MAINSTREAM MEDIA’S “FAKE NEWS” DECEPTION

BAKERY FAKERY IN HALF-BAKED “FAKE NEWS”

PART ONE

“When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, ‘This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,’ the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything—you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.” ~Robert A. Heinlein, If This Goes On, 1940

WHY THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF THE WORDS, ‘FAKE NEWS,’ AS BROADCAST BY MAINSTREAM MEDIA? WHAT BROUGHT THIS ON AND WHY IS ‘FAKE NEWS’ SUCH A HOT TOPIC TODAY?

In recent weeks, following the welcomed demise of Hillary Rodham’s Clinton’s bid for the White House, the American public encountered an expression that has become widespread in the mainstream media: ‘fake news.’

The expression’s sudden appearance in the mainstream media and the public’s constant exposure to it is unsurprising. One might have expected this. Why? The owners of mass media pushed for Hillary Clinton for President. They were blindsided by alternative media sources that supported Donald Trump. The Arbalest Quarrel weblog was an early and fervent supporter of Donald Trump and an open skeptic of Hillary Clinton. Weblogs like the Arbalest Quarrel openly challenged the rationale and logic behind mainstream media’s news accounts, commentary and analysis of the campaigns and of the candidates.

Mainstream media no longer has a monopoly on news coverage, news analysis, and commentary. The owners of mainstream media and the editors, writers, and pundits who work for them, don’t like this. They coined the phrase, ‘fake news.’ They did this to disparage anyone who offered a meaningful alternative to the contrived and scripted news, commentary, and analysis its organizations fed and continue to the public.

The expression, ‘fake news,’ has become essentially synonymous with the phrase, ‘conspiracy theory,’ an earlier phrase mainstream media coined to discredit and disparage news coverage, commentary, and analysis provided by alternative news sources. Mainstream media uses both phrases to dismiss outright the notion that news coverage, commentary on the news, or news analysis presented by alternative media is worthy of public consumption.

By dismissing, discrediting and discounting the legitimacy of alternative media outright, the owners of mainstream media hoped—indeed expected—the American public would, during this recent U.S. Presidential election cycle, look only to mainstream media for its news, for news commentary, and for news analysis as the public had done so in past election cycles. Mainstream media would remain preeminent. It would continue to dominate the central themes presented to the public and would continue to dominate the way those themes are presented to the public. Thus, mainstream media would continue to control and manipulate public opinion.

The owners of mainstream media surmised, once again wrongly, that most Americans derive their news, today, primarily through major networks like MSNBC, CNBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and FOX, and through major newspapers like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times,  Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune. The owners of these and other major news vehicles, organizations, and outlets figured they had a lock on information about the world and the Nation—a lock on the news meted out to the public. That may once have been the case, but is so no longer. The election results proved them wrong.

The owners of mainstream media did not figure on the power of alternative news media—independent weblogs and podcasts that obtained more traffic through the years, siphoning off audience that had relied heavily on the major television networks and the major newspapers for information—the core of the mainstream media.

When Hillary Clinton lost the U.S. Presidential election, the owners of the major news networks and newspapers looked for a scapegoat. They did not blame themselves. But, they needed an explanation for the failure of mainstream media to woo the populace to accept Hillary Clinton as the preferred candidate for U.S. President. They contrived a scapegoat. They found it in two sources: alternative media, and in construction of a bogeyman: the Russians.

THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA CONCOCTS A FANTASY

In their broadcasts and in their newspapers, the owners of major news organizations express their anger and scorn for alternative media. They lament how the weblogs had duped the public by giving the public analyses of candidates and of campaign events that amount to “fake news.” Mainstream media’s use of the phrase, ‘fake news,’ extends beyond the mere casting about for an errant news story appearing in one or the other alternative media source. It goes to the central theme of news reporting and news analysis and news commentary.

But did alternative media dupe the public, really? Was not the public simply waking up to the reality behind the orchestrated campaign of misdirection projected on it through the mainstream media? Didn’t mainstream media seek to maintain the deception it had perennially achieved through its monopoly of news coverage, commentary, and analysis? And, isn’t this meticulous and insidious campaign of deception by the mainstream media—having failed to produce an electoral win for either one of the favored packaged candidates, Hillary Clinton for the Democrats or Jeb Bush for Republicans—ongoing? Isn’t the mainstream media attempting even now—well past the Eleventh Hour as Trump very soon takes the oath of Office—to discredit, and delegitimize him by casting blame for the election’s outcome on a couple of bogeymen: Vladimir Putin of Russia and, to a lesser extent, although quietly, curiously enough, no longer–James Comey, Director of the F.B.I.? Is not the mainstream media guilty of thrusting ‘fake news’ upon the public—the same thing it accuses alternative media of doing and, now, Russia.

Let’s assume for purpose of argument that Russia did have a hand in giving a boost to Trump, as the CIA claims. For all the hoopla and clamoring of the mainstream media in its pious denunciation of Russia for having, as is claimed by the CIA, in a substantially redacted report, the audacity of attacking our democratic process, one should note that none of Trump’s detractors has claimed or so much as hinted that all or any part of the information the public obtained through the apparent hacking of DNC computers and through the hacking of the computers of John Podesta and Hillary Clinton, was false. None of it was.

If, then, the information presented through the hacking of computers were true, why then should not the public be privy to that truth? Why didn’t the mainstream media provide the American public with the very information it claimed Russia handed to the public? Should not the public take umbrage with and express its moral outrage not at the Russians, nor with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, but at the DNC, and at Hillary Clinton, and at the Democratic Party, and at the mainstream media that, together, have made a mockery of our own Democratic processes? Who, truly, is the greater threat to our Nation, to Americans’ sacred rights and liberties, to our Nation’s institutions, to our Democratic processes? Is it Putin and the Russians, really, and others from outside our Nation, or  is it those terrible individuals within our Nation that trounce on the very ideals of our Republic they sanctimoniously claim to adore and uphold?

Consider, too, is our Nation so weak as to be unable to withstand the release of information Americans should have received anyway, through the mainstream media, had the mainstream media done its job to inform the public? Would the American public not then be able to make an informed choice as to whom it truly sought to be the next President of the United States? But, does the mainstream media ever truly seek to inform the public with the news, neutrally presented—all the news that’s fit to print that the NY Times sanctifies as its motto and then patently ignores—so that the public can critically appraise the events of the day and the operations of our Government in dealing with serious dangers to our Nation? Wasn’t the information obtained through the hacking of DNC computers and through the hacking of computers of Democratic Party officials merely a comprehensive reflection of the depths of corruption existent in the DNC and in the Party and in its candidate of choice, Hillary Rodham Clinton?

If the Russians, upon orders of Putin, did hack unceremoniously—and apparently effortlessly into the computers of the DNC, and into those of officials and functionaries or the Party, as those computers were never properly secured anyway and therefore invited hacking–did the information obtained for public consumption act no more nor less than a mirror held up to the face of the American public? Did not that mirror say to Americans: “take a good look at the DNC and at the Democratic Party and, especially, at this person, Hillary Rodham Clinton, a criminal, who seeks the Office of President of the United States–take a good look at the extent of corruption in the DNC, in the Democratic Party, and in that Party’s leaders?”

But, the puppet masters that control the mainstream media didn’t wish to project the truth. The puppet masters did not wish the public to perceive the actual duplicity present in this Country. They did not wish to do so, for, after all, aren’t they the cause of that duplicity? They didn’t wish for the American public to know the truth about Hillary Clinton, to know the truth about the DNC, to know the truth about the Democratic Party apparatus. They still don’t. So, leaving nothing to conjecture, they proclaim Donald Trump, to be an illegitimate, usurper of the Office of U.S. President. The alternative? They would rather sit a criminal, Hillary Clinton, in the seat of highest power.

The mainstream media works in lockstep with the DNC and the Democratic Party to deceive the public. They are all very good at this; and they are relentless. Still, they failed to convince the public to accept their candidate of choice. They are puzzled and distraught and enraged that the public refused to be duped this election cycle. They haven’t given up, though.

The Democratic Party and much of the present machinery of Government, infected with the disease of statism, will likely attack Donald Trump throughout his Presidency. The corrupting influences and forces at work for decades that seek continued concentration of power in Government at the expense of the rights and liberties of the American People, as the founders of our Republic understood those natural rights and liberties, do not wish for Trump’s success. The mainstream media is the vehicle through which the forces that had fought Trump throughout the election cycle will continue to attack him, will continue to frustrate his attempts to strengthen the Nation’s independence and sovereignty. These insidious, secretive, powerful forces will frustrate his attempts to serve the American people. These dark forces will frustrate his attempts to extricate this Nation and its people from foreign entanglements. These corrupting forces will attempt, worst of all, to alienate and isolate Trump, to fracture the public’s trust in Trump, and to harm the public’s relationship with Trump and with the Trump Administration–to make it difficult for Trump to do his work as U.S. President on behalf of this Nation, and on behalf of the Nation’s people, and on behalf of the Nation’s Constitution.

These evil forces will attempt to place the Trump Administration in a container, a deep freeze, cut-off from the public. These evil, corrupting forces will do this to prevent Trump from creating and implementing policy designed to set this Nation on the right path—a path consistent with the intentions of the founders of our Republic, a path that invokes what the Nation meant to the founders of it.

The public must remain vigilant—hyper vigilant—to the mainstream media’s onslaught on President-elect, Donald Trump. The public is getting a taste of the new avenue of attack—an attack on the very legitimacy of Trump’s Presidency.

WHAT IS ‘FAKE NEWS,’ REALLY, AND WHY DO WE SEE THIS MEME—THIS MENTAL VIRUS—IMPRINTED IN THE PSYCHE OF AMERICANS BY THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA?

Let’s parse the phrase, ‘fake news.’ Look up the word, ‘fake,’ in a dictionary. The word, ‘fake,’ means ‘not genuine,’ ‘not authentic,’ ‘sham,’ or ‘false.’ Although not explicit, the word is a pejorative. It connotes, fabrication, fraud, pretense, artifice. The word suggests, then, something more, much more, than the innocent presentation of falsehood in reporting. It suggests deliberate intention or desire to deceive the target audience.

Now check out the word, ‘news.’ The word, ‘news,’ means, ‘information about recent or current events.’ This word, too, has a subjective meaning. The word, ‘news,’ connotes the media tools through which news events are conveyed to the public. How is news conveyed? News is conveyed to the public through many vehicles. It is conveyed through newspapers, magazines, fliers, journals, trade publications, radio, television, and, commonly today, through weblogs and websites—those of major television, radio, and newspapers and through the independents—for profit and non-profit organizations, not affiliated with the major newspapers, television and radio networks, that provide an alternative news, news analysis, and news commentary source for the public.

Today, the public has a plethora of tools from which to gather news. The owners of the mainstream media don’t like this because of what this means to them. It means the public doesn’t rely on or need to rely on the mainstream media alone for its news and for its news analysis and for its news commentary. The mainstream media doesn’t like this because it seeks to control the news the public receives. That means control over dissemination of and analysis of news. That means, too, control over the stories that are told and the manner of the telling. That means controlling the thought processes of the public. That means insidiously projecting onto the public consciousness and conscience, and into the public’s thought processes those ideas the mainstream media seeks the public to accept, in line with prevailing Governmental objectives.

The mainstream media once did this easily, for the mainstream media once maintained exclusive control over the delivery vehicles for the news. That was once the case, but no longer.

Realizing it had lost exclusive control over news coverage, and news analysis and news commentary, the owners of mainstream media established their own websites and weblogs. But, would the public be drawn to the mainstream media’s weblogs and websites? Some members of the public would do so, yes, but not all, perhaps not even most. And, those that do could still contrast the news received through the mainstream media with the news delivered through the owners of independent websites, weblogs, and podcasts. Mainstream media has lost ground, but more, it has lost face as the public becomes aware of the deception—a monstrous deception played upon it. For mainstream media seeks less to inform the public and more to control it, to sway public opinion in one direction, to create an image of the world and of the Nation the owners of mainstream media wish for the public to see—a false image, to be sure, and one that promotes goals and policy objectives antithetical to the interests of the Nation, and of the Constitution, and of the Nation’s citizenry.

Clearly, there’s more to fakery in the news, then, than meets the eye. It is fakery that goes beyond any snippet of news. It goes to a massive, orchestrated scheme of deception of which mainstream media plays a critical part. If there exists “fake news,” then it is fake news on an immense scale—the false projection of a world view that does not benefit this Nation, this Nation’s Constitution or this Nation’s citizenry.

More about the expression, ‘fake news,’ in upcoming articles.

Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.