Monopoly Media

The United States of America is a democracy that functions off of capitalist ideology.  The large corporate news stations report mainly from the point of view of the dominant class.  However we believe that the media areable to give us balanced coveragebecause they are free and independent.   They are able to do this because they can convince us that errors happen from time to time for a number of different reasons and we buy it.  Of course errors do occur but not nearly as often as would explain the glaring outright innacuracies in the media.   A pattern you will see play out consistenly is the favoratism of  favoring management over labor, corporations over corporate critics, affluent whites over low income minorities, officialdom over protestors, the two-party monopoly over leftist third parties, privatization and free market “reforms” over public sector development, U.S. dominance of the Third World over revolutionary or populist social change, and conservative commentators and columnists over progressive or radical ones.  Media relies on bending the truth instead of breaking it.  Otherwise know as framing propoganda.  That way they can say they didn't lie. The way to successfully frame is in the packaging of the news.  How much exposure the issue recieves, where it is at: for instance on the cover of a magazine or on the 132cnd page with the horoscopes.  The headlines, photos, tags, videos or auditory toneof the article effects the framing as well.   The News is reported to us but not explained,so unless you go digging further to discover the order of how things work behind the scenes you are left thinking things happen coincidentally.  With the reccession we are led to believe the economy is just in a slump.  When it is reported thaat their are terrible labor conditions inn a country it is seldomly reported that the conditions are backed by that countries leaders or government.    We say "oh the press really screwed that up" when the fact is they did it purposefully, for this is their skill.  Once we understand that we will stop criticizing thier sloppy reporting and begin analyzing how they promote the dominant agenda so craftily.

Conflict war photgraphs staged

All image manipulation doesnt come in the direct form of photo shopping.  When the Saddam Hussein statue was torn down in Firdos square the picture was not photoshopped but it did not accurately reflect what happened.  In the western world the picture was made to depict rebels sponateously destroying the statue.  When in reality American led coalition forces orchestrated the event and arranged for media coverage to be present.


Ruben Salvadori made a photo essay called PhotoJournalism Behind the Scenes where he talks about the process of conflict-image-production in East Jerusalem.  Palestinian riots against Israeli forces happen on a weekly basis.  He explores the role of journalism in the conflict.  Obviously one side may be being led to believe something is happening that is completely false.  this would probably play a role in the support of the conflict.  The war in ireal and palestine is is being fought physically as well as through public relations.

Image manipulation

In 2009 Ralph Lauren printed this add of an unnaturally thin girls causes the masses to call it in to question.  RL apologized for giving girls an unrealistic standard of beaty to live up too.  Everyone knows that all clebrity pictures are photo shopped, while this is not a huge deal.  It becomes much more serious when political sides use it too skew the vote such as:

1950 - US Senator, Millard Tydings, talking to Earl Browder

It is a 1950 picture of a US Senator, Millard Tydings, talking to Earl Browder, the head of the American Communist Party. Mr. Tydings had never met Mr. Browder, but he had stood up to Joseph McArthy during the McArthy communist witch hunts. Good Old Joe decided to pay him back by creating this picture and disseminating it widely. The picture cost Mr. Tydings his re-election. For our younger readers, the equivalent picture today would be one of a US senator having tea with Osama Bin Laden.(http://youarebeingmanipulated.com/reality-eye-beholder/)

Someone losing an election because of media manipulation is not only unfair to the candidate but unfair to the public who was decieved into voting for the other party.

Buzzsaw

I have been reading Into the Buzzsaw, which is a book written about media manipulation abuses performed by the government and big business.  Their hand was forced not to report, by corporate ownership of mass media and in some places they were fired for trying to shed light on subjects deemed unfavorable by the powers that be. 

Jane Akre an award winning journalist was fired by fox news for tryingto  report a story about rBGH in cows and milk.  The local affilliate she worked for was excited about and spent several hundred dollars on the work for this story.  When Monsanto got wind of it their lawyers shut it down.  First they offered changes to the story that would make it more acceptable (but also untrue). When Jane wouldn't accept them they offerred her a severance package and a job change in exchange for her silence on both the story and how fox tried to cover it up.  She would not accept this either.  The news director and the general manager were let go. Jane was fired next and told by the new general manager "We paid $3 billion dollars for these TV stations. We'll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is!".  The dairy coalition director bragged about how they killed the story with paper work and threats.  In the end the station manager said ""You guys don't get it. It doesn't matter whether the facts are true. This story isn't worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars to go up against Monsanto."

We think we live in a nation where there is freedom of speech.  We do not. Although they don't kill people for speaking, your life may be made unbearably hard with job loss, threats, lawsuits and who knows what else. 

Surprise

When I chose this topic I thought it was going to be all distorted images.  Once I began research it did not take me long to realize that the biggest issues in media manipulation are governement and big corporation cover ups. They infiltrate the media on a large scale and only report the facts that are favorable to their enhancement, even if they are not true. 

There are several different methods of media manipulation.
1) Suppresion by ommision-is just what it sounds like, leaving parts of the story sometimes just critical details or in other cases leaving the whole story out.
2) Attack and destroy- when the media puts out as much information against a story that could not be ignored in order to persaude people to think it isn't true.
3) Labeling- giving a label without any additional details.  An example would be welfare reform. people typically imagine that to be positve but it might mean doing away with important useful parts of welfare such as medical coverage for mental health.
4) Preemptive assumption- the media accepts a policy, that needs to be critical examined, without any questions.  They focus only on things that support the position.

there are many more but a lot them seem to be redundant only slight variations of the ones above.

"The job of media is not to inform, but to misinform: Divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by the political and economic elites, by the technique of flood or continuous flood of distractions and insignificant information."(THE INTERNATIONAL COALITION BLOG)

That is a dramatic take on media manipulation it has been used positively in small instances.