US Networks Build Their Own Fortress America

Posted on Sunday, March 27 at 21:41 by 4Canada
"(O)n the eve of 9/11," he writes, "here is what the CBS Evening News offered: a report on the sexual exploitation of young people; a story with eye-catching video on dangerous aerial stunts by military pilots; another story with in-your-face video, this one featuring a Sacramento serial killer; a piece on declining consumer spending; and two health stories — one of them about dietary supplements." Sept. 11 was expected to change that. But, even with pressing problems like Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Syria, says Fenton, "none of the networks is talking about providing more international news, more context, or serving the public better in its time of need." Consider last week. Italy announced the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq. There was international uproar over U.S. President George W. Bush's naming the hawkish deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz to lead the World Bank. Iraq's new National Assembly opened while under mortar fire. But TV news delivered the trials and tribulations of Scott Peterson, Martha Stewart, Michael Jackson and Robert Blake. "The major news organizations have forgotten their responsibility to the public and have replaced it almost completely with responsibility to stockholders," says Fenton... ...The information gap doesn't just hurt Americans. Last Wednesday, when Bush met with Prime Minister Paul Martin and Mexico's Vicente Fox to discuss immigration and border issues, the story was all but ignored, even though our "porous borders" are always a hot topic on partisan talk shows. "We don't cover Canada, period," says Fenton. "Look how poorly Americans understand the Canadian psyche and Canada's point of view. It's because they're so rarely exposed to it. "And when your government does things that seem to run counter Washington's policy, I am sure they don't have a clue as to why Canada walks a different road." http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1111663353328&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907624636 [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on March 28, 2005]

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  1. Mon Mar 28, 2005 6:15 am
    It has been called"dumbing down". It has been called "media mongering". No matter what it is called,the media,every outlet,every scrap,every rag ever printed,has been bought out ,turned over,manipulated into feeding the world a pack of lies. It has been uswed to pull the biggest cloak over the eyes of an entire nation. It has been bought and payed for by corporation time and again.Ultimatly, the media is controled by other than a unbiased sourse.
    What better way to perpetuate a crime,on the scale of 9/11,then to pull the publics eye away from the stories that would put it into perspective.
    I did a search tonight on stories aired the day before 9/11. Everything BUT middle eastern tension was mentioned.Absolutly nothing on Iraq,etc. Not that this proves anything,or does it?

    ---
    A little peice of heaven is found in good deeds.

  2. Mon Mar 28, 2005 7:03 am
    I got as far as:

    "As Mohammed Atta and his fellow hijackers were boarding the planes they would crash on 9/11"

    LOL

    why is this stuff being put up?

  3. by avatar Spud
    Mon Mar 28, 2005 8:55 am
    The world is dumbing down,suv`s,walmart,bad news,corporate/government corruption......
    Kinda like we are going to hit something.

  4. Mon Mar 28, 2005 6:01 pm
    kinda like the government's propaganda tool known hereaboots as the CBC (cocoon broadcasting corporation) and The Glob and Male (sorry, meant Globe and Mail) whitewashing the Canadian embassy vehicle being blown up in Kabul...trying to make out as though now one could have known it was Canadian and must have been a case of mistaken identity, lol...because we ALL know that no one would want to blow up one of those innocent angels of peace from Canada, right? Interestingly absent from all Canadian media accounts of the incident are the LOCATION of the incident...as in the vehicle had just departed the Canadian Embassy...hmmm..really...or that it was obviously marked as Canadian, plates and all...damn...no, sh**...no accident, eh. The roadside bomb was remotely detonated and not triggered accidentally (they actually reported that part curiously enough and that there was a "small" Canadian flag on the bumper). No mention of the plates, or that it was just leaving the Canadian Embassy, and someone had to have had it staked out and was waiting for just that group/vehicle.

    Why is that I wonder? The government owned and operated media here in Canada can't risk it's population thinking that after all the anti-american flagging aboot the world (so as to make sure no one would want to attack anything Canadian - out of cowardice and economic considerations - protecting that pocketbook as always) that there could possibly exist people out there that actually DON'T CARE who you are or where you come from if they want to blow something/someone up for their "cause" whether they even know for themselves what their "cause" is (as opposed to blindly following a mullah's instructions).

    Politically speaking, the government controls the media, the Liberal party controls the government, and the Liberal party was at the helm as world events were unfolding over the last few years. If an election could be on the horizon, they would much prefer it if the Canadian people thought that they did the right thing in every circumstance, and as a result Canada could not possibly have any enemies and is therefore much safer today as a result of their astute leadership (unlike those foolish cowboys to the south).

    As far as any other information, it's been the same. The article above is so funny I almost fell out of my seat reading a blue journalist bitter from career failure whining aboot the media he can't seem to find a home in. If we in Canada were to actually watch some news other than our TASS-like media here we might find out there is a world there outside of our own, and what happens in it, isn't always how it's described to us by our Liberal party controlled government/media.

    The CBC is a population "management tool" and no more. Try an experiment. Over a period of say 6 months, do as I did to satisfy my own curiosity...every day pick a "big", sensationalised (by the Canadian media outlets) news story from the CBC website. Then check the Globe and Mail, CTV versions. Now check out how the same story is reported by CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX NEWS, etcetera...now go to the BBC and whatever other European news outlets you choose, check it out on Al Aribiya and Al Jazeera. It takes a bit of time, and can be a pain in the a** to keep up with especially trying to live a life not superglued to your computer constantly. I can guarantee you will be a completely different person after 6 months. It'll scare the crap out of you in fact, what you will discover. All of a sudden your fellow Canadians won't make sense to you. A lot of things won't make sense to you. All the hate of everything non-canadian will only make you sad, as you know there is no basis for it, but are powerless to do a damned thing aboot it. You realize that it's impossible to fight the government and the CBC, and that your people are doomed to produce generation after generation of haters...each one more hateful than before. Based almost entirely out of a steady diet if misinformation from the time it was forced upon them as little ones in their day care centres, community centres, schools, peers, parents and capped off by a steady, daily dose of government media mind control. Funny thing is you wouldn't ever know it, unless you had reason to investigate.

    That's what the government doesn't want. They want to placate us with whatever inexpensive, trivial, entertaining, diversionary tactic it takes to prevent us from thinking we might have any "reason" to look into something on our own. If people started doing that, the government (and our way of life) would be in trouble. Keeping a population from discovering truth, or thinking on it's own is too dangerous for a non-democratic government like ours.

    Information control has been the most crucial survival mechanism known to mankind throughout history. Since the beginning of time. Only it's become more difficult to keep a lid on things with modern technology being as it is, requiring greater ingenuity and creativity. Control access to information and you control your population. Cardinal rule of oppressive and corrupt governments everywhere. You make sure your subjects only receive the information you want them to have and that it's crafted, re-worked, manipulated, and finally presented in a way that glorifies your own deeds and villifies the deeds of others you are at odds with. Not quoting sources is one of the best methods of containment. Tell a story with no author. Use direct quotation as little as possible (unless you can edit it to mean what you want it to) and never, EVER name a source. You can't question a ghost to verify accuracy and truthfulness of the story. (People, look for an author of any CBC online story if you don't believe me on this one). Keep their attention off the lack of services, lack of affordable housing, poor food quality, lack of education, over-burdensome taxes, you and your cronie's financial affairs/connections, lack of ability to defend them from a potential foreign aggressor, etcetera...you know, those kinds of things a governmnet would be expected to spend their tax dollars on, the basics.

    Instead focus their attention as much as possible not upon what you are doing, but what a neighboring country is doing for example, and why Canada is better (nationalism), having their energy focused on someone everyone loves to hate (we all know who) keeps them off your own back. If anything goes wrong with anything, anywhere, just blame it on that favourite group of people we all love to hate, no matter even if what goes wrong happens here in Canada, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. It worked for Hitler with the Jews, after all, right? No matter what bad thing happened it was the Jews fault. No matter where it happened either. How else do you work up a country to a feverish pitch of hatred, and then keep it focused upon ONE thing, or ONE group of people, while you skip around doing whatever you want to whomever you want, and taking whatever you want, as your constituants are looking the other way, obsessing and frothing at the mouth. Pretty cool arrangement, eh?

    You HAVE to, you MUST, control where their attention is directed. Keep it on whatever works for them, eh, as they're easy to lead around by that built in nose ring you've programmed into them from birth...just as long as it's not you! If they love to hate America, then follow the path of least resistance...keep them focused on America, or he** even Alberta will do in a pinch...so long as the target of hatred is somehow different from the mainstream, urban, canadian voter blocs of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal...need those numbers..the huge population centres...easy pickens...have to have those votes to keep in the chips...and to cap it off, just for insurance...socially engineer the immigration of the "correct voter type" beneficial for your party into these blocs to ensure your own survival and control of the vote...be careful who you allow in, in what quantity, and where they are allowed to settle...you must not import competition, but bolster your own ranks instead.

    If the attention span of the people seems to be getting shorter, and it becomes somehow more difficult to keep them focused upon those we most love to hate, then there is always a controversial, emotionally charged issue somewhere around the house to get into...gay marriage or whatever else there is that keeps attention off finances...you can't pick a pocket if your mark is paying attention to you.

    The easist thing of course, are those poor clutzes south of the 49th...they literally make it SO easy to accomplish our campaign of misinformation don't they? They are their own worst enemy...airing their dirty laundry in public for the entire world to see, oh baby...field day for the Liberals! Having an open society and freedom of speech and the press makes them so vulnerable to the likes of our government it's almost so funny as to actually be sad in a way. All there is left to do for the CBC is to pass on, accentuate, exaggerate, and tweak for maximum effect the negative, and keep whatever positive news there may be sealed off from entry to Canadian territory. They're like this big, dumb moose, with it's head submerged in the water, feeding... with it's own guts hanging out and oozing blood all over the place...aware of all the wolves(including us) circling, not feeling the pain, nor caring somehow...but naively continuing on...waving it's own innerds at them as if to say, "here I am bleeding, come feast upon me, if you will, please, really....I won't mind". And Canadian's are right there, Johnny on the spot!

    The American media's fault has been that although it's open to it's own people, it's too open to outsiders. Their own news outlets hurt them worse than any of ours ever could. Anyone who ever said that they are "biased, pro-American right-wing, propaganda" of the "corporate elite" was doing just what Papa Paul wants them to do...being the pot that calls the kettle black (very rabidly too I might add) while he picks your pockets clean.

    "Go ahead and hate your neighbour,
    go ahead and cheat a friend,
    ....on the bloody morning after,
    one Liberal PM rides away"

  5. by avatar Spud
    Mon Mar 28, 2005 6:53 pm
    WELL SAID!

  6. Mon Mar 28, 2005 9:06 pm
    I agree with you. The CBC is only good for the headlines. Then you have to search for yourself to get the back story.
    There are lots of alternative news sites on the web as well as some good blogs that give the question to the grand narrative of the CBC. However, there are so many Mainstream news outlets that just report what is on the wire and never look into anything. We cannot be smug. We must be viligent.

    ---
    rhondda

  7. Mon Mar 28, 2005 10:23 pm
    speaking of being vigilant...I just discovered that Tim Horton's is owned/operated by Wendy's Internationale from the states. OMG...this entire time I've been going there spending my mom's lunch money on what I THOUGHT were Canadien doughnuts, and drinking what I THOUGHT was Canadien coffee thinkin' I was being all freakin' patriotic and sh**, and now here I find out that I've been lining corporate America's pockets the entire time :( ... and so I should've just let the neighbourhood bullies beat me up and take my lunch money instead...would've at least gone to a Canadien :( ...

  8. Mon Mar 28, 2005 10:45 pm
    Well Canadian corporations are not any better than the US ones. We attach to Tim Hortons as Canadian as if they are somehow contributing to the common identity of Canadians, when they are laughing all the way to the bank.

  9. Mon Mar 28, 2005 11:22 pm
    Yeah, anon, you`re right, the CBC plays those annoying 'Canada needs America or we`ll die' phrases over and over, when really, Canada can be a self-sufficient nation. The CBC also failed to acknowledge the fixed US election, but was quick to point out the fixed Ukrainian election, among other things. But where i get confused here is your assertion that Canadians hate all Americans. Yes, sound like a news flash to me!

    ---
    Dave Ruston

  10. Tue Mar 29, 2005 1:35 am
    But... when you compare what passes as news from the CBC and outlets like CanWest, there is little comparison. At least the CBC can still be called a 'news' outlet. CanWest hovers between a propoganda tool to outright lie machine to entertainment 'news'.

  11. Tue Mar 29, 2005 2:12 am
    You are right. Can west is just infotainment. However, CBC which I must say, is better than anything else you will find nationally does not probe deeply enough. The other night they had Native comedians on one comedy show. Now I have heard one of these comedians live and he was very very tame on CBC. It was not the same routine he gives to a mostly native audience.
    I applaud the CBC for doing the show. However, I repeat it was tame and we really need to hear the real digs. Even Rich Mercer has sold out. The news shows like Fifth Estate are good, but they do not get to the core of the issue. I watch some BBC programs and they really get to it. Why hasn't the CBC done something about what we are doing in Hati? They can't.It would spoil the myth of the wonderful Canadian peacekeeper. We are getting PC stuff.

  12. by avatar Milton
    Tue Mar 29, 2005 8:24 am
    The US media is strictly under lockdown. If you think a bunch of Arabs, armed with boxcutters or anything else, caused the events that took place on Sept 11, 2001 then you are not paying attention and have been dumbed down.

  13. Wed Mar 30, 2005 3:38 am
    The U.S. Media IS strictly under "lockdown"...the government of Canada has it "locked down" most definitely... or I should say locked out (in favor of Al Bagheera? El Jazeera?) from being exposed to it's loyal crown subjects...still can't believe what happened to Timmy's though :( ...damn...double damn :( ...I'll NEVER be the same again :( ...



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