MEDIA - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
Katie Couric’s Plan to Nuke Iran |
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by Mike Whitney The Smirking Chimp Entered into the database on Thursday, September 07th, 2006 @ 14:54:28 MST |
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The American people want the news. They want to know what is going on and they
want to be well informed. This explains the explosion of new-related web sites
on the internet. It is impossible to be an informed citizen by watching network news.
The business-friendly script is carefully edited to portray America’s
activities around the world in a positive light. This produces coverage
which is invariably sympathetic to US foreign policy goals and lacks objectivity
or depth. For the last decade or so, it didn’t matter what network broadcast
one watched, the lead stories and commercial breaks were featured at just the
same time, from just the same ideological perspective, using just the same talking
points and buzzwords to present a solid wall of disinformation which was intended
to overpower the viewer into believing that “this is the news”.
The internet has broken the spell of controlled information and provided us
with unlimited access to divergent information and viewpoints. Intelligent people
have naturally gravitated to the sites that give them a more accurate and detailed
summary of the days’ events without the meticulously managed spin of network
news. This has caused considerable frustration among the ruling class which
claims a monopoly on information and which has spent a fortune building an empire
to mislead the public on issues that are critical to their continued dominance.
That’s why congress is currently getting involved in the internet, to
destroy the citizens’ free access to unfiltered news. They don’t
care about saving a few seconds of time for the transmission of information
on business-related sites; that’s all nonsense. They want to control what
you see, what you hear, and what you know. That’s the key for maintaining
the class system which keeps them in power. Katie Couric is the latest addition to the network-paradigm. Her promotion
to “news anchor” indicates a further departure from hard news to
personality-driven fluff that resembles factual information. It is a spoof on
news programs no different than the Daily Show, albeit conspicuously less entertaining.
The underlying cynicism of using Couric is impossible to ignore. It shows in
stark terms that network “credibility” is not even a small consideration
in the decision-making process. Substance does not matter; the only thing that
matters is ratings. The networks’ lone concern is finding a suitable vehicle
for hawking the products of their commercial sponsors. That’s why they
selected someone whose meager qualifications are her air-brushed, non-threatening
appearance and her “perkiness”. She has been chosen as the draught-horse
for the heavily-redacted, corporate-friendly news. The results are predictably
abysmal and even depressing. The first two programs indicate an approach to the news which emphasizes familiarity
and casualness. It’s like getting the neighborhood gossip from the girl
next door; and that is what it is supposed to be. The clear intention is to
provide Rumsfeld’s world-view via Katie Couric’s persona; creating
a “softer, gentler” take on America’s global interventions.
The method is subtle and manipulative. The main issues (Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine
etc) are completely ignored or glossed over in a completely non-critical manner
suggesting that America, the gentle giant, is doing its best to calm down the
fractious Arab world and keep them from killing each other. Last night’s presentation followed the same formula; trivializing the
headline news and moving quickly into a slick 4 minute infomercial about the
“wonderful work our spy agencies are doing” listening in on every
phone call we make “to keep us all safer”. The segment was presented
as top secret “insiders-view” of the main office for intelligence
collection in Colorado. It was designed to put a friendly face on the hard working
men and women who are engaged in mauling the 4th amendment on a daily basis.
Like Bush, Couric’s job is to sell the public on the idea that personal
freedom is obsolete and that living in a government cage can be comfortable
and secure. Later, in Katie’s “Free Speech” segment of the program, a
former-government official provided a sanitized view of “immigration”
that was identical to the policies and outlook of the Council on Foreign Relations
(CFR) the amalgam of 4,000 American elites who try to advance their globalist
agenda through their various operatives in the media (Jim Lehrer, Margaret Warner,
Tom Brocaw, Tom Friedman) Tom Friedman, the CFRs number one pitchman for globalization
(“The World is Flat”) was on the show the previous night. Tonight’s
show will feature Rush Limbaugh, reinforcing the belief that “free speech”
should be limited to those whose opinions that match the views of corporate
kingpins and American plutocrats. Don’t expect Noam Chomsky anytime soon. The Katie Show wound up with a “feel-good” segment about a blind,
black boy who has managed to adjust to his handicap and have a relatively normal
life. It is the classic “Horatio Alger” story of someone who disdains
government hand-outs and “pulls himself up by his own bootstraps”.
It is a favorite message of people on the far-right that : “Government
has no responsibility to its people; you are on your own.” Somehow, that
message is more persuasive coming from Katie Couric than from the thousands
of victims who were abandoned during Hurricane Katrina. That, of course, was
the truest example of the Republican theory of “natural selection,”
or rather, “It’s every man for himself”. Behind the glitzy sets and the contrived presentation, the Couric Show
is clearly the most ideologically-driven of the network newscasts. Even a cursory
analysis exposes the influence of far-right doctrinaires preaching their creed
through their newest megaphone, Katie Couric. It’s not a bad strategy. She’s bound to have more success soft-pedaling
war and tax cuts than the malingering dolt from Crawford. It will be interesting to see how she softens us up for nuking Iran.
____________________ Read from Looking Glass News The
Cablization of Network News Katie
Couric: the Pretty Face of Corporate Propaganda CHRIS
MATTHEWS : " I JUST LOVE THIS GUY AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF " Russert:
At the Feet of the Powerful and Throat of the Weak St.
Peter Jennings: Excuse Maker for War and Empire Howard
Kurtz, Unreliable Source Ted
Koppel: "Natural Fit" at NPR News and Longtime Booster of Henry Kissinger
Only
5 Corporations Now Control Majority Of US Media Chris
Matthews: 2005's Misinformer of the Year America's
corporate-controlled media: garbage disguised as news The
Life and Crimes of a Global Goebbels Two
Girls Bleed, Only One Leads CNN's
Vice President of Racism Mass
Mind Control Through Network Television: Are Your Thoughts Your Own? Seventeen
Techniques for Truth Suppression The
Doors Of Perception: Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything Keepers
at the Gate: He Who Controls Television Controls the Masses |