Tag Archives: mainstream media

The Power of Astroturfing

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How Astroturfing and Other Media Manipulation Compromise Your Ability to Get Truthful Information

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola 
  • March 29, 2024

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Ninety percent of news media are controlled by six corporations. As a result, the vast majority of what you read, see and hear is part of a carefully orchestrated narrative created and controlled by special interest groups
  • “Astroturf” is the effort on the part of large corporate special interests to surreptitiously sway public opinion by making it appear as though it’s a grassroots effort for or against a particular agenda
  • Wikipedia is astroturf’s dream come true. Many pages are controlled by anonymous Wikipedia editors on behalf of special interests who forbid and reverse edits that go against their agenda

Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published October 28, 2017.

Ninety percent of news media, be it television, radio, print or online, are controlled by six corporations. As a result, the vast majority of what you read, see and hear is part of a carefully orchestrated narrative created and controlled by special interest groups.

When you combine that with other astroturf and public manipulation schemes that hide the identity of these special interests, the end result is, to use investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson’s term, a Truman-esque fictitious reality, where medical journals, doctors, media and presumably independent consumer groups all seem to be in agreement. The problem is it may all be false.

Attkisson is a five-time Emmy Award-winning anchor, producer and reporter whose television career spans more than three decades. In 2009, she blew the lid off the swine flu media hype, showing the hysteria was manufactured and completely unfounded. At the time, I interviewed her about these findings. I’ve included that fascinating interview below.

In 2014, she left CBS to pursue more independent venues of investigative journalism, and wrote “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington” — an exposé on what really goes on behind the media curtain.

Video Link

Why Everyone Must Be Aware of Astroturfing

The featured video is a TEDx Talk Attkisson gave in 2015, in which she discusses the methods employed by special interest groups to manipulate and distort media messages. For example, astroturfing — false-front “grassroots movements” that are in fact funded by political parties or private industries — are now “more important to these interests than traditional lobbying of Congress,” she says. She explains the term “astroturf” thus:

“It’s a perversion of grassroots, as in fake grassroots. Astroturf is when political, corporate or other special interests disguise themselves and publish blogs, start Facebook and Twitter accounts, publish ads and letters to the editor, or simply post comments online, to try to fool you into thinking an independent or grassroots movement is speaking.

The whole point of astroturf is to try to [give] the impression there’s widespread support for or against an agenda when there’s not. Astroturf seeks to manipulate you into changing your opinion by making you feel as if you’re an outlier when you’re not …

Astroturfers seek to controversialize those who disagree with them. They attack news organizations that publish stories they don’t like, whistleblowers who tell the truth, politicians who dare to ask the tough questions and journalists who have the audacity to report on all of it.”

Wikipedia — Astroturf’s Dream Come True

If you’re like most, you probably rely on certain sources more than others when it comes to information. WebMD, for example, dominates for health information, Snopes for checking the latest rumors and Wikipedia for general facts, figures and details.

Attkisson has a great deal to say about Wikipedia, calling it “astroturf’s dream come true.” Wikipedia is advertised as a free encyclopedia, where information is added and edited by the public. Anyone can add to or edit any given Wikipedia page. Or so they say.

“The reality can’t be more different,” Attkisson says, explaining that many pages have been co-opted and are controlled by anonymous Wikipedia editors on behalf of special interests. “They forbid and reverse edits that go against their agenda,” she says. “They skew and delete information, in blatant violation of Wikipedia’s own established policies, with impunity.”

Even the smallest factual inaccuracies are impossible to correct on these agenda-driven pages. As just one example, in 2012, author Philip Roth tried to correct a factual error about the inspiration behind one of his book characters cited on a Wikipedia page. His correction was repeatedly reversed and, ultimately, he was told he was not considered a credible source!

Worse, a study1 comparing medical conditions described on Wikipedia with published research found that Wikipedia contradicted the medical literature an astounding 90% of the time. So, be aware — Wikipedia is NOT the place for accurate and reliable medical information.

Who’s Who and What’s What?

The extent to which information is manipulated is enormous. Let’s say you hear about a new drug for an ailment you have, or your doctor recommends it, and you decide to research it to be on the safe side. Ultimately, you conclude it is safe and effective because everywhere you look, the information seems to support this conclusion. You feel good knowing you’ve done your homework, and fill the prescription. What you don’t know is that:

Facebook and Twitter pages speaking highly of the drug are run by individuals on the payroll of the drug company
The Wikipedia page for the drug is monitored and controlled by a special-interest editor hired by the drug company
Google search engine results have been optimized, ensuring you’ll find all those positive sources while burying contradicting information
The nonprofit organization you stumbled across online that recommends the drug was secretly founded and funded by the drug company
The positive study you found while searching online was also financed by the drug company
The news articles reporting the positive findings of that study sound suspiciously alike for a reason — they’re reiterating information provided by the drug company’s PR department; hence, you will not find any contradictory information there either
Doctors promoting the drug and making derogatory comments about those who worry about side effects are actually paid consultants for the drug company
The medical lecture your own personal doctor attended, where he became convinced the drug is safe and efficacious, was also sponsored by the drug company

How to Identify Astroturf

Believe it or not, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The extent of the control and manipulation goes even deeper than this. Even the U.S. government, regulatory agencies and public health organizations are colluding with industry in a variety of different ways.

So, what can you do? How can you possibly decipher the truth when the truth is so well-hidden beneath layers of astroturf? As noted by Attkisson, recognizing the telltale signs of astroturf is key. And once you know what to look for, you’ll start to recognize it everywhere you look. Telltale signs and hallmarks of astroturf include the following:

  • Certain key message lines repeatedly crop up. For example, the line “talk to your doctor” is highly suggestive of a PR message for a drug, even if what you’re reading doesn’t look like an advertisement
  • Use of inflammatory and derogatory language. Keywords to look for include crank, quack, nutty, lies, paranoid, pseudo and conspiracy
  • Astroturfers will often claim to debunk “myths” that are not myths at all
  • They will attack people, personalities and organizations rather than address the facts or concerns in question
  • Astroturfers are skeptical of those exposing wrongdoing rather than the wrongdoers. As noted by Attkisson, rather than questioning authority, astroturfers question those who question authority

Astroturfing in Action

Video Link

A perfect example of astroturfing occurred in 2015, when the American Council for Science and Health (ACSH) — a pro-GMO front group — attacked Dr. Mehmet Oz for reporting on the now scientifically established hazards of glyphosate.

Mainstream media swallowed and regurgitated the vicious propaganda without any critical thought whatsoever. Slate magazine publicized the attack with the headline “Letter from Prominent Doctors Implies Columbia Should Fire Dr. Oz for Being a Quack.”

The letter accuses Oz of repeatedly showing “disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine, as well as baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops.” The letter was signed by Dr. Henry I. Miller and nine other “distinguished physicians.”

What the media failed to address is that Miller is a well-known shill for the GMO industry. In his capacity as its frontman, he was caught misrepresenting himself during the Anti-Prop 37 campaign in 2012, pretending to be a Stanford professor opposing GMO labeling, when in fact he is not a professor at Stanford.2 The TV ad had to be pulled off the air because of this misrepresentation.

Learn to Identify Shills and Front Groups

Miller also has a long history of defending toxic chemicals such as DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), in addition to defending Big Tobacco. He’s even penned articles suggesting radioactive fallout might be beneficial for health, while claiming “Organic agriculture is to the environment what cigarette smoking is to human health” — apparently momentarily forgetting he’s defended the safety of cigarette smoking.3

Miller’s true colors were also revealed in August 2017, when he was fired by Forbes magazine for submitting articles ghostwritten by Monsanto. The evidence4 against Miller emerged during the court-ordered discovery process of a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto by people who claim they developed Non-Hodgkin lymphoma as a result of glyphosate exposure (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, used by farmers and home gardeners alike).

The documents, more than 700 pages in all, were posted online by the law firm Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman (now known as Wisner Baum).5 Faced with evidence they’d published material under Miller’s name that was in fact ghostwritten by Monsanto, Forbes not only fired Miller but also removed all of his work from their site. Some of the other nine physicians that signed the letter against Oz are also less than distinguished. As noted by U.S. Right to Know:6

“One was stripped of his medical license in New York and sent to federal prison camp for Medicaid fraud. Yet Dr. Gilbert Ross plays up his M.D. credentials in his role as acting president of [ACSH]. Ross was joined on the Columbia letter by ACSH board member Dr. Jack Fisher.

So what is ACSH? Though some reporters treat it as an independent science source, the group has been heavily funded by oil, chemical and tobacco companies, and has a long history of making inaccurate statements about science that directly benefit those industries — for example, claiming that secondhand smoke isn’t linked to heart attacks [or that] fracking doesn’t pollute water …

These facts are relevant in stories about scientific integrity. The scientific accuracy and motivations of the accusers matter when they are publicly challenging the scientific accuracy and motivations of somebody they are trying to get fired. We urge reporters and editors to take a closer look at the sources selling them story ideas, and to act as better watchdogs for the public interest.”

In short, the attack on Oz was orchestrated not by “concerned physicians” but rather by industry shills whose job it is to attack anyone who embraces a more natural approach to health and/or raise damning questions that might hurt the industry’s bottom-line.

Video Link

Corporate Conflicts of Interest Killed Investigative Journalism

Download Interview Transcript | Video Link

I interviewed Attkisson about her book, “Stonewalled” and the downfall and deterioration of true investigative journalism in 2015. I’ve included that interview again for your convenience. It delves a lot further into the issues brought up in her 10-minute TEDx Talk.

For example, direct-to-consumer drug advertising has created a situation where drug companies in particular wield enormous power over media. The industry spends billions of dollars each year on advertising, and this financial windfall is typically enough for any media outlet to bend to its advertisers’ whims and desires.

Attkisson refers to this as “soft censorship.” It’s when a media outlet’s sponsors wield power at the corporate level over the types of stories and topics journalists are allowed to cover, and the slant they must take when doing so. It’s important to realize that you simply will not get the truth from the media on certain topics for this very reason.

My mission is to arm you with information that is not easily obtainable in the mainstream media about things that influence your health, for better or worse. All of my articles are carefully referenced and I rely on peer-reviewed published science and firsthand interviews with experts in various fields. My advice to you is to develop a keen eye for the hallmarks of astroturfing, and to dig deeper when faced with claims that “the science is settled.” More often than not, it’s anything but.

from:  https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/03/29/astroturfing-media-manipulation.aspx?ui=f460707c057231d228aac22d51b97f2a8dcffa7b857ec065e5a5bfbcfab498ac&sd=20211017&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art3HL&cid=20240329_HL2&foDate=true&mid=DM1549869&rid=2082323638

Turn Off the MSM Rant and Open Your Minds

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Corporate Controlled Mainstream Media (MSM) Exists to Demoralize the Public

It has become increasingly obvious that the corporate controlled mainstream media exists to demoralize the public by cherry-picking stories that favor a narrative that promotes victimization.

by Patrick Herbert

Incidents that are in the minority are amplified and with purposeful repetitive selection to give the impression that the conditions and circumstances surrounding a particular narrative are in the majority.

Mainstream Media Traitors Lies Cia Mind Control Manipulation

I have observed the effect that mainstream narratives have on both the collective and individual level, and the ferocious intensity with which people are convinced that the world that they read about has a one-to-one correspondence with a reality that they believe exists right outside their front door.

One need not look any further than the ocean of mask wearing individuals walking about in public, convinced that the breath of their neighbor or fellow pedestrian is a weapon of mass destruction.

The media has purposefully promoted the concept that those who do not wear a mask are an existential threat to you and your family.

According to them, you are a victim to their callous behavior; that ultimately freedom loving people who refuse to wear a mask are a threat to society.

This is intentional, for as you have been victimized you will willingly forgo any of your freedoms for a guarantee of safety.

Oh, and for good measure, the media will add that they are probably Trump supporters and thus COVID-19 deniers, a tactic sure to enrage the reader even further and a blatant effort to steer the reader politically.

While the fake pandemic is a great example of the media’s role in victimizing its audience, this tactic has been deployed for long before then, primarily for the promotion of a political, racial, and gender divide as part of the effort by those at the top to divide and rule over the population.

As the attention span of the average reader has shrunk, the media has focused its energy on manufacturing loaded headlines.

For the most part, it is the headline exchanged between people who do not have the time to read the content but want to lend credence to their own perspective on an issue.

A heavy emotionalized headline will do just that, and using technology you can fire that headline in every direction like a machine gun.

These headlines are thusly shared rapidly via text messaging or as a post to timelines on the various social medias.

As the world is currently filled with an army of social justice warriors (SJW), so too are their timelines filled with selective headlines that emotionally emphasize the severity of the issues they feel they are valiantly fighting for or against.

Reading through the cherry-picked and heavily manipulated headlines on mainstream media news websites, we can see the reoccurrence of common themes: everyone is a racist, everyone desires to keep women and minorities down, members of the LGBT+ community are in danger, and COVID-19 is killing everyone, everywhere, at every moment.

Victimization. Demoralization.

Cia Owns Everyone

Also manipulated are the pictures that accompany the stories. Normally, these are selected in ways that will further the psychological impact of that which the article is trying to convey.

A story about Joe Biden making gaffes will be accompanied by a picture of Joe Biden looking confused. A story about COVID-19 will show covered gurneys surrounded by people in hazmat suits.

A story about racism will show pictures that emphasize the narrative, such as a picture of people in robes typically worn by the Klu Klux Klan.

I have even seen stock photography of young white men holding torches, mouths open as if yelling, with a headline suggesting they were white supremacist Trump supporters.

With these elements combined tactically, it should be quite obvious that we are not confronted with organizations that seek to inform us but instead to propagandize us along a divide, and within that divide they seek to victimize and demoralize us.

The divides are many, from political to race right down into gender with there being radical subdivisions as we have been introduced to various complexities related to gender and further complicated by what we are told is a biological misunderstanding, with a narrative that is going so far as to try and alter our own perceptions of our own gender biology.

J. K. Rowling has been incessantly attacked for a seemingly innocent defense of what she considers to be the definition of a biological female, something that she has lived and identified with her entire life.

Those attacking her feel some level of injustice has been bestowed upon them, that somehow they are being denied their own identity. Some go so far to claim that these grievances are no less destructive than a physical attack.

How did they reach these conclusions? Victimization.

Certainly we all experience discrimination at some point in our lives but the truth is it happens in perpetuity when one reads the headlines and stories promoted by the mainstream media.

Mika Brzezinski

There is a definitive psychological impact and the people behind the engineering of these divides understand this.

You do not have a black vs. white, man vs. woman, gender biology vs. gender fluidity, religion vs. religion, woke vs. unwoke, without the victimization of one or the other.

There is no better place than to engineer this divide by promoting victimization than through the corporate mainstream media elements most consumed by a majority of the population: television news, news papers, magazines, and websites; an effort done most intentionally in order to manipulate large swaths of society into divided positions much like on a chess board.

It is the narratives that they build in our minds that allows them to control us emotionally, for we forgo any semblance of emotional control when we allow ourselves to become victims.

We are segmented into like-minded collections, played against each other across the board in whichever way is politically, financially, and/or socially expedient to the corporate media masters for reasons that they seek to benefit from.

The majority of humanity, the 99%, are thus relegated to the role of simple pawns in a much larger game whose existence they may never even be aware of.

from:   https://humansarefree.com/2020/08/corporate-controlled-mainstream-media-msm-exists-to-demoralize-the-public.html

Propaganda + Repetition + Economic Devastation = Reaction

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by Jon Rappoport

In today’s episode of COVID fakery on rye and hold the apocalypse, we begin with a bevy of quotes from Edward Bernays (1891-1995), the acknowledged father of modern public relations, aka propaganda. I include his statements as a warm-up backgrounder—

“This is an age of mass production. In the mass production of materials a broad technique has been developed and applied to their distribution. In this age, too, there must be a technique for the mass distribution of ideas.” (1928)

“The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest.” (1947)

“It is sometimes possible to change the attitudes of millions but impossible to change the attitude of one man.” (date unknown)

“When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And ‘propaganda’ got to be a bad word because of the Germans using it, so what I did was to try and find some other words. So we found the words ‘counsel on public relations’.” (date unknown)

“When Napoleon said, ‘Circumstance? I make circumstance‚’ he expressed very nearly the spirit of the public relations counsel’s work.” (1923)

“Domination to-day is not a product of armies or navies or wealth or policies. It is a domination based on the one hand upon accomplished unity, and on the other hand upon the fact that opposition is generally characterized by a high degree of disunity.” (1923)

“The public relations counsel, therefore, is a creator of news for whatever medium he chooses to transmit ideas. It is his duty to create news no matter what the medium which broadcasts this news.” (1923)

“The only difference between ‘propaganda’ and ‘education,’ really, is in the point of view. The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is propaganda.” (1923)

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.” (1928)

“Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.” (1928)

“If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. But men do not need to be actually gathered together in a public meeting or in a street riot, to be subject to the influences of mass psychology. Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences.” (1928)

The news heads and the talk show heads and the sports heads and the advertisers and bureaucrats and politicians and public health flacks and celebrities are assuring television viewers, with no shame: We’re all in this together. Over and over. Night and day. On every channel.

This was the strategy during older wars. No time for disagreement or dissent; there must be a unified response and effort; otherwise, we could lose.

We’re all in this together means: fall in line.

If that’s share and care and love, it’s robot love.

Advertisers, despite their studies and their sophistication and their wall-to-wall profiling of consumers, still believe in the first principle of propaganda: repetition.

Get the name of your product and company out there and don’t stop. Do it a thousand times, a million times. As long as you have money to pay for ads, do it.

Look at the insurance company commercials. Progressive, State Farm, Liberty, Geico. The little vignettes they lay on are really the occasion for pasting their company name on the screen. Make these 30-second stories friendly and funny and crazy, but the money shot is the company name.

Pandemic ads and messages follow the same rule. In this case, it’s TOGETHERNESS. UNITY. Pounded on and on.

Why? If cooperation and love and togetherness are basic human impulses, why do people need to be reminded of that 24 hours a day, on television?

Does a husband who loves his wife need to see his face and his wife’s face on a screen, on every channel, without let-up, along with a message urging him to adore her?

On the other hand, a person who’s been thrown out of a job, who can’t find work, who sees his government checks fading down to zero…he needs pacification. That’s a tough sell. That sell-job requires a whole lot of repetition…

…In order to produce SHAME in him, if he feels cheated and exiled and screwed. The repetition of togetherness and fake love informs him that the collective citizenry isn’t on his side. It tells him his righteous anger has no place in the relentlessly upbeat messaging of “unity.” It keeps him feeling isolated.

Now we’re getting down to it. Don’t let the people who are economically devastated believe they can find each other. Shut them out. Pump them full of television public service ads that paint an “uplifting” picture from which they’re excluded.

They may be devastated, but television tells them they aren’t on the team if they give their own concerns first priority. If they do, they’re non-persons.

After all, when they sit at home watching TV, do they see a cropped video of another unemployed worker sitting in a dark room saying, “THIS IS CRAZY. I WANT TO WORK. I NEED FOOD. MY BOSS CLOSED HIS COMPANY. HE’S BANKRUPT. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?”

Are they offered that kind of unity? Togetherness?

“Hi. I’m an NFL cornerback. I’ve made thirty million during my career. Here I am at home with my kids. We’re playing games on the floor. I’m enjoying my family. We’ll get through this. All of us. Stay safe. Use the time to bring your family closer together.”

Major news outlets are under strict orders to keep “disturbing human interest stories” off the front page and away from their broadcasts. This is also part and parcel of the wartime effort.

It would have to be, since economic devastation is what this fake pandemic is actually all about. No one in the mainstream will let that cat out of the bag. It would be more than a mistake. It would be a confession. It would be suicide.

How about these headlines? VACCINE KINGS WANT TO SOFTEN UP POPULATIONS FOR A NEEDLE IN THE ARM. A RUINED POPULACE IS READY TO BE LED INTO A NEW WORLD ORDER.

Propagandists know that a one-two punch of fear and then assurance works. Scare them with the virus, comfort them with togetherness.

But still, it’s a tough sell. It has legs for a while, but then the natives become restless, especially in the hinterlands. People who aren’t jammed together in big cities, who live in open spaces, tend to develop immunity to lies. Coiffed press hookers on television dispensing so-called news carry less punch. Farmers know if they can’t plant their crops on time, with workers side by side, they’ll go broke.

Generally speaking, people who don’t see other people who are sick, and don’t hear ambulance sirens, start wondering what’s happening.

Protests begin. Protests expand.

The fake night of obedience turns into the real day of rebellion.

It turns out that a story about an invisible virus isn’t quite the same as a line of enemy tanks approaching. All promoted wars are not equal.

Fauci knows this. Birx knows this. Bill Gates knows this. Mayors and governors know this. The CDC and WHO know this. They don’t really care whether you survive, but they know you care. So, for them, it’s a race against time. How long can they keep the lid on? How long can their preposterous messaging work?

Stage magic is an odd game. The performer has to run his tricks quickly, so people don’t have the luxury of sitting back and thinking about how he is fooling them. However, the public health magicians and the politician magicians and the news magicians are hemmed in—they’re basically one-trick ponies. Virus, virus, virus=together, together, together.

It looks good, but it wears out.

It’s wearing out now.

I’ll close this piece with a few more gems from Edward Bernays—to urge you to keep your eye on the ball. The real ball.

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?” (1928)

“A single factory, potentially capable of supplying a whole continent with its particular product, cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda, with the vast public in order to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable. This entails a vastly more complex system of distribution than formerly.” (1928)

“No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.” (1928)

“Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously, wants to hear.” (1928)

from:    https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/05/20/television-wartime-messaging-for-the-love-of-unity/

Time for the Red Pill!

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(Okay, so we are all getting a bit tired of hearing about this plandemic/scamdemic/whatever, but then the MSM is pounding it into the media everyday, so the alternate media needs to keep reminding us that we just might be being snookered.)

Just Like 9/11 Did, COVID-19 Is Shifting Human Consciousness In A Major Way

CE Staff Writer

In Brief

  • The Facts:Major events have a lasting impact on human consciousness, and help people see what they once never saw before. This appears to be happening with the new coronavirus.
  • Reflect On:How do events like 9/11, and the new coronavirus impact human consciousness?

It’s truly an exciting time to be alive, and that’s because more and more people are “waking up” to concepts about our reality and the overall human experience that they were once previously unaware of. This has been happening for decades, but every single year it seems to amplify, and the process of our ‘awakening’ seems to accelerate rapidly.

This type of ‘awakening’ happens in all areas that surround human life. People learn deep truths about health and medicine, education, geopolitics, consciousness, extraterrestrials and much more. The idea that a small group of corporations and the people that run them have a strong hold on our perception, thoughts, emotions, and reactions regarding information and major world events is now far from a mere “conspiracy theory” in the eyes of many. It can be seen quite clearly, and mainstream media has been exposed as the true bearer of “fake news” by many people.

Events like the coronavirus simply accelerate the process of awakening, and expose mainstream media outlets for what they truly are in this moment. There’s a reason why mainstream media has such strong connections to intelligence agencies and have their roots in psychological warfare. You can find documentation and examples of that in an article I published a while ago here.

A quote from Edward Bernays, known as the father of public relations, is powerful because it sums up these thoughts quite well:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

Current Events & Collective Consciousness

When 9/11 happened, we were told that terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre. As the months and years went on, more and more people grew suspicious of their government’s explanation of what happened that day, this included many politicians and academics as well, further adding fuel to the fire. Evidence came forward, science was done and whistleblowers spoke out, giving us a very clear idea that what we were told happened that day, most certainly did not. Today, many polls show that more than half of the American people alone don’t believe the official explanation of what really happened that day. Since 9/11, hundreds of millions of people have become aware of “false flag” terrorism, which is the idea that the ‘powers that be’ created these events, fund terrorism, stage them, and then use these events to justify the infiltration of another country for ulterior motives. They basically create the problem, in several different ways, and then propose the solution.

Organizations like Wikileaks and whistleblowers like Edward Snowden have proved, as well as explained, how events like these are used to justify a heightening national security state, one where more and more of our basic rights and freedoms are stripped from us under the guise of ‘goodwill.’

But these events have shifted human consciousness. People become aware of how our world truly works and functions, a process we call ‘Breaking The Illusion‘ here at CE. People begin to see that the world they think is real is actually not, and that things like corruption exist within the geopolitical realm, an important realization if you wish to reflect on whether our political process truly serves us or not. This then changes the perception of people around the world, causing us to choose new paths and actions as to how to live our lives in society. Paths that would not change if we never ‘broke the illusion.’

Another major event is happening right now, the COVID-19 pandemic. When it comes to COVID-19, what has many people asking questions is the ban and censorship of information. For example, YouTube is now actively banning any content that contradicts anything that the World Health Organization (WHO) states with regards to the new coronavirus. Vimeo recently banned a documentary exposing “Big Pharma’s” influence within the WHO. These blatant forms of censorship have some upset, but many others see it as an eyebrow-raising moment, showing quite clearly the corruption that exists in our world and the efforts that are put forth to control the perception of the masses. We then begin to ask why?

Controlling information and what people think is important if you wish to control their lives. This is why ‘Breaking The Illusion’ is one of the first steps in the CE formula to shift consciousness. After all, why do you think people like Julian Assange are in jail, and people like Edward Snowden are living in exile?

How far have we sunk if telling the truth becomes a crime? How far have we sunk if we prosecute people that expose war crimes for exposing war crimes?  How far have we sunk when we no longer prosecute our own war criminals? Because we identify more with them, than we identify with their people that actually expose these crimes. What does that tell about us and about our governments? In a democracy, the power does not belong to the government, but to the people. But the people have to claim it. Secrecy disempowers the people because it prevents them from exercising democratic control, which is precisely why governments want secrecy. Nils Melzer (source)

With COVID-19, we are also seeing a large number of people questioning the measures that multiple governments have taken to lockdown countries. We are seeing people question the information that’s being put out by our federal health agencies, including the World Health Organization. We have seen a number of scientists in the field, as well as doctors, also question the official narratives, and we have seen people like Edward Snowden, and many more, explain how this ‘pandemic’ is being used for ulterior motives. You can access those articles at the end of this article if you’re interested.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we are now living in a time where a digital authoritarian ‘fact checker’ is patrolling the internet and censoring content it deems as ‘false.’ It does not matter if the information is true or false, backed by science or not, or whether it’s simply an opinion, if it doesn’t align with the mainstream narrative, you are not meant to see it or trust it. Should people not have the right to examine information, check sources, decide for themselves what is real and what is fake?

The Takeaway

COVID-19 has simply accelerated the process of awakening, and it’s also made even more people aware of the censorship of information that’s taking place. Along with the censorship of information, comes ridicule, and bashing by mainstream media in order to oppose and instantaneously shut down any opposite narrative.

Narratives that go against mainstream media narratives are not acknowledged or countered, they are simply ridiculed and deemed a “conspiracy theory.”

The point is, events like this serve the collective. They wake us up, they help us see, they help shift the perceptions about our world and our world ‘leaders’ and  serve as a catalyst for more people to start asking questions, and to see that what we are told is not always what is. This is why events as such, although hard in many senses, and real in many ways, do indeed move humanity forward in a ‘positive’ direction. What’s happening now is not a tragedy, it’s exciting, and it’s not as bad as they’ve made it out to be. But again, you can go into that type of discussion and many more, in the articles below.

Leading Scientist Claims Lockdown & Quarantine is a “Human Catastrophe” (New Interview)

Vitamin C For COVID-19: Critical Care Medicine Hospital Chief In Wuhan Provides Updates

Two Emergency Medicine Doctors On Why Quarantine “Just Doesn’t Make Sense”

If You Die of a Clear Alternative Cause, It’s Still Listed As A COVID Death” – Dr. Ngozi Ezike

Vimeo Bans Documentary Exposing “Big Pharma’s” Influence Within The World Health Organization

Wikileaks Highlights The Influence “Big Pharma” Has On The World Health Organization

New Study: The Flu Vaccine Is “Significantly Associated” With An Increased Risk of Coronavirus

Bill Gates’ Latest Instagram Post Has Been Bombarded With Accusations & Comments Against Vaccines

Renowned Microbiology Specialist On Why He Believes Coronavirus Measures Are “Draconian” (Video)

Renowned German Pulmonologist Questions Coronavirus Measures & If They’re Necessary (Video)

Updates On The New Coronavirus Vaccine – Are You Going To Take It? Will It Be Mandatory?

Spring Has Sprung In Sweden With No Coronavirus Quarantine Or Police Enforced Lockdown

Some New York Hospitals Are Now Treating Coronavirus With High Dose Vitamin C

Conscious Truth Behind Coronavirus Lockdown

Coronavirus Is Proving The Human Race Can Come Together, For Anything, At Anytime

White House: Out of 327 Million Americans – Coronavirus May Kill Up To 200,000

Edward Snowden: Governments Shouldn’t Have The “Mandatory Authority” To Keep People Inside

Scientist Predicts Second Wave of COVID-19 Because “Social Distancing” Has Prevented “Herd Immunity”

More Physicians Go On The Record Explaining Why COVID-19 Deaths May Be Exaggerated

Coronavirus Deaths May Be Miscalculated 

Dr. Ron Paul Gets Flagged As “Fake News” For Sharing His Opinion About Coronavirus

Donald Trump Says The Coronavirus Was “Artificially Induced.” 

Canadian Prime Minister Says We Won’t Return To Normal “Until A Vaccine Is Developed”

Bill Gates: We Won’t Go Back To “Normal Until” A Vaccine Has “Gotten Out To The Entire World”

LA Doctor: COVID-19 Patients Go From ‘Very Ill’ To ‘Symptom-Free’ In 8 To 12 Hours With Hydroxychloroquine & Zinc

Confirmed: High-Dose Vitamin C Has Successfully Treated 50 Moderate to Severe COVID-19 Patients

from:     https://www.collective-evolution.com/2020/05/03/just-like-9-11-did-covid-19-is-shifting-human-consciousness-in-a-major-way/

People Respond

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PEOPLE SURROUND THE HOUSE OF COP WHO ARRESTED IDAHO MOTHER IN PARK

When a mother was arrested for playing in a park with her children, the MSM took glee in the tyranny and made sure to try to smear her as…

 by Mac Slavo of SHTFplan

When a mother in Idaho was arrested for playing a park with her children, the mainstream media took glee in the tyranny and made sure to try to smear her as an “anti-vaxxer.” But the people of Idaho came together and surrounded the cop’s house in a show of support for liberty.

The mainstream media, government, and elitists are panicking at the fact they are unable to control the public any loner.  This can be seen in the attempts to smear anyone who doesn’t live in fear or researchers on their own to discover the “official narrative” is bullshit.  Here’s what the Huffington Post said about Ammon Bundy, who organized the protest at the tyrannical cop’s home:

It’s the militia leader’s latest escalation in his attempt to use the COVID-19 pandemic to spread his extremist, anti-government views. –Huffington Post

The Huffington Post got the memo that many people are quickly turning against the government and the media because of this scamdemic. Their attempts to keep the public scared of people who are standing up to the government are laughable at this point. Few are buying it anymore, and we are witnessing the end of the mainstream media’s fear-mongering and the tyrannical government control over our lives.

“There was a woman at a park with her children and she was arrested!” Bundy yelled at the four or five cops standing in the driveway, watching guard over their fellow officer’s home. “Completely inappropriate.”  Bundy was referencing the arrest, earlier that day, of Sara Walton Brady, a prominent Idaho “anti-vaxxer” (oh no! Not a person who thinks they own the rights to their own body and what goes in it!) who staged a protest at a Meridian playground shuttered due to town measures to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Notice how now, those who stand up to tyranny, forced vaccinations, and simply want their God-given rights to freedom respected are being demonized as “anti-vaxxers?” Well, if that’s what they want to call those of us who will refuse Bill Gates’ forced vaccines, so be it. The media is losing control of the narrative they have spun for the government. It’s all crumbling beneath them, and that’s the reason they are doubling-down.  They want the masses brainwashed and incapable of thinking for themselves.

Those who do their own research and think for themselves are now the targets of mainstream media and the governments they support. But more and more people are rejecting the notion of a ruling class and their manipulative brainwashing puppets in the media.

“The people will not allow you guys to do this for very long!” Bundy yells at the cops in the video. “You will not go into the park and arrest people! You will not go into parks and arrest mothers, and you will not go anywhere and arrest us for exercising what our rights are.”

Bundy is correct, it’s the mainstream media and the government that are on the wrong side of history.  The people are not going to tolerate tyranny for much longer. Even after this scamdemic is over, civil disobedience and standing up to the government isn’t going to stop.  The people have finally figured out who the enemy is and the more the media tries to push to blame back on to those promoting liberty, the more people will wake up to what’s been done to them by tyrants.

Freedom is no longer negotiable and people all over the globe are figuring out that they have basic human rights long denied by rulers, elitists, and those wanting to enslave them.  But the ruling class’s agenda is failing right now, before our eyes.

from:    https://www.silverdoctors.com/headlines/world-news/people-surround-the-house-of-cop-who-arrested-idaho-mother-in-park/

Look Elsewhere!

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6 Ways to Break the Hypnotic Spell of the Mainstream Media

by

Mainstream Media They Live

Here’s six steps to filter out media noise, break the hypnosis of the mainstream media, and get to the information that truly matters.

There is no information age. It doesn’t exist. There is only the Age of Noise. Because although we now appear to have an infinite ability to see everything that’s going on in the world at once, from photos of the world from space to the fact that our friends are indecisive about what to eat tonight, we have no ability to filter that information and sort for what matters. We have no reliable media gatekeeper. We only have the so-called “mainstream media,” which is just the advertising wing of multinational corporations.

We used to pay people to filter information for us: these were called professional journalists, writers and artists, whose job it was to dive into the sea of information and come back up with pearls for us. But we don’t pay those people anymore, because the media conglomerates that have consolidated into only a few massive holdings since the 1990s have realized that they don’t have to.

They don’t have to because their interest isn’t providing real information or truth, their interest is in providing content that gets as many people as possible to look at it, in order to get the most advertising money possible, because that’s how they get paid and can afford the salaries and insurance costs of the large staffs they need to do what they do. That’s their daily reality. And so they’re in the business of giving people what they want.

Since the 90s, the trend has increasingly been to cut out professionals and get people to generate their own content. That means reality television, YouTube, Facebook. No big budgets needed and far more profit gained. Since everybody is a star now, everybody is constantly generating more free content than we can ever consume. And so professional creatives have gone the way of the dinosaurs, and instead of getting reporting on, say, Karen Silkwood blowing the whistle on nuclear power, or Gary Webb’s expose of CIA drug trafficking, you’re getting reporting about how some celebrity is in a Twitter feud.

We have no more professional gatekeepers. We are scattered to the four winds, drowning in Facebook feeds or aggregation blogs. These mega-blogs, which we have mistakenly expected to replace mainstream media outlets, are in the same position: largely beholden to the tastes of their audiences, and stuck having to keep people happy with unchallenging, crowd-pleasing content to drive traffic to their site advertisers so that they can eat.

So where does this leave the information-poor individual who hopefully wants to get their head over the waterline enough to start to see the things that actually matter?

It means you have to be your own media gatekeeper. Flat out. You can’t outsource that job to somebody else anymore, because the mainstream media, or the alternative media, or Blog X, Y or Z, are not going to comprehensively do that job for you the way you need it done. They’re too beholden to economics, ratings and their own viewpoints and reality tunnels. And more and more, they’re probably not able to do that job because they’re not properly trained for that job, and I don’t mean just bloggers, because these days very few people who work in the mainstream media have any journalistic training at all. Nobody can get the information you need for you, you’ve got to do it yourself.

Luckily, we’ve got tools that can help us do that. Here’s a few beginning steps:

1. Decide what matters.

Faced with infinite information, you’ve got to decide up front what you’re going to filter for, at least initially. You’ve got to restrict your data to some extent, which sounds counterintuitive, but is necessary. You don’t need more information, you need more information about the things that matter. I suggest that the things that matter are, simply, information that can directly positively effect the welfare of you and your family, and information about the general welfare of the planet.

2. Use web tools to automate your info intake.

Everybody on the web is largely in the same position: grab info from a few news sources (like AP or Reuters) and then recycle it into blog content. They’re using the same tools as you to get their info. So cut out the middleman. I recommend setting up Google Alerts, for a start, to give you info about the issues you actually care about instead of waiting for somebody else to. Beyond that, I highly recommend using an RSS aggregator like Feedly to dump a lot of media outlets into an easy-to-digest feed. Work done upfront will pay off in time saved later. Reddit is also an excellent tool, as long as you stay off the dreaded, time-sucking front page and keep to subreddits pertinent to important topics.

3. Expand outside of your demographic bubble.

Whoever you are, you fit a demographic, which means that the mainstream media specifically tailors content that it knows you will like for the shows you watch and blogs you read, so advertisers can sell you products they’ve determined your demographic buys and use the language and images they know you will respond to, all in order to get you to make that purchase.

Expand out of the box they’ve decided you fit in. Read blogs and consume media from sources outside of your demographic, and that definitely means outside of your political and religious persuasion. Otherwise you’re blinkered not only to things that are going on around you, but also to parts of life you might be ignoring.

4. Read a book.

You still won’t get nearly as good of an info download from months on the Internet as you will from reading a well-researched, info-dense book, a book which, never forget, can represent years or decades of professional research and experience rather than an afternoon spent dashing off a blog post to throw out into the netherworld. Don’t stop reading, and reading better and more challenging books. The Web is really only a menu of culture; don’t forget to eat the meal.

5. Think critically.

Understand what confirmation bias is, and always consider the source of an article. Who wrote this, and what’s their agenda? What are they selling? Do they cite their own sources? Is this from a professional journalist/writer or from some wackadoo or salesman spouting off on the net? To dig deeper, get this excellent, comprehensive primer in critical thinking skills.

6. Meditate.

Sounds potentially hokey, but there is no better discipline for learning how to shut off what is pointless bullshit and go only for what actually matters than meditation, because in learning to control one’s own thoughts internally, dealing with external noise becomes immensely easier.

Information is power. Know how to get it. Don’t outsource it to the mainstream media to do it for you.

(The image and clip above are from They Live. If you haven’t seen this classic film, you must; it’s actually the best primer on seeing through social hypnosis and the mainstream media that you could hope for. Watch it here!)

from:    https://ultraculture.org/blog/2017/05/03/mainstream-media-hypnosis/

Be A Savvy Listener

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The 10 Primary Directives of Mainstream Media

BY · PUBLISHED · UPDATED

The 10 Primary Directives of Mainstream Media by  – Activist Post

The circus never stops, and no matter who cries fake news against whom, the fact remains that we have entered the post-truth, post-credibility, post-sanity, post-free speech world. While censorship is coming out into the open, the major corporate news organizations still have tremendous reach into the hollows of public consciousness, giving them power to direct and deflect public attention onto or away from whatever they choose.

The news industry parrots scripted narratives and talking points that are written for them by corporate, financial and political interests. This massive public relations and propaganda effort targets the intelligence, common sense and emotional stability of the body politic. It’s part of the endgame of order out of chaos.

Once you wake up to this game, though, it’s easy to see the framework in which they operate; and when you do, the talking heads and recycled government experts are a joke, albeit a dangerous one. Their tactics become more and more obvious, and their intent is easy recognized for its duplicity, subterfuge and hypocrisy.

They want to cram your mind into well-crafted box. It doesn’t matter if you end up in the right side or the left side of the box, as long as you don’t leave and so long as you stay focused on the flickering lights of the flat screen, ignoring anything that is not directly in front of you.

Corporate media has become a weapon of war, and they follow a certain missive. Consider the following directives that drive nearly everything you seen in mainstream news.

1. Be Afraid, Not Empowered

2. Omit and Forget

3. Self-Destruction is Cool, Self-Awareness is a Crime

4. You are a Victim, The State is Your Savior

5. Overreact, Don’t Overthink

6. Enrage Don’t Engage

7.  Indulge, Don’t Conserve

8. Stoke Conflict, Ridicule Peace

9. Permanent War is Normal and Expected

10.  Panic, Don’t Prepare

Now that we’ve entered the age of open government-backed corporate censorship of the Internet, the mainstream media is actively seeking to shut down independent and dissident voices. In order to do so, they must engage in treachery of every form. If you believe that you have a right to the truth, a right to speak out, and a right to demand genuine peace and justice, then you’d better be paying attention.

Read more articles by Sigmund Fraud.

Sigmund Fraud is a survivor of modern psychiatry and a dedicated mental activist. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com where he indulges in the possibility of a massive shift towards a more psychologically aware future for humankind.

from:   https://thedailycoin.org/2018/08/25/the-10-primary-directives-of-mainstream-media/

Mainstream Media Swansong?

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6 Positive Signs That Mainstream Media is Collapsing

Filed in Matrix Articles by

Off-Air-Mainstream-Media-TVBy Phillip Schneider
Waking Times

There is an information awakening taking place right now, and mainstream media is being outed for what it really is: corporate and government controlled propaganda. People are turning to alternative news sources more swiftly than ever now, and as a result, the old guard of media is collapsing at free-fall speeds.

Here are 6 positive signs of the collapse of mainstream media:

1. Mainstream Media is Owned by a Handful of Corporations and the People Know It

It’s no secret anymore that nearly everything we see, read, and hear comes from just a handful of mega-corporations. Thanks to the alternative media, it has become a widely known fact that just six corporations control 90% of the media we consume. These big six have the ability to make key decisions and delegate the news to their lower subsidiary companies by cutting out important stories or alternative points of view. People recognize this and are moving over to the indy media as a result.

2. Fox Stops Disclosing Live Viewership Ratings

Fox News, a subsidiary company owned by Rupert Murdoch of News Corp and top mainstream media outlet has just announced that it will stop disclosing its ratings for live TV viewership. They argue that these statistics are no longer relevant because of how many record their television shows, but it is also being seen as a way to hide a decaying audience. Fox will now be repackaging statistics on a weekly basis to make even the most modest results appear positive.

3. 98% of Young Adults Do Not Trust Mainstream Media

A recent poll shows that only 2% of young adults trust the mainstream media to do the “right thing” on a regular basis. This poll, which was conducted at the Harvard Institute of Politics on over 3,000 18-29 year olds, shows that only 2% of young adults trust the media to “do the right thing” “all of the time.” Furthermore, 10% said that they do the right thing “most of the time”, while 49% said “some of the time” and a whopping 39% said that the media “never” does the right thing.

4. Mainstream Media is Hog-Tied by Corporations and the People Know It

An excerpt from the documentary The Corporation illustrates in their own words the story of two journalists working for Fox News in the mid 1990’s. Here is an excerpt from the film, of an investigation of the “human health implications” of injecting Bovine Growth Hormone into the cows which were used for producing milk:

“With Monsanto, I didn’t realize how effectively a corporation could work to get something on the marketplace,” said journalist Jane Akre. Before the story aired, a letter was received from Monsanto saying that there would be “dire consequences for Fox News” if it does. After receiving the letter, the general manager at Fox in Florida called them into his office and demanded that the story be altered. The next thing that he said was “We just paid three billion dollars for these television stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is…if you refuse to present this story the way we think it should be presented you’ll be fired for insubordination (defiance).”

You can tell by the amount of protesters at “March Against Monsanto” protests that the corporate controlled media does not have a stranglehold on information like they once did.

5. Mainstream Media is Literally Lying to Us So Blatantly that Nobody Pays Attention Anymore

A recent analysis conducted by PunditFact revealed that, according to this study, over half of all statements made by Fox News are false. Now this is not surprising, but what might be is that NBC/MSNBC is right up there at 46% of their statements being anywhere between “Mostly False” to “Pants on Fire.” CNN and ABC rated better, but national new shouldn’t be a race to the bottom.

6. Independent Media More Successful than Ever Before

The positivity that comes out of this is simple: people are waking up to this madness. No longer are we in a situation where the media controls the narrative like they once did, because the new media is there to pick up the ball and roll out the stories that the mainstream media refuses to get into.

The alternative media is making such enormous waves now that the older media is actually starting to listen to alternative voices and stories that are being published by new media outlets. The fact that Kevin Folta, a University Professor at the University of Florida, was receiving large unrestricted grants from Monsanto to promote GMO’s and round-up was even reported on by the New York Times thanks to alternative media making it such a big story that if they hadn’t they would have lost credibility: “If the Times is telling us the truth, then why didn’t they tell us about Kevin Folta?”

As long as the independent media keeps moving, there’s nothing that can stop the truth from getting out.

 

from:    http://howtoexitthematrix.com/2016/03/20/6-positive-signs-that-mainstream-media-is-collapsing/

Using Discernment in Listening to the News

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The 10 Most Critical Things to Consider When Consuming Mainstream News

TV Screen Thinking Head - 2
Dylan Charles, Editor
Waking Times

It’s no secret that 90% of American media is owned by just 6 corporate conglomerates, and it’s also no secret that the media is used by political and corporate propagandists as a tool to reach deep into the hearts and minds of the masses. Mainstream newscasts are a staged version of reality, and as world events continue to rise in pitch and fervor, so will the propaganda, so it’s imperative to brush up on critical thinking skills as a defense against falling into group-think and mass-hysteria.

The great irony here, though, is that it is precisely through the power of media that people will awaken to the deceit happening in the media. By and large the programming that makes it to our eyes and ears is produced to support an agenda, but, even amongst the corporate programs there are genuine voices of reason and truth.

So, how do you tell the difference between a voice of truth and voice of deceit?

The fog of the propaganda war is sure to thicken in the coming months and years, so here are 10 absolutely critical points to ask yourself when consuming mainstream media.

This checklist was submitted by one of our readers, George L. Humphries, who brings a lifetime of experience in military and law enforcement to bear on the issue of propaganda.

Questions I routinely ask myself while reading or viewing. And I ALWAYS pay attention to the masthead and the credits!

1. Who is the author – nationality, ideology and political affiliation, religion, affinity group, related experience base, and education? Who are this author’s friends and promoters? Where, by who, and possibly why is this author normally published? Are other publications by this author parallel, or do they take a different angle entirely – and if so, why?

2. Unstated underlying value assumptions. What values does the author assume the audience shares, and upon which the author builds the thesis? Do you share these values? Does the author in fact share these values, or are they used merely to sell copy or manipulate the reader to a desired attitude or conclusion? What symbols does the author use?

3. Is the author attempting to ‘frame an argument’? What alternative frameworks for the argument occur to you? Why might the author attempt to frame the argument in the way provided, and exclude from identification, acknowledgment or general acceptance other frameworks? Is the author’s thesis merely a preemptive counter-accusation?   

4. Does the author’s mistrust of one government extend to all governments, or does the author forgive the sins of a particular nation’s regimes and ascribe to them an overwhelming benign humanitarian sensibility? What are the shear points in the logical development of the author’s thesis – does the author jump from one well-developed line to an undeveloped one to engage you in the pre-drawn conclusion, hoping you won’t notice or object to the somersault en route?

5. Does the author appeal to your intellect, your emotions, or both? Does the author subliminally propose that all civilized, educated, right-thinking people of the social elite think a certain way, thereby suggesting that your attitudes should fall in line? Does the author recruit you for the ‘Heavenly Host’ by appealing to ‘common’ religious values? Does the author appeal to your sense of justice and proportionality? Does the author appeal to your spirit of humanity? Does the author wave the flag? What does the author’s peripheral vision include, and what does it exclude? What does the author’s cognitive dissonance miniaturize, and what does it enlarge?

6. What gimmicks does the author use to characterize individuals or groups? Does the author use hyperbolic comparisons to historical figures such as Hitler or Jesus? Does the author try to make a case through guilt by association or guilt by dissociation, or innocence by association or innocence by dissociation? Does the author damn with faint praise or edify through shallow criticism? Does the author tear down and trivialize individuals through cheap, pseudo-comic references to personal habits, modes of dress or accent, and then compound these with unfair, grotesque analogies? Does the author use the unsubstantiated words of others, great or terrible, to reference an individual’s character or lack thereof? From where and from whom does the author draw expert witnesses and citations, and do you agree with these sources? Are sources footnoted or substantiated in some way? Might a citation be the old propagandist’s trick of referring to an item carefully placed elsewhere just for that purpose?

7. What themes can be identified? For this author, who or what is good and who or what is bad? What is the author’s litmus test and bottom line, and do you share it? What alternative does the author wish us to identify and support, even if it is not outlined in bold terms?

8. What is the author’s agenda? What, if anything, does the author want us to believe when we have finished reading or viewing, or what action if any would the author like us to take? Remembering that the best propaganda is the truth, and the second best propaganda is 99% truth as a vehicle to propel a 1% lie, does this article fall into either of these two categories? What piece of information might be the 1% lie?

9. Does the author recommend military action? What other conflicts has the author supported, and what other conflicts has the author opposed? What military service, if any, does the author have, and for which nation? Does the author want to put one nation’s blood and treasure in harm’s way for the benefit of a client state? Is the author still fighting a past war? If so, which one, and what side is taken? From your point of view, which conflict should the author be fighting, and from what side?

10. If the author was a paid agent of (foreign) intelligence services(s), who might be the author’s paymaster(s)?

 – George L. Humphries

from:    http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/10/23/the-10-most-critical-things-to-consider-when-consuming-mainstream-news/

On Mainstream News & Credibility

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Mainstream media losing all credibility as it fails to break any news on exploding government scandals

Friday, June 14, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes

(NaturalNews) In another sign of the weakening “influence” of the mainstream media, not one of the major scandals currently swirling around the Obama Administration were broken by what you could fairly call the establishment press.

Fact: Over the past few weeks, three major scandals have broken over the Obama Administration, and it is a very sad (and frightening) truth that our pathetic, American, lapdog mainstream media are not responsible for breaking even a single one,” writes John Nolte in Breitbart News’ Big Journalism section.

He goes onto note that the three scandals – involving the IRS; NSA/Verizon phone records; the Justice Department’s improper seizure of Associated Press phone records; and Benghazi – were either broken by foreign media or the so-called U.S. alternative media (of which NaturalNews is a proud member).

Thank goodness for the alternative press

The Verizon story was broken by The Guardian, a British newspaper (the whistleblower in this case, 29-year-old Edward Snowden, an NSA analyst, probably didn’t trust anyone in the U.S. with this story).

How about the IRS’ improper targeting of conservative political action groups? Again, that story was broken “with a planted question,” Nolte points out.

In the case of the Justice Department’s targeting of AP reporters and editors, even The Associated Press failed to break that story; it only emerged after the Justice Department notified the AP what had occurred, so essentially, the department tattled on itself.

And Benghazi? Again, nope. Even though there was plenty of smoke there, the mainstream media – which has been in bed with Obama since day one of his initial campaign – took a pass en mass. There were a few exceptions, most notably Jake Tapper and Sharyl Attkission, but other than that, only Republican members of Congress and Fox News have been aggressively seeking the truth about what actually took place there when our ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was killed and brutalized.

“Left up to the media, we wouldn’t know anything about Libya. All of the media’s energy was collectively poured into ensuring the truth was never discovered,” Nolte wrote. “And do you want to know what makes this realization especially pathetic? In three of the four scandals (the AP being the exception), had our media been less interested in protecting Power and more interested in holding Power accountable, these huge, career-making stories were right there for the taking.”

What’s more, the media has been extremely hypocritical (no kidding) on some of these scandals. Take the IRS’ targeting of Tea Party groups.

In early June an editorial published by the editorial staff at The New York Times was highly critical of the president over his administration’s targeting of the phone records of millions of Americans, all in the name of protecting national security. And rightfully so; it is an abuse of the Fourth Amendment like no other in the history of the country.

There is no media in the Old Media

But more than a year before the IRS scandal broke, the Times was all about having the nation’s tax collection agency target those very same groups.

“But because Obama told them to, the media hate the Tea Party. So in the face of these complaints and even a few Congressional inquiries, the media either ignored the harassment reports or openly sided with the IRS,” wrote Nolte.

The same thing can be said about what happened in Libya. Because Barack Obama was in reelection mode; and because the mainstream media was all-in to help him get reelected; and because the president’s reelection narrative on terrorism in general was that al Qaeda was on the run – the mainstream press willingly went along and refused to dig deeper on Benghazi. Had that failed operation been scrutinized, many more Americans would have known before Election Day that the administration essentially sacrificed Stevens and three other Americans for the sake of political expediency.

“Our media are not only biased; it is an utter and complete failure and embarrassment. And although there are plenty of remaining table scraps to make meals out of, the media are already losing interest in the IRS, Libya, and AP scandals, but for only one reason – they are absolutely terrified of where they might lead,” Nolte writes.