Yet another consequence of the fake pandemic is the propping up of that doddering old fool, elite television news.
The
COVID story doesn't need Walter Cronkite. It only needs wall to wall.
From 5AM to midnight, pandemic updates (mixed now with riot coverage),
and the network ratings get well. The ratings jump out of the dumpster
and rumble on the studio set and do cartwheels.
I've written a number of articles about network television news. Here are excerpts---
~~~
NEWS ABOUT THE NEWS.
The
elite anchor is not a person filled with passion or curiosity.
Therefore, the audience doesn't have to be passionate or filled with
curiosity, either.
The anchor is not a demanding voice on the air; therefore, the audience doesn't have to be demanding.
The
anchor isn't hell-bent on uncovering the truth. For this he substitutes
a false dignity. Therefore, the audience can surrender its need to
wrestle with the truth and replace that with a false dignity of its own.
The
anchor takes propriety to an extreme: it's unmannerly to look below the
surface of things. Therefore, the audience adopts those manners.
On air, the anchor is neutral, a castratus, a eunuch.
This
is a time-honored ancient tradition. The eunuch, by his diminished
condition, has the trust of the ruler. He guards the emperor's inner
sanctum. He acts as a buffer between his master and the people. He
applies the royal seal to official documents.
Essentially, the
television anchor is saying, "See, I'm ascetic in the service of truth.
Why would I hamstring myself this way unless my mission is sincere
objectivity?"
All expressed shades of emotion occur and are
managed within that persona of the dependable court eunuch. The anchor
who can move the closest to the line of being human without actually
arriving there is the champion. In recent times, it was Brian
Williams---until his "conflations" and "misremembrances" surfaced, and
he was exiled to the wasteland of MSNBC.
The vibrating string
between eunuch and human is the frequency that makes an anchor "great."
Think Cronkite, Chet Huntley, Edward R Murrow. Huntley was just a touch
too masculine, so they teamed him up with David Brinkley, a
medium-boiled egg. Brinkley supplied twinkles of comic relief.
The
cable news networks don't have anyone who qualifies as an elite anchor.
Wolf Blitzer of CNN made his bones during the first Iraq war only
because his name fit the bombing action so well. Brit Hume of FOX has
more anchor authority than anyone now working in network television, but
he's semi-retired, content to play the role of contributor, because he
knows the news is a scam on wheels.
There are other reasons for
"voice-neutrality" of the anchor. Neutrality conveys a sense of science.
"We did the experiment in the lab and this is how it turned out."
Neutrality
implies: we, the news division, don't have to make money (a lie); we're
not like the cop shows; we're on a higher plane; we're performing a
public service; we're a responsible charity.
~~~
From the
early days of television, there has been a parade of anchors/actors with
know-how---intonation, edge of authority, parental feel, the ability to
execute seamless blends from one piece of deception to the next:
John
Daly, Douglas Edwards, Ed Murrow, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Harry
Reasoner, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, and more recently,
second-stringers---Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer, Scott Pelley.
They're all gone.
Now we have Lester Holt, David Muir, and the newly appointed Norah O'Donnell. They couldn't sell water in the desert.
Lester
Holt is a cadaverous presence on-air, whose major journalistic
achievement thus far is interrupting Donald Trump 41 times during a
presidential debate; David Muir has the gravitas of a Sears underwear
model; Norah O'Donnell, long-term, will have the energy needed to
illuminate a miniature Xmas-tree light bulb.
The networks have no
authoritative anchor-fathers waiting in the wings. They don't breed
them and bring them up through the minor leagues anymore.
Instead,
armies of little Globalists, and ideologues who don't realize they're
working for Globalists, have been infiltrating the news business. At
best, they're incompetent.
Thus, news-production techniques that
enable an ongoing illusion of oceanic authority collapse like magnetic
fields that have been suddenly switched off.
The selective mood
lighting, the restful blue colors on the set, the inter-cutting of
graphics and B-roll footage, the flawless shifts to reporters in
far-flung places...it's as if all these supporting features have
suddenly been overcome by actors in a stage play who are abruptly
stepping out of character. The spell is broken.
Elite mainstream
news, in a fatuous attempt to save itself, is trying a democratic
approach. Anchors are sharing more on-air minutes with gaggles of other
reporters. But this is counter-productive in the extreme. The News
has always meant one face and one authority and one voice and one
tying-together of all broadcast elements. It's as if, in a
hypnotherapist's office, the therapist decides to bring in colleagues to
help render the patient into an alpha-state.
If by some miracle,
the news bosses could raise Walter Cronkite, "the father of our
country," from the dead and put him back in the chair... but too many
years have gone by; years of unaccomplished anchors. The horse is out
of the barn, the cat is out of the bag.
This is why major news outlets have been appealing to social media/big tech for help, AKA censorship of independent voices.
One
veteran news director told me several years ago, "We don't have the
stars [elite anchors] anymore. The star system is dead. You could comb
all the local news outlets in America, and you wouldn't find one face
and voice who could really carry the freight. They've vanished. The up
and coming people are lame. We've made them that way. It's some
cockeyed standard of equality we've internalized. And now we're paying
the price."
~~~
The news is all about manipulating the
context of stories. The thinner the context, the thinner the mind must
become to accept it.
Imagine a rectangular solid. The news
covers the top surface. Therefore, the viewer's mind is trained to work
in only two dimensions. Then it can't fathom depth, and it certainly
can't appreciate the fact that the whole rectangular solid moves through
time, the fourth dimension.
First, we have the studio image
itself, the colors in foreground and background, the blend of restful
and charged hues. The anchor and his/her smooth style.
Then we
have the shifting of venue from the studio to reporters in the field,
demonstrating the reach of coverage: the planet. As if this equals
authenticity.
Actually, those reporters in the field rarely dig
up information on location. A correspondent standing on a rooftop in
Cairo could just as easily be positioned in a bathroom in a Las Vegas
McDonald's. His report would be identical.
The managing editor, usually the elite news anchor, chooses the stories to cover and has the final word on their sequence.
The
anchor goes on the air: "Our top story tonight, more signs of gridlock
today on Capitol Hill, as legislators walked out of a session on federal
budget negotiations..."
The viewer fills in the context for the
story: "Oh yes, the government. Gridlock is bad. Just like traffic on
the I-5. We want the government to get something done, but they won't."
The
anchor: "The Chinese government reports the new flu epidemic has spread
to three provinces. Forty-two people have already died, and nearly a
hundred are hospitalized..."
The viewer again supplies context, such as: "Flu. Dangerous. Epidemic. Get my flu shot."
The anchor: "A new university study states that gun owners often stock up on weapons and ammunition..."
The
viewer: "People with guns. Why do they need a dozen weapons? I don't
need a gun. The police have guns. Could I kill somebody if he broke
into the house?"
The anchor: "Doctors at Yale University have made a discovery that could lead to new treatments in the battle against autism..."
Viewer: "Good. More research. Laboratory. The brain."
If,
at the end of the newscast, the viewer bothered to review the stories
and his own reactions to them, he would realize he'd learned nothing.
But reflection is not the game.
In fact, the flow of the news stories has washed over him and created very little except a sense of (false) continuity.
Therefore,
every story on the news broadcast achieves the goal of keeping the
context thin---night after night, year after year. The overall effect
of this staging is: small viewer's mind, small viewer's understanding.
Next
we come to words and pictures. More and more, news broadcasts are
using the rudimentary film technique of a voice narrating what the
viewer is seeing on the screen.
People are shouting and running
and falling in a street. The anchor or a field reporter says: "The
country is in turmoil. Parliament has suspended sessions for the third
day in a row, as the government decides what to do about uprisings aimed
at forcing democratic elections..."
Well, the voice must be
right, because we're seeing the pictures. If the voice said the riots
were due to garbage-pickup cancellations, the viewer would believe that,
too.
We see Building #7 of the WTC collapse. Must have been the
result of a fire. The anchor tells us so. Words give meaning to
pictures.
Staged news.
Since the dawn of time, untold billions of people have been urging a "television anchor" to "explain the pictures."
The news gives them that precise solution, every night.
"Well,
Mr. Jones," the doctor says, as he pins X-rays to a screen in his
office. "See this? Right here? We'll need to start chemo immediately,
and then we may have to remove most of your brain, and as a follow-up,
take out one eye."
Sure, why not? The patient saw the pictures and the anchor explained them.
Eventually, people get the idea and do it for themselves. They see things, they invent one-liners to explain them.
They're their own anchors. They short-cut and undermine their own experience with vapid summaries of what it all means.
For
"intelligent" viewers, there is a sober mainstream choice in America, a
safety valve: PBS. That newscast tends to show more pictures from
foreign lands.
"Yes, I watch PBS because they understand the planet is interconnected. It isn't just about America. That's good."
Sure
it's good, if you want the same thin-context or false-context reports
on events in other countries. Instead of the two minutes NBC might give
you about momentous happenings in Syria, PBS will give you four
minutes.
PBS experts seem kinder and gentler. "They're nice and they're more relaxed. I like that."
Yes, the PBS experts are taking Valium, and they're not drinking as much coffee as the CBS experts.
~~~
When network television news was created in the late 1940s, no one in charge knew how to do it. It was a new creature.
Sponsors?
Yes. A studio with a desk and an anchor? Yes. A list of top
stories? Yes. Important information for the public? Yes.
Of
course, "important information" could have several definitions---and the
CIA already had a few claws into news, so there would be boundaries and
fake stories within those boundaries.
The producers knew the
anchor was the main event; his voice, his manner, his face. He was the
actor in a one-man show. But what should he project to the audience at
home?
The first few anchors were dry sandpaper. John Cameron
Swayze at NBC, and Douglas Edwards at CBS. But Swayze, also a quiz show
host, broke out of the mold and imparted a bit of "cheery" to his
broadcasts. A no-no. So he was eventually dumped.
In came a
duo. Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. NBC co-anchors from 1956 to
1970. Chet was the heavy, with a somber baritone, and David was
"twinkly," as he was called by network insiders. He lightened the mood
with a touch of sarcasm and an occasional grin. It worked. Ratings
climbed. Television news as show biz started to take off. At the end
of every broadcast, there was: "Good night, Chet." "Good night, David."
The audience ate it up. They loved that tag.
However, rival
CBS wasn't standing still. They offloaded their anchor, Douglas
Edwards, a bland egg, and brought in Walter Cronkite, who would go on to
do 19 years in the chair (1962-1981). Walter was Chet Huntley with a
difference. As he grew older, he emerged as a father, a favorite uncle,
with an authoritative hills-and-valleys baritone that created instant
trust. Magic. A news god was born.
Despite many efforts at the
three major networks, no anchor over the past 40 years has been able to
pull off the full Cronkite effect.
The closest recent
competitor---until he was fired for lying and exiled to the waste dump
at MSNBC---was Brian Williams. Williams artfully executed a reversal of
tradition. He portrayed the youthful prodigy, a gradually maturing
version of a newsboy who once bicycled along country roads, threw folded
up papers on front porches, and knew all his customers by name. A good
boy. A local boy. Your neighbor under the maple trees of an idyllic
town. Cue the memories.
By the time Williams took over the helm
at NBC, television news was decidedly a team operation. There were
reporters in the field. The technology enabled the anchor to go live to
these bit players, who tried to exude the impression they were actually
running down leads and interviewing key sources on the spot---when in
fact they could just as easily be doing their stand-ups from a hot dog
cart outside 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the home studio of the
network---because most of their information was really coming from
inside that studio.
Nevertheless, the team was everything. The
anchor was a manager, and his job was to impart an authentic feel to
every look-in, from the White House to Paris to Berlin to Jerusalem to
Beijing to a polar bear on an iceberg.
And local television news
was blowing up to gargantuan proportions. Every city and town and
village and hamlet seemed to have its own gaggle of hearty faces
delivering vital info of interest to the citizenry. Branding and
shaping this local phenomenon evolved into: FAMILY. Yes, that was the
ticket. These bubbly, blown-dry, enthused, manic news and weather and
sports hawks were really "part of the community." Local News was no
longer shoveled high and deep with an air of objectivity. "Aloof" was
out. Share and care was in. What that had to do with actual news was
anyone's guess, but there it was. "Hi, we're your team at KX6, and we
feel what you feel and we live here with you and we know when the roads
are icy and the wrecks pile up on the I-15 and the cops arrest someone
for cocaine possession and when the charity bake sale is coming up to
pay for [toxic] meds for seniors and when your cousin Judy passes away
we mourn as you do..."
News for and by a fictional collective.
Disney news.
A caricature of a simulacrum of an imitation.
The discovery was: the viewing audience wanted news as a cartoon.
The
problem is: this model deteriorates. The descending IQ of the news
producers and anchors and reporters undergoes a grotesque revolution.
Year by year, broadcasts make less sense. Even on the national scene,
NBC hands its prime anchor spot to Lester Holt, who plays the old Addams
Family living corpse, Lurch.
ABC, always looking for a new face, goes all in with David Muir, a Sears underwear-model type.
CBS
counters with a youngish cipher, Jeff Glor, after ridding itself of
Scott Pelley, who, true to his on-camera persona, might show up on The
Young and the Restless as a lunatic surgeon doing operations without
anesthetic.
The networks are losing it.
It's a sight to behold.
Cable
news is even worse. The longest surviving anchor is Wolf Blitzer at
CNN. Wolf's energy level tops out as a man in a tattered bathrobe, in
his kitchen, chatting with his cousin while they play checkers.
~~~
When
professionals broadcast one absurdity after another, they begin to see
the effects are actually strengthening their own position of authority.
It's
a revelation. It's also a continuation of the tradition of the
Trickster archetype. For example, with just a few minor adjustments,
Brian Williams can be seen as the sly Reynard the Fox...
From the
viewpoint of elite television news, controlling the minds of its
audience depends on what's politely called "cognitive dissonance":
As the anchor recites a news story, the viewer sees an obvious hole through which he could drive a truck.
The story makes no sense, yet it's being presented as bland fact. The trusted anchor clearly has no problem with it.
What's the viewer to do? He experiences a contradiction, a "dissonance."
For
example, this year's flu vaccine. The US government has admitted the
vaccine is geared to a flu virus that isn't circulating in the
population. Therefore, even by conventional standards, the vaccine is
useless. But the kicker is, the CDC says people should take the vaccine
anyway.
The anchor relays all this information---and never
seriously questions the situation, never torpedoes the government for
recommending the vaccine.
The average viewer feels a tug, a pulse
of discomfort, a push-pull. The vaccine story is idiocy (side one),
but the trusted anchor accepts it (side two).
Dissonance.
The
top chiefs of news---and top propaganda operatives---anticipate
cognitive dissonance. In a real sense, they want it to happen. They
make it happen. Over and over.
Why?
Because it throws the
viewer into a tailspin. And in that mental state, in his effort to
resolve the contradiction, he will normally choose to...give in.
Surrender. Believe in the anchor. It's the easier path.
The
viewer will even doubt his own perception. "I see no good reason for
Building 7 to collapse, but the news doesn't bring that up, so...it must
be me."
This is the power of the news. It presents absurdities and then moves right along, as if nothing has happened.
The
introduction of contradiction, dissonance, and absurdity parading as
ordinary reality is an intentional feature of brainwashing.
On
the nightly news, the anchor reports that US government debt has risen
by another three trillion dollars. He then cuts to a statement from a
Federal Reserve spokesman: the new debt level isn't a problem; in fact,
it's sound monetary policy; it strengthens the economy.
The viewer, caught up in this absurdity, tries to make sense of it, then gives up and passively accepts it. Brainwashing.
Smoothly
transitioning from this story, the anchor relays information from the
CDC: vaccination rates must achieve 90% in the population, in order to
protect people from dangerous viruses. The viewer thinks, "Well, my
daughter is already vaccinated, so if she comes into contact with a
child who isn't vaccinated, why would there be a problem? Why does 90%
of the population have to be vaccinated to keep her safe? She's already
vaccinated."
The viewer wrestles with this craziness for a
moment, then gives in and accepts what the CDC and the anchor are
saying. More passivity. More brainwashing.
The anchor moves
right along to the next story: "The US is experiencing one of the
coldest winters in history, further evidence of the effects of global
warming, according to scientists at the United Nations."
The
viewer shakes his head, tries to deal with this dissonance, surrenders,
and accepts what he is hearing. Deeper passivity is the result. Deeper
brainwashing.
On and on it goes, day after day, month after month, year after year, on the news.
Contradiction, absurdity, dissonance; acceptance, surrender, passivity.
The same general formula is used in interrogations and formal mind control. It adds up to disorientation of the target.
Most disoriented people opt for the lowest- common-denominator solution: give in; accept the power of the person of authority.
Among
the many supporters of conventional news is the education system. Most
teachers never learn logic, and they don't teach it. The result?
Their students never gain the ability or the courage to reject the news
and its dissonances.
What little these students gain from 12 or
16 years of schooling they eventually sacrifice on the altar of
consensus reality---as broadcast every night on the screen before them.
~~~
Salvador Dali, surrealist, was one of the most reviled painters of the 20th century.
He disturbed Conventional Folk who just wanted to see an apple in a bowl on a table.
Dali's
apples and bowls were executed with a technical skill few artists could
match---except the apples were coming out of a woman's nose while she
was ironing the back of a giraffe, who was on fire.
"It doesn't go together! It doesn't make sense! He's Satan!"
Yet,
these same Folk sit in front of the television screen every night and
watch the entirely surreal network news. Elite anchors seamlessly and
quickly move from blood running in the streets of a distant land to a
hairdryer product-recall to an unseasonal hail storm in Michigan to a
debate about public policy on pedophiles to genetically engineered
mosquitoes in Florida to a possible breakthrough in storing computer
simulations of human brains for later recapture to squirrels gathering
nuts in New Jersey.
Nothing surreal about this??
When the
elite anchor goes on air and digs in, he's paid to be seamless. He
could be transitioning from mass killings in East Asia to sub-standard
air conditioners, and he makes the audience track through the absurd
curve in the road.
The elite anchor should have a voice that soothes just a bit but brooks no resistance. It's authoritative but not demanding.
Scott
Pelley (CBS) was careful to watch himself on this count, because his
tendency was to shove the message down the viewer's throat like a
surgeon making an incision with an icepick. Pelley was a high-IQ
android who was training himself to be human.
Diane Sawyer
wandered into sloppiness, like a housewife who's still wearing her
bathrobe at 4 in the afternoon. She exuded sympathetic syrup, as if
she'd had a few cocktails for lunch. And she affected a pose of "caring
too much."
Brian Williams was head and shoulders above his two
competitors. You had to look and listen hard to spot a speck of
confusion in his delivery. He knew how to believe his act was real. He
could also flick a little aw-shucks apple-pie at the viewer. Country
boy who moved to the big city.
Segues, blends are absolutely
vital. These are the transitions between one story and another.
"Earlier today, in Boston." "Meanwhile, in New York, the police are
reporting." "But on the Hill, the news was somewhat disappointing for
supporters of the president."
Doing excellent blends can earn an
anchor millions of dollars. The audience doesn't wobble or falter or
make distinctions between what went before and what's coming now. It's
all one script. It's one winding weirdness of story every night.
~~~
And
NOW, we have COVID, and we have riots. The current stories--- the lies
are egregious and relentless, the editorializing is cheesy. The
omissions are Grand Canyons.
Surreal, cognitively dissonant, smoothly blended, outrageous:
The News Business. As Usual.
But
with the junior varsity anchors, and their lack of skill, the networks
need overwhelming stories to sell their act. They need COVID and
riots. They have to have government manufacturing chaos and destruction
and tighter control, in order to keep viewers coming back night after
night.
You've got elite Globalists and elite government on one
edge, and elite news on the other edge. They feed into each other.
They bolster each other.
So why must they spend so much time censoring dissent?
Because freedom exists.
Because, no matter what, it always will.
And underestimating its power, time and time again, has proven to be a colossal mistake. |
No comments:
Post a Comment