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

Mainstream media talking heads are just actors and actresses reading teleprompter scripts drafted by teams of writers, editors, and lawyers. Not only do the hosts and anchors have little to no control over what they say on air, but they also have little say in how they look. There are always clauses in their contracts which dictate what they wear and how they do their hair and makeup. After Megyn Kelly was given her own show on Fox News in primetime ( The Kelly File ), she underwent a series of dramatic hairstyle changed as producers were playing with her look trying to find one that audiences liked best. At one point it appears they even made her wear hair extensions to give her the appearance of having long flowing hair, only to quickly abandon the look for a short style. 76During one of the presidential debates in 2016, her abnormally long fake eyelashes caught the attention of viewers who widely ridiculed her online, causing the topic to trend on Twitter. 77

One reason the media circus has spiraled out of control in recent years is the constant pressure to get people’s attention. With countless media outlets and social media accounts competing for clicks and retweets, most ‘journalists’ put being first ahead of being accurate. Carl Bernstein, one of the reporters who broke the Watergate scandal which brought down Richard Nixon, remarked, “The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context.” 78

Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull echoed these sentiments when he said, “It’s not a 24-hour news cycle, it’s a 60-second news cycle now, it’s instantaneous. It has never been easier to get away with telling lies.” 79

In competing with millions of other voices all screaming for our attention, many news outlets repeatedly try to one-up each other with more and more sensational clickbait claims, hoping to get noticed. And in their desperation for attention they have all but destroyed their journalistic integrity. Back in 1985, long before reality TV and Facebook or Instagram◦— media analyst Neil Postman ominously warned, “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; [and] culture-death is a clear possibility.” 80

The millions who regularly get caught up in the latest “Internet challenge” or idiotic social media fad show that this ‘cultural death’ is more of an inevitability than a possibility, and that is it’s not only here, but it is rapidly spreading every day.

For these reasons and many more, it is critically important that we choose to resist the temptation of getting swept away in the sea of meaningless entertainment that’s at our fingertips, and instead create and maintain a regular habit of staying educated and informed. While perhaps occasionally snacking on this pop culture, we must avoid, at all costs, consuming it as our main course, or we will face the same fate as if we ate a steady diet of junk food◦— and we will not just be watching the media circus, but we will become a part of it ourselves.

The media and the mechanisms for distributing information today are tools, and like most tools, if placed in the wrong hands they can be used as weapons. One of these weapons is propaganda, so we should take a close look at just how powerful it can be, and how hard it is at times to detect with an untrained eye.

In 1928 a man named Edward Bernays, who is considered the “father of public relations,” published a book revealing his ingenious methods for shaping public opinion using the available media at the time (newspapers, magazines, black & white films, and radio). Television was just something that was being experimented with, and wouldn’t become a major medium until over 20 years later, in the 1950s. 81

Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, the famous psychologist, which may explain how he himself became such an expert in psychology. His knowledge of how to influence large numbers of people using the media was so far ahead of his time that still today, almost 100 years later, Bernays’ methods are used as the standard operating procedure for advertisers, activists, and governments.

The American Tobacco Company (manufacturer of the Lucky Strike brand) hired him in 1929 to help promote cigarettes, and as a result of his marketing campaign he is largely credited with making smoking seem “cool.” What he did was hire a group of beautiful women to light up cigarettes while they were marching in New York City’s Easter Sunday Parade since women smoking at the time was taboo. He then sent out a press release claiming they lit up “Torches of Freedom” to support women’s rights. The New York Times published an article the next day with the headline, “Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of Freedom . ” 82He had created a self-fulfilling prophecy by duping newspapers into portraying women smoking as part of the growing women’s rights movement, when in reality it was just a marketing ploy by a tobacco company.

Bernays is also the man responsible for the tradition of men buying women diamonds as a symbol of love and marriage. As you know, at least in the United States of America, the tradition of proposing marriage to a woman “must” be done with a diamond ring, and every Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day we are bombarded by advertisements about buying diamonds for the women in our lives. This cultural norm, however, was artificially created by Edward Bernays after the De Beers diamond company (in reality a monopoly) hired him to promote diamonds as the standard symbol of love.

Before Bernays scheme was launched, engagement and wedding rings were just a gold band, but using his techniques of social conditioning he was able to brainwash men and women into believing that a large diamond ring was needed in order to propose marriage or to show a woman that a man loves her. 83

When we look into Bernays’ methods it becomes stunningly clear just how powerful they are, and how candid he was about this power in his book. He wrote, “Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of… in almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.” 84

He also admitted, “Whatever of social importance is done today, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture, charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of propaganda. Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.” 85This “invisible government,” he says, “tends to be concentrated in the hands of the few because of the expense of manipulating the social machinery which controls the opinions and habits of the masses.” 86

The expensive “machinery” he was referring to are the printing presses and film studios, as well as the large costs associated with producing and distributing newspapers and radio broadcasts at the time which was so expensive that only a handful of companies could afford to be in these businesses. It wasn’t until fairly recently with the creation of computers, the Internet, smartphones, and social media that this monopoly has changed; although the multi-billion dollar mainstream media conglomerates still have enormous influence and control over the creation of content and its distribution, and are constantly trying to adapt to hold on to what was once an iron clad grip on the industry.