mercredi, décembre 16, 2015

Media Lens: Manufacturing Consensus - Hilary Benn's Speech


Manufacturing Consensus 
- Hilary Benn's Speech
Media Lens 9 Dec 2015

Everyone laughs when dictators claim 'Victory!' having secured fully 99 per cent of the vote. The deception is so naked, so obvious - nobody is fooled by this supposed 'national consensus'.

By contrast, when Western politics and media appear to reach a consensus on the benevolent intent of 'our' leaders, on the Hitlerian qualities of 'our' latest Official Enemy - when war is understood to be an unavoidable necessity by just about everyone - nobody blinks an eye. The beauty of a system like ours - controlled by propaganda rather than Big Brother-style censorship and violence - is that it looks for all the world like freedom.

The corporate media system may appear to be comprised of a huge variety of newspapers, magazines, websites, TV and radio stations. But in fact these are all corporate media, and all corporate media share similar interests and pursue similar goals in alliance with the state. What looks like consensus is most often a lie - a phoney reflection of corporate dominance and mindless groupthink [...]

Indeed, the propaganda war being waged on Corbyn and the related support for war and Benn's wretched speech – has moved beyond mere bias. The British corporate media are no longer merely channelling distorted news and views to democracy; they are openly working to undermine democracy.
Read full article:
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Comment: A great many Post-Referendum Scots will smile wryly indeed at the above last paragraph quoted from the conclusion of the excellent Medialens article. Compared to the years of distorted vicious headline attacks on First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond by a British media utterly focussed on "undermining democracy" in Scotland, Jeremy Corbyn ain't seen nothing yet. Read, for example, GA Ponsonby's devastating book: 'LONDON CALLING: How the BBC Stole the Referendum'.