News agendas, they're controlling your mind and you don't even know it.

a reply to: and14263

That's why I pay zero attention to any of it. Any news I hear anything about I hear about here, and I only read about it if I find it interesting. Not very often does that happen, and when it does I can think about it critically and not just swallow it like a baited hook. I'm seriously out of the loop in this world and that's how I like it. I do sometimes feel detached though... hello? Is anybody else here? Hello? lol...

originally posted by: and14263
I see it all the time on here. There are two or three free thinkers. The rest let the media control what they think, their opinions, their reactions, their emotions.

That is offensive. You are yet another who thinks they are especially enlightened, at least you agreed there were '2 or 3 others' on this site. After the first sentence, I stopped reading.

a reply to: and14263

Ah, you noticed.

a reply to: reldra

I'm not enlightened mate. Just appreciating the stuff I've learned on here. Don't take offence

It is all propaganda made to make certain groups feel certain thing for other groups. All one needs to do to recognize this is look up the beginning of the Third Reich and their propaganda against the Jews.

Our media is working overtime by creating the same type of divide between all groups. Things are blown out of proportion to incite rage and hate.

What you say is true. Turn off the news folks and live your lives.

It is easier said than done, I know.

a reply to: and14263

Perhaps that is a question for Rupert Murdoch?

No, it's a question for you, because you seem to think the media are a sort of nonprofit propaganda organ for somebody or other. How does that fact that media consumers dictate media content square with your theory that news is actually propaganda? Do people like reading, listening to and watching propaganda?

(The answer, by the way, is 'yes', and this includes you).

*

a reply to: Liquesence

Do we show people what they *want* to see, or do we do our jobs as journalists and seek to inform our citizenry?

Media adapt. Viewership then begins to dictate content (to a degree).

Indeed, journalism, in large part, has taken a backseat to the business model (hence money).

THAT'S the problem.

I don't disagree with you, but this is not what the OP states. It is incompatible with what the OP states.

a reply to: brandiwine14

No, it's not, it's not hard at all. I never even think about what's being discussed on TV or radio or even in the paper. I just live my life, I go to work, come home and work here and bath the kids and get them to bed. Maybe once in a while the wife and I will watch a show that we like with no commercials because we don't watch anything unless it's DVRed. I have absolutely no idea what's being discussed by 98% of the people around me, and I could care less. I care more about the things I devout my life to that probably no one else on the face of the planet gives a crap about. It's what I like and that's what makes me tick.

I realized that I made it sound like I get off on the mundane, but nothing could be farther from the truth. I live for the stuff I do after the rest of my family goes to bed. I build guitars, effects, amplifiers, write songs, record, and do all kinds of other things too. I can't even scratch the surface. The only thing I regret is that I am getting old and I am more and more having to face my mortality. Good thing I also work out like a dog so that I can try to extend my life expectancy.

a reply to: Astyanax

Rupert Murdoch makes profit.

It looks like the OP has not been able to get the response to his rhetorical question that he wanted. Okay, we give up; why are the three headline stories about terrorism news?

a reply to: and14263

Well if we put you Sir in charge of reporting the News do you think so many will be interested if you can only imagine that there are a few free thinkers like yourself here on ATS.
I live in a small town in the UK our little bit of crime is written and reported within local news papers, on the internet and on social media like Tv and radio when warranted. The top story around here at the moment is the Tunisia massacre where 38 have been murdered by a deluded gunman or gunmen. You have never had better access to all news media available from around our world, you can be selective with what you read or watch or as seems from some within this thread go unplug your modem, turn off your Tv and go gossip or grumble with your family and friends..
And world population is still going up not down for all those doomgloomers. Peace..

www.worldometers.info...

a reply to: DJW001

What are you fishing for? If you've missed the point just say. If you want to make me look stupid to make you feel good then go ahead.

It's obvious from the OP that I'm talking about a controlled news agenda instilling fear and control, dividing us into left and right, black and white... Control, divide and conquer.

It also obvious that the news agenda is a clicks = cash scenario. I don't know what you're trying to prove/say? You surely understand why I posted the three pictures? A visual example of a controlled means of communication. Setting the schemas we use to assess/analyse our world. Of which the current schema is 'brown Muslim with turban = terrorist' - divide and conquer.

Now before you carry in... Yes, terrorism is terrible, it needs to be reported, it IS news. But the biased slant and weight on/towards these stories is a small ingredient in the mix of the media control of the minds if the people.

I can't believe I even rose to give you an answer.

Keep up the quality input to the threads on here, you're doing well!

a reply to: and14263

Now before you carry in... Yes, terrorism is terrible, it needs to be reported, it IS news. But the biased slant and weight on/towards these stories is a small ingredient in the mix of the media control of the minds if the people.

The problem is not that the media are carrying stories about terrorism, economic crises and the war in Europe; the problem is that they distract people from these vital issues by giving the same weight to stories about celebrity divorces. The media are not trying to create polarization, the polarization exists. Media exploit the polarization in order to garner market share.Although some media outlets specialize in fear mongering, most actually try to distract the public from what is really happening. There is no question that different media outlets will have different biases; in some countries, the media is entirely controlled by the government to prevent opposition; in Europe and the US, the biases are, as I said, more about appealing to a specific market than creating an artificial reality.

yep OP is correct .
It's divide and conquer 24/7/365.

There are now 1,800 billionaires on the planet.
Those are The Powers That Be.
There are 7,500,000,000 of us non billionaires.
With numbers like those you can bet they
are some paranoid false flag producing MFer's.

TPTB have and will place any number of chosen "bogeys" between
us and them. Think about how easy it would become
if the parameters were us versus the Billionaires ?

What they fear is you figuring out that
if the chain of command is broken from the billionaire
down ,NO ONE is following orders from the top
.000001% pyramid anymore.

Factories hospitals and power plants are useless without a blue collar
worker to run them. The same reasoning applies all throughout the spectrum.
This is what THEY worry about. The fact is that We the people
don't need them at all.

As a matter of fact these 1800 soft, so called humans,
whose suits smell like air conditioning, aren't capable of anything
other than being a black hole devouring profit and human rights.
I for one am sick of them

a reply to: DJW001

Media exploit the polarisation...

You don't have to accept this.... But sorry for my shi**y reply.

That quote from you above has made me look from a different angle. And that I appreciate. But it still leaves me asking who controls the media and why are they given free reign to exploit the polarisation and skew the bases the public form their opinions and political motivations from?

I'm not yet willing to accept it's purely money which is the driving force behind the headlines and pictures we see. I still think it's control from the higher few. They want to control us, not for clicks and cash but for their domination .... Which IS money and power, I admit. But it's power first. I think.

(I starred you for not rising to my cheap shots. Lesson learnt.)

a reply to: and14263

It also obvious that the news agenda is a clicks = cash scenario.

Don't you see how this is incompatible with programming that is designed to propagate a specified agenda?

In the advertising business, copywriters and other creative thinkers are taught what can be achieved in communications terms and what can't. Promoting an impulse purchase or creating desire for a glossy new product is relatively easy. Reinforcing people's beliefs and helping them justify their choices to themselves and others are not hard either. But getting people to take new ideas on board is hard, particularly when this involves cognitive dissonance with what is already believed. And changing people's minds is the hardest task of all.

In fact, it's so hard that we advise clients not to try unless there is absolutely no other option. Look at how many decades it took to change public attitudes about smoking.

There is only one way to combine the ridiculously difficult task of changing minds with a profit-based business model: abandon business ethics let the client throw his money away on communications campaigns that don't work while you pocket the ad revenues and media commissions. How long do you think the secret masters of the world are going to let themselves be fleeced like that?

originally posted by: Astyanax
Conspiracy theorists love to say 'follow the money'.

Okay, let's follow the money. The 'mainstream media' in America are largely owned by six big companies. They're not in business for their health. They're in business to make money. How do they make it? These are publicly-owned companies, their accounts and balance sheets are public documents. We know they make their money principally through advertising and related marketing activities.

Who gets the most money? Advertisers want their message to reach the widest possible audience. So they try to put their ads in the media that have the most viewers, readers, listeners, followers, etc. Of course, the media owners know this, so advertising rates vary in line with audience size. The most expensive commercial spot on US TV used to be (and maybe still is) the half-time slot at the Super Bowl, because it's supposed to have (or have had) the biggest viewership of all.

What does this mean? It means that the most successful and profitable media properties are the most popular ones.

Why do media organizations spend billions of dollars on audience research and polling? They want to know what people want to watch. Their content and programming choices are determined by this. It is the audiences themselves, ultimately, who decide — and in large part determine — what appears on the media.

So who, then, is dominating whom?

Although I don't agree with the OP I do think the "corporate media" operates to sell a certain narrative.

This should have become obvious in the run up to the Iraq war, when CNN,MSNBC, Fox and ABC sang in unison beating the war drums.

It's not a "conspiracy theory" to say the corporate news media outlets operate rather dubiously.

It's like people just can't say it. Capitalism taints "democracy". Period. Actual democracy isn't possible with capitalism. People have to be dragged along. Kicking and screaming if need be.

scholar.princeton.edu...

Like The Iraq war. The the corporate ACA. Like Clinton's "welfare reforms". Like all the tax breaks for the top .01%.

Anything that brings prolonged negative focus onto big business won't be aired on TV news in an objective manner. Even further, any prolonged efforts in opposition to the Pentagons agenda won't be framed in a positive light.

Those who run the government and the large corporations who pay them aren't going to dig their own graves by allowing TV news to shine the light on their activity.

Even mainstream liberals such as Bill Moyers understand this to an extent. Money runs the show. Concentrated wealth not only manipulates our government but also manipulates TV news and the Internet as much as possible.

The Internet is a dangerous thing. The state department is aware of this and they blatantly use it in foreign countries to manipulate the political process. Most recent example was in Cuba with the USG's "Cuban Twitter" fiasco.

a reply to: JeanPaul

It's like people just can't say it. Capitalism taints "democracy". Period.

Not just capitalism. Everything taints democracy, because that is how it's meant to be.

Democracy is the marketplace of special interests. The currency is votes. This is entirely as it should be — right and proper. If you want government by the people, you have to accept that the people are not all going to want the same thing. Only a fool believes in the wisdom of the mob: democracy's great flaw is that it privileges the lowest common denominator. Citizens in a democracy find it hard to unite behind a cause — no matter how just and worthy — and almost impossible to plan for the future. Democracies are also desperately vulnerable to what economists call 'the tragedy of the commons', aka human selfishness.

Since these defects are built into the very concept of government by popular vote, democratic structures have to be designed to protect citizens from powerful, persuasive special interests and what de Toqueville called the dictatorship of the majority. Checks (and yes, balances) have to be built into the system. They are always more or less authoritarian in nature.

But you can't write a perfect democratic constitution and leave it at that. Sooner or later people find ways around the checks and balances — loopholes in the system by means of which they can privilege themselves and their friends at the expense of the common good. New checks and systems then have to be invented to close the loopholes. This is an ongoing process — an evolutionary arms race.

Inspect the history of democracy up close (I recommend reading this book). You will see that it has been constantly evolving under pressure from its enemies and its parasites. And it will continue to do so as long as people desire justice, fairness and liberty. It will never be perfected. At times it may fail utterly, because the times demand more authoritarian forms of government. But I do not think it will ever disappear for good.

Besides, you can't have democracy without capitalism. Kings, despots and oligarchs can help themselves to the wealth they need in order to maintain their rule. But governments of the people have only two sources of revenue: foreign military adventures and taxes. Given the risks of the first course, it is usually wiser to opt for the second. But you need big concentrations of wealth that you can tax. Hence the importance of capitalism: it generates wealth among the people.

Yes, I said 'among the people'.

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: JeanPaul

It's like people just can't say it. Capitalism taints "democracy". Period.

Not just capitalism. Everything taints democracy, because that is how it's meant to be.

Democracy is the marketplace of special interests. The currency is votes. This is entirely as it should be — right and proper. If you want government by the people, you have to accept that the people are not all going to want the same thing. Only a fool believes in the wisdom of the mob: democracy's great flaw is that it privileges the lowest common denominator. Citizens in a democracy find it hard to unite behind a cause — no matter how just and worthy — and almost impossible to plan for the future. Democracies are also desperately vulnerable to what economists call 'the tragedy of the commons', aka human selfishness.

Since these defects are built into the very concept of government by popular vote, democratic structures have to be designed to protect citizens from powerful, persuasive special interests and what de Toqueville called the dictatorship of the majority. Checks (and yes, balances) have to be built into the system. They are always more or less authoritarian in nature.

But you can't write a perfect democratic constitution and leave it at that. Sooner or later people find ways around the checks and balances — loopholes in the system by means of which they can privilege themselves and their friends at the expense of the common good. New checks and systems then have to be invented to close the loopholes. This is an ongoing process — an evolutionary arms race.

Inspect the history of democracy up close (I recommend reading this book). You will see that it has been constantly evolving under pressure from its enemies and its parasites. And it will continue to do so as long as people desire justice, fairness and liberty. It will never be perfected. At times it may fail utterly, because the times demand more authoritarian forms of government. But I do not think it will ever disappear for good.

Besides, you can't have democracy without capitalism. Kings, despots and oligarchs can help themselves to the wealth they need in order to maintain their rule. But governments of the people have only two sources of revenue: foreign military adventures and taxes. Given the risks of the first course, it is usually wiser to opt for the second. But you need big concentrations of wealth that you can tax. Hence the importance of capitalism: it generates wealth among the people.

Yes, I said 'among the people'.

You're ignoring the actual historical cases where young democracies were crushed by the USG. But hey, don't let me ruin your plastic brand of "pragmatism".

a reply to: and14263

By and large, Britain does not have a free press. Our media is not run by the government, and nor does it engage in widespread censorship. Instead, the media is run by a tiny group of politically motivated moguls, themselves in league with other private interests through advertising or personal networks. Journalists from non-privileged backgrounds are filtered out through unpaid internships and expensive post-graduate qualifications, ensuring the media is a closed shop for the well-to-do.

www.theguardian.com...


Now you have a hint with regards to your 'why'.