"Instead of scurrying into a corner and wailing about what media are
doing to us, one should charge straight ahead and kick them in the
electrodes." Marshall McLuhan, 1960.
For the past 35 years, I've been pointing out "flaws" in major media
presentations of the news. Specific lies, specific omissions, specific
strategies intended to keep the public from knowing the truth about a
variety of life and death matters.
The word "media" comes from the Latin, meaning "middle." And "middle"
suggests there are two ends. The media are between two ends. What are
they?
Well, when you back up a few steps from The News, you see that elite
anchors and their colleagues are interposed between EVENTS and THE
PUBLIC AWARENESS OF THESE EVENTS. The anchors and reporters are the
eyes, ears, and mouths for the population. This, at
best, is a highly precarious set-up.
Why would anyone in his right mind place blind faith in these
newspeople? The answer is simple. No one who gives that faith is in
his right mind. He has surrendered his mind.
Surrendered it to the need for authority. "You have to trust
somebody." This is the rube and yokel factor. "The man behind the news
desk looks good. He speaks well. He seems sure of himself. He
represents a large successful organization. Therefore, he
wouldn't lie. Truth is his job description. If he's lying, then what
else about reality might be a lie? I'm not looking for a sinkhole to
fall into. I want to keep my balance. The anchor helps me do that. I
have to maintain a basic trust in my fellow
man. It's part of my religion..."
Then there is a psychological need for The One. More-than-one takes a
person into a realm of uncertainty, and who wants that? "You mean I
have to choose? I have to make distinctions? Forget it. Give me
Lester Holt. Give me the anchor who looks the cleanest.
Give me the one friend above all others. I have the one God, so I want
the one anchor."
But here's the trick. No one who places his blind faith in the one anchor wants to admit that this is what he's doing.
Instead, he might say, "Well, of course Lester is giving me the facts.
What else would he be up to? Stop doubting. Stop all this conspiracy
nonsense."
In other words, there are only two supposed territories. The first is
bland neutral surety. It almost sounds like science. Then there is
crazy Loonsville, where insane fantasies are floated. The correct
choice is obvious. "Congratulations, you just made
the right selection. You get a gold star in the sky."
In the second half of the 19th century, Western philosophers made a
sharp turn. Instead of trying to describe ultimate reality (more and
more, a losing proposition), they focused on the term "epistemology."
The study of knowing. How do people know what they
know? This led to all sorts of hypotheses about the brain, the eye,
the five senses, and so on.
The philosophers, as it emerged, missed the boat. How do people know? Through The News. That's how. Through substituting someone else for themselves. Voila.
And then the question became: who is that someone else going to be?
Aha. Yes. The news networks were very interested in the question and
the answer. "What will make the public choose our man? What does he
need to look like? How does he need to speak?
What can we do to make our man into a star?"
An effective series of strategies along that line, resulting in high
ratings, opened yet another door: "Now that we have our one anchor, and
now that the public has surrendered their minds to him, how can he
present the news with thin surface and short circuits
and tricks and lies and omissions, in order to serve our basic agenda?"
Because, face it, opting for truth, no matter where it led, no matter
how deep it went, no matter who it EXPOSED, would leave the news
networks naked, out in the rain, bereft of sponsors and begging for
pennies on the street. It would cut them off from government
and corporate sources of information. The networks weren't looking to
EXPOSE, they were looking to COLLUDE.
COLLUDE gives you power, it gives you important allies, it gives you
money, it gives you uninterrupted access, it gives you a giant leg up on
your enemies, it gives you the opportunity to fashion and simulate
reality. That last factor creates a natural alliance
with the intelligence community, because they simulate reality all day
long, every day. And they have hills and mountains of interesting
information they can pass along to you. They can guide you on what to
broadcast and what to hold back. They can, in
fact, hand you ready-made packages of false realities. They're your
best friends.
News becomes, by its very nature and essence, FAKE.
What else would you expect?
At that point, all the networks needed was a raft of executives and
work-a-day drones who wouldn't bother to think about how, for example,
intentionally misreporting the vital details of a war would result in
the unnecessary deaths of thousands or millions
of people. And what do you know? Such employees were readily
available. Pump them up with a little bullshit about the Mission of
journalism, wind them up, and release them. They'll carry out their
functions.
You have a news network. Actually, you have a major corporation. And
the overriding success of a corporation is in peddling product.
As long as the public keeps trusting. Blindly.
Should I continue for a bit? Why not? I'll offer the example I've most
often cited in these pages over the past 20 years: the Starfield
Revelation. It's based on my strategy of exposing facts FROM the
mainstream in order to ACCUSE AND INDICT the mainstream.
No woo-woo, no fringe, no aimless speculation.
On June 26, 2000, the Journal of the American Medical Association
published a review by Dr. Barbara Starfield, who was a respected and
revered public health expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Public
Health. Impeccable MAINSTREAM credentials, all the way
up and down the line. The review was titled, "Is US Health Really the Best in the World?"
Starfield stated that the death toll in the US, in a given year,
directly CAUSED by medical treatment, was 225,000. (106,000 as a result
of correctly prescribed medical drugs and 119,000 as result of
mistreatment and errors in hospitals)
With a few seconds of extrapolation, you would arrive at a figure of
2.25 MILLION deaths caused by the US medical system, over the course of a
decade.
Now, I can't force anyone to register in their minds what that means. I
can't force them to think. I can't force them to experience a shock to
their system. But the facts speak for themselves. The US medical
system kills 2.25 million people per decade.
Nine years after Dr. Starfield published her findings, I interviewed
her. She told me the US government had never contacted her to consult
on a plan to stop all this killing, and the US government had never put
together a plan to stop all this killing.
What about the news media? Well, after the publication of Starfield's
review, there were stories in the press. For a little while. Then they
disappeared. None of those stories expressed great shock or indicated
that deep journalistic investigations were
on the way.
In other words, the press did a limited hangout. That's a term that
comes straight out of the intelligence agencies, and it means you expose
a piece of a story, not the whole sordid tale, and you move on,
assuming that the (blind and trusting) public will
be satisfied. And incurious.
Because, as you, the reader, can no doubt realize, mainstream news execs
COULD HAVE rolled up their sleeves and said, "This is one of the
biggest scandals we've ever seen. It's horrendous. The cost of human
lives is on the level of a war. But it's happening
in the HEALING profession, and no one in government has been doing
anything to stop the war. We're going to put our most relentless people
on it. They're going to wave the Starfield report in front of the
noses of every person on Capitol Hill. They're going
to go to the White House. They're going to interview doctors and
medical school presidents and journal editors and the families of people
who have died in this healing war. They're going to invade the FDA and
find out why that agency has seen nothing and
done nothing. They're going to go to the pharmaceutical companies and
pound on doors until those people start to talk. There are MANY GUILTY
PARTIES here, and we're going to find out and prove who they are. We're
going to force it. We're going to get people
to roll over on each other, come hell or high water, and we're going to
keep climbing up on the ladder of influence and control and CRIME.
We're going to publish an ongoing chronicle of our findings, week in and
week out, for as long as it takes. We're going
to launch a shit storm..."
You get the idea.
That's called journalism. It's the kind of journalism you can do when you have large resources and dedicated personnel.
But those elite news anchors---you know, the ones who are in the middle,
between events and the public awareness of events---they don't have the
air time or the inclination or the courage to challenge the basic
structure of their news organizations, which exist
as a result of COLLUSION.
Neither do their editors and other bosses have the inclination.
On just one of a number of levels---it doesn't take a genius to figure
out what would happen to the pile of money derived from pharma
advertising, if a major mainstream news network decided to pursue this
story into the gates of hell.
At any rate, when I see how much time mainstream media outlets are
clocking, in their crusade to call thousands of "alternative people"
fake news, I register ZERO degree of wonderment or surprise. I
understand their game. I know how it's played and where
it comes from. I know the character of the people who are playing it.
After all, I named my website
NoMoreFakeNews 19 years ago. I wasn't buying their act then, and I'm not buying it now.
You want to see a real and genuine and serious and profound and criminal
mental disorder, as opposed to the disorders cooked up by committees of
psychiatrists who may as well be meeting in the offices of drug
companies who are waiting for the latest categories,
so they can start manufacturing toxic meds as treatments? You want to
see the real thing?
Put on a helmet and a hazmat suit and turn on the news.
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