Currently viewing the tag: “Machine”
When Dwayne Whitney started his trucking business decades ago he had only one truck. Today he has eighteen and 20 employees. But that’s about to change.
“The State of California says my trucks are killing people,” says Whitney. “What do you say to that?”
In a few years, new air quality regulations approved by the California Air Resources Board will render Whitney’s entire fleet illegal.
“New CARB rules are putting me out of business,” he says.
CARB claims that diesel particulates, a type of pollution emitted from buses and trucks, contributes to 2,000 premature deaths in California each year. But UCLA epidemiologist Dr. James Enstrom says the number should be closer to zero.
In 2005 Enstrom authored an extensive study that found no relationship between diesel particulates and premature deaths. He says his study, as well as other evidence that agrees with it, have been ignored by an agency bent on passing ever more stringent regulations regardless of their effect on California’s economy.
Enstrom blew the whistle on CARB for, among other things, failing to publicize that the lead author of the study that was used to justify the new regulations falsified his education history (he purchased his PhD from an online diploma mill).
But UCLA didn’t come to Enstrom’s defense. In fact, officials informed him that, after 34 years at the university, he was out of a job.
“The environmental regulation machine in powerful in California,” says Adam Kissel of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which is defending Enstrom in the fight to keep his job. “When Dr. Enstrom went up against that machine he was retaliated against.”
A hearing that begins on April 4 will determine whether Dr. Enstrom keeps his job, and the final decision rests with UCLA Chancellor Gene Block.
Says Kissel, “If Dr. Enstrom loses his job because he exercised his academic freedom, then it’s a message to other researchers that you’d better not rock the boat because you might be next.”
Approximately 9 minutes.
“The Green Regulation Machine” is written and produced by Ted Balaker. Field Producer: Paul Detrick; Camera: Alex Manning, Hawk Jensen, Josh Swain, Austin Bragg.
Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions of this and all our videos and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new content is posted.
When Dwayne Whitney started his trucking business decades ago he had only one truck. Today he has eighteen and 20 employees. But that’s about to change.
“The State of California says my trucks are killing people,” says Whitney. “What do you say to that?”
In a few years, new air quality regulations approved by the California Air Resources Board will render Whitney’s entire fleet illegal.
“New CARB rules are putting me out of business,” he says.
CARB claims that diesel particulates, a type of pollution emitted from buses and trucks, contributes to 2,000 premature deaths in California each year. But UCLA epidemiologist Dr. James Enstrom says the number should be closer to zero.
In 2005 Enstrom authored an extensive study that found no relationship between diesel particulates and premature deaths. He says his study, as well as other evidence that agrees with it, have been ignored by an agency bent on passing ever more stringent regulations regardless of their effect on California’s economy.
Enstrom blew the whistle on CARB for, among other things, failing to publicize that the lead author of the study that was used to justify the new regulations falsified his education history (he purchased his PhD from an online diploma mill).
But UCLA didn’t come to Enstrom’s defense. In fact, officials informed him that, after 34 years at the university, he was out of a job.
“The environmental regulation machine in powerful in California,” says Adam Kissel of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which is defending Enstrom in the fight to keep his job. “When Dr. Enstrom went up against that machine he was retaliated against.”
A hearing that begins on April 4 will determine whether Dr. Enstrom keeps his job, and the final decision rests with UCLA Chancellor Gene Block.
Says Kissel, “If Dr. Enstrom loses his job because he exercised his academic freedom, then it’s a message to other researchers that you’d better not rock the boat because you might be next.”
Approximately 9 minutes.
“The Green Regulation Machine” is written and produced by Ted Balaker. Field Producer: Paul Detrick; Camera: Alex Manning, Hawk Jensen, Josh Swain, Austin Bragg.
Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions of this and all our videos and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new content is posted.
Matthew Boyle at the Daily Caller offered more Thursday on how NPR director of institutional giving Betsy Liley discussed with the fake Muslim front group MEAC how George Soros decided to obscure his large donation to NPR by opting against on-air announcements of his $ 1.8 million gift to place reporters in every state capital (perhaps complete with medical-marijuana information brochures).
But then Liley suggested to the MEAC impersonators this was not the first time Soros donated to NPR. In a classic example of Soros-enabled liberal bias, he funded a documentary about executions in the state of Texas — on October 12, 2000! — just as Texas Gov. George W. Bush was running for president. This was the day after Bush was questioned on the death penalty in Texas in a presidential debate. (Salon.com interviewed the documentarians under the headline "Inside the Texas Death Machine.")
This attempt at a public execution of the Bush for President campaign had multiple funders, according to the press release: "Witness to an Execution was funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Soros Foundation."
Certainly a press release is public notice of a Soros grant. But it's not as much notice as announcing the grant on NPR's air from coast to coast. From Boyle's account:
Liley brought up Soros and his nonprofit organization, the Open Society Institute, while discussing what kind of on-air publicity the Muslim Education Action Center (MEAC) Trust would want in exchange for its donation. Liley mentioned that Soros and his organization decided they didn't want on-air publicity for their donation to avoid conservatives' scrutiny.
"George Soros and the Open Society Institute gave us $ 1.8 million, and they have decided not to use on-air credits because of what's happening in Congress," Liley said. When the man she thought represented the fictitious Muslim Brotherhood front group asked her how Soros's donation and "what's happening in Congress," relate, Liley said conservatives tried to link Soros's donation to Williams's firing.
Then came the talk of the previous Soros booty:
"I think the first gift was within the first year he set up the Foundation, which was 10 or 15 years ago," Liley said. "But, it was a different political situation and current events were a little different, and so, it went through – I was not here, but I think it went – there wasn't a press hullabaloo. I mean, the Open Society Institute was getting – you know, the conservatives on some of the websites, were having people call his foundation. The press was calling and so, it became, kind of – you know they got roped into the Juan Williams thing, which they didn't feel like they needed to be."'
Liley explains, though, that Soros's contribution had "nothing to do with" Juan Williams's firing, but, that perception caused him to choose to avoid publicity with air-time donors usually take advantage of.
"No one here has even met Mr. Soros," Liley said. "But, in light of that, his foundation chose not to use their on-air credits because they felt like it would just add more fuel to the fire that was an unnecessary fire for them. They don't need the recognition. So, I bring it up just as an example of choices that different people make."
A Nexis search located the documentary, aired inside the evening newscast All Things Considered, meaning this wasn't aired during odd hours in the middle of the night. It was smack dab in drive-time evening news. Governor Bush is not mentioned, but the horror of his agreement with this system might be implied. Here's one emotion-packed part of it:
Chaplain JIM BRAZZEL: Had one man who wanted to sing "Silent Night." He made his final statement, and then after the warden gave the signal [to start the lethal injection flowing], he started singing "Silent Night," and he got to the part 'Round yon virgin, mother and child,' and just as he got 'child' out was the last word.
JOHN MORITZ, reporter, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram: The people inside the room watching it are invariably silent. Sometimes you find people holding hands, maybe a mother and father of a murder victim or friends of the condemned man.
LEIGH ANNE GIDEON, former reporter, Huntsville Item: It's very quiet, it's extremely quiet. You can hear every breath everyone takes around you. You can hear the cries, the weeping, the praying.
LARRY FITZGERALD, PR officer, Huntsville Prison: The second chemical is pantrimonium bromide(ph), which is a muscle relaxant. It causes the diaphragm and the lungs to collapse.
JIM WILLETT, warden of Huntsville Prison: It's usually a real, real deep breath. Just seem like they draw in all the air they can.
GIDEON: And then whenever that breath goes, it's like a snore. I mean, it's like (makes noise), kind of like taking a balloon and squishing that balloon and the sound that a balloon makes when you're squishing the air out of it.
Chaplain BRAZZEL: Generally there is some erratic movement on the part of the inmate, some coughing, sputtering, occasionally a gasp, then there's quiet.
Unidentified Man #7: I've had several of them where — watching their last breath go from their bodies and their eyes never take — unfix from mine. You know, I'm gonna just-actually locked together. And I can close my eyes now and see those eyes. My feelings and my emotions are extremely intense at that time. I've never really been able to describe it, and I guess in a way I'm kind of afraid to describe it. I've never really delved into that part of my feelings yet.
FITZGERALD: A third chemical actually stops the heart.
WILLETT: At that point, and it's just something out of tradition and I certainly haven't messed with it because it's worked-I was told to wait three minutes from that point, and I have kept it to a T on three minutes.
GIDEON: You see no more breathing, you hear no more sounds. It's just waiting.
MICHAEL GRACZYK, AP reporter, Houston bureau: I had a mother collapse right in front of me as were standing virtually shoulder to shoulder. She collapsed, hit the floor, went into hyperventilation and almost convulsions.
GIDEON: I've seen family members collapse in there, I've seen them scream and wail. I've seen them beat the glass.
Capt. TERRY GRAHAM, Huntsville Prison: I've seen them fall into the floor, totally lose control, and yet, how do you tell a mother that she can't be there in the last moments of her son's life?
GIDEON: You'll never hear another sound like a mother wailing whenever she's watching her son being executed. There's no other sound like it. It is just this horrendous wail. You can't get away from it. That wail surrounds the room. It's definitely something you won't ever forget. (Soundbite of music)
NPR had no time to ponder the families of the victims of these executed criminals. The documentary ended with this:
WARDEN WILLETT: I don't believe the rest of my officers are going to break like Fred did, but I do worry about my staff. I can see it in their eyes sometimes, particularly when we do a lot of executions in a short period of time. So far this year, we've done 33, and I'm guessing we'll get someplace close to 50 by the end of 2000. That'll be a record.
I'll be retiring next year, and to tell you the truth, this is something I won't miss a bit. There are times when I'm standing there watching those fluids start to flow and wonder whether what we're doing is right. It's something I'll be thinking about for the rest of my life. (Soundbite of music)
I'm Warden Jim Willett in Huntsville, Texas.
By Jim Harper
At least one report has it that a Commerce Department official will announce the Obama administration’s support for “baseline privacy legislation” at a Wednesday Senate Commerce Committee hearing.
You mean, like, the Fourth Amendment? If only it were so.
The action is in the House Government Reform Committee, which is holding a hearing on the Transportation Security Administration’s strip-search machines. What’s the administration’s “baseline privacy policy” on that?
I’ve already written two posts in the last year (1, 2) titled “Physician, Heal Thyself”…
Obama Administration to Take a Stand on Privacy, But it Ain’t Fixing the Strip-Search Machine Morass is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
Having played a kingmaker role in many of the most competitive Republican primaries of 2010, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is now setting up his own campaign machine for the 2012 elections that could rival the National Republican Senatorial Committee, according to Politico.
“The buildup is the latest sign that DeMint has become the pre-eminent conservative political activist in the Senate, and he plans to push candidates whose ideological views align with his and the tea party movement’s — even if it sets up a major clash with the NRSC, which always looks for the most electable prospect.”
Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire
In light of new revelations about NPR's top brass bashing conservatives in a hidden-camera investigation, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell and NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham issued the following statements calling on Congress to wake up and stop using tax dollars to fund National Public Radio.
Brent Bozell, founder and president of the Media Research Center (MRC):
NPR hates Middle America, plain and simple. This week’s utterances from NPR officials underline that these taxpayer-funded bureaucrats loathe most of the taxpayers who feather their comfortable nest. Their contempt for “scary” Middle Americans belies their ridiculous claims of concern for rural stations and their absurd declaration that somehow NPR is the epitome of fairness and balance.
No wonder the radical left-wing billionaire George Soros has funneled $ 1.8 million into NPR. They are doing his bidding and calling it "news."
Tim Graham, MRC Director of Media Analysis:
NPR and its $ 600,000 salaried executives increasingly seek out funding from far-left elitists like George Soros and gratefully accept lobbying help from MoveOn.org. They willingly go to lunch with people who they think want to be told that the country is dangerously conservative, under-educated, and needs the progressive College of Public Broadcasting to enlighten them.
If the Senate and the President are serious at all about deficit reduction, they should start where the cuts are easiest. The House’s vote to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is long overdue. There is nothing in this ballooning federal budget more deserving of a zero than the elitists in public broadcasting.
In light of new revelations about NPR's top brass bashing conservatives in a hidden-camera investigation, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell and NewsBusters senior editor Tim Graham issued the following statements calling on Congress to wake up and stop using tax dollars to fund National Public Radio.
Brent Bozell, founder and president of the Media Research Center (MRC):
NPR hates Middle America, plain and simple. This week’s utterances from NPR officials underline that these taxpayer-funded bureaucrats loathe most of the taxpayers who feather their comfortable nest. Their contempt for “scary” Middle Americans belies their ridiculous claims of concern for rural stations and their absurd declaration that somehow NPR is the epitome of fairness and balance.
No wonder the radical left-wing billionaire George Soros has funneled $ 1.8 million into NPR. They are doing his bidding and calling it "news."
Tim Graham, MRC Director of Media Analysis:
NPR and its $ 600,000 salaried executives increasingly seek out funding from far-left elitists like George Soros and gratefully accept lobbying help from MoveOn.org. They willingly go to lunch with people who they think want to be told that the country is dangerously conservative, under-educated, and needs the progressive College of Public Broadcasting to enlighten them.
If the Senate and the President are serious at all about deficit reduction, they should start where the cuts are easiest. The House’s vote to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is long overdue. There is nothing in this ballooning federal budget more deserving of a zero than the elitists in public broadcasting.
In a weekend interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) described state-level clashes between conservative politicians and public employee unions as one part of a “giant fight over the future for our country.” In this fight, Boehner said, public employees are armed and dangerous:
Governors are trying to find ways to balance their budgets, which they’re required to do. In some of these states you’ve got collective bargaining laws that are so weighted in favor of the public employees that there’s almost no bargaining. We’ve given them a machine gun and put it right at the heads of the local officials and they really have their hands tied. And I think what you’re seeing in these states is they’re trying to bring some balance to these negotiations that when you look at the pay of public employees today and you look at their retirement benefits they are way out of line with many other working Americans. So all of these Governors are going to have big challenges and it’s not just going to be the Governors. You’re going to see every political jurisdiction in America grapple with what do we need to do as opposed to what do we want to do. All of them are going to go through a very difficult period.
Watch it:
Boehner is sorely mistaken about the role of public employee unions in state budget crises. In 80 percent of the states that do not have collective bargaining rights for public employees, the budget crises are worse than in Wisconsin. Also, public employees in Wisconsin have already agreed to reduce their salaries — which, contra Boehner, are not “way out of line” with other working Americans.
Aside from contradicting Boehner’s plea for more civility earlier this year, his characterization of machine-gun wielding public employee unions belies a popular conservative talking point that nobody is trying to defame public workers. “No one’s demonizing or vilifying public employees,” said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) yesterday. “People are not denigrating state workers,” said Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R).
Dave Mosher reports:
Cell phones emit ultra-high-frequency radio waves during calls and data transfers, and some researchers have suspected this radiation — albeit inconclusively — of being linked to long-term health risks like brain cancer. The new brain-scan-based work, to be published Feb. 23 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows radiation emitted from a cell phone’s antenna during a call makes nearby brain tissue use 7 percent more energy.
“We have no idea what this means yet or how it works,” said neuroscientist Nora Volkow of the National Institutes of Health. “But this is the first reliable study showing the brain is activated by exposure to cell phone radio frequencies.”
(Image: "A bottom-of-the-brain view showing average use of radioactive glucose in the brains of 47 subjects exposed to a 50-minute phone call on the right side of their head," – Nora Volkow, JAMA)
By Malou Innocent
Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings—yes, that Michael Hastings—has written another investigative article on U.S. operations in Afghanistan, centered again on a general in the theatre. The revelations are perhaps more shocking than those that resulted in General Stanley McChrystal’s dismissal last summer.
His newest bombshell alleges that the U.S Army illegally engaged in “psychological operations” with the aim of manipulating various high-level U.S. government officials into believing that the war was progressing in order to gain their continued support. The list of targets includes members of Congress, diplomats, think tank analysts, and even Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff. Over at The Skeptics, I attempt to put this in context:
While American soldiers and Afghan civilians continue to kill and be killed in Afghanistan, the Pentagon seeks to provide the illusion of progress, systematically misrepresenting realities on the ground to bide more time, gain more troops, and acquire more funding. It’s bad enough that the American media uncritically relays statements from U.S. officials portraying “success” on the ground. Now the Pentagon is using its massive propaganda budget to blur the line between informing the public and spinning it to death. In fact, several years ago the Associated Press found that the Pentagon had spent $ 4.7 billion on public relations in 2009 alone, and employs 27,000 people for recruitment, advertising and public relations, nearly as many as the 30,000-person State Department. Essentially the Pentagon is trying to influence public policy and lobby civilian officials to shift policies toward their own ends while dispersing the costs onto the American taxpayer.
Luckily, it appears that Americans have come to learn that despite the media’s frequent adulation of their uniformed military, the Pentagon operates just like every other bureaucracy in the federal government. According to a poll released earlier this month by Gallup, 72 percent of Americans want Congress to speed up troop withdrawals from Afghanistan. Much like the McChrystal flap from last summer, there is a very fine line between military officials offering their honest opinion and threatening civilian control of the war.
Click here for the full post.
The Pentagon Propaganda Machine Rears Its Head is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
And he is training tomorrow’s diplomats. “Claremont McKenna’s Pro-Islamist Professor,” by Charles C. Johnson in National Review, February 21:
Claremont McKenna College is a nationally recognized leader in training Defense Department officials and State Department personnel (including numerous ambassadors). Professor Bassam Frangieh is head of Claremont McKenna’s Arabic Department and Middle East Studies program, where he teaches tomorrow’s diplomats about the Middle East, plans study-abroad programs — and supports recognized terrorist groups, namely, Hezbollah and Hamas.
In the wake of Hamas’s election victory in 2006, Frangieh told an interviewer that he looks to Hamas with “great joy” and supports violence against Israel. Hamas’s control, he said, “might be able to produce the beginning of salvation. . . . I wonder what else would the Arabs have without Hamas and Hezbollah? Nothing. Except humiliation. I congratulate Hamas on its victory.” Meanwhile, in his academic work, he has written in favor of suicide bombing and martyrdom. In a speech at the University of Bridgeport in 2007, he said that Islam is “very democratic,” and he praised Saddam Hussein as a model leader who “wasn’t a thief” and who “really did something for his country.”
Frangieh has also made his views known through petitions, which, he says, “stem from the heart and are cast onto paper.” In 2006 he signed a pro-Hezbollah petition that was circulated along with a flyer encouraging its signatories to “Boycott Israel. . . . We are all Hizbullah now.” The petition, promoted by prominent anti-Israel, anti-American activists like Tariq Ali, Omar Barghouri, and Norman Finkelstein, demanded a boycott of Israel and encouraged Israeli academics to stop the “Zionist killing machine.” It called Hezbollah the “Lebanese Resistance” and a “legitimate” army, and praised its “heroic operations” against Israel. A 2007 petition blamed a “Zionist conspiracy” for then-senator Biden’s plan to divide Iraq into three separate autonomous regions. In 2009, Frangieh brought the Syrian ambassador, Imad Moustapha, to speak as an honored guest of the college; he had earlier instructed his students to warmly serenade Moustapha with singings from the Koran. (One student even asked, in all earnestness, what students could do to help Syria promote peace.) Syria, a designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, has been governed for 40 years by a brutal dictatorial dynasty. Along with the Muslim Student Association (MSA), Frangieh also brought to campus Imam Zaid Shakir, who blamed the Fort Hood massacre on America’s easy access to guns. Yet another major guest was PLO member Sari Nusseinbeh, who during the first intifada helped terrorists avoid arrest and secure funding….
As the nation, still reeling from 9/11, was further terrorized by the infamous Anthrax Letters. Almost ten years later, the National Academy of Sciences report on the case reveals that from a scientific perspective, Bruce Ivins, the man suspected of the crime, may not have been the culprit.
An independent panel of scientists has determined that the FBI did not have enough scientific evidence to produce a conviction in the case of the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people.
The National Academies of Sciences released a review Tuesday of the science used in the investigation. The $ 1.1 million report, which was commissioned by the FBI, concluded that the man accused in the case, Bruce Ivins, could have carried out the attacks, but the science alone did not prove it.
In October and September of 2001, letters containing anthrax killed five people and infected 17 others. Recipients included NBC News, The New York Post, Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT).
Even after over 600,000 investigator work hours spent by the FBI’s “Amerithrax Task Force,” the case against Ivins was largely circumstantial.
Ivins killed himself in 2008 just as the government was prepared to indict him. The Justice Department closed the case last year, concluding Ivins had acted alone in stealing the spores from the government lab where he worked.
The report released Tuesday questioned the link between a flask of anthrax found in Ivins’ office and the letters.
“The scientific link between the letter material and flask number RMR-1029 is not as conclusive as stated in the DOJ Investigative Summary,” the report said.
The panel added that another explanation for the link “was not rigorously explored” by the FBI.
The case was closed when Ivins killed himself three years ago. There were plenty of questions then about Ivins and his sudden death, and what the FBI was trying to prove. Now, it seems, somebody has the courage to point out that the case against Ivins wasn’t as airtight as the country was led to believe.
Will Eric Holder re-open the case? Doubtful.
The Obama administration has taken messaging control a whole new level, ABC News (“Obama’s Media Machine: State Run Media 2.0?“) reports.
As the 2012 presidential campaign kicks into gear, President Obama’s White House media operation is demonstrating an unprecedented ability to broadcast its message through social media and the Internet, at times doing an end-run around the traditional press.
The White House Press Office now not only produces a website, blog, YouTube channel, Flickr photo stream, and Facebook and Twitter profiles, but also a mix of daily video programming, including live coverage of the president’s appearances and news-like shows that highlight his accomplishments.
[…]
But while these innovative communications tools ostensibly offer greater transparency and openness, critics say they have come at a troublesome expense: less accountability of the administration by the independent, mainstream press.
Over the past few months, as White House cameras have been granted free reign behind the scenes, officials have blocked broadcast news outlets from events traditionally open to coverage and limited opportunities to publicly question the president himself.
Obama’s recent signing of the historic New START treaty with Russia and his post-State of the Union cabinet meeting, for example, were both closed to reporters in a break with tradition. And during a recent question and answer session with the president and visiting Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the White House imposed an unusual limit of just one question each from the U.S. and Canadian press corps.
“The administration has narrowed access by the mainstream media to an unprecedented extent,” said ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton, who has covered seven administrations. “Access here has shriveled.”
Members of the press have always had quibbles with White House media strategies, calling cut-backs in access an affront to transparency, even as administration officials insist they’re simply taking advantage of new technologies.
But some say the current dynamic is different, and dangerous. “They’re opening the door to kicking the press out of historic events, and opening the door to having a very filtered format for which they give the American public information that doesn’t have any criticism allowed,” said University of Minnesota journalism professor and political communication analyst Heather LaMarre.
[…]
“If Nixon had announced he was going to start the ‘Nixon channel’ and said they were only going to put up stuff he approved of, people would have said, ‘Oh my God, this is like Communist Russian state media,’” said David Perlmutter, director of the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication. ”But now social media have a friendly face on them, so these media tools are not seen by the public — particularly younger Americans — as some sort of power grab by the president or government,” he said. “They’re just modern ways of reaching out and communicating.”
John Sexton pithily summarizes, “In essence the White House is creating pool reports with itself as the pool reporter.”
There’s an even shorter way of describing this: propaganda. Like military coup, another term that has loaded connotations in popular discourse, it actually has a precise and neutral definition in the social science literature. The Dictionary of Political Economy uses this one:
Persuasive communications directed at a specific audience that are designed to influence the targeted audience’s opinions, beliefs and emotions in such a way as to bring about specific, planned alterations in their behavior. The information communicated by the propagandist may be true or false, the values appealed to may be sincerely held by the propagandist or cynically manipulated, and the presentation may be either logically and dispassionately argued or rhetorically tailored to arouse the most irrational emotions and prejudices — but the message content of propaganda is always deliberately selected and slanted to lead the audience toward a predetermined mindset that benefits the cause of the propagandist.
Ironically, this is the flip side of the social media revolution that we’re seeing breaking down state monopoly over information in Egypt and other authoritarian societies. Just as it’s now next to impossible for government to keep the people’s voice from being heard, government can connect directly to the people, bypassing gatekeepers.
American presidents have always tried to do this. George Washington toured the (thankfully much more geographically compact) country via horse and carriage to talk directly to the people. Later presidents would use the telegraph, phonograph, radio, and television to do the same thing. Franklin Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” remain an iconic example.
In more modern times, Ronald Reagan’s communications team perfected the art of the sound byte, putting the president before the press only briefly and virtually ensuring that they would report his finely tuned message of the day. Bill Clinton famously used Don Imus, Arsenio Hall, and Larry King to go around the rough and tumble political press.
President Obama is the first president to campaign and govern entirely in the age of Twitter and YouTube. His people have mastered the concept.
Why send out press releases to critical journalists when you can put them out directly on your blog? Why let grandstanding interviews question you when you can make your own television shows? Why not send out your own sound bytes via Twitter and Facebook.
For better or worse, the closest Republican analogue right now is Sarah Palin. She gets all the press she wants and controls the message by keeping critical reporters out of her public events and sending out messages via social media. It hasn’t kept people from being critical of her, of course, but it keeps her front and center in the national conversation.
She is mastering the art of Washington doublespeak.
American Thinker Blog
