At a family gathering last weekend I spoke up, not my usual self. I had been up since 4AM and the chatter around me was a bit distracting as I tried to concentrate on my cards. I am not sure what piece of information had been delivered by the group, but I finally said in frustration that it was amazing to me how TV engendered not just belief, but instant belief. I was corrected by someone there that it is best to check a number of sources before forming an opinion, which (I did not say) is difficult when one is dealing with a hypnotic medium, TV.
I then said that the news reporters on TV were just reading teleprompters, and then added that the information on them all came from a common source. I suppose I could have added the scene from Ron Burgundy in Anchorman, seen below:
Burgundy himself was shocked later to see himself saying those words.
The opening video above comes to us courtesy of Bart Sibrel, the moon guy. You only need watch a minute of it to get the drift. I am of the opinion that all news all over the country is scripted and comes from a central source, though I’ve no idea where.
Do you want two sides of a story?
- Go to NPR/PBS, where people consider themselves better informed than most, and especially to those who watch FOX. NPR/PBS viewers are morally and intellectually superior to FOX viewers.
- Go to FOX, where people consider themselves better informed than most, and especially to those who watch NPR/PBS. FOX viewers are morally and intellectually superior to NPR/PBS viewers.
Never mind that NPR/PBS and FOX have packaged the exact same “news”, merely changing the attitudinal content to adjust to the mindset of the patrons.
Piece of Mindful 
Good point. Family gatherings can the most challenging, for me at least. I just don’t go. The most amusing part for me was listening to the fox/npr so-called opposing views. I guess, more amusing and eliciting nervous laughter from those crowds, was my chiming in with not so much, “the facts”, but the obvious contradictions in their narratives. Life is hard. It’s even harder when you’re fooled. I have a video I downloaded, featuring, at first one, then two, then three and finally over an hundred news casters repeating the “danger to our democracy” mantra. I’ve shown it a few times. It gets the same nervous laughter. Anyway, thanks again for your insight.
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Pass that video along, if you can. It makes the point better than the Sibrel piece.
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The Fake News Spin – Mainstream Media Repetition | Brainwashing The Masses
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This is one of many that I’ve acquired over the years. Enjoy!
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Whats amazing is the news is coordinated worldwide, not just nationally. But packaged with the local flavor and “personalities”. I have luckily trained my parents to not watch the news as much as they used to, and not react to things like they used to. My dad used to be like a parrot on the latest “outrage”, until he suffered my giggle fits too many times where I knew the story to be fake/bullshit, and he was just reacting to the latest situation. I finally got them to understand it was not healthy to react to the news, and it’s fear porn.
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The whole war with Iran is a colossus joke. Anyone who has looked at a map and knows demographics knows this is not Grenada. Iran has half the landmass of India, and about 1/3 the population of the United States. And a culture dating back several thousand years. And we are going to drop a few bombs on them and the war will be over in a few weeks. I almost feel sorry for the idiots who signed up for the US military – as likely since they started this conflict they will milk it for years, as they have done in the Ukraine.
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A line from Ellul, which I would look up were it not buried in other stuff in the next room. Rough quote: The US is good, and everything it does is good. Even if it does the wrong thing, it is only for the right reasons. The USSR is bad, and everything it does is bad. Even if it does the right thing, it is only for the wrong reasons.
Insert most recent villain, North Korea, Iran, Putin, Epstein.
I remember in grade school being told that people behind the Soviet missile program did not care about human life, so they would sacrifice their people willy nilly to get it done.
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The most recent villain, for many, would be Trump.. and the US “is bad, and everything it does is bad. Even if it does the right thing, it is only for the wrong reasons.” Is the current lesson many are taking away. Mostly Democrats, but his base and old school Republicans are faltering and peeling away to some degree, as well.
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Morgan000c (something like that..) on substack has a piece showing how all the Israeli areas struck were on the books for demolition and redevelopment, and the war cuts through red tape and community resistance. Multiple agendas in play. They have some transit corridor alternative to china’s belt and road, that this somehow advances.
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I have a story, and somewhat sad one, about the life of a TV personality. Last weekend I visited old friends who I grew up living next door to, that are like a second family. Anyhow the father (who is like a second father to me) has a well known scientist father, and grandfather, and brother who was a TV doctor in the Columbus, Ohio news market – one of the guys who gives health advice on the nightly news. So about 25 years ago this doctor gets caught prescribing opiate painkillers to the TV weatherman. And is subsequently fired and has his medical license yanked. But his brother never really practiced medicine once he got the TV job, likely due to charisma and good looks. So, according to his brother he was already and alcoholic before getting fired, and would go out on the town in Columbus acting like a big shot, yet his credit cards were always maxxed out. So the tragic part of the story is his brother just recently died of starvation at 80 years old, in debt, with a nasty shrewish wife. Such is the life of TV news personalities.
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