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writing for godot

How the Corporate Media Distorts Reality

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Written by Tom Adams   
Wednesday, 25 July 2012 22:58
The vast majority of people are extremely reluctant to entertain the fact that they have been manipulated. As Mark Twain said, "It Is easier to fool people than to convince people that they have been fooled." The stark reality is that American corporate media, which disproportionately represents the viewpoints and interests of the wealthy, has molded and twisted the minds of the American public to think in ways that are not only irrational, but are against their own interests.

In particular, they manipulate language to get you to think differently (i.e., in ways which benefit them) about certain concepts. A classic example is the word "welfare". If you look up the word "welfare" in the dictionary, it has overwhelmingly positive connotations:

wel·fare/ˈwelˌfe(ə)r/
Noun:

1. The health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group.
2. Statutory procedure or social effort designed to promote the basic physical and material well-being of people in need.

What could possibly be construed as negative in the words "health", "happiness", "fortune", or "physical and material well-being of people"? But in American culture, the word "welfare" has been twisted and distorted to have primarily *negative* connotations. If you ask the average American on the street what comes to mind when they hear the world welfare, you will hear denigrating things like "lazy welfare bums", "sapping off the system", and "get a job" etc. On the other hand, if you ask the average Norwegian, I guarantee you will get different results. The phrase "welfare state" has primarily positive connotations, because of the cultural differences in a society where economic equality is valued.

This is no accident; that's what propaganda systems are designed to do: mold your minds in ways that benefit the propagandists.

Sadly, we live in a culture where the "physical and material well-being of people" has been twisted into something negative. George Orwell, are you listening?
 

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+1 # Jim Young 2012-07-27 15:34
So true. Read Newt Gingrich's GoPac memo "Language: A Key Element of Control" (Lenin would have recognized the tactics), then read George Lakoff's "The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic." Newt's is a guide on how to use deliberate negative language against anything your opposition favors or thinks, while using only glowing language to describe what you are trying to sell (EVEN IF IT EXACTLY THE SAME THING). Lakoff returns to identifying the core principles and using positive language to support them (warning against the negative, reactionary, language that lets the propagandists control the subject with no one paying attention to the real fine points). I wish he hadn't called it talking "Democratic", though, and had called it something more non-politically manipulable like universal common sense discussions.
 
 
+1 # VLR 2012-07-28 02:04
That's IT? That's the whole article?
 
 
0 # Jim Young 2012-07-31 09:55
The first 2 lines were enough for me, in this case.

I am disappointed that bumper sticker slogan's seem to influence so many more than sufficiently in-depth, two way, or more, discussions or debates have been able to. Bill Moyers seems to be my go to guy for digestible length discussions, with many of the original insiders (or actual major participants like CitiBank's John Reed) that enlighten far more than they inflame.

For now, I'm working on Kareem Abdul Jabbar's simple practice of trying to get his (carefully considered) point across without offending, or confusing (those he hopes will listen more attentively, I assume). I wish I could do better at shorter expressions, anywhere near as effective as something like Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
 
 
0 # toma8012 2012-08-05 19:45
Quoting VLR:
That's IT? That's the whole article?


Perhaps the title is a bit misleading in that it indicates a wider scope than is presented in the article.
 

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