Media (manipulation?)

EDUTUS College

Western Balkan Information

Literacy Conference on Una

River 2014

Speaker: Esther Molnar

Table of Contents

• Introduction

• Media=manipulation?

-Media manipulation tools

-Mind Control

• What you never hear in the

media

“The most effective way to conquer a man is to

capture his mind. Control a man’s mind and you

control his body.” (Steven Jacobson)

Media manipulation tools• What is manipulation? : a certain social attitude,

created on purpose in order to influence the reactions, behavior of an individual/social

+converting the target [ourselves], turning it into one dependent on the influence of the source transmitting the message

• Forms of manipulation:

a) persuasionany attempt to convince somebody to

accept your ideas or adopt certain behaviour.

+clearly seen in the means of propaganda

e.g: Reagan’s Cambodia- and Nicaragua warfare

in the „Rambo” movie

b) misinforming

any attempt to influence the enemy’s decision, in

other words, “creating a false reality so convincing

that the enemy considers it fair

• it can be a dangerous weapon because it can be

used to find excuses, distracting attention,

discredit a person or create conflicts between

nations and finally, manipulate public opinion

• in order to manipulate the masses successfully, it

has to be done on society’s level

• the intensity of the information transmitted in the media ?

Its means can be making exaggerations and „news” according to Bernard Goldberg

• The press likes to use words like „scandal” or„tragedy”

• The source will be forgotten but the informationstays like the created opinion

• Howard Koch once mentioned in his book “The Panic Broadcast” that “we are ready to believe almost anything if it comes from a recognized authority

“The man who

never looks into a

newspaper is better

informed than he

who reads

them”(Thomas

Jefferson

• Dangers of the media:

Dependency!

Mind Control• Steven Jacobson

„Mind Control in the United

States”

is a deliberate process created by

communications technicians, by which you

receive and respond to information and

instructions without being consciously

aware of the instructions

Principles of mind control

• Distraction:

the attention of the conscious mind on one or more of the five senses (sight, sound, touch, smell and taste) in order to program the subconscious mind

Repetition of the information “imbeds it in your subconscious mind so that your acceptance of its truth (accuracy) becomes a conditioned response. You accept this information as true without thinking whenever it is presented to you again

• Tools for it are the TV, radio, (3D) movies

• James Vicary marketing researcher’s experiment ( „Hungry? Eat Popcorn” and „Drink Coca-Cola”).

• Neil Postman pointed out when he said that

television changes the form of information and

turns everything into entertainment

• Jacobson extended this idea and stated that

information control can be found in the areas of

education as well.

• The same principles apply here: to program

students to accept information that is not true

• Education of the young is used to condition them

to what comes later, thus eliminating the

difference between propaganda and teaching.

The interrelation of propaganda and education

can be seen for both aim to distract attention by

which the mind is conditioned with vast amounts

of information posing as ‘facts’ and ‘knowledge’

dispensed for ulterior motives.

• Repetition: that is the real „brainwash” for the

information gets into our subconscious without

noticing it and turns into a belief without even

questioning its truth.

Psychological uniformity

• America has always been facing the problem of cultural variety for the numerous settlers across the globe.

• Solution: psychological standardization

• + the dominance in the American market was carried abroad by the major companies and has cultural, social and political consequences

• +”colonizing the subconscious”/”culturalinvasion”

The Lords of the media• Why is that every music and movie is so

similar? Because they are in one hand. Onlythrough concentration in a few hands of a large number of media can there be an orchestration and continuity to propaganda and the application of scientific methods to influence the public

The 5 biggest companies

• AOL Time Warner :Time, Life, 64 magazin,

Warner Bros, 40 zenekiadó,HBO, Cartoon Network, CNN,

Sean Paul, Madonna• Viacom:

CBS, Nickelodeon,Paramount Pictures, 1800 mozi,..

• Walt Disney:ABC, Disney Channel,History Channel,Touchstone Pictures, Selena Gomez,..

So a limited number of sources have fewer content but when

it comes from more sources the message is more effective so

it does not matter which tv-channel you see or newspaper

you read

• Vivendi Universal:Universal Studios, internet/mobil companies,Lady Gaga, The Black Eyed Peas, Rihanna,..

• Sony:Columbia Pictures,

Beyonce, Shakira, Christina Aguilera

• Who controls these companies? Jacobson statedthat the companies are in the hands of the global elite and the aim is that “the new dynasties of political control through international financial alliances. The goal was to create a world-wide system of financial control in order to dominate the economy of the world and the political system of each country

• E.g.: relationship between governments and companies is conducted by Council of ForeignRelatons United Nations, IMF are also Councilprojects. Members are former CIA agents and CEO-s of companies (Nike, Coca-Cola, CBS, Visa, stb..).

What you never hear in the

media• „The news and the truth are not the same things."

Walter Lippmann

• Noam Chomsky „Media Control” (1997):

The role of propaganda in democracy

• What is democracy?

„specialized class” and

„bewildered herd”

according to

Walter Lipmann

• the public has the means to participate in some meaningful way in the management of their own affairs and the means of information are open and free

• it must be barred from managing of their own affairs and the means of information must be kept narrowly and rigidly controlled

• The role of propaganda in democracy

• it has the aim to bring about agreement on the part of the public for things that they did not want

• at the top is the “specialized class” (a class of “responsible men”) who control society, it is composed of a small elite, an intellectual community who can understand the common interests, what all of us care about, and these things elude the general public. The mass of the public are just too stupid to be able to understand things

• The main task would be to tame the heard through the manufacture of consent (media, education, popular culture) and have to provide them some tolerable sense of reality. E.g. Woodrow Wilson’swar against Germany

• + hysterical Red Scare

• so the solution is distraction of the masses like inPR

• The problem: people began to wake up!

• Mohawk Valley method:

Mobilizing community opinion

The main thing is to shout empty slogans that nobody is going to be against and everybody is going to be for (in reality, nobody even knows what they mean). Mobilizing community opinion in favor of vapid, empty concepts like Americanism”

the population ought just to be sitting in front of the TV and having drilled into their heads the message, which says, the only value in life is to have more commodities or live like that rich middle class family you are watching and to have nice values like harmony and Americanism

• And if we ran out of distraction tools then weinvent a „parade of enemies” like Hussein, Bin Laden., „internal aggression”

• Problem: we ran out of enemies

And then America

invented terrorism