In 1933, the American Press Was Proud that Hitler Adopted Its
Propaganda Methods. Nothing Has Changed
Washington’s Blog
Thursday, July 23, 2009
In 1933, the American advertising industry proudly and publicly boasted that
Hitler was copying their American propaganda techniques.
After Hitler and Goebbels gave a bad name to propaganda, Freud’s nephew –
psychologist Edward Bernays – simply re-branded propaganda as “public
relations” and “professional journalism”.
As veteran reporter John Pilger writes:
Bernays, described as the father of the media age, was
the nephew of Sigmund Freud. “Propaganda,” he wrote, “got to be a bad
word because of the Germans . . . so what I did was to try and find
other words [such as] Public Relations.” Bernays used Freud’s theories
about control of the subconscious to promote a “mass culture” designed
to promote fear of official enemies and servility to consumerism. It
was Bernays who, on behalf of the tobacco industry, campaigned for
American women to take up smoking as an act of feminist liberation,
calling cigarettes “torches of freedom”; and it was his notion of
disinformation that was deployed in overthrowing governments, such as
Guatemala’s democracy in 1954.
Pilger previously addressed “Professional Journalism”:
Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public
relations, wrote about an invisible government which is the true ruling
power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That
was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was
invented. It is a history few journalist talk about or know about, and
it began with the arrival of corporate advertising. As the new
corporations began taking over the press, something called
“professional journalism” was invented. To attract big advertisers, the
new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the
establishment-objective, impartial, balanced. The first schools of
journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun
around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression
was associated with the new media and with the great corporations, and
the whole thing was, as Robert McChesney put it so well, “entirely
bogus”.For what the public did not know was that in order to be
professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were
dominated by official sources, and that has not changed. Go through the
New York Times on any day, and check the sources of the main political
stories-domestic and foreign-you’ll find they’re dominated by
government and other established interests. That is the essence of
professional journalism. I am not suggesting that independent
journalism was or is excluded, but it is more likely to be an honorable
exception. Think of the role Judith Miller played in the New York Times
in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Yes, her work became a scandal,
but only after it played a powerful role in promoting an invasion based
on lies. Yet, Miller’s parroting of official sources and vested
interests was not all that different from the work of many famous Times
reporters, such as the celebrated W.H. Lawrence, who helped cover up
the true effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August,
1945. “No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin,” was the headline on his
report, and it was false.
Consider how the power of this invisible government has grown. In
1983 the principle global media was owned by 50 corporations, most of
them American. In 2002 this had fallen to just 9 corporations. Today it
is probably about 5. Rupert Murdoch has predicted that there will be
just three global media giants, and his company will be one of them.
This concentration of power is not exclusive of course to the United
States. The BBC has announced it is expanding its broadcasts to the
United States, because it believes Americans want principled,
objective, neutral journalism for which the BBC is famous. They have
launched BBC America. You may have seen the advertising.
The BBC began in 1922, just before the corporate press began in
America. Its founder was Lord John Reith, who believed that
impartiality and objectivity were the essence of professionalism. In
the same year the British establishment was under siege. The unions had
called a general strike and the Tories were terrified that a revolution
was on the way. The new BBC came to their rescue. In high secrecy, Lord
Reith wrote anti-union speeches for the Tory Prime Minister Stanley
Baldwin and broadcast them to the nation, while refusing to allow the
labor leaders to put their side until the strike was over.
So, a pattern was set. Impartiality was a principle certainly: a
principle to be suspended whenever the establishment was under threat.
And that principle has been upheld ever since.
And see this.
Nothing has changed since:
The corporate media are acting like virtual “escort services”
for the moneyed elites, selling access – for a price – to powerful
government officials, instead of actually investigating and reporting
on what those officials are doing
The U.S. military is instructing active duty personnel to post pro-government
comments on social media websites
Governments are paying civilians to write pro-government comments and to vote
up or down stories favorable to their government. And see this
Propaganda agents are using computer scripts on social networking sites to bury
messages they don’t like
The government is paying off reporters to spread disinformation. Famed
Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein says the CIA has already bought and paid for
many successful journalists. See also this New York Times piece, this essay by
the Independent, this speech by one of the premier writers on journalism, and
this and this roundup. Indeed, an expert on propaganda testified under oath
during trial that the CIA employs THOUSANDS of reporters and OWNS its own media
organizations (the expert has an impressive background)
http://www.prisonplanet.com/in-1933-the-american-press-was-proud-that-hitler-adopted-its-propaganda-methods-nothing-has-changed.html
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--- On Thu, 7/23/09, Sardar <[email protected]> wrote:
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