Hacker News Reader

> So apologies if I am being a bit harsh.

So why not just rephrase it to be less harsh? Or are you not really sorry, just trying to be civil?

> Ignoring the appeal to authority

Well you don't really expect him to paste in the contents of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Poli... in the comment box, do you? That is a good resource to study and with plenty of references and sources. In fact, it had to be, because it challenges common assumptions about how propaganda and control works in US.

> Most people think that in a dictatorship there's one guy in charge and he directly controls the lives and actions of all the people.

Right after you accuse the poster of a common fallacy (appeal to authority) your proceed building a straw man. Dictatorships in most cases are sustained by military leaders, party leaders, or an extended family network (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud).

However I do not see how your discussion of power structure and distribution in a dictatorship applies directly to the article above.

> Nope, dictatorships are actually oligarchies

Ok, so? You can call it the "military-industrial complex" or "a ruling family", it doesn't matter. The majority of the people are controlled by a very small and powerful minority and use propaganda to effect that control better. I thought that was the point.

> Some highlights were comparing "news shows" across several different channels, 1 of which was a news show, 1 was a quasi news show, and 1 was an entertainment show. I seriously doubt such comparisons are going to lead to much value for the reader.

You, me and everyone here probably know that these news sources are heavily biased but I don't think the majority of Americans know. I believe that most would be willing to swear that American news agencies are free of censorship and also provide objective news. There is the party division of Fox vs MSNBC or CNN but I think most would pick one of those and identify it as a valid news source.

> It doesn't have to be false, involve logical fallacies, or any of that. Some of the best propaganda, as the Pentagon says itself, is simply telling people the truth about stuff they haven't heard before.

Yes you are applying the Lippmann & Bernays definition of it. It has acquired a negative connotation over time for a reason -- because it is usually used to mislead and lie rather then inform and educate.

The problem with Pentagon news is that they are not objective. The way the news are worded, and most importantly, which news are selected to be reported, and which are not, introduces a tremendous amount of bias.

> Then there was the over-reaching narrative of "everything is propaganda"

Ok, let's apply your definition "Propaganda = dissemination of objective information." So everyone is interested in educated the people? Every one of those powerful entities like the government and corporations will always report the objective truth, without spinning it, even when it ends up harming it? You really believe that?

> "Easily manipulated into warlike frenzy" and "more controlled by propaganda than North Koreans" (I paraphrase) are serious assertions. Assertions that you began with, then failed to offer any proof, aside from a Chomsky quote.

But you also fail to provide a counter-argument and don't explain how American public went from isolationism to hating Germans in such a short time? How do you explain the fact that so many Americans still claim that Saddam was involved with al-Qaeda or had weapons of mass destruction?

One of the biggest problems with the way the news is presented is the idea of framing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)) -- stories are presented in a narrowly-framed viewpoint so most public debate only occurs inside the framed perimeters.

Our perspective is constrained so we see things through a "reality tunnel" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel).

We never see the whole picture. We only see a narrow sliver of it. Perspective is infinite -- only the Omniscient see its entirety. But we often believe that our perspective is the way things are -- the whole truth. Thus it shapes our beliefs, and in so doing, guides our thoughts, our choices, our trajectory.

And because we are not experts in most things, we use mental shortcuts to help us decide (http://jcr.wisc.edu/publicity/press-releases/docs/2009/june/...).

Here's an example of a divisive, yet narrowly-framed issue: Abortion.

How is abortion usually framed? People argue about the "right to life" vs a "woman's right to choose." We argue back and forth about these issues, but we are doing so inside a narrowly-framed perspective.

Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg said that abortion is primarily about population control, but this rarely gets talked about (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12ginsburg-t.html...). It's the establishment's pink elephant that's been sitting in the back of the room since the 1970s.

I believe that much of propaganda is designed to dance around the issue of population control (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_population_control).

Watch Dr. Al Bartlett's (http://www.albartlett.org/) fascinating lecture on the exponential function at the University of Colorado at Boulder (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9znsuCphHUU&playnext=1...). He says, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." Professor Bartlett then goes through the stark reality of what will happen if we continue our exponential growth against finite natural resources.

Research by economists John Donohue and Steven Levit at the University of Chicago (http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittT...) showed that the legalizing of abortion started to reduce violent crime by the 1980s because would-be impoverished people weren't growing up to be criminals. You may have read about this is Levit's book, Freakonomics (http://freakonomicsbook.com/). The government knows this.

In the 1960s Henry Kissinger completed National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200), which is more commonly referred to as the "Kissinger Report" (http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PCAAB500.pdf). Kissinger says that the greatest threat to America is not the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but the overpopulation of third-world countries. NSSM 200 discusses several mechanisms that control population growth, such as war, famine, disease, pestilence, poverty and immigration.

My point is that abortion is a form of population control and our government sees it as such, but this rarely gets talked about. Instead we argue about "right to life" and "right to choose" and most have never even considered the bigger issue because that's the way the issue has been framed, because that's the way the government and the media establishment want it.

The question we should be asking is, "Do you believe that population control is a good thing or a bad thing?"

Why do you think government and media don't talk about the population control issue more? Is it because they think the population will be upset thinking about the idea of population control?

At the end of Dr. Bartlett's lecture on population growth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9znsuCphHUU&playnext=1...), he presents the "Great Challenge." He asks, "Can you think of any problem on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted or advanced by having larger populations at the local level, the state level, the national level, or globally?"

My answer to his challenge is: Yes, larger populations mean we have more of our greatest resource -- ourselves. Our creativity and ingenuity has developed solutions to our greatest problems, but we need true and accurate information so that we make better decisions and work toward a solution. To our government and the media: Don't hold back stark realities or frame it in propaganda because this only impairs our ability to find a solution.

The Propaganda Project (http://www.propagandaproject.org) is my answer for reducing the noise and getting more truth out of the media. Do you think it can work?

> My point is that abortion is a form of population control and our government sees it as such, but this rarely gets talked about.

I wonder where is the separation between those that understand the issue at hand (let's say "population control") but know that they will never be able to frame it as such, and those that don't know the issue and are just bouncing around between the allowed frame limits?

In other words this seems to imply there is a group of people in the government that meet and discuss these issues "off-the-record" so to speak, and they all sit around and ponder "How would we curb population growth?". Presumably NSC is doing this as you pointed out.

However I feel there is tinge of conspiracy theory here as well. I can't imagine there be this group of very intelligent and informed governmental group that is also at the same time able to keep it secret and is able to exercise control. They would have to communicate their desires or commands to IMF, World Bank, UN, branches of the US Govt., somehow determine who gets elected and who doesn't etc. It is not impossible but somehow I don't quite believe it yet.

This separation occurs between those that take the time to research and think about the issue and those that accept the issue the way it's generally framed.

Population control has been talked about publicly. It was discussed more prevalently in the 1970s -- it just doesn't get talked about much anymore.

Here is a recent video of David Rockefeller speaking about the importance of population control for the UN and other international bodies (such as you mentioned):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClqUcScwnn8

Again, it's not so much a conspiracy -- you don't see the establishment giving presentations on who killed JFK at conferences. But as you can see, population control is a discussed in these settings -- just not in the mass media. As explained in "Manufacturing Consent," these type of framed issues are just part of the political economy.

You don't think there's a link between dictatorships and repressive regimes? You can see examples of this right now in the news with all these protests going on.

I also fail to see why news-based entertainment shows (as is my understanding of one of the programmes mentioned) are any less valid a target for propaganda analysis. Do you believe people cannot be influenced by an entertainment programme? If not, why would such an analysis hold little 'value for the reader'?

I feel you are taking his points far too literally to be relevant in any real-world situation, even if OP's assertions were overly-emotive hyperbole. Nor are you providing much (relevant) value here, IMO - it's not enough to counter criticism of the US with complaints of "America-bashing" unless you say why the criticism is invalid.

As for the propaganda definition you provided (which is a good one), it states the purpose of the disseminations is to change people's opinions. Now you can do that with just plain releasing facts and information (e.g. Wikileaks cables) but it's disingenuous to downplay the role of delivering information by whatever means necessary to produce a specific effect. Propaganda that is 100% factual and non-misleading is called 'facts'.

You would be far better off reading Chomsky's own take on it Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, or a documentary like Century Of The Self.

link to The Century Of The Self - Adam Curtis

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/century_...

Here is Chomsky speaking @ Harvard on "Propaganda and Control of The Public Mind":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0OnTHz--7I&playnext=1...

This fascinating talk presents a ton of research with references so you can research it further.

You're comparing a totalitarian system to a mid-level manager at a company. Not the same things.

There is a ton of material written about the workings of the Nazi German government and the Soviet Union. I suggest reading it. While Stalin, Hitler or Lenin didn't directly oversee millions of people, the top layers of the power structure were deliberately setup to create bitter rivalries and a level of terror and paranoia that kept them in line.

When they didn't stay in line or were perceived as a threat, they were shot. On MANY occasions, people near the top of the Communist structure in the USSR were declared "counterrevolutionaries" and erased. Probably the highest-risk thing for an aspiring apparatchik in one of these types of places to do is get close to the top.

You seem to be incredulous that US TV news is propaganda. The government in the 20th century wisely forced broadcasters to treat news as a public service and restricted the ability of individuals to control broadcasting on a national scale. Anyone who can remember TV from the 70's can tell you about the difference.