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Life Imitates the BBCBy Graham Cunningham
American Thinker ^ | July 21, 2007 | Graham Cunningham

Posted on 07/21/2007 2:26:01 PM PDT by Keflavik76

The current scandal involving the BBC is just the tip of a very large iceberg. Its cutting-room trickery designed to make the British queen appear fractious and ridiculous was all just a regrettable mistake says the BBC. Cynics, on the other hand, might think that this ‘mistake' chimes rather too coincidentally with the British chattering class' disdain for monarchy.

This was tacky journalism for sure but not, you might think, anything too sinister. The really big lie however is the one that says that this particular piece of manipulation is just an unfortunate lapse in the BBC's normally impeccable standards of truth telling. For the truth is that the BBC - in common with all other big media brands - manipulates reality every week, every hour, every minute.

The range of ‘information' and opinion in which we are almost completely reliant on it is frightening. And yet notice how whenever the media machine touches on something about which you have direct personal experience, how wide of the mark it invariably proves to be. The sheer quantity of this kind of 'information' coming at you in the modern world takes a great deal of intellectual effort to process properly. It is easier to just let it wash over you. Eventually it becomes a quicksand and it sucks you in.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/07/life_imitates_the_bbc.html

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: mediaculturebbc
This is a great article on the corrosive effect the major media has on our culture. The red pill is the new media. George Orwell almost had it right:

In his nightmare 1984, a political elite controlled the television in the corner of the room and used it to brainwash the citizenry. Whereas in the real post 1984 nightmare, a pervasive mass media - a cancerous organism out of the control of anyone, even its own media elite - brainwashes everyone, politicians included.

1 posted on 07/21/2007 2:26:02 PM PDT by Keflavik76
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To: Keflavik76
For the truth is that the BBC - in common with all other big media brands - manipulates reality every week, every hour, every minute.

Say it loud and say it again!

2 posted on 07/21/2007 2:34:30 PM PDT by IronJack (=)
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To: Keflavik76

What it is, is the Brit media, the BBC has been taken over by Islam, and is being used to destroy ( a form of jihad) this unique part of British culture, it’s very historic identity.

It’s no different that what the BBC has been doing against Christianity in the UK, and the UK’s participation in counter Islamic terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere.

Brits have to be blind not to see the pro- Islam nature of the BBC. And worse, they pay for it.


3 posted on 07/21/2007 2:41:28 PM PDT by Nathan Zachary
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To: Keflavik76

The author approaches but doen’t quite touch on the truth. This pollution of the media was not, very likely, accidental. Sometimes bad things, and especially real bad things, happen because someone wants it to happen and has the wherewithal to make it happen. In this case, that would be something as simple as money, and lots of it.

The media is first of all, a business. What kind of a businessman would hire the mush-minded, socialist charlatans that seem to produce the world’s news. Is it in the best interest of the businessman to have his message be one of vehement anti-business propaganda? It is extremely difficult to imagine that the cesspool that is the media, got that way strictly by the process of devolution.


4 posted on 07/21/2007 3:08:47 PM PDT by David Isaac (Duncan Hunter '08)
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To: David Isaac

The mainstream print and network news media has been losing viewers and readers for years but their world view has not been altered. They are structured to be a business that makes money but their primary mission is to perform a “public service” that moves public policy and public debate in the right direction.


5 posted on 07/21/2007 3:33:27 PM PDT by Keflavik76
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To: Nathan Zachary
Brits have to be blind not to see the pro- Islam nature of the BBC. And worse, they pay for it.

Eh. They see it. What're they going to do? I think my city garbage collector sucks, but how do I opt out of paying him?

Here's a new blog for tracking BBC Bias: BBC Biased. There are others out there, but this one just sprang up over the weekend, and it looks to be pretty good.

6 posted on 07/21/2007 3:34:35 PM PDT by prion (Yes, as a matter of fact, I AM the spelling police)
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To: Keflavik76
Or you might think it is the big brother state - or more precisely the big nanny state. Personally I feel like Winston Smith in 1984 and the biggest threat I see is the soft-left group-think that pours daily from the big Western media.


7 posted on 07/21/2007 3:43:55 PM PDT by Donald Rumsfeld Fan (NY Times: "fake but accurate")
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To: David Isaac
It is extremely difficult to imagine that the cesspool that is the media, got that way strictly by the process of devolution.

Cultural rot and decay is what it is. Societies decay over time.

I like to think it as the immutable second law of thermodynamics manifesting itself within cultures and societies. They always progress towards ever higher states of entropy (i.e. disorder).


8 posted on 07/21/2007 4:04:37 PM PDT by Donald Rumsfeld Fan (NY Times: "fake but accurate")
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To: Nathan Zachary

‘What it is, is the Brit media, the BBC has been taken over by Islam, and is being used to destroy ( a form of jihad) this unique part of British culture, it’s very historic identity.

It’s no different that what the BBC has been doing against Christianity in the UK, and the UK’s participation in counter Islamic terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere.

Brits have to be blind not to see the pro- Islam nature of the BBC. And worse, they pay for it.’

LOL! Have you ever watched the BBC?

No, not BBC news and not BBC America, but the actual BBC?

Have you watched their Sunday morning religious programming?

The problem with discussing the BBC with Americans is that they think the BBC News is the whole BBC when in reality it is a very small part of it. When you say BBC to a Brit we think of 4 channels of TV, maybe the CBBC channel our kids watch, we don’t think of the little bit which is the news. For us the BBC is more about comedy shows, watching sports and films without ad breaks and all those programmes that would not exist if it were not state funded like Monty Python etc.

If we don’t like what we see on the BBC news, we do like you do and choose from the other 150 satellite/cable channels we have!


9 posted on 07/21/2007 4:37:46 PM PDT by britemp
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To: Keflavik76

Sadly the author of this article hasn’t been paying attnetion. The BBC did not edit the film on the HM the Queen to make her look bad-tempered, the German production company RDF did, without the knowledge of the BEEB.

There’s plenty wrong with the BEEB, but this was not one of them.


10 posted on 07/21/2007 4:41:33 PM PDT by britemp
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To: David Isaac

I think the book “Manufacturing Consent” by the revolting Noam Chomsky is actually an important book for understanding the role of media in the contemporary world: If we understand what this book really is.

Its a blueprint not a critique. Its a manifesto declaring the importance of mass propaganda as the critical tool for controlling modern society: The first shot in the left’s systematic conquest of the western media machine.

The left has understood the importance of propaganda for generations. We still do not and pay the price. The Nazi or communists were masters in their day but are far surpassed by today’s application of Madison Avenue marketing technology to the realm of politics.


11 posted on 07/21/2007 5:20:35 PM PDT by Mad_as_heck (The MSM - America's (domestic) public enemy #1.)
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To: Keflavik76; The Spirit Of Allegiance; atomic conspiracy; Fester Chugabrew; Earthdweller; Eddie01; ..
Best of all you know what the most important thing going on in the world at any one time is because it is the thing that headlines the news. (Sarcasm in the original).
This is a fine piece generally, but I think that is the money quote.

The bias of journalism is simply the conceit that journalism defines the public interest. The desire to support that conceit explains the lust of journalists to attack anyone who is not a supporter of the idea that criticism is the highest (and not, as Theodore Roosevelt suggested, the lowest) field of endeavor. And socialists, quite simply, are critics who seek authority without responsibility. And who, if they get it, promptly validate Lord Acton's suggestion that

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Why Broadcast Journalism is
Unnecessary and Illegitimate


12 posted on 07/22/2007 5:27:03 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters except PR.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

BTTT


13 posted on 07/22/2007 5:51:48 AM PDT by E.G.C.
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
Great article by Graham Cunningham. Thanks for the ping. Thanks for posting. Many great quotes.

Personally I feel like Winston Smith in 1984 and the biggest threat I see is the soft-left group-think that pours daily from the big Western media. And why do I see this as more threatening even than the armies of bureaucrats with their can't do this and must do that? Even more than the salivating, hate-crazed zealots? Because the nice liberal journalists, scriptwriters and television celebrities, in spite of their laid back and chummy manner are slowly choking people's ability to think straight.

BTTT!

14 posted on 07/22/2007 6:21:09 AM PDT by PGalt
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To: Keflavik76
From the text.

The BBC and it's hinterland of favoured contributors teems with champagne lefties, celebrity poseurs and assorted other have-your-cake-and eat-it fellow travellers of the liberal establishment elite.

A nice burst of rhetoric for a bright Sunday morning. Well worth a careful read. In Canada on the television we have CBC on one channel. After a brief overview of Canadian "news" then it switches over to BBC.

Of one thing we seem to have been spared lately, is the absence of sweet Caroline Hawley. I read where a Coalition official said of her "she would smell sewage in a bed of roses". Ok she has her job to do, but why absolutely a blanket of doom?

I still glance at Michael Ware of Time beloved of CNN. Almost a personification of a huge wet blanket. Can this man not ever go for a vacation? (laughs)Most of the whole English languarge spectrum is polluted. Defunding the only answer, but it will never happen.

15 posted on 07/22/2007 9:25:31 AM PDT by Peter Libra
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
Thanks for the ping. Cunningham does a great job of articulating my own beliefs about mass media.
The greatest engine of freedom is more probably the wealth created by free market capitalism. I would argue that mass mediated group-think has actually been a major enemy of freedom in the 20th century.
The top-down television system is an alien and corrosive force in democratic capitalism. Contrary to the rich and variegated promise of new technology proliferating options on every hand, TV squeezes the consciousness of an entire nation through a few score channels. - Life After Television.
The de-massification of the media de-massifies our minds as well. During the Second Wave era the continual pounding of standardized imagery pumped out by the media created what critics called a "mass mind." Today, instead of masses of people all receiving the same messages, smaller de-massified groups receive and send large amounts of their own imagery to one another. As the entire society shifts toward Third Wave diversity, the new media reflect and accelerate the process. - The Third Wave.

16 posted on 07/22/2007 1:44:18 PM PDT by Milhous (There are only two ways of telling the complete truth: anonymously and posthumously. - Thomas Sowell)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion; Keflavik76
Great article. The author is able to reduce to writing many of my own thoughts about the Ministry of Truth.

The dinosaur media - articulate(and some not-so-articulate) busybodies influencing our very futures. They're nothing more than back fence gossips who lambaste everyone except themselves.

Thanks for the ping.

17 posted on 07/22/2007 9:43:38 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake (ABCNNBCBS: An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.)
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