Why
Americans will believe almost anything
Aldous
Huxley's inspired 1954 essay detailed the vivid,
mind-expanding, multisensory insights of his mescaline
adventures. By altering his brain chemistry with
natural psychotropics, Huxley tapped into a rich
and fluid world of shimmering, indescribable beauty
and power. With his neurosensory input thus triggered,
Huxley was able to enter that parallel universe described
by every mystic and space captain in recorded history.
Whether by hallucination or epiphany, Huxley sought
to remove all bonds, all controls, all filters, all
cultural conditioning from his perceptions and to
confront Nature or the World or Reality first-hand
- in its unpasteurized, unedited, unretouched infinite
rawness.
Those
bonds are much harder to break today, half a century
later. We are the most conditioned, programmed beings
the world has ever known. Not only are our thoughts
and attitudes continually being shaped and molded;
our very awareness of the whole design seems like it
is being subtly and inexorably erased. The doors of
our perception are carefully and precisely regulated.
Who cares, right?
It
is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining
to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are
scientifically implanted in the public consciousness
by a thousand media clips per day. In an effort to
save time, I would like to provide just a little background
on the handling of information in this country. Once
the basic principles are illustrated about how our
current system of media control arose historically,
the reader might be more apt to question any given
story in today's news.
If
everybody believes something, it's probably wrong.
We call that CONVENTIONAL WISDOM. In America, conventional
wisdom that has mass acceptance is usually contrived: somebody
paid for it.
Examples:
*
Pharmaceuticals restore health
* Vaccination brings immunity
* The cure for cancer is just around the corner
* Menopause is a disease condition
* When a child is sick, he needs immediate antibiotics
* When a child has a fever he needs Tylenol
* Hospitals are safe and clean.
* America has the best health care in the world.
* Americans have the best health in the world.
* Milk is a good source of calcium.
* You never outgrow your need for milk.
* Vitamin C is ascorbic acid.
* Aspirin prevents heart attacks.
* Heart drugs improve the heart.
* Back and neck pain are the only reasons for spinal adjustment.
* No child can get into school without being vaccinated.
* The FDA thoroughly tests all drugs before they go on the market.
* Pregnancy is a serious medical condition
* Infancy is a serious medical condition
* Chemotherapy and radiation are effective cures for cancer
* When your child is diagnosed with an ear infection, antibiotics should
be given immediately 'just in case'
* Ear tubes are for the good of the child.
* Estrogen drugs prevent osteoporosis after menopause.
* Pediatricians are the most highly trained of al medical specialists.
* The purpose of the health care industry is health.
* HIV is the cause of AIDS.
* AZT is the cure.
* Without vaccines, infectious diseases will return
* Fluoride in the city water protects your teeth
* Flu shots prevent the flu.
* Vaccines are thoroughly tested before being placed on the Mandated Schedule.
* Doctors are certain that the benefits of vaccines far outweigh any possible
risks.
* There is a terrorist threat in the US.
* There is a bioterrorist threat in the US.
* The NASDAQ is a natural market controlled by supply and demand.
* Chronic pain is a natural consequence of aging.
* Soy is your healthiest source of protein.
* Insulin shots cure diabetes.
* After we take out your gall bladder you can eat anything you want
* Allergy medicine will cure allergies.
* An airliner can be flown with professional precision by a group of crazed
amateurs into a 100-storey building and can cause that building to collapse
on its own footprint. Twice.
* The Iraqis blew up the World Trade Center.
This
is a list of illusions, that have cost billions to
conjure up. Did you ever wonder why most people in
this country generally accept most of the above statements?
PROGRAMMING
THE VIEWER
Even
the most undiscriminating viewer may suspect that TV
newsreaders and news articles are not telling us the
whole story. The slightly more lucid may have begun
to glimpse the calculated intent of standard news content
and are wondering about the reliability and accuracy
of the way events are presented. For the very few who
take time to research beneath the surface of the daily
programming and who are still capable of independent
thought, a somewhat darker picture begins to emerge.
These may perceive bits of evidence of the profoundly
technical science behind much of what is served up
in mass media.
Events
taking place in today's world are enormously complex.
An impossibly convoluted tangle of interrelated and
unrelated occurrences happens simultaneously, often
in dynamic conflict. To even acknowledge this complexity
contradicts a fundamental axiom of media science: Keep
It Simple.
In
real life, events don't take place in black and white,
but in a thousand shades of grey. Just discovering
the actual facts and events as they transpire is difficult
enough. The river is different each time we step into
it. By the time a reasonable understanding of an event
has been apprehended, new events have already made
that interpretation obsolete. And this is not even
adding historical, social, or political elements into
the mix, which are necessary for interpretation of
events. Popular media gives up long before this level
of analysis.
Media
stories cover only the tiniest fraction of actual events,
but stupidly claim to be summarizing "all the
news." The final goal of media is to create a
following of docile, unquestioning consumers. To that
end, three primary tools have historically been employed:
• deceit
• dissimulation
• distraction
Over
time, the sophistication of these tools of propaganda
has evolved to a very structured science, taking its
cues in an unbroken line from principles laid down
by the Father of Spin himself, Edward L Bernays, over
a century ago, as we will see. Let's look at each tool
very briefly:
DECEIT
Deliberate
misrepresentation of fact has always been the privilege
of the directors of mass media. Their agents - the
PR industry - cannot afford random objective journalism
interpreting events as they actually take place. This
would be much too confusing for the average consumer,
who has been spoonfed his opinions since the day he
was born. No, we can't have that. In all the confusion
the viewer might get the idea that he is supposed to
make up his own mind about the significance of some
event or other. The end product of good media is single-mindedness.
Confusion and individual interpretation of events do
not foster the homogenized, one-dimensional lemming
outlook.
For
this reason, events must have a spin put on them -
an interpretation, a frame of reference. Subtleties
are omitted; all that is presented is the bottom line.
The minute that decision is made - what spin to put
on a story - we have left the world of reporting and
entered the world of propaganda. By definition, propaganda
replaces faithful reporting with deceitful reporting.
Here's
an obvious example: the absurd and unremitting
allegations of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction
as a rationale for the invasion of Iraq. Of course
none were ever found, but that is irrelevant. We
weren't really looking for any weapons - but the
deceit served its purpose - get us in there. Later
the ruse can be abandoned and forgotten; its usefulness
is over. And nobody will notice. Characterization
of Saddam as a murderous tyrant was decided to be
an insufficient excuse for invading a sovereign nation.
After all, there are literally dozens of murderous
tyrants the world over, going their merry ways. We
can't be expected to police all of them.
So
it was decided that the murderous tyrant thing, though
good, was not enough. To whip a sleeping people into
war consciousness has historically involved one additional
prerequisite: threat. Saddam must therefore be not
only a baby-killing maniac; he must be a threat to
the rest of the world, especially America. Why? Because
he has weapons of mass destruction. For almost two
years, this myth was assiduously programmed into the
lowest common denominator of awareness which Americans
substitute for consciousness. Even though the myth
has now been openly dismissed by the Regime itself,
the majority of us still believe it.
Hitler
used the exact same tack with the Czechs and Poles
at the beginning of his rampage. These peaceful peoples
were not portrayed as an easy mark for the German war
machine - no, they were a threat to the Fatherland
itself. Just like Albania in the Dustin Hoffman movie.
And threats must be removed by all available force.
With
Iraq, the fact that UN inspectors never came up with
any of these dread weapons before Saddam was captured
- this fact was never mentioned again. That one phrase
- WMD WMD WMD - repeated ad nauseam month after month
had served its purpose - whip the people into war mode.
It didn't have to be true; it just had to work. A staggering
indicator of how low the general awareness had sunk
is that this mantra continued to be used as our license
to invade Iraq long after our initial assault. If Saddam
had any such weapons, probably a good time to trot
them out would be when a foreign country is moving
in, wouldn't you say?
No
weapons were ever found, nor will they be. So confident
was the PR machine in the general inattention to detail
commonly exhibited by the comatose American people
that they didn't even find it necessary to plant a
few mass weapons in order to justify the invasion.
It was almost insulting.
So
we see that a little deceit goes a long way. All it
takes is repetition. Lay the groundwork and the people
will buy anything. After that just ride it out until
they seem doubtful again. Then onto the next deceit.
DISSIMULATION
A
second tool that is commonly used to create mass intellectual
torpor is dissimulation. Dissimulation simply means
to pretend not to be something you are. Like some insects
who can disguise themselves as leaves or twigs, pretending
not to be insects. Or bureaucrats who pretend not to
be acting in their own interest, but rather in the
public interest. To pretend not to be what you are.
Whether
it's the Bush League in Iraq or Hitler in Germany,
aggressors do not present themselves as marauding invaders
initiating hostilities, but instead as defenders against
external threats. Freedom-annihilating edicts like
the Homeland Security Act and the Patriot Act - currently
the law of the land - do not represent themselves as
the negation of every principle the Founding Fathers
laid down, or as shaky pretexts for the Takers to further
loot the country, but rather as public services, benevolent
and necessary new rules to ensure our SECURITY against
various imagined enemies. To pretend to be what you
are not: dissimulation.
Other
obvious examples of dissimulation we see today include:
*
pretending like the world's resources are not finite
* pretending like more and more government will not further stifle an already
struggling economy
* pretending like programs favoring "minorities" are not just another
form of racism
* pretending like drug laws are necessary for national security
* pretending like passing more and more laws every year is not geared ultimately
for the advancement of the law enforcement, security, and prison industries
* pretending there is a bioterrorist threat in the US today
* pretending there is a terrorist threat in the US today
* pretending the present regime has not benefited from every program that
came out of 9/11
To
pretend to be what you are not: dissimulation.
DISTRACTION
A
third tool necessary to media in order to keep the
public from thinking too much is distraction. Bread
and circuses worked for Caesar in old Rome. The people
need to be kept quiet while the small group in power
carries out its agenda, which always involves fortifying
its own position.
All
actions of the present Reich since 9/11 may be explained
by plugging in one of four beneficiaries:
• Oil
• Pharmaceuticals
• War gear
• Security systems
Every
act, every political event, every public statement
of the present administration has promoted one or more
of these huge sectors. More oil, more drugs, more weapons,
more security.
But
the people mustn't be allowed to notice things like
that. So they must be smokescreened by other stuff
, blatant obvious stuff which is really easy to understand
and which they think has a greater bearing on their
day to day life. A classic axiom of propaganda is that
people shouldn't be allowed to think too much about
what the government is doing in their name. After all,
there's more to life than politics, right? So while
the power group has its cozy little war going on, the
people need to have their attention diverted.
All
the strong men of history would have given their eyeteeth
to have at their disposal the number and types of distractions
available to today's regimes:
-
TV sports, its orchestrated frenzy and spectacle
- Super Sunday
- an endless succession of unspeakably boring, inane movies, short on plot,
long on CGI
- the wanton sexless flash of MTV with its uninspired lack of talent, a study
in split second phony images
- colossally dull TV programs which serve the secondary purpose of instilling
proper robot attitudes into people who have little other instruction in life
values
- the artistic Mojave of modern music, with its soulless cyber-droning, a
constant quest for the nadir of reptilian brain stimulation, devoid of lyrical
competence, instrumental proficiency, or passion
- the ever-retreating promise of financial success, switched now to the trappings
and toys that suggest success, available to anyone with a credit card
- organized superstitions of all varieties, with their requisite pseudo-spiritual
trappings
- the constant dramatization of crimes and "issues" throughout
the world whose collective goal is the humble and grateful acknowledgement
of "how good we've really got it"
- dwelling for months on the minutiae of unsupported allegations of impropriety,
preferably sexual, of a celebrity personality
With
these noisy, banal distractions the forces promoting
the general decline in intelligence and awareness
jubilantly engulf us on all sides. Media science
holds the advantage: as people get dumber and dumber
year by year it gets easier and easier to keep them
dumb. The only challenge is that their threshold
keeps getting lower. So in order to keep their attention,
messages have to become more obvious and blatant,
taking nothing for granted.
Here
are some indicators of our declining intelligence:
-
flagrant errors of grammar and spelling rampant in
advertising, which go unnoticed
- declining SAT scores and the arbitrary resetting of Average, which has
occurred at least twice in the past 8 years, in order to cover up how dumb
our kids are really getting
- increased volume and decreased speed of the voices of newsreaders on radio
and TV
- the limited vocabulary and cliched speech allowed in radio programs; the
obvious lack of education and requisite pedestrian mentality required of
the corporate simians who are featured on radio
- increasing illiteracy of high school graduates, both written and spoken
- the unwritten policy requiring school teachers, especially math and English
teachers, to pass students who have failing marks, especially if they're
a certain race or other, so that the school won't "look bad"
- decreasing requirements for masters theses and PhD dissertations in both
length and content
- increasing oversimplification of movie and TV plot lines - absence of subtlety
in conceptual and dramatic content; blatant moralizing of compliant robot
values
- the speed at which images on TV are flashed, giving the viewer barely enough
time to recognize which sledgehammer idea they are referring to before the
next one appears, about 2 seconds later. That way there is no possible way
the brain can follow a train of thought in any kind of depth. From childhood
the brain learns that it is not to be tasked with understanding abstractions
or concepts of any subtlety from the information presented. All the brain
has to do is react to the incessant bombardment of fragmented ADD-generating
visual stimuli without trying to derive sense or logic from it. This is why
TV should be watched only with the sound off, since it has generally the
same educational value as a lava lamp.
- the enormous proportion of time spent by TV channels telling the viewer
what will be shown in the future, leaving no time for actually delivering
what they have already endlessly promised in the recent past, which should
be airing at the present moment.
- newspaper articles that are not written by reporters but that are scientifically
crafted phrase by canny phrase by the PR industry and placed into the columns
of syndication in the guise of 'hard news'
- Jerky, clumsy news clips, loaded with coarse innuendo and nonsequitur,
ridiculously brief: most news clips evoke only the most superficial suggestion
of events which may or may not have transpired, resulting generally in the
transfer of no information
- the downward spiral of the level of ordinary conversations, which are commonly
just exercises in stringing together random clich?s?from the very finite
stock of endlessly repeated homogeneous bytes. It's as though we're only
allowed to have 50 thoughts, and most conversation is just linking these
50 programmed audio clips together in a different order
- in popular music the overriding absence of melody, lyric, chord complexity,
or instrument competence
TERRORISTS
ARE US?
Imagine
for a moment that 9/11 was a put-up job engineered
for the sole purpose of cementing the current regime
into power and frightening the bovine populace into
surrendering even more of what little freedom they
have left. Hypothetical situation now, just work with
me a little. Imagine there never were any dissident
crazed terrorists representing Osama or Saddam, but
instead a highly disciplined though slightly whacked-out
team of military fanatics, programmed somehow to think
they were doing something valuable for some faction
or other. A put-up job, from the inside.
So
then imagine that all the violence and stress perpetrated
on the collective American psyche since 9/11 about
war, bioterrorism, and security has all been completely
unnecessary. And that all the billions of dollars of
extra security and wasted time in airports and borders
was also totally unnecessary because there never were
any terrorists, except us. And all the shrill media
articles and "stories" that support the few
underlying events have been unnecessary, their prime
purpose being self promotion. Think how much our quality
of life has suffered. What if all this stress has been
totally unnecessary?
Many
of our best people have come to precisely these conclusions.
Once you get past the initial hurdle of being able
to consider the unthinkable possibility that the present
regime could be so obsessed with gaining political
advantage that they would actually blow up 3000 of
our own people, the rest falls into place. Over the
top? Not such a stretch really when you compare the
thousands that have been sacrificed to the whims of
other murderous tyrants the world over throughout all
of recorded history. How are we any better?
WHAT
DO WE REALLY KNOW?
When
it comes to a discussion of what's going on in the
world, the honest individual must admit that he has
almost no idea. When was the last time George Bush
invited you into the Green Room for a private chat
with Cheney and Ashcroft about the future of big oil?
When did Bill Gates last invite you up to his Redmond
digs for a wine and cheese brainstorming session about
the next Big Thing? Or when did your neighbor who lives
three blocks away from you call you up to tell you
about the unfulfilled plans of his father who just
found out he's dying of cancer? How many life stories
of the world's six billion people do you know anything
about?
This
is to say nothing of fluid events which are coming
in and out of existence every day between the nations
of the world. What is really going on? Much more effort
is spent covering up and packaging actual events that
are taking place than in trying to accurately report
and evaluate them. These are questions of epistemology – what
can we know? The answer if very little, if our only
source of information is the superficial everyday media.
The few people who buy books don't read them. Passive
absorption of pre-interpreted already-figured-out data
is the preferred method.
HOW
IT ALL GOT STARTED
But
wait, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's back
up a minute. In their book Trust Us We're Experts,
Stauber and Rampton pull together some compelling data
describing the science of creating public opinion in
America. They trace modern public influence back to
the early part of the last century, highlighting the
work of guys like Edward L. Bernays, the Father of
Spin.
From
his own amazing 1928 chronicle Propaganda, we learn
how Edward L. Bernays took the ideas of his famous
uncle Sigmund Freud himself, and applied them to the
emerging science of mass persuasion. The only difference
was that instead of using these principles to uncover
hidden themes in the human unconscious, the way Freudian
psychology does, Bernays studied these same ideas in
order to learn how to mask agendas and to create illusions
that deceive and misrepresent, for marketing purposes.
THE
FATHER OF SPIN
Edward
L. Bernays dominated the PR industry until the
1940s, and was a significant force for another 40
years after that. (Tye) During that time, Bernays
took on hundreds of diverse assignments to create
a public perception about some idea or product. A
few examples:
As
a neophyte with the Committee on Public Information,
one of Bernays' first assignments was to help sell
the First World War to the American public with the
idea to "Make the World Safe for Democracy." (Ewen)
We've seen this phrase in every war and US military
involvement since that time.
A
few years later, Bernays set up a stunt to popularize
the notion of women smoking cigarettes. In organizing
the 1929 Easter Parade in New York City, Bernays showed
himself as a force to be reckoned with. He organized
the Torches of Liberty Brigade in which suffragettes
marched in the parade smoking cigarettes as a mark
of women's liberation. After that one event, women
would be able to feel secure about destroying their
own lungs in public, the same way that men have always
done. Bernays popularized the idea of bacon for breakfast.
Not
one to turn down a challenge, he set up the liaison
between the tobacco industry and the American Medical
Association that lasted for nearly 50 years. They proved
to all and sundry that cigarettes were beneficial to
health. Just look at ads in old issues of Life, Look,
Time or Journal of the American Medical Association
from the 40s and 50s in which doctors are recommending
this or that brand of cigarettes as promoting healthful
digestion, or whatever.
During
the next several decades Bernays and his colleagues
evolved the principles by which masses of people could
be generally swayed through messages repeated over
and over, hundreds of times per week.
Once
the economic power of media became apparent, other
countries of the world rushed to follow our lead. But
Bernays remained the gold standard. He was the source
to whom the new PR leaders across the world would always
defer. Even Josef Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda,
closely studied the principles of Edward Bernays when
Goebbels was developing the popular rationale he would
use to convince the Germans that in order to purify
their race they had to kill 6 million of the impure.
(Stauber)
SMOKE
AND MIRRORS
As
he saw it, Bernay's job was to reframe an issue; to
create a desired image that would put a particular
product or concept in a desirable light. He never saw
himself as a master hoodwinker, but rather as a beneficent
servant of humanity, providing a valuable service.
Bernays described the public as a 'herd that needed
to be led.' And this herdlike thinking makes people "susceptible
to leadership." Bernays never deviated from his
fundamental axiom to "control the masses without
their knowing it." The best PR happens with the
people unaware that they are being manipulated.
Stauber describes Bernays' rationale like this:
"the
scientific manipulation of public opinion was necessary
to overcome chaos and conflict in a democratic society." --
Trust Us, p 42
These
early mass persuaders postured themselves as performing
a moral service for humanity in general. Democracy
was too good for people; they needed to be told what
to think, because they were incapable of rational thought
by themselves.
Here's
a paragraph from Bernays' Propaganda:
"Those
who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute
an invisible government which is the true ruling power
of our country. We are governed, our minds molded,
our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men
we have never heard of. This is a logical result of
the way in which our democratic society is organized.
Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this
manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning
society. In almost every act of our lives whether in
the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct
or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively
small number of persons who understand the mental processes
and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull
the wires that control the public mind."
A
tad different from Thomas Jefferson's view on the subject:
"I
know of no safe depository of the ultimate power
of the society but the people themselves; and if
we think them not enlightened enough to exercise
that control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy
is not take it from them, but to inform their discretion."
Inform
their discretion. Bernays believed that only a few
possessed the necessary insight into the Big Picture
to be entrusted with this sacred task. And luckily,
he saw himself as one of that elect.
HERE
COMES THE MONEY
Once
the possibilities of applying Freudian psychology to
mass media were glimpsed, Bernays soon had more corporate
clients than he could handle. Global corporations fell
all over themselves courting the new Image Makers.
There were dozens of goods and services and ideas to
be sold to a susceptible public. Over the years, these
players have had the money to make their images happen.
A few examples:
*
Philip Morris
* Pfizer
* Union Carbide
* Allstate
* Monsanto
* Eli Lilly
* tobacco industry
* Ciba Geigy
* lead industry
* Coors
* DuPont
* Shell Oil
* Chlorox
* Standard Oil
* Procter & Gamble
* Boeing
* Dow Chemical
* General Motors
* Goodyear
* General Mills
THE
PLAYERS
Dozens
of PR firms have emerged to answer the demand for spin
control. Among them:
*
Burson-Marsteller
* Edelman
* Hill & Knowlton
* Kamer-Singer
* Ketchum
* Mongovin, Biscoe, and Duchin
* BSMG
* Ruder-Finn
Though
world-famous within the PR industry, these are names
we don't know, and for good reason. The best PR goes
unnoticed. For decades they have created the opinions
that most of us were raised with, on virtually any
issue which has the remotest commercial value, including:
*
pharmaceutical drugs
* vaccines
* medicine as a profession
* alternative medicine
* fluoridation of city water
* chlorine
* household cleaning products
* tobacco
* dioxin
* global warming
* leaded gasoline
* cancer research and treatment
* pollution of the oceans
* forests and lumber
* images of celebrities, including damage control
* crisis and disaster management
* genetically modified foods
* aspartame
* food additives; processed foods
* dental amalgams
* autism
LESSON
#1
Bernays
learned early on that the most effective way to create
credibility for a product or an image was by "independent
third-party" endorsement. For example, if General
Motors were to come out and say that global warming
is a hoax thought up by some liberal tree-huggers,
people would suspect GM's motives, since GM's fortune
is made by selling automobiles. If however some independent
research institute with a very credible sounding name
like the Global Climate Coalition comes out with a
scientific report that says global warming is really
a fiction, people begin to get confused and to have
doubts about the original issue.
So
that's exactly what Bernays did. With a policy inspired
by genius, he set up "more institutes and foundations
than Rockefeller and Carnegie combined." (Stauber
p 45) Quietly financed by the industries whose products
were being evaluated, these "independent" research
agencies would churn out "scientific" studies
and press materials that could create any image their
handlers wanted. Such front groups are given high-sounding
names like:
*
Temperature Research Foundation
* International Food Information Council
* Consumer Alert
* The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition
* Air Hygiene Foundation
* Industrial Health Federation
* International Food Information Council
* Manhattan Institute
* Center for Produce Quality
* Tobacco Institute Research Council
* Cato Institute
* American Council on Science and Health
* Global Climate Coalition
* Alliance for Better Foods
Sound
pretty legit don't they?
CANNED
NEWS RELEASES
As
Stauber explains, these organizations and hundreds
of others like them are front groups whose sole mission
is to advance the image of the global corporations
who fund them, like those -listed on page 2 above.
This is accomplished in part by an endless stream of
'press releases' announcing "breakthrough" research
to every radio station and newspaper in the country.
(Robbins) Many of these canned reports read like straight
news, and indeed are purposely molded in the news format.
This saves journalists the trouble of researching the
subjects on their own, especially on topics about which
they know very little. Entire sections of the release
or in the case of video news releases, the whole thing
can be just lifted intact, with no editing, given the
byline of the reporter or newspaper or TV station -
and voilá! Instant news - copy and paste.
Written by corporate PR firms.
Does
this really happen? Every single day, since the 1920s
when the idea of the News Release was first invented
by Ivy Lee. (Stauber, p 22) Sometimes as many as half
the stories appearing in an issue of the Wall St. Journal
are based solely on such PR press releases.. (22) These
types of stories are mixed right in with legitimately
researched stories. Unless you have done the research
yourself, you won't be able to tell the difference.
So when we see new "research" being cited,
we should always first suspect that the source is another
industry-backed front group. A common tip-off is the
word "breakthrough."
THE
LANGUAGE OF SPIN
As
1920s spin pioneers like Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays
gained more experience, they began to formulate rules
and guidelines for creating public opinion. They learned
quickly that mob psychology must focus on emotion,
not facts. Since the mob is incapable of rational thought,
motivation must be based not on logic but on presentation.
Here are some of the axioms of the new science of PR:
*
technology is a religion unto itself
* if people are incapable of rational thought, real democracy is dangerous
* important decisions should be left to experts
* when reframing issues, stay away from substance; create images
* never state a clearly demonstrable lie
Words
are very carefully chosen for their emotional impact.
Here's an example. A front group called the International
Food Information Council handles the public's natural
aversion to genetically modified foods. Trigger words
are repeated all through the text. Now in the case
of GM foods, the public is instinctively afraid of
these experimental new creations which have suddenly
popped up on our grocery shelves and which are said
to have DNA alterations. The IFIC wants to reassure
the public of the safety of GM foods. So it avoids
words like:
*
Frankenfoods
* Hitler
* biotech
* chemical
* DNA
* experiments
* manipulate
* money
* safety
* scientists
* radiation
* roulette
* gene-splicing
* gene gun
* random
Instead,
good PR for GM foods contains words like:
*
hybrids
* natural order
* beauty
* choice
* bounty
* cross-breeding
* diversity
* earth
* farmer
* organic
* wholesome
It's
just basic Freud/Tony Robbins/NLP word association.
The fact that GM foods are not hybrids that have been
subjected to the slow and careful scientific methods
of real cross-breeding doesn't really matter. This
is pseudoscience, not science. Form is everything and
substance just a passing myth. (Trevanian)
Who
do you think funds the International Food Information
Council? Take a wild guess. Right - Monsanto, DuPont,
Frito-Lay, Coca Cola, Nutrasweet - those in a position
to make fortunes from GM foods. (Stauber p 20)
CHARACTERISTICS
OF GOOD PROPAGANDA
As
the science of mass control evolved, PR firms developed
further guidelines for effective copy. Here are some
of the gems:
*
dehumanize the attacked party by labeling and name
calling
* speak in glittering generalities using emotionally positive words
* when covering something up, don't use plain English; stall for time; distract
* get endorsements from celebrities, churches, sports figures, street people
- anyone who has no expertise in the subject at hand
* the 'plain folks' ruse: us billionaires are just like you
* when minimizing outrage, don't say anything memorable
* when minimizing outrage, point out the benefits of what just happened
* when minimizing outrage, avoid moral issues
Keep
this list. Start watching for these techniques. Not
hard to find - look at today's paper or tonight's TV
news. See what they're doing; these guys are good!
SCIENCE
FOR HIRE
PR
firms have become very sophisticated in the preparation
of news releases. They have learned how to attach the
names of famous scientists to research that those scientists
have not even looked at. (Stauber, p 201) It's a common
practice. In this way, the editors of newspapers and
TV news shows are themselves often unaware that an
individual release is a total PR fabrication. Or at
least they have "deniability," right?
Stauber
tells the amazing story of how leaded gas came into
the picture. In 1922, General Motors discovered that
adding lead to gasoline gave cars more horsepower.
When there was some concern about safety, GM paid the
Bureau of Mines to do some fake "testing" and
publish spurious research that 'proved' that inhalation
of lead was harmless. Enter Charles Kettering.
Founder
of the world famous Sloan-Kettering Memorial Institute
for medical research, Charles Kettering also happened
to be an executive with General Motors. By some strange
coincidence, we soon have Sloan-Kettering issuing reports
stating that lead occurs naturally in the body and
that the body has a way of eliminating low level exposure.
Through its association with The Industrial Hygiene
Foundation and PR giant Hill & Knowlton, Sloane-Kettering
opposed all anti-lead research for years. (Stauber
p 92). Without organized scientific opposition, for
the next 60 years more and more gasoline became leaded,
until by the 1970s, 90% or our gasoline was leaded.
Finally
it became too obvious to hide that lead was a major
carcinogen, which they knew all along, and leaded gas
was phased out in the late 1980s. But during those
60 years, it is estimated that some 30 million tons
of lead were released in vapor form onto American streets
and highways. 30 million tons. (Stauber)
That
is PR, my friends.
JUNK
SCIENCE
In
1993 a guy named Peter Huber wrote a new book and coined
a new term. The book was Galileo's Revenge and the
term was junk science . Huber's shallow thesis was
that real science supports technology, industry, and
progress. Anything else was suddenly junk science.
Not surprisingly, Stauber explains how Huber's book
was supported by the industry-backed Manhattan Institute.
Huber's
book was generally dismissed not only because it was
so poorly written, but because it failed to realize
one fact: true scientific research begins with no conclusions.
Real scientists are seeking the truth because they
do not yet know what the truth is.
True
scientific method goes like this:
1.
form a hypothesis
2. make predictions for that hypothesis
3. test the predictions
4. reject or revise the hypothesis based on the research findings
Boston
University scientist Dr. David Ozonoff explains that
ideas in science are themselves like "living organisms,
that must be nourished, supported, and cultivated with
resources for making them grow and flourish." (Stauber
p 205) Great ideas that don't get this financial support
because the commercial angles are not immediately obvious
- these ideas wither and die.
Another
way you can often distinguish real science from phony
is that real science points out flaws in its own research.
Phony science pretends there were no flaws.
THE
REAL JUNK SCIENCE
Contrast
this with modern PR and its constant pretensions to
sound science. Corporate sponsored research, whether
it's in the area of drugs, GM foods, or chemistry begins
with predetermined conclusions. It is the job of the
scientists then to prove that these conclusions are
true, because of the economic upside that proof will
bring to the industries paying for that research. This
invidious approach to science has shifted the entire
focus of research in America during the past 50 years,
as any true scientist is likely to admit. If a drug
company is spending 10 million dollars on a research
project to prove the viability of some new drug, and
the preliminary results start coming back about the
dangers of that drug, what happens? Right. No more
funding. The well dries up. What is being promoted
under such a system? Science? Or rather Entrenched
Medical Error?"
Stauber
documents the increasing amount of corporate sponsorship
of university research. (206) This has nothing to do
with the pursuit of knowledge. Scientists lament that
research has become just another commodity, something
bought and sold. (Crossen)
THE
TWO MAIN TARGETS OF "SOUND SCIENCE"
It
is shocking when Stauber shows how the vast majority
of corporate PR today opposes any research that seeks
to protect
*
public health
* the environment
It's
a funny thing that most of the time when we see the
phrase "junk science," it is in a context
of defending something that threatens either the environment
or our health. This makes sense when one realizes that
money changes hands only by selling the illusion of
health and the illusion of environmental protection
or the illusion of health. True public health and real
preservation of the earth's environment have very low
market value.
Stauber thinks it ironic that industry's self-proclaimed debunkers of junk
science are usually non-scientists themselves. (255) Here again they can
do this because the issue is not science, but the creation of images.
THE
LANGUAGE OF ATTACK
When
PR firms attack legitimate environmental groups and
alternative medicine people, they again use special
words which will carry an emotional punch:
*
outraged
* sound science
* junk science
* sensible
* scaremongering
* responsible
* phobia
* hoax
* alarmist
* hysteria
The
next time you are reading a newspaper article about
an environmental or health issue, note how the author
shows bias by using the above terms. This is the result
of very specialized training.
Another
standard PR tactic is to use the rhetoric of the environmentalists
themselves to defend a dangerous and untested product
that poses an actual threat to the environment. This
we see constantly in the PR smokescreen that surrounds
genetically modified foods. They talk about how GM
foods are necessary to grow more food and to end world
hunger, when the reality is that GM foods actually
have lower yields per acre than natural crops. (Stauber
p 173) The grand design sort of comes into focus once
you realize that almost all GM foods have been created
by the sellers of herbicides and pesticides so that
those plants can withstand greater amounts of herbicides
and pesticides. (see The Magic Bean)
THE
MIRAGE OF PEER REVIEW
Publish
or perish is the classic dilemma of every research
scientist. That means whoever expects funding for the
next research project had better get the current research
paper published in the best scientific journals. And
we all know that the best scientific journals, like
JAMA, New England Journal, British Medical Journal,
etc. are peer-reviewed. Peer review means that any
articles which actually get published, between all
those full color drug ads and pharmaceutical centerfolds,
have been reviewed and accepted by some really smart
guys with a lot of credentials. The assumption is,
if the article made it past peer review, the data and
the conclusions of the research study have been thoroughly
checked out and bear some resemblance to physical reality.
But
there are a few problems with this hot little set up.
First off, money .
Even though prestigious venerable medical journals pretend to be so objective
and scientific and incorruptible, the reality is that they face the same
type of being called to account that all glossy magazines must confront:
don't antagonize your advertisers. Those full-page drug ads in the best journals
cost millions, Jack. How long will a pharmaceutical company pay for ad space
in a magazine that prints some very sound scientific research paper that
attacks the safety of the drug in the centerfold? Think about it. The editors
may lack moral fibre, but they aren't stupid.
Another problem is the conflict of interest thing. There's a formal requirement
for all medical journals that any financial ties between an author and a
product manufacturer be disclosed in the article. In practice, it never happens.
A study done in 1997 of 142 medical journals did not find even one such disclosure.
(Wall St. Journal, 2 Feb 99)
A
1998 study from the New England Journal of Medicine
found that 96% of peer reviewed articles had financial
ties to the drug they were studying. (Stelfox, 1998)
Big shock, huh? Any disclosures? Yeah, right. This
study should be pointed out whenever somebody starts
getting too pompous about the objectivity of peer review,
like they often do.
Then
there's the outright purchase of space. A drug company
may simply pay $100,000 to a journal to have a favorable
article printed. (Stauber, p 204)
Fraud
in peer review journals is nothing new. In 1987, the
New England Journal ran an article that followed the
research of R. Slutsky MD over a seven year period.
During that time, Dr. Slutsky had published 137 articles
in a number of peer-reviewed journals. NEJM found that
in at least 60 of these 137, there was evidence of
major scientific fraud and misrepresentation, including:
*
reporting data for experiments that were never done
* reporting measurements that were never made
* reporting statistical analyses that were never done
* o Engler
Dean
Black PhD, describes what he the calls the Babel Effect
that results when this very common and frequently undetected
scientific fraud in peer-reviewed journals is quoted
by other researchers, who are in turn re-quoted by
still others, and so on.
Want
to see something that sort of re-frames this whole
discussion? Check out the McDonald's ads which routinely
appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Then keep in mind that this is the same publication
that for almost 50 years ran cigarette ads proclaiming
the health benefits of tobacco. (Robbins) Very scientific,
oh yes.
KILL
YOUR TV?
Hope
this chapter has given you a hint to start reading
newspaper and magazine articles a little differently,
and perhaps start watching TV news shows with a slightly
different attitude than you had before. Always ask,
what are they selling here, and who's selling it? And
if you actually follow up on Stauber & Rampton's
book and check out some of the other resources below,
you might even glimpse the possibility of advancing
your life one quantum simply by ceasing to subject
your brain to mass media. That's right - no more newspapers,
no more TV news, no more Time magazine or People magazine
Newsweek.
You
could actually do that. Just think what you could do
with the extra time alone. Really feel like you need
to "relax" or find out "what's going
on in the world" for a few hours every day? Think
about the news of the past couple of years for a minute.
Do you really suppose the major stories that have dominated
headlines and TV news have been "what is going
on in the world?" Do you actually think there's
been nothing going on besides the contrived tech slump,
the contrived power shortages, the re-filtered accounts
of foreign violence and disaster, even the new accounts
of US retribution in the Middle East, making Afghanistan
safe for democracy, bending Saddam to our will, etc.,
and all the other non-stories that the puppeteers dangle
before us every day? What about when they get a big
one, like with OJ or Monica Lewinsky or the Oklahoma
city bombing? Or now with the Neo-Nazi aftermath of
9/11. Or the contrived war against Iraq? Do we really
need to know all that detail, day after day? Do we
have any way of verifying all that detail, even if
we wanted to? What is the purpose of news? To inform
the public? Hardly.
The
sole purpose of news is to keep the public in a state
of fear and uncertainty so that they'll watch again
tomorrow to see how much worse things got and to be
subjected to the same advertising.
Oversimplification? Of course. That's the mark of mass media mastery - simplicity.
The invisible hand. Like Edward Bernays said, the people must be controlled
without them knowing it.
Consider
this: what was really going on in the world all that
time they were distracting us with all that stupid
vexatious daily smokescreen? We have no way of knowing.
And most of it doesn't even concern us even if we could
know it. Fear and uncertainty -- that's what keeps
people coming back for more.
If
this seems like a radical outlook, let's take it one
step further:
What would you lose from your life if you stopped watching TV and stopped
reading newspapers and glossy magazines altogether?
Whoa!
Would
your life really suffer any financial, moral, intellectual,
spiritual, or academic loss from such a decision?
Do
you really need to have your family continually absorbing
the illiterate, amoral, phony, culturally bereft, desperately
brainless values of the people featured in the average
nightly TV program? Are these fake, programmed robots "normal"?
Do
you need to have your life values constantly spoonfed
to you?
Are those shows really amusing, or just a necessary distraction to keep you
from looking at reality, or trying to figure things out yourself by doing
a little independent reading? Or perhaps from having a life?
Name
one example of how your life is improved by watching
TV news and reading the evening paper or the glossy
magazines. What measurable gain is there for you?
What
else could we be doing with all this freed-up time
that would actually expand awareness?
PLANET
OF THE APES?
There's
no question that as a nation, we're getting dumber
year by year. Look at the presidents we've been choosing
lately. Ever notice the blatant grammar mistakes so
ubiquitous in today's advertising and billboards? Literacy
is marginal in most American secondary schools. Three-fourths
of California high school seniors can't read well enough
to pass their exit exams. ( SJ Mercury 20 Jul 01) If
you think other parts of the country are smarter, try
this one: hand any high school senior a book by Dumas
or Jane Austen, and ask them to open to any random
page and just read one paragraph out loud. Go ahead,
do it. SAT scales are arbitrarily shifted lower and
lower to disguise how dumb kids are getting year by
year. (ADD: A Designer Disease) At least 10% have documented "learning
disabilities," which are reinforced and rewarded
by special treatment and special drugs. Ever hear of
anyone failing a grade any more?
Or
observe the intellectual level of the average movie
which these days may only last one or two weeks in
the theatres, especially if it has insufficient explosions,
chase scenes, silicone, fake martial arts, and cretinesque
dialogue. Doesn't anyone else notice how badly these
30 or 40 "movie stars" we keep seeing over
and over in the same few plots must now overact to
get their point across to an ever-dimming audience?
Radio?
Consider the low mental qualifications of the falsely
animated corporate simians they hire as DJs -- seems
like they're only allowed to have 50 thoughts, which
they just repeat at random. And at what point did popular
music cease to require the study of any musical instrument
or theory whatsoever, not to mention lyric? Perhaps
we just don't understand this emerging art form, right?
The Darwinism of MTV - apes descended from man.
Ever notice how most articles in any of the glossy magazines sound like they
were all written by the same guy? And this writer just graduated from junior
college? And yet he has all the correct opinions on social issues, no original
ideas, and that shallow, smug, homogenized corporate omniscience, which enables
him to assure us that everything is fine...
All
this is great news for the PR industry - makes their
job that much easier. Not only are very few paying
attention to the process of conditioning; fewer are
capable of understanding it even if somebody explained
it to them.
TEA
IN THE CAFETERIA
Let's
say you're in a crowded cafeteria, and you buy a cup
of tea. And as you're about to sit down you see your
friend way across the room. So you put the tea down
and walk across the room and talk to your friend for
a few minutes. Now, coming back to your tea, are you
just going to pick it up and drink it? Remember, this
is a crowded place and you've just left your tea unattended
for several minutes. You've given anybody in that room
access to your tea.
Why
should your mind be any different? Turning on the TV,
or uncritically absorbing mass publications every day
- these activities allow access to our minds by "just
anyone" - anyone who has an agenda, anyone with
the resources to create a public image via popular
media. As we've seen above, just because we read something
or see something on TV doesn't mean it's true or worth
knowing. So the idea here is, like the tea, perhaps
the mind is also worth guarding, worth limiting access
to it.
This
is the only life we get. Time is our total capital.
Why waste it allowing our potential, our scope of awareness,
our personality, our values to be shaped, crafted,
and boxed up according to the whims of the mass panderers?
There are many important issues that are crucial to
our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being which
require time and study. If it's an issue where money
is involved, objective data won't be so easy to obtain.
Remember, if everybody knows something,
that image has been bought and paid for.
Real
knowledge takes a little effort, a little excavation
down at least one level below what "everybody
knows."
www.thedoctorwithin.com
Copyright
MMVI Dr Tim O'Shea
ReferencesStauber & Rampton Trust Us, We're Experts Tarcher/Putnam 2001
Ewen, Stuart PR!: A Social History of Spin Basic Books 1996
Tye, Larry The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public
Relations Crown Publishers, Inc. 2001
Bernays E Propaganda Liveright 1928
King, R Medical journals rarely disclose researchers' ties Wall St. Journal
February 2, 1999
Engler, R et al. Misrepresentation and Responsibility in Medical Research
New England Journal of Medicine v 317 p 1383 November 26, 1987
Black, D PhD Health At the Crossroads Tapestry 1988
Trevanian Shibumi 1983
Crossen, C Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in America 1996
Robbins, J Reclaiming Our Health Kramer 1996
Huxley, A The Doors of Perception: Heaven and Hell Harper and Row 1954
O'Shea T The Magic Bean www.thedoctorwithin.com