If you haven't read it go and read it now..This is a must read and you have to force yourself through it...I am referring to the NY Time's cover story on how the Pentagon used psyops on the news media during the last few years..All those military analysts were surprise surprise selling us a scripted media campaign engineered inside the pentagon...here is the link..click here
This is the kind of article that has so many implications, so many ripples that it is difficult to assimilate...
First off...this is the primary argument for a big media..The article itself I mean...With newsrooms getting smaller and more and more people getting their news from small boutique news organizations..whether it be internet or radio or print...the harder it is for the media to uncover this type of story...The NYT had to sue the government to get access to the documents and then had to have a staff of trained researchers and journalists go over them..You can't do that in your basement in your bathrobe..You need resources...
Also...the media cannot be trusted to give us anything approaching an objective truth...This is a not an original thought but it seems to be forgotten by the public...Even people who pride themselves on being informed are going to be duped unless they not only get many viewpoints...but more importantly unless they ask constantly: "why are they telling me this?"
This is my biggest complaint about the media organizations..It is their failure to take into account the spin and agenda of the corporation and/or the government...more and more these days the two are merged...Almost anything we see or hear or read on the news is there for a larger reason...there is an agenda and it is manufactured...It is easy to see through but it has to be examined in the first place.
There is ALWAYS an agenda behind what you see or read or hear and since the media itself will not cop to the spin ...it is up to us to ask what they want us to think..Its like going to a store..the cashier asks if you have some kind of store issued discount card...it seems like a good deal..all you have to do is get the card and you get a deduction...but the first question you have to ask is why do they want me to have one? Is it because they are just good guys and they want to give me a break? Or could there...possibly be...something in it for them?
This same kind of scrutiny has to be paid to anything in media land..corporations and political consultants are spending their days trying to get access..trying to do whatever it takes to get their message out...and they realize that the public are going to shut them out if the message is obvious..so it has to be hidden behind layers of authority and experience...
What is needed of course is for the media itself to do this as part of their coverage...It is a testament to this that it has taken over 5 years for this story to see the light of day...and most of the other majour news organizations decline to comment for the article...I think every newspaper...every television and radio station..should speak to the influences that are at work in their coverage...The media like to say that they do this work constantly and that they are aware of it...but the very existence of this article five years after the start of the war casts a very dubious light on their transparency.