The
Fake News
Uncle
Bill Warner
The
latest fad in the world of TV fantasy is fake news courtesy of the
"VNR" (Video News Release). Just as commercials present
only the point of view, of the sponsor, trying to get you to buy
their products, many people are trying to sell you more important
things, such as acceptance of bad ideas or even war. This used to
be called "propaganda." We know that beer commercials
are paid for by brewers, who have a special interest in our pocketbooks,
if not our welfare. Consequently, they pay actors to imitate happy
drunks, not out-of-control barfing buffoons. We know who pays for
these VNRs and make we make allowances.
But what if
your government, using your tax dollars to manipulate public opinion,
was giving out free VNRs that were then uncritically used by your
local trusted TV outlet which might not mention that they were paid-for
covert propaganda? The General Accounting Office of Congress has
determined that these VNRs are illegal, and that Federal Agencies
should stop spending hundreds of millions supplying these to news
media outlets. This "fake news" is all-too-often presented
without identifying the source. That is like showing a happy beer
party without mentioning it was paid for by Budweiser.
Hitler made
good use of what is now known as the VNR with his slick films promoting
Aryan superiority. It was presented as fact that Jews, Slavs, Gipsies,
and people with dark skins were inferior. Opinion presented as fact.
Faked up stories about Jews were fed regularly to their media. Pretty
heavy- handed, right?
On one hand,
we condemn the idea of a state-controlled press (including radio
and mainly TV) in places like North Korea, but condone it here at
home!
When the big
post Prop. 13 budget cuts hit the public schools a number of years
back, teachers, deprived of real educational films, often succumbed
to using movies provided by industry which were in fact just commercials
in the sheep's clothing. Kids came to believe that cutting down
redwoods improved America, or that eating more cheese made you healthy.
The trick is to get people to confuse opinion with fact, and if
presented convincingly enough, it works.
George Orwell,
writing in 1948 about 1984, clearly saw what the "Ministry
of Truth" could do to control people's minds by feeding the
only lies and half-truths. Now we have the Pentagon Channel, supplying
all sorts of Army-chosen "news" from Iraq and Afghanistan
available free on their website to every cable and satellite operator
in the U.S. Is it too far-fetched to imagine a convincing actor
posing as a news anchor showing you their footage of a happy Iraqi
on the street thanking President Bush for sending our troops over
to straighten his country out and forgetting to mention that this
news item was paid for by the Pentagon? Many TV operators don't
have the funding to check out the truth contained in all those VNRs,
but they can at least be urged to identify the source.
In some cases,
however, such as with Fox News (featured in the film, "Outfoxed")
this deception appears to be welcomed and enforced from the top
down within the news organization. Instead of citing sources, we
Fox reporters often insert their own or the Fox management's opinions
by inserting the words, "...some people say...", or just
an VNR clip with no attribution whatsoever. Presentations of opinions
which go against their official line are shamelessly manipulated
or shouted down. The Fox motto should be changed to "We decide,
not you."
One of the
most egregious example of fake news was the item that helped get
us into the first Gulf War. We all saw the emotional VNR of the
anonymous sobbing 15 year old Kuwaiti girl, "Nasiyreh",
who described how invading Iraqi troops had gone into a hospital
where she was volunteering and yanked some 15 babies out of their
incubators and had thrown them on the cold floor to die. It was
presented as truth, and even the President (Bush Sr.) and several
Congressmen referred to it in public speeches to drum up support
for the war. By the time the news came out that the whole incident
was a fake, produced by a US public relations firm with Kuwaiti
money, we were at war. The "eye witness" to the atrocity
just happened to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the
US, and who was not even in Kuwait at the time.
Maybe it is
time to demand that our news sources get the VNRs off the air, or
at least label them for what they are and put them back with the
beer commercials where they belong. The American public deserves
no less.
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