Flat Earth News

[Olive Yao]

Flat Earth News


In het nederlands vertaald als Gebakken lucht.


Recensie in De Pers

[Olive Yao]

Newspeak in the 21st Century

David Edwards and David Cromwell





Uit de recensie van David McQueen van Spinwatch, 25 augustus 2009:

Edwards and Cromwell are the founders of and principle contributors to the media watchdog site Media Lens - a widely-read and influential thorn in the side of the liberal media that has often publicly irritated or infuriated mainstream journalists in revealing ways since it was set up in 2001. The authors’ consistently sharp, uncompromisingly radical critique of the ‘free press’ and of broadcasters such as the BBC has served as a rallying point for a section of the public who have grown weary of the media’s subservience to state and corporate interests.

(…)

The authors’ analysis is indebted to Herman and Chomsky’s influential but deeply unfashionable ‘propaganda model’ which is sneered at by many of today’s ‘intellectual class’, yet is shown in Newspeak to be as relevant to the British media in 2009 as it was to the American media when Manufacturing Consent was first published in 1988. Edwards and Cromwell’s analysis, like that of Herman and Chomsky, is characterised by intellectual clarity, persistent, well-informed scepticism and meticulous attention to factual detail, qualities which are necessary as their targets are not the obvious or easy ones.

(…)

Chapter four includes a more characteristically sustained and careful demolition of The Guardian and The Independent’s ‘green credentials’ over global warming. The authors clearly demonstrate that, despite the papers’ alarming headlines and George Monbiot’s contribution to the debate at The Guardian, these papers’ heavy dependence on advertising for fossil fuel-intensive products including 1p flights, luxury cars, and space for BP’s cynical, greenwashing ‘beyond petroleum’ campaign makes a mockery of their various ‘calls for action’. The contradiction inherent in corporate, profit-driven newspapers promoting a consumerist lifestyle based on unsustainable growth (the ‘forbidden topic’), whilst warning against climate change, is laid embarrassingly bare. They also systematically destroy ‘scientific’ claims made in a notorious Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle screened in 2007. Cromwell’s research background in this area gives this examination of the documentary’s discredited, but widely-publicised claims an irrefutable force.


lees verder


MediaLens

"MediaLens is a response based on our conviction that mainstream newspapers and broadcasters provide a profoundly distorted picture of our world. We are convinced that the increasingly centralised, corporate nature of the media means that it acts as a de facto propaganda system for corporate and other establishment interests. The costs incurred as a result of this propaganda, in terms of human suffering and environmental degradation, are incalculable."

[neith]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aR3-B4mt_w"]YouTube- Flat Earth Society - Dark Street Downtown[/ame]

[Olive Yao]

De media als werelddorpsgek


When you stand back and see the scale of this – the penetration of falsehood deep into the foundations of our collective thinking; the construction of so much activity on top of those false foundations; the money, the time, the energy which are thrown into them; the sheer waste of opportunity – you see a kind of madness, a kind of psychotic society which has started to lose contact with reality and believes its own delusions. If we could prove that this were being organised by some malign conspiracy, it would be a great relief since we could oust the conspirators and cure the sickness. What really makes this frightening is that this group psychosis is now the natural creation of our information industry.

(…) The mass media now operate more like a global village idiot, deeply ignorant and easily led.

Why should a profession lose touch with its primary function? Why would truth-telling disintegrate into the mass production of ignorance? Now, there’s a real story.


Flat Earth News blz. 45

[Olive Yao]

The crucial point is that, in the age of the internet, there is simply no longer any need to indulge the mainstream media's high-paid servility to power. Though they scoff at the notion, journalists really do have the blood of millions of innocent people on their hands.

People who care about rational thought, who feel compassion for human suffering, will withdraw their support from the corporate media system. Readers will stop supporting it with their subscriptions, writers will stop supporting it with their words - and they will instead set about the vital work of building and supporting not-for-profit, internet-based media offering our only serious hope for compassionate change.


Newspeak p. 95

[Amine]

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[A_K_A]

Shit, neith was me voor.

[Olive Yao]

Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing consent


enkele citaten en opmerkingen

[Olive Yao]

The blinded Observer

Een krant stopt een klokkeluider van de CIA in de doofpot.

WikiLeaks en democratie

De informatie in de telegrammen is van ons. Ons recht erop rust op democratie en autonomie.

WikiLeaks en het propagandamodel

De theorie in de drie boeken over media en politiek toegepast op de WikiLeaks-affaire.

[Olive Yao]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl4NlA97GeQ"]WikiLeaks en propaganda[/ame]