Posted on 11/29/2005 6:04:33 AM PST by John Jorsett
Thanks for the ping.
I read the same post, AND I think you misread it. I know it confused me. He/she was actually complementing your formatting unless I miss my guess; I know I preferred yours.
Re your offer to post a regular "propaganda" thread on FR. JMO, but most here seem to be wise to the ways of the media manipulators. Their offerings are mostly met with well earned skepticism here. Those on the other side don't and won't care. As long as the TOM(Tired Old Media) carries their water, they're pretty much a gift horse for our degenerate brethren. It wouldn't do for the braindead in our midst to go looking into that mouth now would it?
However, if you do decide to proceed, please add me to the ping list.
FGS
I think it would be beneficial to have a ping list for propaganda techniques. I suppose you could call it preaching to the choir, but I still think a lot of people on Free Republic need some continuing education, myself included. I'm not so sure that everyone on FR is up to speed. There are new people joining all the time, and even some seasoned people miss the obvious.
I want to be on your ping list. The propaganda stuff is fascinating to me. I say go for it.
Very good article. I came across something like this last year and should be required study in schools.
linked here:
http://www.texasmediawatch.com/linksResources.asp?details=viewField&linkNum=0&id=740
Texas Media Watch: Some Bias Indicators
Reporters and editors, consciously and unconsciously, use a variety of techniques that result in slanted and unbalanced news. The following list of bias indicators includes many of the practices that distort information:
1.Embedded opinion – doses of editorial opinion are frequently woven into newspaper reports along with facts, cueing the reader on how he should feel about the issue.
2.Expert selection – reporters often substitute issue advocates for “experts” in news stories without noting their bias.
3.Expert “anointing” – reporters also create an “expert” by attributing authority to an academic or community leader who actually has no particular knowledge of a topic and may be biased.
4.Selective skepticism – reporters are sometimes appropriately skeptical about some information but ignore the dubious nature of other data. The same reporters who question a government budget projection will not challenge an estimate of the homeless population provided by a service provider.
5.Airbrushing – reporters can make a non-credible source seem credible by cleaning up a quote or failing to disclose relevant associations.
6.Name calling and stereotyping – choosing words that prejudice readers against the participants in a political or policy debate.
7.Bias stylebook – reporters sometimes demonstrate bias with word selection. Supporters of legal abortion are almost always called “abortion rights” advocates but supporters of school vouchers are rarely referred to as not “voucher rights” advocates.
8.Copycat Bias – once a national newspaper has reported a story with a slant, the Texas press will frequently incorporate the same bias into their reports, without examining possible bias.
9.Quote tilting – reporters sometimes use a strong quote to demonstrate one side of an argument and counter it with a weak quote from the other side. This creates the illusion of a balanced report, but does not give the reader equal information about the debate.
10.Orchestrated bias – when a newspaper targets an individual, idea or policy and uses both news pages and editorial views to campaign for their view. An outline of this practice works was demonstrated in the notorious 2002 Houston Chronicle memo on light-rail that was inadvertently leaked to the web. See Houston Press story
11.Unchallenged assumption – Writing a news story from a point of view or an assumption that is not challenged in the story or analyzed for accuracy.
12.Projection -- Reporters sometimes use a unnamed and non-specific sources to give credence to an idea that may only be circulating in the press corps. Terms like “many believe” or “some fear” are sometimes a reflection of who the reporter is speaking with – not of public sentiment.
13.Overuse of unnamed sources – Reporters sometimes gives legs to stories that have little merit by repeating an unnamed source in many news stories without making an effort to find an on-the-record source to corroborate the information with a named source.
14.Guilt by association and conspiracy theories – Reporters sometimes attach guilt to individuals or organizations because of their connections to other individuals or organizations without making the link. A conservative who is a member of a conservative think-tank board or contributes to anti-abortion groups are discredited, whether or not the association is relevant to the news report.
15.Demonizing and “sinisterizing” -- Reporters sometimes create the impression of illegality or at least impropriety through tone, word choice and sentence construction. For example, “trial attorneys openly funnel money into Democratic campaigns in order to assure the election of lawmakers who will support their agenda. Use of words like “openly” and “funnel” create the impression that it is somehow wrong for attorneys to contribute to the candidates of their choice.
16.Unbalanced labeling – reporters have begun to use terms like “Christian” or “social conservative” to label some GOP activists while leaving their ideological opponents unidentified. If the religion or ideology of one individual in a story is relevant – the religion and ideology of all the protagonists in the news story are relevant.
17.News judgment and story choice – The most prevalent evidence of press bias can be found in the stories reporters choose to write and the one’s they ignore.
A corallary to this one is what I'd call "Unbalanced Counterpoint", where the "opposition" point is presented by a fringe (at best) representative of a group, whose views are not shared by the majority of that group, or a completely ineffective, mealy-mouthed member of the group. (E.g., Bill Kristol as the token "conservative" on a panel could fit either description.)
"You are now the first and only member of the new Propaganda Ping List (maybe Propaganda Roundup)
Now, what should it be called and where should it be posted (under what area?)?"
Cool!! I always wanted to be first in something.
I don't know about the area to be posted. I don't really do any posting, everybody beats me to it. Thanks!
This article tracks rather closely with the Logical Fallacies which, at least at one time, were taught as part of the Philosophy curriculum. These are available through a Google search if anyone is interested.
What you correctly refer to as "garbage," is now the very fabric of American Culture. THe school system began its inexorable collapse in the 1950's and has continued until Western Christian Culture, American Version, is alive and well in the hands of a very few. It is a dead subject for study by a very small elite, who lead a war to destroy it by interpreting it as evil, or worse, inconsequential, to the masses. Jack, the plan is for us to become de-tribalized. If you want to see what that looks like, take a gander at post-colonial Africa. It's just going to take us a couple of centuries more to reach that state.
I cannot guess what the follow-on to Communism will be, but the techniques and design are going to be the same. For the foreseeable future, Americans will remain clean, well fed, well supplied with material goods, but becoming more profoundly ignorant with each generation, will be progressively more easily led. Where? That's the question.
Care to post a link? This is handy reference material for Recognizing Propaganda 101.
Yep. If you look at the rampant ignorance in our schools, where learning is trumped, in many cases by political correctness and "multicultural" pettifogging, you'll see the early fruits of the leftist agenda. Already we're falling behind in math and the sciences. Engineers are rarer than honest Democrats. Kids don't know the capital of their own state, let alone the first thing about the Bill of Rights. They can recite the lyrics to Fitty Centz' new babble, but they don't know the words to the national anthem. And the ACLU continues its purge of God from the public square.
Yep, the future is pretty bleak if we don't wake up.
I don't know how to post a link but you will get a pretty good overview of the Logical Fallacies by typing this address: csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html
Would the selective reporting of credentials for "experts" qualify as a separate technique? Things like the recent study on whether unborn babies feel pain - where the authors of the study were long-time abortion rights activists, besides having academic credentials, but the academic creds were the only ones reported.
Thanks, I'll check it out. By the way, I put links in my postings simply by including the "http://" and the FR posting machine seems to turn it into a link for me!
Yeah well, that's the way things seem to work around here, but if you'll take note of something, that is, THIS thread has had only 70+ replies but something approaching 1400 views. Lots of people will take a look without commenting. They/we will probably learn something about the goebbelists and many will pass the info along, or at worst, retain it for future reference. Now, if you were to stick "live thread" on the end of your post, it would bring out every flying monkey on FR commenting on everything up to and including the latest hair style. But I digress...
The solid but mundane work of defunding, demystifying, and destroying the TOM(Tired Old Media) is not overly glamorous. If you haven't found 'em already, the MRC and AIM, amongst others, get little fanfare but do yeoman's work in documenting and archiving media shenanigans. Our own in house FR CHAPTER did some excellent work some years back in an effort to shine a light on media malpractice. The propaganda aspect is addressed but not given the full treatment by all, so...
...where would be a good place to post that and under what title?
The News/Activism category is where I'd put it. In case you haven't noticed, I've really become enamored with the term goebbelist/goebbelism as it relates to our domestic media seditionists. Maybe you could work it into a theme of some kind.......or not ;^) It might make a passable keyword also, eh? By way of suggestion, make your first couple of posts barnburners as much as possible; something that really showcases the Marxist infestation and their goebbelist tactics. Also, for starters, go to An Amused Spectator's FR home page and snatch his ping list. Most are media watchers extraordinaire and most should be interested.
Good luck,
FGS
A side note: I noticed someone else suggested consolidating/condensing your list. Maybe cutting it down to a round number, like 20, would be better??? Something about round numbers...
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