The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #99124   Message #2064133
Posted By: Amos
30-May-07 - 12:37 PM
Thread Name: BS: Noam Chomsky on Iran, etc.
Subject: RE: BS: Noam Chomsky on Iran, etc.
Some organizations manage to field enough pressure across many pressure-points to orchestrate a media campaign.

The most obvious of these is wide-area purchased advertising as is done for commercial purposes or political campaigns.

Less obvious, and more insidious is to "make news" by generating controversy. This can "entrain" the media response because controversy sells papers. The tactic is to blow up the controversy with exagerrated or false data (for example, stating that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger). An editor who smells a hot controversy will give it column-inches or air-time because he knows that it will stir people up, and increase his viewers or readers.

The original code of ethics of the Fourth Estate required that reporter's have the temerity to question, fact-check and investigate such manufactured news. But it is too often the case that in the pressure to get something out, they do not.

Given enough dollars or influence it is possible for a coordinate dorganization to manipulate the media, certainly. The point I was making earlier is that there is no single organization that holds such control lines. The public microphone is constantly the target of grabbery and squabble.

A