Guarantee.
You have all seen some headline at one time or another and been outraged either at the subject itself or just the fact that people are outraged about it and that's a win-win for the media they often say there is no such thing as "bad publicity" but the truth is there is no such thing as "bad news" for the news media.
So what if I told you your outrage is being manufactured just like your consent.
Manufacturing Concent
It's a common joke that Orwell's 1984 wasn't meant to be an instruction manual, well Manufacturing Consent Co-written by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman in 1998 must be a propagandist's bible.
It in this book that the authors peel back the curtain behind the powers and examine exactly how the media that is presented to be the safeguard of democracy, truth, and justice is actually deeply involved in... you guessed it manufacturing your concent.
They lay out the concept of the propaganda model and provide a reframing of what many of us might traditionally think of propaganda mainly that it's not just a tool of the evil totalitarian despot.
The Five Filters.
In their propaganda model, they established the five filters of media
Ownership.
Since WWII media has changed dramatically, most significantly that many smaller independent news sources once free to criticise the status quo began to be absorbed by larger corporations and conglomerates as these outlets became controlled by those corporations and set the stage for the of profit before truth.
According to BusinessInsider.com 6 corporations own 90% of the media in America while in Australia that number is closer to 2 being Murdochs Fox/Newscorp and Fairfax.
Advertising
We are the product, it's a truth that many fail to recognize, we watch T.V thinking we are consuming a product made for our entertainment or enlightenment but the truth is we are the product sold to companies to advertise their products to right in our own living rooms when if some door to door salesman knocked there is next to no chance they are coming in, every single thing you watch is filler, fluff to put between the sales pitch and the better they make the fluff the more they can charge their customers for their product(you).
Don't believe it just look at how much they charge to rent 30 seconds of your living room time during the Superbowl.
Sourcing
It's the nature of the News beast that it engenders complicity, that access to vital information or scoops from the powers is metered out to "trustworthy" reporters or outlets and that when information is provided its expected to be in line with the official story and if you want to challenge that story then good luck getting access to the Whitehouse.
Flak
Put on your jacket because if you want to challenge the official story the new media is amazing at hatchet jobs, push too hard on a story that's not in line and good luck getting it published, blow the whistle on illegal government activity and watch the media very quickly paint you as a traitor to national security and line you up for a charge of treason.
The Common Enemy
This is the big one the media in this theory is there to establish a common enemy, at the time of writing Manufacturing Consent that common enemy was still communists, but the truth is it doesn't matter who is painted as the enemy as long as it works to create us vs them mentality in the population, if it generates a strong national patriotism combined with heightened unreasonable fear and hatred for the enemy then it's working exactly as planned.
This strategy is the big one in manufacturing your consent, its there to make you feel ok with your country bombing the hell out of theirs because after all those aren't people they are the enemy and don't forget that "Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia." and even when its the bears it was the immigrants.
Yeah, but what about my outrage this post is a disgrace!
Ok, I'm getting there it boils down to this they need a vast majority of the public support to wage wars or commit actions that may otherwise be unethical against a foreign populace and another truth is that even with the effort to manufacture your consent there is a value to a nations unity great and powerful things can be achieved.
Unity but not too much.
This bit is going to sound like a conspiracy theory but if you followed the five filters then it's not really a stretch, they need your unity to achieve their goals against an external threat but they fear our unity as a threat to their power thus begins the balancing act between keeping the largest number united against "The Enemy" and creating artificial divides between as many other their people as possible.
Their best method is to fan the flames of outrage, to target issues that may be real, legitimate and even worthy of your outrage and spin it placing in your living rooms only the most controversial of opinions no matter which side of the issue your on this serves to make you think its impossible for there to be a middle ground and that the opposite side is so far off base that no reconciliation is possible.
There is no room for the moderate when you're trying to divide people. United we stand, Divided we're governed
Examples.
The Media trawl your social media looking for fires to light.
While I hate sending you to an external article before you get to the bottom of this post because well... upvotes that's what I'm going to do this particular link it an article from a woman that made a tweet about something she didn't agree with or thought was slightly off, in this case, the name of a lipstick color.
To of her amazing credit, she shows transparently the actual engagement on her tweet and proceeded to show exactly how the tweet that had no major traction was twisted by the media with buzzwords like disgusted, outrage, offensive.
Sparking multiple articles, pushing up the retweets, and enraging people on the social justice side and those tired of the PC culture.
Truth is she does a far better job at showing the outrage machine in action much better than I can.
Racism where there isn't.
This next one relates to racism which to be absolutely clear I acknowledge does exist in fact race has been the single greatest tool in the unification against a common enemy long before the media even existed and that's because it's lazy, its oh so easy to create a common enemy or false divide when there is a uniform that's worn on the skin.
BLACKFACE = BAD, in case you not aware Blackface was a nasty theatrical makeup technique employed by white actors and singers from around 1830 all the way up into primetime TV with The Black and White Minstrel Show, which ended in 1978, yeah that's right 1978 (wtf) the sole purpose of blackface was to marginalize the black community with parody and mocking, like I said false division through media.
I don't expect or ask that the black community forgets blackface but I do expect that intent should be the deciding factor when deciding racism.
Which brings me to the this the outrage machine is so good at its job they can convince you that something is its opposite. In Australia, we have book week, a week in which children dress up to a theme and go to school in 2016 that theme was Australia: Story country that year a young white boy decided that he wanted to dress as his hero and Australian born AFL champion of Fijian decent which is to say he is black.
The young boy's mother agreed and dressed the boy as his HERO dreads, Guernsey, blackened skin and all being proud of her efforts to make her son look like his hero she posted to social media.
[original source twitter]
Big mistake because the outrage machine was about to teach her and her son that the reward for wanting to be like your hero was shame and ridicule, remember when I said blackface was bad because its purpose was to ridicule or mock black culture? Well the purpose of this boys costume was anything but mocking its purpose was adoration, its purpose was a pretending to be just like the man the child admired, and the lesson the outrage machine taught the child was it's not ok to want to be like someone with a different skin color.
Sometimes looking at everything through the lens of history makes it look like everything comes from that world and while to quote George Santayana "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" sometimes if we can't let the past go we never really leave it.
Please Think.
They really do want us divided, but one of the strangest things in the age of social media is that now even individuals and smaller groups are able to use the strategies to inflame your outrage and manufacture your consent, fake news comes from all angles even those that claim to be fighting it and the War on Truth had gone Gorilla.
I had two more examples that I really wanted to examine but didn't want to make anyone that might actually read this go 3000 words in.
Kind regards
Shai Peter.
My Wife is also a great Steemian worth a follow check out her most recent posts here.
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