Noam Chomsky - "10 strategies of manipulation" by the media

Pap

Byrnzie wrote:

You maybe need to fix it up a bit?

1. The strategy of distraction

An essential element of social control is the strategy of distraction, which is to divert public attention from problems and important changes decided by the political and economic elites, by the technique of Flood or flooding of constant distractions and trivial information. The strategy of distraction is also essential to prevent the public interest in the essential knowledge in the area of ​​science, economics, psychology, neurobiology and cybernetics. "Keep the public busy, busy, busy, with no time to think; back on the farm with the other animals". (Quoted in the text Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars).

2. Create problems and offer solutions.

This method is also called "Problem-reaction-solution." It creates a problem, a "situation" created to cause some reaction in the audience, so that this is the norm of the measures you would accept. For example: Let unfold and intensify urban violence, or organizing bloody attacks, so that the public is the applicant's law security and policies to the detriment of freedom. Or: Create an economic crisis to accept as a necessary evil retreat of social rights and dismantling of public services.

3. The strategy of gradualism.

To make acceptable an unacceptable measure, gradually apply enough, drop by drop, for consecutive years. It is that way new radical socioeconomic conditions (neoliberalism) were imposed during the 1980’s and 1990’s: the minimal state, privatization, insecurity, flexibility, mass unemployment, wages that do not ensure decent incomes, many changes that would have given rise to a revolution if they had been applied all at once.

4. The strategy of deferring.

Another way to accept an unpopular decision is to present it as "painful and necessary", gaining public acceptance at the time, for future application. It is easier to accept a future sacrifice than an immediate sacrifice. First, because the measure is not used immediately, then because the public, the masses, always have the tendency to expect naively that "everything will improve tomorrow" and that the sacrifice required may be avoided. This gives more time for public get used to the idea of ​​change and accept it with resignation when the time comes.

5. Address the public as you would a little child.

Most targeted advertising to the general public uses discourse, arguments, characters with especially childish intonation, often targeting frailty, as if the viewer were a creature of very young age or mentally impaired. The more you try to fool the viewer, the more childish the adopted tone. Why? "If one goes to a person as she had the age of 12 years or less, then, because of suggestion, that person tends, with some probability, to respond or react without much thought as a person 12 years old or younger would (see "Silent Weapons for quiet wars")".

6. Appeal to the Emotional aspects rather than critical thought.

Make use of Emotional response is a classic technique to cause a short circuit on rational analysis and finally the critical sense of the individual. Moreover, appealing emotions opens the door to the unconscious for implanting or grafting ideas, desires, fears and doubts, compulsions, or induce behaviors...

7. Keep the public in ignorance and mediocrity.

Making sure the public is incapable of understanding the technologies and methods used to control and enslave. "The quality of education given to the lower social classes should be as poor and mediocre as possible so that the gap of ignorance between the plans lower classes and upper classes is and remains impossible to achieve for the lower classes (see "Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars")".

8. Encourage the public to be complacent with mediocrity.

Promote to the public to believe that being stupid, vulgar and uneducated is fashionable...

9. Reinforce self-blame.

To make believe the individual that he/she is the culprit for their own misfortune, because of the failure of their intelligence, their abilities, or their efforts. So, instead of rebelling against the economic system, the individual devaluates and blames himself, which generates a depressive state, one of whose purposes is creating a lack of action, and without action, there is no revolution!

10. Understand individuals better than they understand themselves.

During the past 50 years, rapid advances in science have generated a growing knowledge gap between public and those owned and used by the dominant elites. With biology, neurobiology and applied psychology, the "system" has enjoyed a sophisticated understanding of human beings, both physically and psychologically. The system has gotten better at knowing the common folk than what he knows of himself. This means that in most cases, that the system has a greater control and a great power over individuals, than the power that individuals have on themselves.

Free

Working off this wonderful piece on media manipulation, some new information.

http://fair.org/home/an-unqualified-success-at-media-manipulation/

An Unqualified Success at Media Manipulation

On Tuesday, April 5, Bernie Sanders won the Wisconsin Democratic primary by double digits, and his victory speech ran for half an hour on CNN, a rare media moment when he was able to repeat the issues that have resonated with many Democratic primary voters.

After the Wisconsin loss, the Hillary Clinton campaign went into high gear, sending emails out announcing a new strategy of going negative. The next day, CNN (4/6/16) ran a piece by senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny that began, “Hillary Clinton’s campaign is taking new steps to try and disqualify Bernie Sanders in the eyes of Democratic voters.” The story laid out Clinton’s new “three-part strategy” with regard to Sanders: “Disqualify him, defeat him and unify the party later.”

Political strategists know well that attacks can backfire, especially for candidates with high negatives such as Hillary Clinton. Accordingly, the Clinton campaign attacked Sanders through a common political maneuver: They used surrogates.

CNN’s Zeleny reported:

A Clinton campaign fundraising appeal after the Wisconsin primary offered a glimpse into the new approach. The campaign’s deputy communications director, Christina Reynolds, argued that Sanders is unqualified, sending a full transcript of a New York Daily News editorial board interview of Sanders. [Emphasis added.]

“We’ve said for a long time that this primary is about who’s really going to be able to get things done. And from reading this interview, you get the impression Senator Sanders hasn’t thought very much about that,” Reynolds wrote. “In fact, even on his signature issue of breaking up the banks, he’s unable to answer basic questions about how he’d go about doing it, and even seems uncertain whether a president does or doesn’t already have that authority under existing law.”

Though as FAIR (4/7/16) pointed out, the banking issue was a red herring. (“When asked how he would break up the big banks, Sanders said he would leave that up to the banks,” economist Dean Baker wrote. “That’s exactly the right answer.”) But by Wednesday, MSNBC’s Morning Joe (4/6/16) had already picked up the Clinton campaign’s talking points. Host Joe Scarborough repeatedly tried to get Clinton herself to weigh in on whether Sanders was “unqualified” to be president. Instead of answering yes or no, she reiterated the campaign’s carefully massaged strategy: “I think he hadn’t done his homework, and he’d been talking for more than a year about doing things that he obviously hadn’t really studied or understood, and that does raise a lot of questions.”

(As Salon—4/8/16—pointed out, “question” is what Donald Trump did in 2012 regarding Barack Obama’s birth certificate: “I don’t consider myself birther or not birther, but there are some major questions here.”)

The Washington Post (4/6/16) jumped in with a story headlined “Clinton Questions Whether Sanders Is Qualified to Be President.” Though it parrots the Clinton campaign’s talking points against Sanders, it attributed them to anonymous “critics” rather than to the campaign:

Clinton’s comments follow a New York Daily News interview with Sanders that critics say revealed his inability to explain specifically how he would accomplish goals such as breaking up the biggest banks. [Emphasis added]

On Wednesday night, Sanders responded to the charges at a rally at Temple University, where he suggested Clinton was getting a little nervous. “And she has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, quote unquote, not qualified to be president.” He went on to use the phrase as a rhetorical devise to criticize her policy record:

I don’t believe that she is qualified if she is, through her Super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special interest funds. I don’t think that you are qualified if you get $15 million from Wall Street through your Super PAC. I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq. I don’t think you are qualified if you’ve supported virtually every disastrous trade agreement, which has cost us millions of decent-paying jobs.

The next move revealed the sophisticated media-handling of Clinton campaign strategists. Clinton operatives Christina Reynolds and Brian Fallon went on the offensive with, as Salon (4/8/16) put it, “sanctimonious incredulity,” saying, “This is a ridiculous and irresponsible attack for someone to make.” They complained that Clinton herself had never said such a thing, yet Sanders opened his comments with “quote, unquote.”

And that’s when the media storm hit. In the face of Clinton denials, media opened with Bernie Sanders going negative:

NBC (4/7/16): “Bernie Sanders: Hillary Clinton Not ‘Qualified’ to Be President. The gloves are truly off between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Less than 24 hours after Sanders’ big win in Wisconsin, the senator from Vermont hammered Clinton for not being “qualified” to be president.”
NPR (All Things Considered, 4/7/16): “The Democratic presidential race has turned negative. Bernie Sanders now says Hillary Clinton isn’t qualified to be president.”
Huffington Post (4/7/16): “Sanders’ criticisms of Clinton focused on her policy positions, but to many of her supporters they came off as a personal insult…. Especially for many older supporters, they have heard throughout their lives that they’re not as qualified as their male counterparts, and they relate personally to the struggles Clinton has faced.”
Paul Krugman (New York Times, 4/8/16): “The way Mr. Sanders is now campaigning raises serious character and values issues…. There was Wednesday’s rant about how Mrs. Clinton is not ‘qualified’ to be president…. Is Mr. Sanders positioning himself to join the ‘Bernie or bust’ crowd, walking away if he can’t pull off an extraordinary upset, and possibly helping put Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in the White House?”
The ‘Factcheckers’ Step In

By late Thursday afternoon, the website PolitiFact (4/7/16) evaluated Sanders’ claim, asking and answering, “Did Hillary Clinton Say Bernie Sanders ‘Not Qualified’ to Be President? Not Directly.” Sanders’ claim was “mostly false,” it found, citing Morning Joe, where Clinton only “questioned” his qualifications. When the Sanders campaign pointed to the CNN report saying that the Clinton campaign would “disqualify him, defeat him and unify the party later,” PolitiFact retorted that the CNN article says “Clinton spokeswoman Christina Reynolds argued that Sanders is unqualified,” not Clinton.

Even more curious was the Washington Post’s (4/7/16) review of Sanders’ claim in a piece titled “Sanders’ Incorrect Claim That Clinton Called Him ‘Not Qualified’ for the Presidency.” The Post gave Sanders three-out-of-four pinocchios for dishonesty, saying: “Sanders is putting words in Clinton’s mouth. She never said ‘quote unquote’ that he was not qualified to be president…. He can’t slam her for words she did not say.”

Free

The Post gave itself no pinocchios for headlining its own article the day before, “Clinton Questions Whether Sanders Is Qualified to Be President.” It offered instead, “The art of headline writing is an imperfect art.” Not only doesn’t the Post hold Clinton responsible for her campaign’s negative attacks, it treats her use of surrogates to make negative attacks as a positive, saying “she diplomatically went out of her way to avoid saying” that Sanders was unqualified.

In the face of Sanders’ responding in kind, Clinton retreated by way of a similarly disingenuous comment she made to reporters outside Yankee stadium on Thursday. CBS (4/7/16) and other media reported that Clinton laughed off the attack when reporters asked her to react to Sanders: “Well, it’s kind of a silly thing to say.” She added, “I don’t know why he’s saying that. But I will take Bernie Sanders over Donald Trump or Ted Cruz any time, so let’s keep our eye on what’s really at stake in this election.”

As Clinton backed off from the “disqualify” strategy, Sanders backed off as well, telling the Today show (4/8/16), “I respect Hillary Clinton, we were colleagues in the Senate, and on her worst day she would be an infinitely better president than either of the Republican candidates.” He acknowledged to Charlie Rose (CBS Evening News, 4/7/16) that he was responding to the Clinton camp’s declarations that “they’re going to go much more negative on us.”

But in the aftermath of the Wisconsin win, the media frame was not about Sanders’ momentum, Clinton’s connection to the Panamanian tax haven or, as US Uncut (4/8/16) reported, three major policy wins for Bernie Sanders, but how Sanders had gone negative and was untruthful. It occupied the news cycle for days, knocking out a barrage of bad press that was hobbling her in the run-up to the New York primary. With a lot of help from media friends, the Clinton people rewrote the news.<\b>

brianlux

Time and again the media has proved itself to be in Hillary's pocket. Thankfully, we have a more broad spectrum of information on the internet. Hopefully more people will begin to seek out that information and rely less on the major media news forces that dominate television. Sadly, the average American thus far is still tuned into the boob tube, if they are tuned in at all.