189021\/revisions\/189024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=189021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=189021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=189021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}