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Op zondag 3 december 2006 17:31 schreef Refragmental het volgende:Als ik het zo snel lees gaat Propaganda over het gebruik van de media door machthebbers om de publieke en politieke opinie te manipuleren.
Als het dat soort boek is heb ik nog wel een aantal andere aanraders die wat recenter zijn.
Neil Postman. "Amusing Ourselfs to Death" en "How to watch TV news".
"Amusing Ourselfs to Death" gaat over het gebruik van amusement door de media om de waarheid te verbergen, en het boeit ons niks dat de waarheid niet verteld worden, het enige wat nog belangrijk is, is dat we onze portie amusement krijgen. Zelfs een dictatuur gebaseerd op dit principe is niet ondenkbaar.
En "How to watch TV news" legt je uit in welke context je TV (en andere media) nieuws moet plaatsen.
Ook 2 aanraders... beiden overigens gebaseerd op een combinatie van 1984 en Brave New World.
Over dat onderwerp heb je ook nog Noam Chomsky die boeken heeft geschreven als "Necessary Illusions", "Manufacturing Consent" en "Media Control". Hij heeft samen met Edward Herman een theorie ontwikkeld genaamd het propaganda model.
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Propaganda modelThe propaganda model is a theory advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that alleges systemic biases in the mass media and seeks to explain them in terms of structural economic causes.
OverviewFirst presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media, the propaganda model views the private media as businesses selling a product — readers and audiences (rather than news) — to other businesses (advertisers). The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five are:
Ownership of the medium
Medium's funding sources
Sourcing
Flak
Anti-communist ideology
The first three are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important.
Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles which the model postulates as the cause of media biases.[1]
Ownership
Herman and Chomsky argue that since mainstream media outlets are either large corporations or part of conglomerates (e.g. Westinghouse or General Electric), the information presented to the public will be biased with respect to these interests. Such conglomerates frequently extend beyond traditional media fields, and thus have extensive financial interests that may be endangered when certain information is widely publicized. According to this reasoning, news items that most endanger the corporate financial interests that own the media will face the most bias and censorship.
The authors claim that the importance of the ownership filter is the reason that corporations are subject to shareholder control in the context of a profit-oriented market economy. The theory then argues that maximizing profit means sacrificing news objectivity, and news sources that ultimately survive must have been fundamentally biased, with regard to news in which they have a conflict of interest.
Funding
Since the mainstream media depends heavily on advertising revenues to survive, the model suggests that the interests of advertisers come before reporting the news. Chomsky and Herman argue that, as a business, a newspaper has a product which it offers to an audience. The product is composed of the affluent readers who buy the newspaper — who also comprise the educated decision-making sector of the population — while the audience includes the businesses that pay to advertise their goods. According to this "filter", the news itself is nothing more than "filler" to get privileged readers to see the advertisements which makes up the real content, and will thus take whatever form is most conducive to attracting educated decision-makers. Stories that conflict with their "buying mood", it is argued, will tend to be marginalized or excluded, along with information that presents a picture of the world that collides with advertisers' interests. The theory argues that the people buying the newspaper are themselves the product which is sold to the businesses that buy advertising space; the news itself has only a marginal role as the product.
The president of the main French television station TF1 stated this point of view in an interview in 2004, published in the book Les dirigeants face au changement ('Managers Facing Change') (Éditions du Huitième jour) [7]: "... the job of TF1 is to help Coca-Cola, for example, to sell its product. [...] In order for an advertising message to be perceived, the brain of the television viewer must be available. Our broadcasts are aimed at making that brain available: i.e. by distracting it, by relaxing it and preparing it between two messages. What we sell to Coca-Cola is time with this available human brain.".
Sourcing
The third filter concerns the mass media's need for a continuous flow of information to fill their demand for daily news. In an industrialized economy where consumers demand information on numerous worldwide events unfolding simultaneously, they argue that this task can only be filled by major business and government sectors that have the necessary material resources. This includes mainly The Pentagon and other governmental bodies. Chomsky and Herman then argue that a symbiotic relationship arises between the media and parts of government which is sustained by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest. On the one hand, government and news-promoters strive to make it easier for news organizations to buy their services; according to the authors (p. 22), they
provide them with facilities in which to gather
give journalists advance copies of speeches and forthcoming reports
schedule press conferences at hours well-geared to news deadlines
write press releases in usable language
carefully organize their press conferences and "photo opportunity" sessions
On the other hand, the media becomes reluctant to run articles that will harm corporate interests that provide them with the resources that the media depends upon.
This theoretical relationship also gives rise to a "moral division of labor", in which "officials have and give the facts," and "reporters merely get them". Journalists are then supposed to adopt an uncritical attitude that makes it possible for them to accept corporate values without experiencing cognitive dissonance.
During the year 2005 in the USA, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticised the George W. Bush administration for the preparation and distribution of videos which falsely give the impression of being interviews made independently of the administration. The New York Times claimed that "more than 20 federal agencies, including the State Department and the Defense Department, now create fake news clips. The Bush administration spent $254 million in its first four years on contracts with public relations firms, more than double the amount spent by the Clinton administration."[8]
Flak
Chomsky and Herman claim that "flak" refers to negative responses to a media statement or program. The term "flak" has been used to describe what Chomsky and Herman see as targeted efforts to discredit organizations or individuals who disagree with or cast doubt on the prevailing assumptions which Chomsky and Herman view as favorable to established power (e.g., "The Establishment"). Unlike the first three "filtering" mechanisms — which are derived from analysis of market mechanisms — flak is characterized by concerted and intentional efforts to manage public information.
Flak from the powerful can be either direct or indirect. The direct could include the following hypothetical scenarios:
Letters or phone calls from the White House to Dan Rather or William Paley
Inquiries from the FCC to major television networks requesting documents used to plan and assemble a program
Messages from irate executives representing advertising agencies or corporate sponsors to media officials threatening retaliation if not granted on-air reply time.
The powerful can also work on the media indirectly by:
Complaints delivered en masse to their own constituencies (e.g., stockholders, employees) about media bias,
Generation of mass advertising that does the same,
By funding watchdog groups or think tanks engineered to expose and attack deviations in media coverage that endanger vital elite interests.
By funding political campaigns that elect politicians who will be more willing to curb any such media deviations.
Bron: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model
Meer over de gedachten van Bernays en Freud over het beinvloeden van de massa en hoe de public relations industrie werkt kan je lezen in de onderstaande boeken.
The Father of Spin (Larry Tye)
Trust Us We're Experts (John Stauber & Sheldon Rampton)
Toxic Sludge Is Good For You (John Stauber & Sheldon Rampton)
Mass Psychology (Sigmund Freud)
Civilization And Its Discontents (Sigmund Freud)
One-Dimensional Man (Herbert Marcuse)
Maar het makkelijkste kan je denk ik gewoon de BBC documentaire
Century of the Self kijken om in een betrekkelijk korte tijd de achtergrond uitgelegd te krijgen.
Werken van H.G. Wells lijken mij ook zeer de moeite waard.
Ik heb gisteren een aantal van zijn boeken besteld.
War of the Worlds
The Time Machine
The Last War: A World Set Free
A Modern Utopia
The Open Conspiracy: What Are We To Do With Our Lives?
Weer genoeg leeswerk voor een paar maanden... waar ik waarschijnlijk toch niet aan toe kom.
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed - if all records told the same tale - then the lie passed into history and became truth. Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past."