Posted on 05/31/2020 8:14:37 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
Journalism today likes to provoke us, do you feel provoked? In the blueprint for modern journalism, "Public Opinion", Lippmann wrote on Page 355 the following:
It is a problem of provoking feeling in the reader, of inducing him to feel a sense of personal identification with the stories he is reading. News which does not offer this opportunity to introduce oneself into the struggle which it depicts cannot appeal to a wide audience. The audience must participate in the news, much as it participates in the drama, by personal identification. Just as everyone holds his breath when the heroine is in danger, as he helps Babe Ruth swing his bat, so in subtler form the reader enters into the news. In order that he shall enter he must find a familiar foothold in the story, and this is supplied to him by the use of stereotypes. They tell him that if an association of plumbers is called a "combine" it is appropriate to develop his hostility; if it is called a "group of leading business men" the cue is for a favorable reaction.It is in a combination of these elements that the power to create opinion resides. Editorials reinforce.
Feeling provoked? You should feel that way, provoking you is the point. But to what end?
Walter Lippmann, the Father of Modern Journalism, is informing the reader that the journalist has leisure here to pick and choose whatever key word they prefer, based on whatever group that they the journalist prefers. Since the problem that needs to be resolved is that you are unprovoked, key words will be employed in the news to provoke you. In this instance, let's compare two different nationwide movements and compare the provocative keywords.
1) Movement #1 is entirely peaceful, and is seeking an end to coronavirus lockdowns so that they can get back to living their lives and feeding their children. Oh, and many times they show up to their protest with their guns. Really big guns.
2) Movement #2 is burning down Autozones, looting Target stores, and vandalizing and destroying private property.
So, which one are the protesters or not? According to most journalists, the answer would be that the first group are violent racists and nazis, even if they haven't actually hurt anybody, and even if the only nazi symbols present are those being used to describe other people, well there was a nazi symbol at one of the rallies anyways so that proves that they were nazis.
In Lippmann's day, these people burning down whatever stores would be called a "group of leading businessmen", because the journalist wants to cue you to have a favorable reaction. The journalists support this movement, and will do anything to make sure you support it too.
Meanwhile Lippmann would call the peaceful conservative protesters a combine, because the journalists really hate guns, and so therefore the media wants everybody to hate you as much as the media hates you. But because this is 2020 and the word "combine" does not have the power it would have had during the trust-busting days, the constitutional word of "protesters" is given to the looters in group #2, and the hostility word of "racists" is weaponized toward peaceful group #1. Now everybody is provoked. Thus, the problem has been solved. You have been provoked, and you have now been forced to have an opinion(forced by the journalists) about the two groups whether you like it or not.
That's the blueprint. That's how the machine works. It's been this way now for about 100 years.
Walter Lippmann’s book “Public Opinion”
Free and open source audiobook:
https://librivox.org/public-opinion-by-walter-lippmann/
Free text
https://books.google.com/books?id=eLobn4WwbLUC&pg=PA1
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6456
Good analysis.
That machine has been losing control of the narrative because of talk radio, the Internet, and social media.
How the fake news proprietors characterize “the people in the streets” depends on what is being protested and who is being protested against. In other words, the narrative is driven by whose ox is being gored. So much nicer to hear yourself being described as a protester as you throw a lit Molotov cocktail into an historic building than to hear yourself referred to as a terrorist for peacefully demanding that a tyrant donkey party governor set your people free while simultaneously engaging in Constitutional open carry.
I just wish I could convince more people to read Lippmann’s work, because all the answers we need are there.
Rioters are undocumented shoppers....
The left actively worked to gain control of the media.
Who? What others? I would like to look into it.
Maybe Journalists will care when thugs and looters burn down their buildings... This wasn’t Selma. When Selma happened most newspapers were standing with the racists... (yes, there were REAL racists 50 years ago)..
Because the media is playing up that there were “good people” in the riot
Were there any hammers and circles or red stars on the protest banners prior to these riots?
What did the signage say? Was there any extremist rhetoric I know I’ve seen at least one saying kill pigs
How queer that the media is silent on this extremist rhetoric on poster signage
They were deliberately misreporting context and verbiage of poster language from Michigan earlier this month.
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