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    Laurie, that Propaganda in Focus website is a paradise for Covid conspiracists Archived Message

    Posted by Der on July 6, 2022, 10:29 am, in reply to "David Miller, Dr. Piers Robinson and Max Blumenthal "

    Just been reading some guy there who laments our loss of trust in government and the police as a result of the Covid crisis. He's out of his mind. These are things to be celebrated not lamented.

    No doubt some other guy somewhere laments the fact that Covid has encouraged trust in government and the police. Coz they kept us safe, ya know.

    But maybe coz I now wear a mask in shops and other indoor public places I am blind to what's really going on and am now less rebellious. Message to self: stop wearing mask over eyes.

    As has been said on here many times, the fact that some folk will milk a situation (Covid) for what it's worth is not an indication that they organised or created that situation.

    It might be time for a quote from Herman & Chomsky's preface to Manufacturing Consent:

    "Institutional critiques such as we present in this book are commonly dismissed by establishment commentators as “conspiracy theories,” but this is merely an evasion. We do not use any kind of “conspiracy” hypothesis to explain massmedia performance. In fact, our treatment is much closer to a “free market” analysis, with the results largely an outcome of the workings of market forces. Most biased choices in the media arise from the preselection of right-thinking people, internalized preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the constraints of ownership, organization, market, and political power. Censorship is largely self-censorship, by reporters and commentators who adjust to the realities of source and media organizational requirements, and by people at higher levels within media organizations who are chosen to implement, and have usually internalized, the constraints imposed by proprietary and other market and governmental centers of power.

    There are important actors who do take positive initiatives to define and shape the news and to keep the media in line. It is a “guided market system” that we describe here, with the guidance provided by the government, the leaders of the corporate community, the top media owners and executives, and the assorted individuals and groups who are assigned or allowed to take constructive initiatives. These initiators are sufficiently small in number to be able to act jointly on occasion, as do sellers in markets with few rivals. In most cases, however, media leaders do similar things because they see the world through the same lenses, are subject to similar constraints and incentives, and thus feature stories or maintain silence together in tacit collective action and leader-follower behavior.

    The mass media are not a solid monolith on all issues. Where the powerful are in disagreement, there will be a certain diversity of tactical judgments on how to attain generally shared aims, reflected in media debate. But views that challenge fundamental premises or suggest that the observed modes of exercise of state power are based on systemic factors will be excluded from the mass media even when elite controversy over tactics rages fiercely."

    I haven't read everything on that site. I'm reasonably sane that way. I skim the crap. I've turned into a crap detector. (I wonder how that would look on my CV.)

    Mind, lest one rushes to throw out the baby with the bathwater, one also finds Oliver Boyd-Barrett on that site. He's usually worth a look. Though in the one I glanced at he was on about some 9-11 report. Not my cup of tea. There's real blatant crap going on all around us all the time. Man made famine in Yemen and Afghanistan, for a start. Why do we need to get into bullshit conspiracy stuff? And no, I'm not responding to any hogwash posts on 9-11 or JFK or Elvis on the frigging moon. Mind, if anybody has anything on Elvis being seen fighting in Ukraine I'd be very interested. Riveted, indeed.

    Haven't looked at the video yet. Later. I'm more a reader. Gotta see sources. Got a lot of time for Miller.

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