Article Highlights:
Swiss study illustrates extensive use of propaganda in media
Three news services provide nearly all the content seen on mainstream television, radio, newspapers, and periodicals
Journalism has slowly transformed from fact-based to emotion-based
Investigative journalism has withered due to multiple challenges facing individual journalists
A few months ago, we invited longtime friends of ours over for dinner and we were talking about how difficult it is to determine the truth of current world events. One of our visitors commented she had all but given up figuring that out and had largely stopped paying attention to the news.
I totally understand!
A couple months later, my friend Harry joined us for dinner and we got to discussing that same issue. I told him that back in the 70’s and 80’s, I thought the media was more truthful in what it told us. He disagreed, commenting that we were lied to about the Vietnam War (i.e. the Gulf of Tonkin fabrication that got us fully into that war), and of course, the granddaddy of them all – the JFK assassination. If you have delved into that event, it should have become clear rather quickly that we weren’t told the full story.
I later contemplated what he said and realized he was right. I was just too trusting and idealistic back then to recognize media obfuscation. I think my problem (if it is a problem) is that I was raised in a protected social environment with a strong sense of community where people could be trusted. As a result, I had learned little about how to identify lies.
This brings to mind the time my high school social studies teacher took our class to the local court house to observe a trial. The two opposing parties told diametrically opposite stories. I was puzzled, realizing that one of them must have lied under oath. I was such a greenhorn.
Over subsequent decades, ample opportunities arose for questioning people’s honesty – extending frequently to honesty of the press. Through this exposure, my discernment of news has changed considerably, and along the way, I developed methods to help me separate the wheat from the chaff.
‘Fake news!’ Forty years ago, the expression would have been labeled an oxymoron. Maybe it is just a sign of the times. Or maybe it is a useful term, as learning how to discern fake news, builds the overall skill of discernment – something I have needed to strengthen my entire life. I don’t think I am alone.
In these days of fake news and media bias, it is especially valuable to have some tools for evaluating press accuracy. Part 2 will explore some approaches.
Let’s get started with a Pop Quiz!
What do the following events have in common?
Michigan State University Professor uncovers $21 Trillion of unaccounted expenditures from 1998 to 2015 by Dept. of Defense and Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, and with continued tracking, determines ongoing growth in unaccountability
During contract negotiations, Pfizer asks Latin American companies for additional indemnity from civil cases, to prevent the company being held liable for rare adverse effects of its Covid vaccines or for its own acts of negligence, fraud or malice; even demanding national assets in return for contract violations.
Trial of sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell implicates involvement of numerous very wealthy and famous individuals
US Government issues accounting rule FASAB 56, allowing concealment of any government accounting information under the premise of national security
Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rate, if calculated using 1980’s methods, stands at slightly above 15%, in contrast with current government reported CPI of approximately 7.5%
In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, a court required the FDA make public all Pfizer Covid vaccine trial data over a period of 8 months instead of the 55-year data release period initially proposed by FDA
*Quiz answer at end of newsletter
Last year I encountered an insightful study titled, The Propaganda Multiplier: How Global News Agencies and Western Media Report on Geopolitics. This study was performed by a group called Swiss Policy Research (SPR), an independent, nonpartisan and nonprofit research group investigating geopolitical propaganda.
The study describes how three news services provide the majority of Western news stories:
Associated Press (AP) with main editorial office in New York. AP news is used by around 12,000 international media outlets, reaching more than half of the world’s population every day.
French Agence France-Presse (AFP) based in Paris, which sends over 3000 stories and photos every day to media all over the world.
Reuters out of London, which is owned by Canadian media entrepreneur Thomson – one of the 25 richest people in the world – and merged into Thomson Reuters, which is headquartered in New York.
Most Western news outlets rely on one of these three news agencies for providing their international news, from which they copy content. Nearly all the news here in the US arises from AP and Reuters.
Here is a sampling of quotes from the study that caught my attention:
“Even the head of a news agency noted: “There is something strange about news agencies. They are little known to the public. Unlike a newspaper, their activity is not so much in the spotlight, yet they can always be found at the source of the story.” (Segbers 2007, p. 9)
The key role played by these agencies means Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world.”
“In fact, not only the text, but also the images, sound and video recordings that we encounter in our media every day, are mostly from the very same agencies. What the uninitiated audience might think of as contributions from their local newspaper or TV station, are actually copied reports from New York, London and Paris.
Some media have even gone a step further and have, for lack of resources, outsourced their entire foreign editorial office to an agency. Moreover, it is well known that many news portals on the internet mostly publish agency reports.“
This excerpt from the study is from an on-site reporter describing how, when in the field, he would just read what the news service provided him, rather than investigate the nearby event himself:
“The common idea about correspondents is that they ‘have the story’, () but the reality is that the news is a conveyor belt in a bread factory. The correspondents stand at the end of the conveyor belt, pretending we’ve baked that white loaf ourselves, while in fact all we’ve done is put it in its wrapping.
Afterwards, a friend asked me how I’d managed to answer all the questions during those cross-talks, every hour and without hesitation. When I told him that, like on the TV-news, you knew all the questions in advance, his e-mailed response came packed with expletives. My friend had realized that, for decades, what he’d been watching and listening to on the news was pure theatre.”
The following diagram from the study shows the relationship of these three news services to the main stream news sources consumers typically rely upon.
The study is relatively short, and worth a read if you want to understand how the ‘news’ you hear on radio and see on TV is produced. It includes the following two sections that I found particularly enlightening:
“What the agency does not report, does not take place” - referring to the practice of leaving out important stories that don’t fit the desired narrative
“Adding questionable stories” - where a constructed or made-up story is published
Additional excerpts of interest from the study:
“Often the mass media do not report on reality, but on a constructed or staged reality. () Several studies have shown that the mass media are predominantly determined by PR activities and that passive, receptive attitudes outweigh active-researching ones. (Blum 1995, p. 16)”
“Among the most active actors in “injecting” questionable geopolitical news are the military and defense ministries. For example, in 2009 the head of the American news agency AP, Tom Curley, made public that the Pentagon employs more than 27,000 PR specialists who, with a budget of nearly $ 5 billion a year, are working the media and circulating targeted manipulations.”
“Former CIA officer and whistleblower John Stockwell said of his work in the Angolan war: “The basic theme was to make it look like an [enemy] aggression. So any kind of story that you could write and get into the media anywhere in the world, that pushed that line, we did. One third of my staff in this task force were propagandists, whose professional career job was to make up stories and finding ways of getting them into the press. () The editors in most Western newspapers are not too skeptical of messages that conform to general views and prejudices. () So we came up with another story, and it was kept going for weeks. () But it was all fiction.”
One of the more interesting elements in the above diagram is the CIA. From sources I have seen elsewhere, CIA input is a more significant factor than is generally realized. Quoting William Casey, CIA Director from 1981 to 1987, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” That was almost 40 years ago. I wonder how far along that program has progressed.
Not everyone trusts the CIA, as I learned first-hand during my my Peace Corps Volunteer stint in the Philippines. Our first three months in country were spent in language training. Not having learned a language before, my language skills at four months were marginal, at best. We were sent to our permanent sites after language training.
Shortly after arrival at my assigned location, I attended an evening event with the municipal mayor and his employees, since I was assigned to work with that group. There was plenty of drinking, and the vice-mayor got rather drunk. He wanted to talk to me, and at one point got angry with me and said, “Papatyon ikaw kay CIA ka.”, which translated means, “I will kill you because you are CIA.”
Since my language skills were still weak, I wasn’t quite sure what he said, but I thought he said he wanted to kill me. Quite the welcome party! Thankfully, nothing became of it, but I came away realizing that the CIA wasn’t appreciated in other parts of the world.
I never had a problem later on with the vice-mayor, so I think his threat was mostly an alcohol issue. I never reported it to the Peace Corps head office, or I would have been pulled out immediately. As the saying goes, “I wasn’t in Kansas anymore!” (I grew up in Kansas, by the way.)
The Swiss study is filled with examples of propaganda techniques used in the media. Historically, Switzerland has been one of the most politically non-aligned countries in the world. If you think the situation described in the Swiss study is untrue, and that this study is….. well, just more propaganda, then watch this short clip.
“Extremely dangerous to our democracy!”, you say? This clip left me wondering just exactly what is it that is ‘extremely dangerous to our democracy’.
As a side note, I found it interesting during my time working in China that the Chinese people generally know their news is controlled, although they may not know the extent to which it is controlled. Here in the USA, many people have no idea the extent to which the press is controlled.
“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.”
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
The problem with media accuracy doesn’t end with the news services. Journalists working for large media outlets increasingly face challenges in providing unbiased news. I came across this thread from the Twitter feed of a long-time journalist. Bemoaning the state of his profession, he lists 30 specific issues causing biased and hyperbolic reporting. Here are a few examples that struck me.
“On average, the journalists that I've worked with had an expectation of producing 3-4 stories per day and one editor had 4-5 writers beneath. This was a corporate demand, not an editorial one, and it does not allow time for top quality work.”
“In the absence of a technical editor, many stories are edited for clarity, but not for data integrity. The results are most often seen when millions/billions/trillions are confused, or when bad metric conversions slip by.”
“A story that is a plain statement of facts presented without sensationalism, will, on average, receive 400-1,200 visits. This is a guaranteed financial loss for an ad-supported news website.”
“To increase readership of a straight news story, there are emotional triggers that can be leveraged. E.g. Headlines that include "Why You Should..." or "Why We Must..." Writers learn these tactics by exposure, or are taught directly.”
“People who use search engines are, with their search data, broadcasting what they want to read. It is reverse broadcasting. News organizations get the message and prepare content with higher odds of success.”
All this leaves me wondering – is this newsletter just more propaganda? 🤔
Stay tuned for Part 2 to explore methods for discerning truth in media.
*Answer to Pop Quiz: Few, if any, of these events were reported in the Main Stream Media
Nice article. I was wondering if you were going to include the video showing dozens of "news" stations doing their Stepford Wives impersonation.
It's interesting that you got into high school without realizing the existence of lying liars. I experienced it in 1st grade at the latest.