Марк Дайс - The True Story of Fake News - How Mainstream Media Manipulates Millions

Since John Oliver uses his HBO show Last Week Tonight as more of a political soapbox than a place for comedy, some people are actually crediting him with influencing U.S. legislation, court rulings, and American culture. The media has actually dubbed it, ‘The John Oliver Effect.’ Time magazine actually ran a story titled, “How the ‘John Oliver Effect’ is Having a Real-Life Impact,” and detailed some of his political activism and its real world consequences. 128 Fortune magazine says the comedian’s impact is no joke and that his show “could very well be the envy of most newsrooms around the country.” 129

The mainstream media often steers the public conversation by giving constant coverage to certain stories which reinforce the ideologies they are trying to promote. They’ll often choose an isolated incident that’s making news in the local community where it happened, and while it has no real national significance, the major networks will ‘coincidentally’ determine it should be one of the top stories in the country and then sensationalize it so the incident then becomes a widely talked about topic.

These stories often include rare police brutality incidents involving a white police officer and a black suspect. But when it’s a white officer and a white victim, or a black officer and a white victim, the incidents remain local stories and don’t get national attention. Similarly, if a celebrity happens to call a gay or transgender person a derogatory name, then the big networks all have panels of pundits complain about it for hours, days, or even weeks on end to emphasize how ‘hateful’ and ‘dangerous’ such language is.

When these mountains out of molehills are turned into the top stories on the evening news of the Big Three broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) it doesn’t take a professional media analyst to see a pattern and realize there is coordination among these companies behind the scenes to decide which topics will be the “top stories.” It’s statistically impossible that the Big Three would regularly choose the same little-known local stories from the newswires to all report on nationally. Many events of the day warrant being the top stories on all networks, but most do not and shouldn’t make it any further than their local news channels, yet they regularly get the national spotlight, and always when they fit the current agenda of the time.

The technical term for what they’re doing is called agenda-setting. They magnify selected stories and topics through their constant coverage and endless panel discussions about every little detail. Talking for hours on end about the stories creates a self-fulfilling prophecy by building certain instances into major issues, and by treating them as if they are major issues when they are not, and getting people to talk and think about them so much, they then become major issues.

As television became part of everyone’s lives, a study was conducted during the 1968 presidential election called the Chapel Hill Study, which showed the strong correlation between what people thought were the most important election issues and what the national news media repeatedly reported were the most important issues. 130It basically showed that instead of just reporting on the news, the networks were actually influencing what people thought was news. Since then, hundreds of studies into the agenda-setting power of the mainstream media have been conducted which consistently show the immense power the industry has to shape public opinion and not only influence what people think about, but how they think about it. 131

Aside from agenda-setting, the major networks also frame topics in a certain light trying to influence how they are perceived. Through their carefully selected panelists and pointed questions, they can easily paint a person or issue in a positive light or a negative one.

For example, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2016, the liberal media always portrayed the protests (and riots) as a civil rights movement on par with Martin Luther King’s of the 1950s and 60s, consisting of people who were fighting against an ‘epidemic’ of white police officers shooting ‘innocent’ black men. In reality, the vast majority of black men shot and killed by police are armed and dangerous thugs with criminal histories, but those facts are ignored and the incidents are always framed as another ‘innocent’ black man who has been ‘murdered’ by police because ‘they’re all racists.’

The media likes to take rare and isolated instances of officer involved shootings and magnify them to give the appearance that there is a nation-wide epidemic of ‘racist’ police officers who are gunning down innocent young black men, thus adding fuel to the fire of black power groups and further straining race relations in America. People like Travyon Martin and Michael Brown are turned into celebrities from the nonstop coverage. Their names even trend on Twitter on their birthdays and the anniversaries of their deaths. 132Leftist organizations had signs and T-shirts printed with their faces on them which people wore to protests and they are revered as if they’re Martin Luther King or Tupac Shakur.

CNN and MSNBC love to give airtime to any Republican who expresses sympathy for a liberal cause. Congressmen who are completely unknown outside of their own small districts are held up as examples of a “growing trend” of “resistance” against conservatives when they speak out against members of their own party, when in reality, most of the time they’re just an eccentric member of the House of Representatives with no national influence at all.

Radio talk show host Michael Savage released a book in 2006 titled Liberalism is a Mental Disorder , and it’s unclear if he coined the phrase or if he just used it for the title of his book because it was being used regularly by conservatives. But whoever came up with it, it’s more than just a joke, it is an empirical fact, and unfortunately that mental disorder is getting progressively worse as those affected by it are embracing and promoting behavior and policies so bizarre, it seems like their agenda is a plot out of a science fiction horror film. What’s worse is the mainstream media is trying to normalize insanity, and at the same time demonize anyone who doesn’t accept it.

One of these agendas is trying to destroy any distinction between men and women, and implement a new “genderless society.” Transgender activists like Riley J. Dennis and Zinnia Jones are promoting the idea that ‘some women have penises’ and ‘men can menstruate.’ 133 The Charlotte Observer published an editorial saying that women and girls need to get used to sharing bathrooms and locker rooms with people who have “different genitalia” than them and concluded that, “Yes, the thought of male genitalia in girls’ locker rooms◦— and vice versa◦— might be distressing to some. But the battle for equality has always been in part about overcoming discomfort◦— with blacks sharing facilities, with gays sharing marriage◦— then realizing that it was not nearly so awful as some people imagined.” 134

Transgenderism is now being celebrated as if it’s cool and special. At the 2015 Golden Globe Awards, Amazon.com’s original series Transparent was given two awards, one for best TV series, and another for best actor. In the show, Jeffrey Tambor plays a retired college professor who, in his late 50s, decided he wanted to live as a woman. Critics hailed the show saying it was “making history.” 135That same year ESPN gave Caitlyn Jenner the “courage” award at the ESPYs, an award show that’s supposed to be about sports. 136