propaganda

it amazes me more that we, as individuals, seem to think ourselves immune to the sway of propaganda, than it does how well the actual propaganda works. maybe education plays a role in how we view it and how susceptible we are to it?

marketing is a form of propaganda, right? the idea of it all is to color the opinion of the individual, (preferably en masse but this discussion needs to be personal,) in a preconceived way. i have a friend who believes he is immune to marketing. (silly-i know.) but he believes it. and he is not someone who just goes with the flow on everything, which is precisely why he is deluded on this point. because he detests the suv or more importantly, our reliance on oil, he fancies himself an independent thinker and to be fair to him, he is an independent thinker. but to think this industry that spends countless trillions of dollars (seemingly daily,) to affect our perceptions, thoughts, tastes, notions, etcetra, does so in vain, is pure folly. my friend thinks he exists in a niche outside of where marketing campaigns tread. (that place might also be known as fantasyland.)

i am targeted. daily. further, i succumb. who am i to stand up to this juggernaut? it's kind of like that laura branigan song from the '80s: gloria. remember that one? (of course you do-it was on pop radio every 40 minutes for about a 4-month span.) "gloria! gloria! i think they got your number. gloria! i think they got the alias, that you been livin' under!" i hated that song. i detested it. seriously. but here i am 20-something years later and i still remember the lyrics? seems more like i loved it. the truth is, the only radio station i could get at the beach was one called the mighty 690, an a.m. station, and they played it constantly. they played it till my ears bled.

al franken's air america radio recently requisitioned the #5 preset on my a.m. dial in my car. since i've been listening, i've noticed there are investment companies who are: "the right company for the socially conscious investor," (or some such poppycock.) npr is brought to me by companies that want my business. mother jones magazine and the new yorker contain ads from companies who have literally targeted me; the consumer. and guess what? they all win. i do spend some money. more importantly, i have no illusions that i am in some enlightened class who exist outside of the reach of marketing ploys and techniques. my goal, in this context, is to allow as little sway over me as possible, to maintain my values and to be true to myself.

when i see all the erectile dysfunction advertisements in the sports section of the la times, i like to think i'm not sucked into, (er, rephrase,) lured into that sense of insecurity that sells so many things. in that way i perceive myself as savvy. (somewhat. i mean, by comparison to the newly upright cro-magnon types who are running out to have surgery to increase their penis length or girth.) but in subtler ways, i know the marketers get me. they have my number. they know the alias i've been living under. ("socially conscious, left-leaning, tree hugger type with serious authority issues," might be a moniker they use?) they sell me npr for chrissakes, (which in turn sells me on shopping at whole foods or bristol farms or trader joe's. . .gets me thinking about the hybrid car and dyes in diapers.)

marketing and propaganda have been around forever. many war efforts have turned on which side better sold its message. in our current war effort, the u.s. has dropped thousands of leaflets on various parts of iraq. these little notes tend to suggest we are the big brother who has arrived in the nick of time to fend off evil dictators and unfriendly neighbors so the good reader can increase his quality of life by participating in democracy, etc. the point is simply that propaganda exists and it works to varying degrees. and i say all that to elucidate the idea that we are all subject to the effects of propaganda.

for an intellectual discussion of propaganda, how it works and how deeply entrenched our democracy is in it, see: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9103-media-control.html (therein, chomsky explains how propaganda is not simply socialist slogans and maoist songs for schoolchildren. he speaks of how it has effectively been used in our society ostensibly to change public opinion.) (i thought this quote was interesting and poignant: "Propaganda is to democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.")

despite my admission of vulnerability, i admit, i want to know when i am being manipulated. i want to recognize the tools of marketing and propaganda when they play upon me. i'm a regular guy. answering the college degree question all i can say is, "some coursework completed." but i don't want to be duped or taken advantage of. that's why these stories in the new york times over the last few days caught my eye.

this first one is about ken lay, the creepy friend of bush who engineered the enron debacle, (or at least must be held accountable for it,) and how he used propaganda at enron.

FRANK RICH
Enron: Patron Saint of Bush's Fake NewsPublished: March 20, 2005
Just when Americans are being told it's safe to hand over their savings to Wall Street again, he's baaaack! Looking not unlike Chucky, the demented doll of perennial B-horror-movie renown, Ken Lay has crawled out of Houston's shadows for a media curtain call.
His trial is still months away, but there he was last Sunday on "60 Minutes," saying he knew nothin' 'bout nothin' that went down at Enron. This week he is heading toward the best-seller list, as an involuntary star of "Conspiracy of Fools," the New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald's epic account of the multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme anointed America's "most innovative company" (six years in a row by Fortune magazine). Coming soon, the feature film: Alex Gibney's "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," a documentary seen at Sundance, goes into national release next month. As long as you're not among those whose 401(k)'s and pensions were wiped out, it's morbidly entertaining. In one surreal high point, Mr. Lay likens investigations of Enron to terrorist attacks on America. For farce, there's the sight of a beaming Alan Greenspan as he accepts the "Enron Award for Distinguished Public Service" only days after Enron has confessed to filing five years of bogus financial reports. Then again, given the implicit quid pro quo in this smarmy tableau, maybe that's the Enron drama's answer to a sex scene.
The Bush administration, eager to sell the country on "personal" Social Security accounts, cannot be all that pleased to see Kenny Boy again. He's the poster boy for how big guys can rip off suckers in the stock market. He also dredges up some inconvenient pre-9/11 memories of Bush family business. Enron was the biggest Bush-Cheney campaign contributor in the 2000 election. Kenny Boy and his lovely wife Linda flew the first President Bush and Barbara Bush to the ensuing Inauguration on the Enron jet. Even as Enron was presiding over rolling blackouts in California, Dick Cheney or his aides had at least six meetings with the company's executives to carve up government energy policy in 2001. Even now what exactly transpired at those meetings remains a secret.
But never mind. The president himself gave his word when the Enron scandal broke that Kenny Boy was really more of a supporter of Ann Richards anyway. Feeling our pain, Mr. Bush told us of his own personal tragedy: his mother-in-law lost $8,000 she had invested in Enron. Soon stuff was happening in Iraq, and the case was closed, or at least forgotten.
Yet the larger shadows linger. Revisiting the Enron story as it re-emerges in 2005 is to be reminded of just how much the Enron culture has continued to shape the Bush administration long after the company itself imploded and the Lays were eighty-sixed from the White House Christmas card list.
The enduring legacy of Enron can be summed up in one word: propaganda. Here was a corporate house of cards whose business few could explain and whose source of profits was an utter mystery - and yet it thrived, unquestioned, for years. How? As the narrator says in "The Smartest Guys in the Room," Enron "was fixated on its public relations campaigns." It churned out slick PR videos as if it were a Hollywood studio. It browbeat the press (until a young Fortune reporter, Bethany McLean, asked one question too many). In a typical ruse in 1998, a gaggle of employees was rushed onto an empty trading floor at the company's Houston headquarters to put on a fictional show of busy trading for visiting Wall Street analysts being escorted by Mr. Lay. "We brought some of our personal stuff, like pictures, to make it look like the area was lived in," a laid-off Enron employee told The Wall Street Journal in 2002. "We had to make believe we were on the phone buying and selling" even though "some of the computers didn't even work."
If this Potemkin village sounds familiar, take a look at the ongoing 60-stop "presidential roadshow" in which Mr. Bush has "conversations on Social Security" with "ordinary citizens" for the consumption of local and national newscasts. As in the president's "town meeting" campaign appearances last year, the audiences are stacked with prescreened fans; any dissenters who somehow get in are quickly hustled away by security goons. But as The Washington Post reported last weekend, the preparations are even more elaborate than the finished product suggests; the seeming reality of the event is tweaked as elaborately as that of a television reality show. Not only are the panelists for these conversations recruited from administration supporters, but they are rehearsed the night before, with a White House official playing Mr. Bush. One participant told The Post, "We ran through it five times before the president got there." Finalists who vary just slightly from the administration's pitch are banished from the cast at the last minute, "American Idol"-style.
Like Enron's stockholders, American taxpayers pay for the production of such propaganda, even if its message, like that of the Enron show put on for visiting analysts, misrepresents and distorts the bottom line of the scheme that is being sold. We paid for last year's phony television news reports in which the faux reporter Karen Ryan "interviewed" administration officials who gave partially deceptive information hyping the Medicare prescription-drug program. We paid Armstrong Williams his $240,000 for delivering faux-journalistic analysis of the No Child Left Behind act.
The administration cycled the Ryan and Williams paychecks through the PR giant Ketchum Communications. Ketchum was also one of the companies hired to flack for Andersen, the now-defunct Enron accounting firm that shredded a ton of documents. We don't know what, if any, role Ketchum is playing in the White House's Social Security propaganda push, though we do know the company has received at least $97 million from the government, according to a Congressional report.
That $97 million may yet prove a mere down payment. The Times reported last weekend that the administration told executive-branch agencies simply to ignore a stern directive by the Congressional Government Accountability Office discouraging the use of "covert propaganda" like the Karen Ryan "news reports." In other words, the brakes are off, and before long, the government could have a larger budget for fake news than actual television news divisions have for real news. At last weekend's Gridiron dinner, Mr. Bush made a joke about how "most" of his good press on Social Security came from Armstrong Williams, and the Washington press corps yukked it up. The joke, however, is on them - and us.
USA Today reported this month that the Department of Homeland Security, having failed miserably to secure American ports and air transportation from potential Al Qaeda attacks, has nonetheless shelled out $100,000-plus to hire "a Hollywood liaison": Bobbie Faye Ferguson, an actress whose credits include the movie "The Bermuda Triangle" and guest shots on television schlock like "Designing Women" and "The Dukes of Hazzard." She will "work with moviemakers and scriptwriters" to give us homeland security infotainment - which is to actual homeland security what the movie "Independence Day" is to an actual terrorist attack.
Another propagandist with a rising profile is Susan Molinari, the onetime CBS News personality who appears regularly on news shows like "Hardball" and "Capitol Report." As she bloviates from the right about Social Security or the fake newsman Jeff Gannon, she is invariably described as "a former Republican Congresswoman" or a "CNBC political analyst." But her actual current jobs remain mysteriously unmentioned: C.E.O. of the Washington Group, Ketchum's lobbying firm, and president of Ketchum Public Affairs. Were the Ketchum link disclosed, perhaps some real NBC reporter might find the nerve to ask her what other Karen Ryans and Armstrong Williamses might be on the Ketchum payroll. Or not.
The Bush propagandists have been successful at many tasks, from fomenting the canard that Iraqis attacked on 9/11 to deflecting moral outrage from Abu Ghraib and toward indecency as defined by its Federal Communications Commission. But Social Security may be a bridge too far even for propaganda machinery of this heft. Polls find that an ever-increasing majority of the country rejects the idea of letting Wall Street get its hands on its retirement savings.
Americans do have short memories, but it's the administration's bad luck that not just Kenny Boy but a whole brigade of bubble plutocrats have lately been yanked back into the spotlight by their legal travails: WorldCom's Bernard J. Ebbers, Tyco's L. Dennis Kozlowski, HealthSouth's Richard M. Scrushy, Global Crossing's Gary Winnick. No one is glad to see them. The public knows that the economy has not fully mended, and that there remain different economic rules for insiders than for the panelists drafted for the presidential Social Security roadshow. The new bankruptcy bill embraced this month by Republicans and Democrats alike throws Americans paying usurious credit-card interest to the wolves even as wealthy debtors remain protected.
You can catch the public mood in the reaction to Martha Stewart's homecoming. Despite the news media's heavy-breathing efforts to hype her emergence from jail as the heartwarming comeback of a born-again humanitarian, the bottom line shows that few in the audience are buying it. The Martha Stewart Omnimedia stock price started tumbling the moment she was back on camera, in line with the cratered circulation and ad sales of her magazine. Handing out hot cocoa to reporters at her Bedford, N.Y., estate did not turn the tide, and her spinoff of "The Apprentice" may be arriving just as the country is getting sick of C.E.O.'s again. Coincidentally or not, ratings for the existing "Apprentice" are off in tandem with the filing for bankruptcy protection by Donald Trump's casino empire, the saturation coverage of his lavish nuptials and the introduction of a Trump fragrance.
It's against this backdrop that the returning Mr. Lay - completely unrepentant, still purporting on "60 Minutes" that he's an innocent victim of others - could be the Democrats' new best friend. A Texas tycoon who helped create the political career of George W. Bush only to be discarded when scandal struck has re-emerged at just the precise moment when he might do his old buddy the most harm.

if you were there, as a reporter or a wall street investor, would you want to recognize the fact these enron people were trying to pull the proverbial wool past your eyes, over your mouth and into a straight-jacket of propaganda?

in this next piece, we see how insidious our own tax-dollar funded propaganda is.

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV NewsBy DAVID BARSTOW and ROBIN STEIN Published: March 13, 2005
It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.
To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.
Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters about the origin of the news segments they distribute. The reports themselves, though, are designed to fit seamlessly into the typical local news broadcast. In most cases, the "reporters" are careful not to state in the segment that they work for the government. Their reports generally avoid overt ideological appeals. Instead, the government's news-making apparatus has produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts describing a vigilant and compassionate administration.
Some reports were produced to support the administration's most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters, like the administration's efforts to offer free after-school tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight holiday drunken driving. They often feature "interviews" with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.
Some of the segments were broadcast in some of the nation's largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.
An examination of government-produced news reports offers a look inside a world where the traditional lines between public relations and journalism have become tangled, where local anchors introduce prepackaged segments with "suggested" lead-ins written by public relations experts. It is a world where government-produced reports disappear into a maze of satellite transmissions, Web portals, syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge cleansed on the other side as "independent" journalism.
It is also a world where all participants benefit.

by the way, the yellow is meant to represent the color of journalism evident. i went to school for journalism and my experience was that there were a few people who were conscientious and who would make fine journalists. the majority were lazy, hazy or just trying to get some course credit. but i was at a community college. based on the "news," i see on tv, based on lies even in this cornerstone paper i've been pasting here, based on that guy who made up all those stories at the nation, (was it the nation?) i assume it was no different at columbia u or the ohio state university.

this next piece is an example of how our president treats all this kind of stuff. he pooh-poohs it. that's his own form of propaganda. he says it as if an logical person would recognize it's business as usual and who the hell are these paranoid conspiracy theorists anyway who think there's harm around every corner, geez he's just a good texan and a good american and damn it he's steering the course in a mean angry world for all of our good. i remember him complaining about liberal hollywood back in his early days and how the right had to harness that propaganda machine that reaches people. this has got to be at least partially why arnold ran in the first place and certainly why this administration is spending through the nose on propaganda.

Bush Defends Offering Video News ReleasesBy RICHARD W. STEVENSON Published: March 17, 2005
WASHINGTON, March 16 - President Bush on Wednesday defended his administration's practice of providing television stations with video news releases that resemble actual news reports, saying that the practice was legal and that it was up to broadcasters to make clear that any of the releases they used on the air were produced by the government.
Responding to a question during his news conference in the White House briefing room, Mr. Bush said he expected cabinet agencies to abide by a Justice Department memorandum circulated last week that concluded video news releases were legal as long as they were factual and not intended to advocate the administration's positions.
"This has been a longstanding practice of the federal government to use these types of videos," Mr. Bush said. "The Agricultural Department, as I understand it, has been using these videos for a long period of time. The Defense Department, other departments have been doing so. It's important that they be based on the guidelines set out by the Justice Department."
Mr. Bush said it would be "helpful if local stations then disclosed to their viewers" that any portions of the releases they used were produced by the government, but he added that, "evidently, in some cases, that's not the case."
The New York Times reported on Sunday that at least 20 government agencies have made and distributed hundreds of video news releases in the last four years. Many of them were broadcast on local news programs without any public acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
Pressed on why the government does not require that broadcasters identify the material as being government-produced, Mr. Bush said that "there's a procedure that we're going to follow," and that if there is a "deep concern" about the releases appearing on the air as if they were journalistic reports, then local stations "ought to tell their viewers what they're watching." The administration's use of the video news releases paid for by taxpayers has drawn criticism from some Democrats in Congress, and Democrats are also raising questions about the way in which television stations use them. In a letter sent on Monday to Michael K. Powell, the departing chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, the senior Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, asked the commission to investigate whether stations were misleading their viewers.
"Until now, attention has largely focused on whether certain V.N.R.'s created by the federal government violated the restriction on using appropriated funds for publicity or propaganda," Mr. Inouye said in the letter. "However, equally as serious is growing evidence that certain broadcasters are editing government-created V.N.R.'s to make it appear as if such information is the result of independent news gathering."

Here's more of the same. the gao comptroller does his job and bush makes fun ofhim like he showed up at pistol duel with a swiss army knife.

Administration Is Warned About Its 'News' Videos By ANNE E. KORNBLUT Published: February 19, 2005 WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 - The comptroller general has issued a blanket warning that reminds federal agencies they may not produce newscasts promoting administration policies without clearly stating that the government itself is the source. Twice in the last two years, agencies of the federal government have been caught distributing prepackaged television programs that used paid spokesmen acting as newscasters and, in violation of federal law, failed to disclose the administration's role in developing and financing them. And those were not isolated incidents, David M. Walker, the comptroller general, said in a letter dated Thursday that put all agency heads on notice about the practice. In fact, it has become increasingly common for federal agencies to adopt the public relations tactic of producing "video news releases" that look indistinguishable from authentic newscasts and, as ready-made and cost-free reports, are sometimes picked up by local news programs. It is illegal for the government to produce or distribute such publicity material domestically without disclosing its own role. Mr. Walker, who as comptroller general is chief of the Government Accountability Office, Congress's investigative arm, said in his letter: "While agencies generally have the right to disseminate information about their policies and activities, agencies may not use appropriated funds to produce or distribute prepackaged news stories intended to be viewed by television audiences that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials." "It is not enough," he added, "that the contents of an agency's communication may be unobjectionable." Mr. Walker's letter was made available late Friday afternoon by Democrats on Capitol Hill. Asked for a response Friday night, the White House had no immediate comment. The two best-known cases of such video news releases - one concerning the new Medicare law, the other an antidrug campaign by the Bush administration - drew sharp rebukes from the G.A.O. after separate investigations last year found that the agencies involved had violated the law. Those cases were followed by disclosures that the government had paid at least one conservative commentator, Armstrong Williams, to promote the administration's No Child Left Behind education measure and had put two other conservative writers on the federal payroll to help develop programs. These episodes have prompted calls from Democrats for stricter oversight of the administration's publicity practices, which have cost millions of dollars of federal revenue. In the Medicare case, a video made in the style of a newscast featured a spokeswoman named Karen Ryan who claimed to be reporting from Washington on Medicare law changes strongly backed by the administration but opposed by many Democrats, who consider them a windfall for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. In part of one script, she said that "all people with Medicare will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending." Often there is an intermediary in the process: a public relations firm hired by a government agency to produce a polished video and direct other aspects of a publicity drive. One centrally involved firm is Ketchum, a giant in the public relations industry whose representatives arranged for both the Medicare video and the contract with Mr. Williams, a pact that is now under investigation by three government agencies. Ketchum has received $97 million in government public relations contracts since 2001. The G.A.O. letter did not caution agencies to curtail their publicity practices, telling them simply to adhere to disclosure requirements. "Prepackaged news stories," Mr. Walker wrote, "can be utilized without violating the law, so long as there is clear disclosure to the television viewing audience that this material was prepared by or in cooperation with the government department or agency." But Democrats said they hoped the letter would lead to tougher scrutiny of what they describe as an aggressive publicity machine within the administration. "The G.A.O. is sending a clear message to the Bush administration: shut down the propaganda mill," Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey said in a statement on Friday. "The G.A.O. is simply telling the White House to stop manipulating media, stop paying journalists and be straight with the American people."

while i think there is a fat chance that will happen, i still can't help but think since i recognize people trying to pull the wool over my eyes, since i recognize the propaganda in my own society, (in our democracy,) others can to.

i saw some grass roots advertising (propaganda,) recently from an aircraft manufacturer. (i think it was northrup.) i thought to myself, does northrup really care that much? are they protecting the environment and making the communities they are located in happier, more peaceful, places to live? and why is this ad on during csi? aircraft buyers are known to watch ridiculous crime dramas? or does northrup need a shot in the arm of public goodwill to ensure a certain legislation passes which will affect their business, or something similiar to that? did a republican controlled congress trot out the famous baseball players to discuss the well being of america's children as it relates to steroid use all the while taking photos and collecting autographs "backstage," in order to distract the public from a certain alaskan wilderness drilling the american public has said no to so many times in the past? it seems to me propaganda comes in many forms and guises-sometimes it is merely distraction.

lastly, i offer a couple quotes. . .

"i believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the rights of the people by the gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
-James Madison

"The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government."
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt