Having grown up with television, the majority of people reading these words will find it difficult to conceive of how vastly different society is today due to this single invention. The television marked a turning point in man’s history as surely as the introduction to Europe of the printing press and movable type by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439 A.D.. Prior to Gutenberg’s printing press, ownership of books was largely limited to the wealthy, and mass publication newspapers and magazines were unheard of. When writings had to be meticulously copied by hand, the time and labor involved greatly limited the volume of available material. News was often passed along to the masses by town criers who would stand at places where people gathered and proclaim aloud the latest government edict or news of the day.
Town Crier 1909, Provincetown, MA
Town Crier’s were common as recently as the early 1900s, although newspapers and magazines had been in existence since the 17th century. It would only be after the mass adoption of radio by consumers, and the proliferation of broadcast stations, enabling news and information to be heard in vast numbers of homes simultaneously, that the role of the town crier would become obsolete. Nevertheless, the printing press did revolutionize society as newspapers began to make reports of current events available to the masses for a modest sum.
All forms of mass communication are subject to abuse. Men in positions of power and influence use the media not merely to inform, but to shape public opinion. The global elite have always had a need to control the masses. In the days of kings and princes, they could use armies to rule over the people. However, with the advent of democratic forms of government, the elite needed to look to other tools to maintain their control. Chief among these tools is the mass media. By purchasing newspaper and magazine publishing companies, “press barons,” as they were called, were able to wield tremendous political influence over the populace. By the year 1920 nearly all of the major newspapers in America were run by large media corporations such as Gannett, Hearst Corporation, The McClatchy Company, Cox Enterprises, and The Tribune Company.
This aggregation of print media under the control of large corporations coincided with the establishment of the Federal Reserve which handed control of America’s money supply over to private corporate interests. Thus, the government and the media became the instruments of international financiers and industrialists who covertly rule the masses. By obtaining a majority interest in these media organizations, the global elite could appoint the editors of the newspapers and publishing houses and thereby control what issues are reported on and what views are expressed.
As I was growing up and attending public schools in America, I remember being taught that communist countries like the Soviet Union and China did not have a free press. Rather, they had a state controlled press. This state press was able to propagandize the citizens of these nations, plying them with a distorted, lying, and false view of the world. I was assured by my teachers that America was different, for it had a free press. I was told that in no way were Americans propagandized. It was only in much later years that I discovered the lie.
The deceit is accomplished by suggesting that America’s government is run democratically by the people, and the government does not own or control the press. It is corporations that own and control the press. A very different reality comes to light once a person understands that it is also the corporations that control American government, and they have done so for more than a century. Thus, just like in the Soviet Union or Red China, the press is in the hands of the powers that run the government. This is a perfect situation to accomplish the propagandizing of the American populace. The situation is no different in any of the other so-called democratic nations of the world. You and I have been propagandized from birth. An elite group, very small in number, wield the power to propagandize the people, molding public opinion and herding the masses like sheep in whatever direction they desire.
Edward Bernays wrote his seminal book Propaganda in the year 1928. This book expressed concisely and openly the policies and methods of those who control mankind through the media.
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which democratic society is organized…
Whatever attitude one chooses toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons – a trifling fraction… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world…
In theory, every citizen makes up his own mind on public questions and matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion about anything. We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issue so that our field of choice is narrowed to practical proportions. From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public question…
[Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928]
It is necessary for you, the reader, to grasp what it is that Bernays has said here. A global elite has determined that the only way for a democratic society to operate is for unseen rulers who constitute the true government of this world, to manipulate the habits and opinions of the masses. This global elite has judged the common man to be incapable of governing himself. It is okay that the common man believe he is governing himself (theory), but in practice a cabal of men who deem themselves to be “philosopher kings,” are exercising a form of mind control through the mass media. As Edward Bernays stated, in “every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons – a trifling fraction… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind…”
Brothers and sisters, the media is the instrument used by the global elite to exert this mind control over the masses. The media is owned and wholly controlled by “a trifling fraction” of humanity. Those who own the media use it for their purposes. Among these purposes are keeping the people distracted with mindless entertainment – the equivalent of the Roman circuses; inducing men and women to continue to purchase the products and services offered by the transnational corporations; and most importantly, to shape public opinion.
To accomplish these ends all means are used. News is not merely reported on. The news is manufactured. The “false flag events” which “truthers” speak of with such disdain are viewed by the global elite as the necessary staging of events which provide a context to drive their narrative and shape public opinion. To the global elite, there is nothing nefarious in these manufactured events. They are viewed as necessary fabrications which allow the elite to shape public opinion that men might continue to live under the illusion of democratic rule. If the people would rule themselves, then they must be guided by an unseen “intelligent minority.” These men create events, even those which involve the death and maiming of hundreds of individuals, in order to “contrive new ways to bind and guide the world...” In the eyes of these hidden rulers, the end justifies the means.
In a word, the policy by which mankind must be ruled in an age of democracy is “Deception.” The true powers that rule the world can never be content to allow the masses to rule. The elite will permit the masses only to have the illusion of self-rule. In actual practice the masses continue to be governed by a trifling fraction of men, those who possess the wealth of this world. These “Illuminati,” or “Enlightened Ones,” rule the masses through deception, and the media is their chief instrument to disseminate this deception.
In the early to mid decades of the 20th century, printed media began to be replaced by electronic media. First the radio, and then the television became dominant forms of mass media. In the book Strategic Public Relations by Barbara Diggs-Brown, the author writes of the rise of television to a place of ascendancy in mass media.
The Rise of Television: Instant Opinion Making
In the years following World War II, television came of age and became an important force in forming public opinion. Although still a young medium, television had been around for a while. The first broadcast occurred on April 7, 1927, when then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover’s remarks were transmitted live over telephone lines from Washington, D.C., to New York City: “Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world’s history.” On September 4, 1951, President Harry S. Truman inaugurated transcontinental television service when AT&T carried his address to the United Nations in San Francisco to viewers as far away as New England.
During the 1950s, as television sets became more affordable and programming more varied, millions of Americans brought television into their homes, making it the dominant mass media. The power of television to sell opinion and products, as well as to entertain, was not lost on American politicians, journalists, and business leaders. Television became a prime medium for molding public opinion…
The Kennedy Years: Television, PR, and the Presidency
As New York Times columnist Frank Rich has noted, John F. Kennedy did for television what Roosevelt did for radio: made the medium into a “political force.” By the time Kennedy was elected president in November 1960, 90 percent of American households owned a television. Kennedy recognized the power of the medium and became the first president to use television to speak directly to voters.
The first of four televised debates between Kennedy and his opponent, Vice President Richard Nixon – known as the Great Debates – was held on September 26, 1960. An estimated 70 million Americans tuned in to the contest, which marked television’s entrance into presidential politics. The broadcast highlighted the visual contrast between the two men. Kennedy was at ease and looked tan, confident, and rested. Nixon was pale and underweight, having just spent two weeks in the hospital for a knee injury. He wore an ill-fitting shirt, and refused makeup to cover his five-o’clock shadow.
In substance, the men were more evenly matched. In fact, those who listened to the debate on the radio thought Nixon was the winner. But television viewers, who saw a still sickly Nixon, disconcerted by Kennedy’s good looks, quickness, and charm, perceived Kennedy to be the winner by a wide margin. The debates raised questions about the influence of television on the democratic process, causing voters to consider the extent to which the presence of the television camera could change the outcome of the debate…
The Pentagon’s PR Nightmare: The First Televised War
In 1965, the Viet Nam War became the first war to be televised. Footage of the brutality of the war was broadcast nightly, helping fuel the country’s largest anti-war movement and diminish support for the war. The movement became the most successful protest against a war in U.S. history, forcing the U.S. government to accept withdrawal without victory. But the movement’s success led to a military backlash against the press. Believing it had lost the war due to public opposition, the Pentagon adopted a policy in the 1980s of using press pools, which gave the military control over who could talk to troops and under what conditions…
The exercise of virtual censorship, combined with careful public relation campaigns, was intended to insure that the public saw the military in the best light… The Pentagon used the media to showcase its strength, and its management of the news – and the media’s acquiescence to it, for the most part – produced a sanitized version of the war.
[End Excerpt]
Barbara Diggs-Brown declares only part of the truth. The media is fully in the control of the rulers of the hidden government, the moneyed elite. The Illuminati, the small group of enormously wealthy individuals who see themselves as the cognoscenti, the intelligent minority, own the media corporations, control the purse-strings of the government, finance the wars, they own the corporations which build the military’s hardware, and they fund and direct the think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations which formulate government policy.
Newspapers, magazines, radio, movies, and television (and now the Internet), are all used by these global masters to shape and guide the public mind. The task of mind control is performed skillfully, secretly, and effectively. Even the opposition is controlled, as these masters of deceit set the narrative on the political right and the political left. Fox News and MSNBC, far from being adversaries, are operating in collusion at the highest levels. The massive corporations they belong to have interlocking relationships, leading back to the same financial powers which exert such a profound control over the globe.
The Pew Research Center produced a report in March of 2014 titled A Boom in Acquisitions and Content Sharing Shapes Local TV News in 2013. The report showed that local news stations were experiencing tremendous consolidation as they were being purchased by large corporations. Control over the content of the national news had already been accomplished, and the next step was to exercise control over the reporting of the local news.
Local television in the U.S. saw massive change in 2013, change that remained under the radar of most Americans. Big owners of local TV stations got substantially bigger, thanks to a wave of station purchases…
Almost 300 full-power local TV stations changed hands in 2013, at a cost more than $8 billion. The 2013 total of 290 is 195 more stations than in 2012 and more than four times the dollar value. Many of the deals resulted in stations in the same market being separately owned on paper but operated jointly, a practice that has grown exponentially in just the past two years. Joint service agreements of one kind or another now exist in at least 94 markets, almost half of the 210 local TV markets nationwide, and up from 55 in 2011.
One measurable impact has been fewer stations originating local news content… Fully a quarter of the 952 U.S. television stations that currently air local newscasts do not produce the programs themselves; another station provides them…
Other types of news sharing partnerships are also on the rise. Stations owned by the same company now routinely share news content regionally or groupwide. In some of the largest markets, local news services produce coverage for two or more competing stations. And more than three-quarters of local TV stations say they share news content with other media, including radio stations and newspapers, according to the most recent survey by the Radio Television Digital News Association…
[Source: http://pewrsr.ch/1Z1rtNp]
Ever wonder why you can switch between channels to catch the evening news only to find that the stations are covering nearly all of the same limited number of stories? Independent news reporting is a thing of the past. The powers-that-be want uniformity. They want control. Because they own both the national broadcasting companies and the local stations, they can exert a complete top to bottom control of the flow of information. As the Pew Research report stated, a full quarter of local news stations do not produce any of their own material. Those which do produce news rely upon wire services to acquire a significant percentage of their stories, and frequently have their reporters read the canned reports verbatim.
Of the approximately 300 stations sold in 2013, 75% of them were purchased by 3 media companies. The largest number of acquisitions were by Sinclair Broadcasting.
Sinclair Broadcasting acquired more individual stations than any other buyer… Sinclair CEO David Smith… made clear what his ultimate goal would be: “I’d like to have (coverage in) 80 percent of the country if I could get it. I’d like to have 90 percent.”
[Ibid]
Sinclair’s corporate website provides the following company information.
Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. is one of the largest and most diversified television broadcasting companies in the country. Sinclair owns and operates, programs or provides sales services to more television stations than anyone and has affiliations with all the major networks. In addition, Sinclair is the leading local news provider in the country.
Below these words one finds the following banner.
It would be naive to believe that these “competing” networks in any degree represent alternative views which are independent of the transnational corporate rulers, or in any way opposed to their agenda of global domination. The appearance of rivalry between the “conservative” views expressed by FOX News, and the “liberal” views of MSNBC or CNN is nothing more than controlled opposition. The same corporate powers script all sides of the issues, framing the discussion for the populace. This prevents any original, or potentially threatening ideas from gaining traction in the public mind.
ABC/FOX Live News Truck – Springfield, MA
Brothers and sisters, we are not merely contending with a group of men who have a material agenda to enrich themselves. Nor are these corporate rulers simply responding to threats, tamping down stories that might expose what is actually happening in the world. There is a master plan which is being followed. The author of this plan is a fallen angelic entity whose intelligence and experience far exceeds that of any offspring of Adam. When Satan plays chess, he sees permutations that dwarf the capacity of fallen man. He has schemes within schemes, feints within feints. Even much of what passes for “alternative media” today, and many who are considered the leading members of the “truth movement,” are agents of Satan.
If you put your confidence in men like Alex Jones of Infowars, Jeff Rense, David Icke, or sites like The Drudge Report, BeforeItsNews, or hundreds of similar sources of alternative media, you have misplaced your confidence. With the exception of Andrew Breitbart (Editor at The Drudge Report) who was silenced, these men and their sites represent no threat to the global order. If they did, they would have been removed long ago. Although you will find some truth coming from these alternative news sources, they are controlled opposition. They are useful to the elite for identifying those who are their adversaries. They also serve to promote ideologies and actions which play into the hands of the world powers.
It is in the interest of the global elite to sow strife, fear, and division among mankind. The majority of alternative media sites serve this end. They also promote carnal reactions to tyranny. A global power which controls militaries containing millions of soldiers, sailors, and airmen; who have a monopoly on weapons of mass destruction; who can meet guns and rifles with tanks and missiles, is not intimidated by the threat of civil unrest or the actions of local militia groups. Part of Satan’s overall plan is to greatly depopulate the earth. Consequently, turning citizens against their government, and townspeople against the local police, serves their purposes very well. Those who take up the sword will die by the sword.
As I have emphasized repeatedly in my writings, I do not advocate that Christians engage in political activism, or that they should take up carnal weapons against the rulers of this dark and evil world. My purpose is to remove the veil of illusion from people’s minds in order that they might see this world as it truly is. Only then will the people of God be able to walk wisely in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Repeatedly, God’s word declares, “Do not be deceived,” “Do not be deceived,” “Do not be deceived.”
Images exert a far greater influence upon the human psyche than words alone. Satan understands this, and so too do those men and women whom he appoints to guide this world. Following is one anecdote I came upon in my research.
Larry Tracy, who now trains corporate executives to make oral presentations for government contracts, headed the Pentagon’s top briefing team and worked for years with the Department of State. He was aware that graphics were so influential in the government’s decision to purchase goods and services that bad buying decisions were made based on the quality of the visuals in the presented materials. This has in turn led to the government, at times, putting constraints on presented graphics by requiring black and white submissions, or even requiring that no graphics be used in a presentation in order to reduce the likelihood of high-quality, polished graphics unfairly persuading evaluators…
The industry understands the influence that graphics have on their audience. It is common knowledge to companies like Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin that graphics are an essential part of winning new government business…
Flags, eagles, and other symbols of patriotism are often included on proposal covers simply because of the positive emotional influence patriotic imagery has on government evaluators. Part of the cover’s goal is to instantly establish that the presenter is a supportive, trustworthy, reliable patriot.
[Source: http://billiondollargraphics.com/infographics.html]
Adolph Hitler devoted two chapters of Mein Kampf to the subject of the importance of propaganda, stressing that “visual presentation” was of fundamental importance. That the NAZI’s were able to effectively mobilize an entire nation to extreme acts of devotion is undeniable. The emotional and psychic power of their visual imagery was immense.
Hitler Gives Address at Reichstag, 1939
The NAZI party was renowned for sponsoring grandiose rallies which were visual spectacles. The swastika on a brilliant red background, the image of the eagle, and other visual centerpieces were used with great emotional effect.
Reich Party Congress
Some of the most impressive rallies were those held at night. Great numbers of searchlights were used to create a stunning visual effect that was called Lichtdom, or Cathedral of Light.
The NAZI propaganda also utilized visual imagery to great effect to stir a patriotic fervor among the populace to support the war effort.
The United States brought many of the most skilled NAZI party members to America after the war. The space program was heavily populated with their numbers, for no other nation was as advanced as the Germans in rocketry. They had used their V-1 and V-2 rockets to terrible effect against England during the war. Not coincidentally, the pageantry of 1930s Germany was also brought to America, and it was used to create in the American populace a patriotic fervor and immense national pride regarding the nation’s space program. People are readily manipulated emotionally by appeals to patriotism and pride of nation, rendering them disinclined to question government propaganda.
Ticker Tape Parade for Apollo 11 Astronauts, New York City
Apollo 16 Publicity Photo
Note the inclusion of the eagle, and the various U.S. flag motifs. Such visual queues stirred a sense of American patriotism without the viewer being aware they were being manipulated. To question the space program would immediately be met with great emotional resistance from those stirred with patriotic fervor. This is a large part of the reason that no serious challenges were made publicly. To do so would be considered by many to be “un-American.”
With the advent of the television and its powerful ability to shape public opinion and stir emotion, the American people had arrayed against them a force of mental manipulation never wielded before.
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Excellent essay that calls out for distribution. I neither agree nor disagree with the religion aspect of the essay. That is of no importance. What cries out for sharing is how powerful forces control the USA propaganda distribution systems.
Thank you for the effort you made to create this article. I found it while conducting an image search to add to one of my blog posts intended to assist the efforts done by many to counter the barrage of propaganda elite-owned media and other sources inundate the masses with continuously.