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The Propaganda Multiplier How Global News Agencies and Western Media Report on Geopolitics

This study by Swiss Propaganda Research was first published in 2016, it is presented here in English for the first time. Translated by Terje Maloy.

Therefore you always have to ask yourself: Why do I get
this specific information in this specific form at this moment?
Ultimately, it’s always about questions of power.”
Dr. Konrad Hummler, Swiss banking and media executive

It is one of the most important aspects of our media system – and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris.

The key role played by these agencies means that Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world.

A study of the Syria war coverage by nine leading European newspapers clearly illustrates these issues: 78% of all articles were based in whole or in part on agency reports, yet 0% on investigative research. Moreover, 82% of all opinion pieces and interviews were in favor of the US and NATO intervention, while propaganda was attributed exclusively to the opposite side.

Introduction: “Something strange”

“How does the newspaper know what it knows?” The answer to this question is likely to surprise some newspaper readers:

The main source of information is stories from news agencies. The almost anonymously operating news agencies are in a way the key to world events. So what are the names of these agencies, how do they work and who finances them? To judge how well one is informed about events in East and West, one should know the answers to these questions.”
Höhne 1977, p.11

A Swiss media researcher points out:

The news agencies are the most important suppliers of material to mass media. No daily media outlet can manage without them….So the news agencies influence our image of the world; above all, we get to know what they have selected.”
Blum 1995, p.9

In view of their essential importance, it is all the more astonishing that these agencies are hardly known to the public:

A large part of society is unaware that news agencies exist at all … In fact, they play an enormously important role in the media market. But despite this great importance, little attention has been paid to them in the past.”
Schulten-Jaspers 2013, p.13

Even the head of a news agency noted:

There is something strange about news agencies. They are little known to the public. Unlike a newspaper, their activity is not so much in the spotlight, yet they can always be found at the source of the story.”
Segbers 2007, p.9

“The Invisible Nerve Center of the Media System”

So what are the names of these news agencies that are “always at the source of the story”? There are now only three global agencies left:

  • The American Associated Press (AP) with over 4000 employees worldwide. The AP belongs to US media companies and has its main editorial office in New York. AP news is used by around 12,000 international media outlets, reaching more than half of the world’s population every day.
  • The quasi-governmental French Agence France-Presse (AFP) based in Paris and with around 4000 employees. The AFP sends over 3000 stories and photos every day to media all over the world.
  • The British agency Reuters in London, which is privately owned and employs just over 3000 people. Reuters was acquired in 2008 by Canadian media entrepreneur Thomson – one of the 25 richest people in the world – and merged into Thomson Reuters, headquartered in New York.

In addition, many countries run their own news agencies. However, when it comes to international news, these usually rely on the three global agencies and simply copy and translate their reports.


The three global news agencies Reuters, AFP and AP, and the three national agencies of the German-speaking countries of Austria (APA), Germany (DPA) and Switzerland (SDA).

Wolfgang Vyslozil, former managing director of the Austrian APA, described the key role of news agencies with these words:

News agencies are rarely in the public eye. Yet they are one of the most influential and at the same time one of the least known media types. They are key institutions of substantial importance to any media system. They are the invisible nerve center that connects all parts of this system.”
Segbers 2007, p.10

Small abbreviation, great effect

However, there is a simple reason why the global agencies, despite their importance, are virtually unknown to the general public. To quote a Swiss media professor:

Radio and television usually do not name their sources, and only specialists can decipher references in magazines.”
Blum 1995, p.9

The motive for this discretion, however, should be clear: news outlets are not particularly keen to let readers know that they haven’t researched most of their contributions themselves.

The following figure shows some examples of source tagging in popular German-language newspapers. Next to the agency abbreviations we find the initials of editors who have edited the respective agency report.

News agencies as sources in newspaper articles

Occasionally, newspapers use agency material but do not label it at all. A study in 2011 from the Swiss Research Institute for the Public Sphere and Society at the University of Zurich came to the following conclusions (FOEG 2011):

Agency contributions are exploited integrally without labeling them, or they are partially rewritten to make them appear as an editorial contribution. In addition, there is a practice of ’spicing up‘ agency reports with little effort: for example, unpublished agency reports are enriched with images and graphics and presented as comprehensive articles.”

The agencies play a prominent role not only in the press, but also in private and public broadcasting. This is confirmed by Volker Braeutigam, who worked for the German state broadcaster ARD for ten years and views the dominance of these agencies critically:

One fundamental problem is that the newsroom at ARD sources its information mainly from three sources: the news agencies DPA/AP, Reuters and AFP: one German/American, one British and one French….The editor working on a news topic only needs to select a few text passages on the screen that he considers essential, rearrange them and glue them together with a few flourishes.”

Swiss Radio and Television (SRF), too, largely bases itself on reports from these agencies. Asked by viewers why a peace march in Ukraine was not reported, the editors said: “To date, we have not received a single report of this march from the independent agencies Reuters, AP and AFP.”

In fact, not only the text, but also the images, sound and video recordings that we encounter in our media every day, are mostly from the very same agencies. What the uninitiated audience might think of as contributions from their local newspaper or TV station, are actually copied reports from New York, London and Paris.

Some media have even gone a step further and have, for lack of resources, outsourced their entire foreign editorial office to an agency. Moreover, it is well known that many news portals on the internet mostly publish agency reports (see e.g., Paterson 2007, Johnston 2011, MacGregor 2013).

In the end, this dependency on the global agencies creates a striking similarity in international reporting: from Vienna to Washington, our media often report the same topics, using many of the same phrases – a phenomenon that would otherwise rather be associated with »controlled media« in authoritarian states.

The following graphic shows some examples from German and international publications. As you can see, despite the claimed objectivity, a slight (geo-)political bias sometimes creeps in.

“Putin threatens”, “Iran provokes”, “NATO concerned”, “Assad stronghold”: Similarities in content and wording due to reports by global news agencies.

The role of correspondents

Much of our media does not have own foreign correspondents, so they have no choice but to rely completely on global agencies for foreign news. But what about the big daily newspapers and TV stations that have their own international correspondents? In German-speaking countries, for example, these include newspapers such NZZ, FAZ, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Welt, and public broadcasters.

First of all, the size ratios should be kept in mind: while the global agencies have several thousand employees worldwide, even the Swiss newspaper NZZ, known for its international reporting, maintains only 35 foreign correspondents (including their business correspondents). In huge countries such as China or India, only one correspondent is stationed; all of South America is covered by only two journalists, while in even larger Africa no-one is on the ground permanently.

Moreover, in war zones, correspondents rarely venture out. On the Syria war, for example, many journalists “reported” from cities such as Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo or even from Cyprus. In addition, many journalists lack the language skills to understand local people and media.

How do correspondents under such circumstances know what the “news” is in their region of the world? The main answer is once again: from global agencies. The Dutch Middle East correspondent Joris Luyendijk has impressively described how correspondents work and how they depend on the world agencies in his book People Like Us: Misrepresenting the Middle East:

I’d imagined correspondents to be historians-of-the-moment. When something important happened, they’d go after it, find out what was going on, and report on it. But I didn’t go off to find out what was going on; that had been done long before. I went along to present an on-the-spot report.

The editors in the Netherlands called when something happened, they faxed or emailed the press releases, and I’d retell them in my own words on the radio, or rework them into an article for the newspaper. This was the reason my editors found it more important that I could be reached in the place itself than that I knew what was going on. The news agencies provided enough information for you to be able to write or talk you way through any crisis or summit meeting.

That’s why you often come across the same images and stories if you leaf through a few different newspapers or click the news channels.

Our men and women in London, Paris, Berlin and Washington bureaus – all thought that wrong topics were dominating the news and that we were following the standards of the news agencies too slavishly….

The common idea about correspondents is that they ‘have the story’…but the reality is that the news is a conveyor belt in a bread factory. The correspondents stand at the end of the conveyor belt, pretending we’ve baked that white loaf ourselves, while in fact all we’ve done is put it in its wrapping….

Afterwards, a friend asked me how I’d managed to answer all the questions during those cross-talks, every hour and without hesitation. When I told him that, like on the TV-news, you knew all the questions in advance, his e-mailed response came packed with expletives. My friend had relalized that, for decades, what he’d been watching and listening to on the news was pure theatre.

– Luyendjik 2009, p. 20-22, 76, 189

In other words, the typical correspondent is in general not able to do independent research, but rather deals with and reinforces those topics that are already prescribed by the news agencies – the notorious “mainstream effect”.

In addition, for cost-saving reasons many media outlets nowadays have to share their few foreign correspondents, and within individual media groups, foreign reports are often used by several publications – none of which contributes to diversity in reporting.

“What the agency does not report, does not take place”

The central role of news agencies also explains why, in geopolitical conflicts, most media use the same original sources. In the Syrian war, for example, the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” – a dubious one-man organization based in London – featured prominently. The media rarely inquired directly at this “Observatory”, as its operator was in fact difficult to reach, even for journalists.

Rather, the “Observatory” delivered its stories to global agencies, which then forwarded them to thousands of media outlets, which in turn “informed” hundreds of millions of readers and viewers worldwide. The reason why the agencies, of all places, referred to this strange “Observatory” in their reporting – and who really financed it – is a question that was rarely asked.

The former chief editor of the German news agency DPA, Manfred Steffens, therefore states in his book The Business of News:

A news story does not become more correct simply because one is able to provide a source for it. It is indeed rather questionable to trust a news story more just because a source is cited. () Behind the protective shield such a ’source‘ means for a news story, some people are quite inclined to spread rather adventurous things, even if they themselves have legitimate doubts about their correctness; the responsibility, at least morally, can always be attributed to the cited source.”
Steffens 1969, p.106

Dependence on global agencies is also a major reason why media coverage of geopolitical conflicts is often superficial and erratic, while historic relationships and background are fragmented or altogether absent. As put by Steffens:

News agencies receive their impulses almost exclusively from current events and are therefore by their very nature ahistoric. They are reluctant to add any more context than is strictly required.”
Steffens 1969, p.32

Finally, the dominance of global agencies explains why certain geopolitical issues and events – which often do not fit very well into the US/NATO narrative or are too “unimportant” – are not mentioned in our media at all: if the agencies do not report on something, then most Western media will not be aware of it. As pointed out on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the German DPA:

What the agency does not report, does not take place.”
Wilke 2000, p.1

“Adding questionable stories“

While some topics do not appear at all in our media, other topics are very prominent – even though they shouldn’t actually be:

Often the mass media do not report on reality, but on a constructed or staged reality. () Several studies have shown that the mass media are predominantly determined by PR activities and that passive, receptive attitudes outweigh active-researching ones.”
Blum 1995, p.16)

In fact, due to the rather low journalistic performance of our media and their high dependence on a few news agencies, it is easy for interested parties to spread propaganda and disinformation in a supposedly respectable format to a worldwide audience. DPA editor Steffens warned of this danger:

The critical sense gets more lulled the more respected the news agency or newspaper is. Someone who wants to introduce a questionable story into the world press only needs to try to put his story in a reasonably reputable agency, to be sure that it then appears a little later in the others. Sometimes it happens that a hoax passes from agency to agency and becomes ever more credible.”
Steffens 1969, p.234

Among the most active actors in “injecting” questionable geopolitical news are the military and defense ministries. For example, in 2009, the head of the American news agency AP, Tom Curley, made public that the Pentagon employs more than 27,000 PR specialists who, with a budget of nearly $ 5 billion a year, are working the media and circulating targeted manipulations. In addition, high-ranking US generals had threatened that they would “ruin” the AP and him if the journalists reported too critically on the US military.

Despite – or because of? – such threats our media regularly publish dubious stories sourced to some unnamed “informants” from “US defense circles”.

Ulrich Tilgner, a veteran Middle East correspondent for German and Swiss television, warned in 2003, shortly after the Iraq war, of acts of deception by the military and the role played by the media:

With the help of the media, the military determine the public perception and use it for their plans. They manage to stir expectations and spread scenarios and deceptions. In this new kind of war, the PR strategists of the US administration fulfill a similar function as the bomber pilots. The special departments for public relations in the Pentagon and in the secret services have become combatants in the information war….The US military specifically uses the lack of transparency in media coverage for their deception maneuvers. The way they spread information, which is then picked up and distributed by newspapers and broadcasters, makes it impossible for readers, listeners or viewers to trace the original source. Thus, the audience will fail to recognize the actual intention of the military.”
Tilgner 2003, p.132

What is known to the US military, would not be foreign to US intelligence services. In a remarkable report by British Channel 4, former CIA officials and a Reuters correspondent spoke candidly about the systematic dissemination of propaganda and misinformation in reporting on geopolitical conflicts:

Former CIA officer and whistleblower John Stockwell said of his work in the Angolan war, “The basic theme was to make it look like an [enemy] aggression in Angola. So any kind of story that you could write and get into the media anywhere in the world, that pushed that line, we did. One third of my staff in this task force were covert action, were propagandists, whose professional career job was to make up stories and finding ways of getting them into the press….The editors in most Western newspapers are not too skeptical of messages that conform to general views and prejudices….So we came up with another story, and it was kept going for weeks…[But] it was all fiction.”

Fred Bridgland looked back on his work as a war correspondent for the Reuters agency:

We based our reports on official communications. It was not until years later that I learned a little CIA disinformation expert had sat in the US embassy, in Lusaka and composed that communiqué, and it bore no relation at all to truth…Basically, and to put it very crudely, you can publish any old crap and it will get newspaper room.”

And former CIA analyst David MacMichael described his work in the Contra War in Nicaragua with these words: “They said our intelligence of Nicaragua was so good that we could even register when someone flushed a toilet. But I had the feeling that the stories we were giving to the press came straight out of the toilet.”

– Hird 1985; watch full report

Of course, the intelligence services also have a large number of direct contacts in our media, which can be “leaked” information to if necessary. But without the central role of the global news agencies, the worldwide synchronization of propaganda and disinformation would never be so efficient.

Through this “propaganda multiplier”, dubious stories from PR experts working for governments, military and intelligence services reach the general public more or less unchecked and unfiltered. The journalists refer to the news agencies and the news agencies refer to their sources. Although they often attempt to point out uncertainties with terms such as “apparent”, “alleged” and the like – by then the rumor has long been spread to the world and its effect taken place.

The Propaganda Multiplier: Governments, military and intelligence services using global news agencies to disseminate their messages to a worldwide audience.

As the New York Times reported…

In addition to global news agencies, there is another source that is often used by media outlets around the world to report on geopolitical conflicts, namely the major publications in Great Britain and the US.

For example, news outlets like the New York Times or BBC have up to 100 foreign correspondents and other external employees. However, Middle East correspondent Luyendijk points out:

Dutch news teams, me included, fed on the selection of news made by quality media like CNN, the BBC, and the New York Times. We did that on the assumption that their correspondents understood the Arab world and commanded a view of it – but many of them turned out not to speak Arabic, or at least not enough to be able to have a conversation in it or to follow the local media. Many of the top dogs at CNN, the BBC, the Independent, the Guardian, the New Yorker, and the NYT were more often than not dependent on assistants and translators.”
Luyendijk p.47

In addition, the sources of these media outlets are often not easy to verify (“military circles”, “anonymous government officials”, “intelligence officials” and the like) and can therefore also be used for the dissemination of propaganda. In any case, the widespread orientation towards the major Anglo-Saxon publications leads to a further convergence in the geopolitical coverage in our media.

The following figure shows some examples of such citation based on the Syria coverage of the largest daily newspaper in Switzerland, Tages-Anzeiger. The articles are all from the first days of October 2015, when Russia for the first time intervened directly in the Syrian war (US/UK sources are highlighted):


Frequent citation of British and US media, exemplified by the Syria war coverage of Swiss daily newspaper Tages-Anzeiger in October 2015.

The desired narrative

But why do journalists in our media not simply try to research and report independently of the global agencies and the Anglo-Saxon media? Middle East correspondent Luyendijk describes his experiences:

You might suggest that I should have looked for sources I could trust. I did try, but whenever I wanted to write a story without using news agencies, the main Anglo-Saxon media, or talking heads, it fell apart. () Obviously I, as a correspondent, could tell very different stories about one and the same situation. But the media could only present one of them, and often enough, that was exactly the story that confirmed the prevailing image.”
Luyendijk p.54ff

Media researcher Noam Chomsky has described this effect in his essay “What makes the mainstream media mainstream” as follows:

If you leave the official line, if you produce dissenting reports, then you will soon feel this…There are many ways to get you back in line quickly. If you don’t follow the guidelines, you will not keep your job long. This system works pretty well, and it reflects established power structures.”
Chomsky, 1997

Nevertheless, some of the leading journalists continue to believe that nobody can tell them what to write. How does this add up? Media researcher Chomsky clarifies the apparent contradiction:

[T]he point is that they wouldn’t be there unless they had already demonstrated that nobody has to tell them what to write because they are going say the right thing. If they had started off at the Metro desk, or something, and had pursued the wrong kind of stories, they never would have made it to the positions where they can now say anything they like…They have been through the socialization system.”
Chomsky 1997

Ultimately, this “socialization process” leads to a journalism that no longer independently researches and critically reports on geopolitical conflicts (and some other topics), but seeks to consolidate the desired narrative through appropriate editorials, commentary, and interviewees.

Conclusion: The “First Law of Journalism”

Former AP journalist Herbert Altschull called it the First Law of Journalism:

In all press systems, the news media are instruments of those who exercise political and economic power. Newspapers, periodicals, radio and television stations do not act independently, although they have the possibility of independent exercise of power.”
Altschull 1984/1995, p. 298

In that sense, it is logical that our traditional media – which are predominantly financed by advertising or the state – represent the geopolitical interests of the transatlantic alliance, given that both the advertising corporations as well as the states themselves are dependent on the US dominated transatlantic economic and security architecture.

In addition, our leading media and their key people are – in the spirit of Chomsky’s “socialization” – often themselves part of the networks of the transatlantic elite. Some of the most important institutions in this regard include the US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission (see in-depth study of these networks).

Indeed, most well-known publications basically may be seen as “establishment media”. This is because, in the past, the freedom of the press was rather theoretical, given significant entry barriers such as broadcasting licenses, frequency slots, requirements for financing and technical infrastructure, limited sales channels, dependence on advertising, and other restrictions.

It was only due to the Internet that Altschull’s First Law has been broken to some extent. Thus, in recent years a high-quality, reader-funded journalism has emerged, often outperforming traditional media in terms of critical reporting. Some of these “alternative” publications already reach a very large audience, showing that the “mass” does not have to be a problem for the quality of a media outlet.

Nevertheless, up to now the traditional media has been able to attract a solid majority of online visitors, too. This, in turn, is closely linked to the hidden role of news agencies, whose up-to-the-minute reports form the backbone of most news portals.

Will “political and economic power”, according to Altschull’s Law, retain control over the news, or will “uncontrolled” news change the political and economic power structure? The coming years will show.

Case study: Syria war coverage

As part of a case study, the Syria war coverage of nine leading daily newspapers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland were examined for plurality of viewpoints and reliance on news agencies. The following newspapers were selected:

  • For Germany: Die Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)
  • For Switzerland: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Tagesanzeiger (TA), and Basler Zeitung (BaZ)
  • For Austria: Standard, Kurier, and Die Presse

The investigation period was defined as October 1 to 15, 2015, i.e. the first two weeks after Russia’s direct intervention in the Syrian conflict. The entire print and online coverage of these newspapers was taken into account. Any Sunday editions were not taken into account, as not all of the newspapers examined have such. In total, 381 newspaper articles met the stated criteria.

In a first step, the articles were classified according to their properties into the following groups:

  1. Agencies: Reports from news agencies (with agency code)
  2. Mixed: Simple reports (with author names) that are based in whole or in part on agency reports
  3. Reports: Editorial background reports and analyzes
  4. Opinions/Comments: Opinions and guest comments
  5. Interviews: interviews with experts, politicians etc.
  6. Investigative: Investigative research that reveals new information or context

The following Figure 1 shows the composition of the articles for the nine newspapers analyzed in total. As can be seen, 55% of articles were news agency reports; 23% editorial reports based on agency material; 9% background reports; 10% opinions and guest comments; 2% interviews; and 0% based on investigative research.

Figure 1: Types of articles (total; n=381)

The pure agency texts – from short notices to the detailed reports – were mostly on the Internet pages of the daily newspapers: on the one hand, the pressure for breaking news is higher than in the printed edition, on the other hand, there are no space restrictions. Most other types of articles were found in both the online and printed editions; some exclusive interviews and background reports were found only in the printed editions. All items were collected only once for the investigation.

The following Figure 2 shows the same classification on a per newspaper basis. During the observation period (two weeks), most newspapers published between 40 and 50 articles on the Syrian conflict (print and online). In the German newspaper Die Welt there were more (58), in the Basler Zeitung and the Austrian Kurier, however, significantly less (29 or 33).

Depending on which newspaper, the share of agency reports is almost 50% (Welt, Süddeutsche, NZZ, Basler Zeitung), just under 60% (FAZ, Tagesanzeiger), and 60 to 70% (Presse, Standard, Kurier). Together with the agency-based reports, the proportion in most newspapers is between approx. 70% and 80%. These proportions are consistent with previous media studies (e.g., Blum 1995, Johnston 2011, MacGregor 2013, Paterson 2007).

In the background reports, the Swiss newspapers were leading (five to six pieces), followed by Welt, Süddeutsche and Standard (four each) and the other newspapers (one to three). The background reports and analyzes were in particular devoted to the situation and development in the Middle East, as well as to the motives and interests of individual actors (for example Russia, Turkey, the Islamic State).

However, most of the commentaries were to be found in the German newspapers (seven comments each), followed by Standard (five), NZZ and Tagesanzeiger (four each). Basler Zeitung did not publish any commentaries during the observation period, but two interviews. Other interviews were conducted by Standard (three) and Kurier and Presse (one each). Investigative research, however, could not be found in any of the newspapers.

In particular, in the case of the three German newspapers, a journalistically problematic blending of opinion pieces and reports was noted. Reports contained strong expressions of opinion even though they were not marked as commentary. The present study was in any case based on the article labeling by the newspaper.

Figure 2: Types of articles per newspaper

The following Figure 3 shows the breakdown of agency stories (by agency abbreviation) for each news agency, in total and per country. The 211 agency reports carried a total of 277 agency codes (a story may consist of material from more than one agency). In total, 24% of agency reports came from the AFP; about 20% each by the DPA, APA and Reuters; 9% of the SDA; 6% of the AP; and 11% were unknown (no labeling or blanket term “agencies”).

In Germany, the DPA, AFP and Reuters each have a share of about one third of the news stories. In Switzerland, the SDA and the AFP are in the lead, and in Austria, the APA and Reuters.

In fact, the shares of the global agencies AFP, AP and Reuters are likely to be even higher, as the Swiss SDA and the Austrian APA obtain their international reports mainly from the global agencies and the German DPA cooperates closely with the American AP.

It should also be noted that, for historical reasons, the global agencies are represented differently in different regions of the world. For events in Asia, Ukraine or Africa, the share of each agency will therefore be different than from events in the Middle East.

Figure 3: Share of news agencies, total (n=277) and per country

In the next step, central statements were used to rate the orientation of editorial opinions (28), guest comments (10) and interview partners (7) (a total of 45 articles). As Figure 4 shows, 82% of the contributions were generally US/NATO friendly, 16% neutral or balanced, and 2% predominantly US/NATO critical.

The only predominantly US/NATO-critical contribution was an op-ed in the Austrian Standard on October 2, 2015, titled: “The strategy of regime change has failed. A distinction between ‚good‘ and ‚bad‘ terrorist groups in Syria makes the Western policy untrustworthy.”

Figure 4: Orientation of editorial opinions, guest comments, and interviewees (total; n=45).

The following Figure 5 shows the orientation of the contributions, guest comments and interviewees, in turn broken down by individual newspapers. As can be seen, Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung, NZZ, Zürcher Tagesanzeiger and the Austrian newspaper Kurier presented exclusively US/NATO-friendly opinion and guest contributions; this goes for FAZ too, with the exception of one neutral/balanced contribution. The Standard brought four US/NATO friendly, three balanced/neutral, as well as the already mentioned US/NATO critical opinion contributions.

Presse was the only one of the examined newspapers to predominantly publish neutral/balanced opinions and guest contributions. The Basler Zeitung published one US/NATO-friendly and one balanced contribution. Shortly after the observation period (October 16, 2015), Basler Zeitung also published an interview with the President of the Russian Parliament. This would of course have been counted as a contribution critical of the US/NATO.

Figure 5: Basic orientation of opinion pieces and interviewees per newspaper

In a further analysis, a full-text keyword search for “propaganda” (and word combinations thereof) was used to investigate in which cases the newspapers themselves identified propaganda in one of the two geopolitical conflict sides, USA/NATO or Russia (the participant “IS/ISIS” was not considered). In total, twenty such cases were identified. Figure 6 shows the result: in 85% of the cases, propaganda was identified on the Russian side of the conflict, in 15% the identification was neutral or unstated, and in 0% of the cases propaganda was identified on the USA/NATO side of the conflict.

It should be noted that about half of the cases (nine) were in the Swiss NZZ, which spoke of Russian propaganda quite frequently (“Kremlin propaganda”, “Moscow propaganda machine”, “propaganda stories”, “Russian propaganda apparatus” etc.), followed by German FAZ (three), Welt and Süddeutsche Zeitung (two each) and the Austrian newspaper Kurier (one). The other newspapers did not mention propaganda, or only in a neutral context (or in the context of IS).

Figure 6: Attribution of propaganda to conflict parties (total; n=20).

Conclusion

In this case study, the geopolitical coverage in nine leading daily newspapers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland was examined for diversity and journalistic performance using the example of the Syrian war.

The results confirm the high dependence on the global news agencies (63 to 90%, excluding commentaries and interviews) and the lack of own investigative research, as well as the rather biased commenting on events in favor of the US/NATO side (82% positive; 2% negative), whose stories were not checked by the newspapers for any propaganda.

About the authors: Swiss Propaganda Research (SPR) is an independent research group investigating geopolitical propaganda in Swiss and international media. You can contact us here. English translation provided by Terje Maloy.
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Mükke, Lutz (2014): Korrespondenten im Kalten Krieg. Zwischen Propaganda und Selbstbehauptung. Herbert von Halem Verlag, Köln.
Paterson, Chris (2007): International news on the internet. The International Journal of Communication Ethics. Vol 4, No 1/2 2007. (PDF)
Queval, Jean (1945): Première page, Cinquième colonne. Arthème Fayard, Paris.
Schulten-Jaspers, Yasmin (2013): Zukunft der Nachrichtenagenturen. Situation, Entwicklung, Prognosen. Nomos, Baden-Baden.
Segbers, Michael (2007): Die Ware Nachricht. Wie Nachrichtenagenturen ticken. UVK, Konstanz.
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Wilke, Jürgen (Hrsg.) (2000): Von der Agentur zur Redaktion. Böhlau, Köln.

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sean ryan
sean ryan
Sep 9, 2020 4:44 PM

I worked in the media and PR for decades, I can personally attest to and verify the accuracy of this article.
I often worked as a liaison between high-paying advertisers, and the “news” media (whom are now largely owned by the same Cartel of largest shareholders/investors), coordinating meetings to ensure only officially-approved narratives.

I worked with a number of media asset management companies, like the former T3 Media, which were relied on to provide footage for not only entertainment in television and movies, and such, but also to “news” outlets.

Many of the images we see are not directly related to or from the events in the stories presented.

The public needs to be worried that the largest “news” organizations in the U.S. are largely owned by entertainment companies.
Where does the line get drawn between “fact” and fiction, “news” and “entertainment”?

And further concerned that those entertainment organizations are largely owned by the same Cartel of largest investors (often large investment banks, but further in a highly-convoluted shell-game of cross-ownership).

We are currently witnessing the greatest concentration of wealth amongst a relatively few in modern history.
That wealth concentration is also applicable to assets, including corporate assets.

One can read the words of the “Father of Spin”, Edward Bernays, in his 1928 book Propaganda to perhaps gain a better understanding of the absolute fabrications of “news”:

“In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons […] who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world. ”

“Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.”

“Who are the men, who, without our realizing it, give us our ideas, tell us whom to admire and whom to despise, what to believe about the ownership of public utilities .. about immigration who tell us how our houses should be designed, what furniture we should put into them, what menus we should serve at our table, what kind of shirts we must wear, what sports we should indulge in, what plays we should see, what charities we should support, what pictures we should admire, what slang we should affect, what jokes we should laugh at? ”

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it? ”

“If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway.”

“But when the example of the leader is not at hand and the herd must think for itself, it does so by means of clichés, pat words or images which stand for a whole group of ideas or experiences.”
-Propaganda (1928)-

“The public relations counsel, therefore, is a creator of news for whatever medium he chooses to transmit ideas. It is his duty to create news no matter what the medium which broadcasts this news. ”
-Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923)-

“If you can influence the leaders…..”
Those “leaders” are not just political leaders, but media, educational, scientific, and other such.

This is a fully-functional, highly-coordinated, well-financed multi-fronted attack.

We are truly living in the Dark Ages of the 21st Century.

Arrby
Arrby
Mar 11, 2019 8:22 PM

“It was only due to the Internet that Altschull’s First Law has been broken to some extent. Thus, in recent years a high-quality, reader-funded journalism has emerged, often outperforming traditional media in terms of critical reporting.”

For which reason the Corporatocracy State has turned on alt media with a vengeance. All those millions, billions, of dollars spent on counterrevolution (maintaining the status quo) and along comes a bunch of little people, nobodies, and it’s all been for nothing. Unless they can stop the little people with big mouths dead in their tracks. And they do possess the firepower. And for those who think that “Well, We have the internet,” I’m sorry to report: We don’t.

Paul
Paul
Mar 9, 2019 1:15 PM

An interesting situation is quickly developing in the Democrat Party that in many ways mirrors Labour’s problems. Iihan Omar dares criticise the Israeli lobby and is viciously attacked as an anti-Semite Nazi; we’ve seen that, done that of course many times over the last 2 years – but for the Democrats it’s only been a week and they’re in trouble. As the big wig Democrats know only too well it’s not easy justifying the regular Friday massacres of teenagers and the maiming of THOUSANDS using special exploding ammunition that shatters legs for life – 22,000 seriously injured. Nor is it easy to justify the Occupation in defiance of International law let alone the siege of the Gaza ghetto. As several articles in the US media this week make clear the problem is that Omar’s views are supported by many sane rational Americans who know the kowtowing to Israel is wrong. In the UK the Israel (aka Jewish) lobby remains strong. Here an MP who said something FAR less critical than Omar, not even mentioning Israel itself, is suspended and likely to be hounded out of politics, like Ken Livingstone or George Galloway. It will be embarrassing for the British Left if the Democrats sort out the problem and kick out the Zionists and those bribed by Israel while in Britain we still have to listen to very unstable people like Baroness Hodge ranting about the well known Nazi, Corbyn. Nobody swallows that but it’s treated as if it’s FACT. I wish some of the people who ‘interview’ her would ask her opinion of Omar but in the interviews I’ve heard recently nobody asks her a thing – she just vents and they say ‘thank you so much your Ladyshio, it’s so kind of you to talk to us’.

Shardlake
Shardlake
Mar 9, 2019 2:08 PM
Reply to  Paul

… Nobody swallows that but it’s treated as if it’s FACT. If only that were true, the problem is that a substantial proportion of the population believe it IS true ! Generally speaking, the people of this nation are prepared to believe the right wing MSM and do not seek to enlighten themselves by visiting websites like this one and similar. For more than forty years now we have had an education system that has been ‘dumbed down’ so we have a generation of people who read no further than the headlines in a media, if they read at all, which continues to tell them to vote for policies that are not in their interest. Brexit is a case in point.

mark
mark
Mar 11, 2019 2:58 AM
Reply to  Paul

George Galloway was kicked out of the Labour Party. What for?
Criticising the Iraq war, and he has since been proven right a thousand times over.
The “anti semitic” scam has been used to pick off the people around Corbyn. Ken Livingstone, Marc Wadsworth, Chris Williamson, others, including Jewish members “who are the wrong sort of Jews.”.
And of course to smear Corbyn himself. In the past he has been smeared as a communist spy, a terrorist, and attacked for not bowing deeply enough, not singing loudly enough, or for his clothing. None of this was going anywhere, so now we have the contrived anti Semitism issue.
A serious mistake was made in trying to appease and accommodate the smear merchants. They should have just been called out for the liars they are. There is nothing to apologise for. Williamson should not have apologised.
Nothing is ever enough for these people. They just double down and demand more.
Tom “I Am A Proud Zionist” Watson is now going through years of tweets of Labour Party members with his friends on speed dial at the Board of Deputies and the Mossad Office. They are trying to find anything that they can declare themselves “offended” by.
This is nothing less than a purge of the Left from the Labour Party by the Blairite Backstabbers in an attempt to seize back control.

Paul
Paul
Mar 11, 2019 9:47 AM
Reply to  mark

Absolutely right! But the emphasis is on an ‘attempted’ coup – because it’s unlikely to succeed. Watson just doesn’t have popular support; the PLP would support him but as soon as it comes to actual voting they’ll remember there will soon be a GE and those that want to stay in work will have to reflect on what the membership want.

mark
mark
Mar 8, 2019 10:15 PM

Chelsea Manning has just been jailed again by a secret court.
Maybe Russia could extend diplomatic status to her and Julian Assange, like Britain has just done to the British Iranian woman jailed for espionage in Iran.

Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Mar 9, 2019 7:10 AM
Reply to  mark

Mark: saw that news an hour ago on Worldwide Socialist Website. When the fuck are people going to start waking up to what’s going on? The apathy and indifference and complacency in the ‘Free West’ is truly surreal. Chelsea Manning is an absolute inspiration for us who refuse to swallow the bullshit.

Paul
Paul
Mar 9, 2019 1:49 PM
Reply to  mark

Except HMG do have some responsibility for their assets, like brave spies.

Antipropo
Antipropo
Mar 8, 2019 8:22 PM

For well researched news on the Syrian reality read Eva Bartlett and Vanessa Beeley. Both have been to Syria many times and speak Arabic. Almost any other “western” reporting is garbage and propaganda. Witness the near total media blackout on the OPCW final report into the false flag chemical attack in Douma which led to 129 cruise missiles launched into Syria. On that by the way we are meant to believe that 70 missiles were targeted at 2 adjacent buildings in Damascus.

harry stotle
harry stotle
Mar 9, 2019 6:04 AM
Reply to  Antipropo

Yet the Guardian seemed to think a technology journalist based in San Francisco who had never been to Syria during the conflict or had no expertise in Middle Eastern geopolitics was in a better position to report on the activities of the White Helmets (as a means of embedding a narrative meant to portray the insurgency as ‘good’ and Assad/Russia as ‘bad’).
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/18/syria-white-helmets-conspiracy-theories

According to our intrepid reporter based on the west coast of America ‘The White Helmets, officially known as the Syria Civil Defence, is a humanitarian organisation made up of 3,400 volunteers – former teachers, engineers, tailors and firefighters – who rush to pull people from the rubble when bombs rain down on Syrian civilians.’

Monbiot could be heard whoop-whooping in the background when Olivia added ‘The way the Russian propaganda machine has targeted the White Helmets is a neat case study in the prevailing information wars. It exposes just how rumours, conspiracy theories and half-truths bubble to the top of YouTube, Google and Twitter search algorithms.’

‘Propaganda machine’, ‘half-truths’, ‘conspiracies’ – the irony of course is delicious given Solons (and her mentors) modus operandi made all the more egregious by this fantastic piece unpicking the way information streams are marshalled and controlled in order to serve neocon narratives.

Its why we keep coming back to Off-G because as sure as hell you are not going to hear about such outrageous dissembling from those who create the mood music at Guardian Towers.

Arrby
Arrby
Mar 11, 2019 8:11 PM
Reply to  Antipropo

Peter Ford as well.

Allen Edmundson
Allen Edmundson
Mar 8, 2019 8:13 PM

There is a “journalistic” reason for professional armies (all “volunteer”, though their other employment choices may be limited) is that draftees are less likely to keep quiet, more likely to contradict the propaganda. This was one lesson of the War on Viet Nam, the one perhaps meant by GHW Bush when he announced that our (first) war on Iraq had put Viet Nam behind us.

Paul
Paul
Mar 8, 2019 5:08 PM

The Agencies are themselves controlled by State organisations, in particular the Intelligence Agencies. Thus ‘reporting’ on Foreign Policy becomes utterly opaque and false. It’s useful to check out the agency websites – you’ll get to read it later in the indigenous press. But you get to see the new ‘issues’ they pick on and invariably they give a reliable account of what will become the narrative that ALL the media will follow. It’s hard to appreciate that the real issue is what isn’t picked out; the sins of omission are widespread and significant. The willingness of newspapers to kow-tow to instructions and the script was never more obvious to me personally than in 2014 when Poroshenko declared war on Russian speakers in the East of Ukraine – all 7 million of them! – and proceeded to bombard large cities of more than a million unprotected inhabitants, many living in high rises blocks, with unguided Grad missiles that caused thousands of innocent deaths. Jet bombers and tanks were deployed against civilians in the War against Terror. Naively I did expect at least the Guardian newspaper to speak out against what was clearly an atrocity. But not a bit of it. The rebels getting bombed were Russian stooges and Ukraine had to hold steady against the Asian hordes – or words to that effect. It wasn’t a one off either; the paper slavishly followed the narrative of brave men fighting filthy Russians. A ‘journalist’ called Luke Harding rivalled some of his WW2 propagandists for his outrageous falsehoods. But we do have at least two foreign correspondents you can rely on, both of whom do get published in the Independent. They are Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn of course. There you get a glimpse of the reality, constrained as they must be. Fisk’s ‘Great War for Civilisation: the Conquest of the Middle East’ which covers his personal frontline experiences over 30 years from Algeria to the Iraq-Iran war, the Israeli wars against Lebanon and onto Iraq 2003 and then the Syrian war is a masterpiece. He makes no bones about his narrative; the West declared the ME as theirs when the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1918 – and have never been working harder than in recent times to hang onto it and it’s precious resources, by hook or crook. It’s the crook that has to be censured from public consumption.

democritus460
democritus460
Mar 8, 2019 2:52 PM

For an entertaining, if ultimately depressing, view from the receiving news editor’s end, check out Chris Moore’s memoirs of his time at BBC World Service: How Newsrooms Die and Greg Dyke, My Part in his Downfall. Evidently nothing happened in the world until one of the big three agencies reported it. When one did, the only question in the BBC newsroom was ‘does one of the others say the same thing?’ If so, it was written-up and broadcast. Job done and no need to worry whether the BBC had got the angle ‘right’.

Narrative
Narrative
Mar 8, 2019 2:34 PM

The propaganda Multiplier: Very apt heading!

These broadcasters have become very well-established echo chambers serving the political elites, all with deception and falsehood while mindlessly humiliating and trashing out those who dare to dissent and deviate from the choreographed narrative.

They have no shame in attacking the Chinese as having strictly controlled media.

In many ways, the Chinese system is far superior simply because they are trying to help the majority of the population. Plus, in the Chinese system , there is a clear consistency between what they say and what they do. In the Western system, they are working against the majority of the population, and double-speak is rife and things are getting worse with more broadcasters being opted out.

mark
mark
Mar 8, 2019 3:14 PM
Reply to  Narrative

At the time of the criminal war of aggression against Iraq for Israel, you had stories and lies about uranium and aluminium tubes leaked to corrupt media hacks like Judith Miller. They faithfully regurgitated these lies, which were then repeated in other media organs. These stories and lies, from “anonymous sources” or more often invented sources, were then touted as further “evidence” of the need for war. All these people have blood on their hands. And they have never been held accountable. On the contrary, they have been handsomely rewarded for their activities, and still regularly beat the drum for another war for Israel, this time with Iran.

We have seen the way state controlled propaganda outlets like the Integrity Initiative, White Helmets, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, all the armies of bogus NGOs and “humanitarian” organisations, constantly manipulate information and peddle lies. The default position should be that any information coming from official sources or the MSM must simply be dismissed as lies. These people have forfeited all trust and credibility.

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Mar 8, 2019 2:06 PM

The follow up should be when and who set up the agencies – how they were and are financed and who benefits.

I remember there was an old film about Reuters with Edward G Robinson i think.

Prior to that there is the infamous story possibly apocryphal, about the man who cornered the market on the news due from Waterloo.

Ultimately all financial gambling is reliant on feeds from a few platforms.

That we have this wild west yet uncontrolled internet is the only reason why the old masters methods, strings and the hands that hold them are daily becoming evident for these who look.

For these that like the show – they will always believe the trick and illusion – and most will even convince themselves of the lie that is magic as REALITY and act according to the lies.

Who is the most culpable in the chain of shit eating?

The shitter, the eater or the paid shit shoveller who transfers from arse to mouth?

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Mar 8, 2019 4:53 PM
Reply to  DunGroanin

DunGroanin, the shitter was a born and trained psychopath who had little if any choice. Most eaters are innocent, like a field of sheep – they too have little if any choice.

Whilst most shit shoveller’s will almost certainly have been brainwashed, as a result of joined the cult of mainstream journalism, they must also be fully aware of the evil that men do. If they had the courage, they would stop doing it, and tell the truth instead, or do something entirely different.

So my vote for the lowest of the low, goes to the shit shoveller’s – the “journalists”.

Tony

tonyopmoc
tonyopmoc
Mar 8, 2019 1:59 PM

Fascinating article, none of which surprises me, but it’s good to see much of the detail confirmed. However, it is not just the mainstream media that is infected by such control and corruption. It is now very difficult to find a website or blog, such as this one, that has not been corrupted, or the people running them seriously threatened, making them very wary of including content that they “know” is off-limits – or else.

Contrasting that, here is a completely wonderful exposure of gross corruption within the highest places of the US Government, and controlling authorities / criminal gangsters. This totally fascinating interview with former National Security Agency Technical Director Bill Binney is riveting stuff. He is not making it up.

“Mr. President—Listen to Bill Binney. Russiagate is a Worse Hoax than You Thought”

Tony

BigB
BigB
Mar 8, 2019 1:22 PM

A very thought provoking article, apposite to the current hybrid warfare on freedom and reality,

Reality is policy and agenda driven: framed and reported in such a way as to further the pre-determined ideology. Ideological policy is not in response to the reported event: the reported event is the response to a particular ideological policy. Ideological belief determines its own outcome: distorting reality to suit its own self-confirming agenda. That which does not suit, does not happen. This is the self-informing recursion of belief on which the class superstructure and their controlled coercive regimes of truth and power are founded. Reality is class-biased. As a result: it becomes class-structured and class-determined.

When I look into this closed loop hermeneutic cycle – where meaning is the metonym of power – there is no ‘first cause’ – no historically determinable date or instigating epoch. The modern iterations of power are built on previous historical regimes of power, which are built on …trans-finitely and trans-historically. Culture was hijacked at an early stage – possibly pre-civilisationally – and manipulated into regimes of truth and power, autocratically bent toward the ruling classes. Culture is class-biased and dispossession orientated from the start. Culture is a powerful mythology that poetically justifies the history of dispossession, dehumanisation, and enslavement. Civilisation is a generated culture of self-justifying belief systems of hierarchical power relations – founded on the oppression of the designated weak. Sub-cultures are generally the historical ‘memento mori’ charting the history of oppression (by which, I do not mean to cheapen or invalidate their authenticity. Historical and current oppression is very real.).

Only two things have changed, as far as I can see. One is that the culture-driven media-political simulation of reality is becoming exposed as increasingly unreal. It has become an unmoored ‘Empire State of Mind’ that is leaving a desolate reality in its wake – as Karl Rove’s infamous (and possibly apocryphal) quote once indicated. The second is that the oppressed sub-cultural casualties of trans-historical regimes of Unkowing and Unreality are falling back into reality, landing in a bruised (if not bloodied) heap, and wondering what the fuck to do. If indeed, there is anything that can be done. To which my premise is that the only cure for unreality is reality.

It is not my want to convince, but I will at least suggest, that the entire trans-generational, pan-globalised culture system has become toxic to life. In effect, our entire inherited and acculturated trans-historic architecture of belief has become propagandistic and programming. That recursive cultural programming favoured, from the start, the development of a cultural cognitive elite: who then accelerated the cultural becoming to suit their own ends. The current iteration is the most extremised: due to a similar coercion of technological imperialism into ‘BigData’ and surveillance capitalist technocracy. There is no money for socialisation – to end homelessness or knife crime, for instance – but the coffers are bottomless for Integrity Initiatives, Fusion Doctrines, Pentagram/NATO/EU cyber-subjugation via the ideologically managed and counter-freedom-firewalled ‘shiternet’ …or so it seems.

That this was an inevitability is in the inherence toward unreality of regimes of truth and power unmoored from reality from their very Foundational and Essential axioms. This current iteration is nothing but a determinable outcome from first principles. It is the way it is because it could not have been any other way. The re-magining of a historical alternative history is a function of the present, not of the past. Think about it. Nothing changes but the thinking about it.

The past may be subjectively determined: but the future is not. The ossified and misplaced concrete establishment on unmoored, unreal, and unknowing past principles need not wholly determine the future …especially if we modify the paradigmatic principles….

BigB
BigB
Mar 8, 2019 2:39 PM
Reply to  BigB

The entire Western philosophical and civilisational tradition is built on but two bi-polar and binary beliefs. The Foundational object-pole and the Essential subject-pole. The trans-finite proliferation of beliefs is the exponential dichotomic discrimination from the core of these two. The thinking subject is predicated on an objectively immortal ground which is mind-independent. The mere perception of this ground is ‘pre-ontological’. Ontological Being emerges as a higher truth from the merely perceptual. In Sartre’s iteration of duality: Being is “ens causa sui” …self-caused, self-perpetuating, and absolutised.

As I seek to convince no one, merely express an alternative POV – this is bullshit. Not only is it bullshit, it is demonstrable bullshit: demonstrable bullshit that does not withstand examination or a true encounter and sustained dialogue with reality. Western philosophical civilisation – for that is what it is – is built on misplaced concrete pseudo-Foundational and Essential beliefs that were never based on reality. Can it be any surprise that they were coercively co-opted by the fanatics and fantasists of Being – the cognitive elite and dispossessing classes – and viciously expunged of all ideological dissension to be recursively inculcated as regimes of truth and power? Some call it acculturation, education, and freedom of choice. I think not. It was never free, right from the indiscernible start.

Before I am consigned to the not-so-very-funny-farm: look at the sentence structure of what I am writing. It contains the very displaced subject-pole and object-pole of subversion and subjugation. In duality, the very language becomes a tool and instrument of power. You may think it is a bit of a stretch from sentence structure to coercive attempts at mind control. How about a Current Era of 2019 years of development? Of a separation from life whose paradigmatic principles were not even new then. Mind, Being, language, and civilisation have a co-evolutionary tract. A change of civilisation requires a change of mind.

Maggie
Maggie
Mar 8, 2019 9:56 PM
Reply to  BigB

Sheesh BigB, I don’t know what it is that you are on, but perhaps you should share it with us to enable us all to actually understand what you post, as Binra and BigB. I want to understand, truly I dol
”Timothy Leary’s dead… oh no he’s outside looking in?”

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Mar 9, 2019 1:36 AM
Reply to  Maggie

“Take any collection of ten priests in our Cartesian world (as it has lately come to be castigated) and they will, thus inevitably, entertain more than, usually many more than, ten mutually exclusive theologies/cosmologies/etceterologies, which is as good an indication of terminal mind fuck as any, and very catching to boot. Biggus Dickus is running rampant, as he has since before even CE times–thanks a lot Aristotle & Co–and we are thusly all screwed. The only way to effect a cure is to reput des horses before des Cartes. That will necessitate replacing y/our big picture obscuring bifocals with old-fashioned eyeballs.”

HTH

Stonky
Stonky
Mar 9, 2019 12:01 PM
Reply to  Maggie

Good luck with that Maggie. I’ve tried to engage with BigB in the past on the issue of faux-clever people who think you’re not really smart unless no one has the faintest idea what you’re talking about. Genuinely clever people are exactly the opposite – they can take a complex subject and present it in language that ordinary people can understand.

Unfortunately BigB is deaf to the idea. I think he must have studied Social Sciences, a field in which academics spend their careers in a nightmare of dread that one day they might say something that somebody else understands.

Big B certainly expends considerable time and effort on his behemoths. For all I know he has something worthwhile to say. Unfortunately he is determined to drown it under a tsunami of unintelligible jargon. I simply gave up on reading his posts.

Stonky
Stonky
Mar 9, 2019 12:14 PM
Reply to  Stonky

Based on some of the convoluted nonsense he writes, I also sometimes wonder if BigB is a real (not) live actual random-language generating bot:

“… look at the sentence structure of what I am writing. It contains the very displaced subject-pole and object-pole of subversion and subjugation. In duality, the very language becomes a tool and instrument of power…”

Most of us write what we think.Does any genuine human being have an internal monologue that says stuff like that to itself?

BigB
BigB
Mar 9, 2019 1:40 PM
Reply to  Stonky

Stonky

Well, that’s the problem for independent thinkers. They think that they think independently of the structural constraints of the language: and the cultural idioms it contains in hidden structural axioms. Like Self. Or Mind. Or Being. What are the objective referents of these?

So, do they think independently, or are they being thought?

Define ‘independent’: independently of language? Or Self, or Mind, or Being.

Language recursively refers only to language. There is more to life than language: not easy to say when the language created concepts that do not exist.

In a self-referential language: that recursively indexes inexistent concepts – which is the random word generator? The language or the thinking subject?

Who is the thinking subject?

BigB
BigB
Mar 10, 2019 10:52 AM
Reply to  Stonky

Stonky

Obviously you will not read this: but someone might. You may never have heard of cognitive linguistics, or the wider field of semiotics, but they exist. So does conceptual metaphor theory. These are valid fields of enquiry, from which I draw. Further, there is Buddhism’s own investigations into language, logic and metaphor – which I have studied. There is a remarkable cross-over. Denigration is not negation: language is the key to understanding.

Language has a universal non-metaphoric ’embodied’ core. Our basic movements, orientation (in space-time), and functions can be said to have ‘grammar’. This key conceptual core is used to describe our basic relationship to each other and the environment. As language develops, these ‘domains’ are expanded by ‘cross-domain mapping’. Meaning is said to ‘transact’ to build up metaphoric descriptions. When we get to the level of discussion we are involved in here: geopolitics, geo-economics, propaganda – these concepts are highly metaphoric (referring to concepts which refer to concepts recursively transacting meaningfulness). Language becomes highly subjectivised the more abstract it becomes. These concepts have been highly manipulated by a cognitive elite who control the information flows – and through culture and education – redefine the meaninfulness. Of which they are losing control, and language is being reclaimed and redefined. To a degree.

For my part: I think it would be wise, over time, to redefine language in such a way as it better reflects the realities it is supposed to convey. To do that language has to be ’embodied’. I can’t be bothered to discuss how it became ‘disembodied’ and mind-independent – but it did. What people do not realise is that we are doing ‘Enlightenment’ politics, with outdated metaphors, some of them over 2,000 years old. In the case of ‘mind’: probably as old as language itself. But that is another credible theory – that mind and language are metonymic, co-evolutionary, and symbolically synonymous – for another time.

Meanwhile, if we think that language is ‘objective’, empiric, and referential only to concrete, substantial, separated, independently existent entities – it is not. It is highly metaphoric – one of the major findings of cognitive neuroscience – and covertly subjectivised. As it stands, it is a tool of the cognitve elite. Language itself is the propaganda multiplier.

Accept or dismiss as you want.

Paul
Paul
Mar 9, 2019 12:45 PM
Reply to  Stonky

Frankly I think he’s just taking the piss

BigB
BigB
Mar 9, 2019 2:04 PM
Reply to  Maggie

Maggie

How long have you got!

Duality: the complexity and subtlety of disparate beliefs and concepts that make the modern world is truly unimaginable. And being added to daily: by choice. It is trans-finite, if not infinite. In the root of the root analysis: they are all differentiations of a single cognitive discrimination – between object and subject; between self and other. This is the ‘atma/dharma’ (self/other) root discrimination: from which the “ten thousand things” – (the now trans-finite) array of definitions arise.

[Elsewhere, I refer to this as ‘otherisation’: which is the sole basis of sectarian ingroup/outgroup discrimination.]

What we discriminate: we are. What we believe: we perceive. What we perceive, or how we perceive, is translated into how we act. Action is ultimately cognition. Our conceptual beliefs, differentiations and discriminations are enacted in what we do and how we do it – through thought-acts, speech-acts, and physical-acts. Conceptual belief is performative and enactive. We are responsible for our acts. This is karma.

Karma is much misunderstood. It is not retributive. The retributive element of karma is the action. The action, or enaction of conceptual belief, is habituated (individually and collectively) by repeat performative acts or enaction of idealisms. Patterns of behaviour become established and substantiated over time. Over time, certain patterns become cultural norms – or shared social dispositions, prejudices, or propensities to act (idealised behaviourism). These can be good, bad, or neutral (indifferent).

We have a subconscious architecture of belief (the conceptual ‘cognitive unconscious’) that we acquire and inherit (nature and nurture). This has been built up over time: trans-generationally. It is substantially the culturally concretised accretion of innumerable object/subject discriminations. The trans-generational transmission of culturally generated conceptual beliefs is not genetic: but epigenetic. Language is the primary medium of transmission. All of our higher conceptions – beyond the directly perceptual situation we find ourselves in – requires the pre-determined condition of a fully formed self-representational language. Thought – beyond our primary self-awareness – is language. The thought is structural and cannot escape the medium of its construction and transmission (language). Language is recursively referential to language: not reality. It is thought alone that transforms consciousness. This is called ‘vijnana – parinamo’ – the transformation or ‘alterity’ of consciousness.

Consciousness is transformed by language into language – it becomes fully conceptualised. There are many forms of non-conceptual perception, communication and meaning – primarily our direct perceptual experience, paralinguistics, biosemiotics, etc – but all of these get filtered through the cognitive unconscious; and reinforced by reflective thought patterns. The primary conception, and the primary architecture of all belief is the self-view (atma-drsti) – which becomes reified (hypostatised) into the ‘I am-conceit’ (asmimana) and the philosophy of self-existence (satkayadrsti). This has become the primal conceit – the ‘necessary’ or ‘vital’ lie – on which the constructs of society (abstract and actual) have been founded. Civilisation is founded on ‘self’ – and the culture of the individuated self-existent being.

Since the Enlightenment, we supposedly live in an objective, empirical, scientifically rational culture. One that relies on data analysis, verificationism and posivitism. So we have been able to isolate self and index it to a verifiable set of quantifiable attributes? What about mind: which is a metonym for self – something every thinking subject individually ‘owns’? Mind has no physical attributes; no mass; no dimensions; no location in space-time; and cannot be reduced to neural correlates. So where the hell is it: this zeropoint of self-absorption that separates everything?

We have verified a culture without us in it. A conceptualised culture that has its roots more in an imaginary neo-Platonic heaven than in the cognitive situation we find ourselves in. A culture built on the dualities of language that have subjectification and objectification (self and otherisation) as the root of the root conceptualisation. A culture that has taken self – the individuated being – as its epitomised, absolutist idol. I’m calling it Being because it is a collective constituency of trans-personal conception. It is not limited to the independent individual: but has become collectivised in group identities – crucially including the TNCs (corporate personhood).

We have got here by the subjectification of choice and belief. We have chosen cultural Being over any other form of conception or ontological architecture. Why? Largely because of blind choice (avidya – primal nescience) – we did not know we were doing the choosing. And partly, it has never been a fair choice. A lot of the choosing was done by those who self-appointedly took the choosing to be their divine right. The paradigmatic parameters of cultural Being have always favoured monopolisation by the most conceited, narcissistic, megalomaniacs to form a cognitive elite. They control the parameters of choice. Less and less do we get any say at all.

Which brings me back to the cogency of the article. Today’s cognitive elite want to control the cultural paradigmatic parameters by limiting choice to their pre-determined policy-driven definition. They are forcing us into a culturally-driven Beingness that less and less want. The more we dissent, the greater the coercive control of media-political information flows – such as the Fusion doctrine and NATO/EU cyber hybrid-warfare …against us. We are in the midst of a worldview world war with the corporate-fascist supra-state.

What I am saying is that the whole arborescent superstructure of culturally individuated Being – based on a self no one can find – is rotten , almost to the core. It is top-heavy, and about to fall anyway. If we perform a ‘crown reduction’; or even a pollarding; back to the healthy part of the trunk – we merely quicken its growth. We have to go back to the root and foster healthy regenerative regrowth.

The problem is the roots of the culture have never been exposed. The are assumed, subsumed, and consumed in culture. If you pare culture back to its healthy person-to-person community heart: to allow that to flourish – you need to heal the cause of dualised separation (from which false confections of Being arise to take over (recuperate) culture). Subject-pole and object-ground co-dependently arise in consciousness: as consciousness. This is ‘pratitya-samutpada’: the profound principle of nondualism. There is no separation anywhere. Everything ‘inter-is’.

In the full-Monty Zen POV: this conception renders all other conceptions as inconsistent and incoherent. Too subtle for sure. But there is no reason why we cannot move from fixed, substantiated, misconceptions of Being to a more dynamic, systemic holism, and processual Becoming (Rheological Process). The independent individual can easily be redefined as a processual becoming that arises inter-relationally, in communication and community with the rest of the process. Nothing is lost except the narcissistic hold of power over and dominion of Being. Trying to re-imagine the world – from the ground up – were we are co-mutual creative autonomous agents might take some doing, but it can be done.

Mikalina
Mikalina
Mar 9, 2019 3:42 PM
Reply to  BigB

There was a martial arts film once where two men faced each other; the one, jumping in the air, turning round, landing prepared to face his enemy did a combination of arm movements followed by some kicks and centred himself, ready, physically and spiritually to do battle. The other guy took out a gun and shot him.

Can’t think what made me think of that.

(BigB is spot on where politics is concerned, though)

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Mar 9, 2019 11:53 PM
Reply to  Mikalina

“Can’t think what made me think of that.”

Zen tries to put many of the sorts of insights BigB is trying to convey into snapshots that break the conscious mind and render it open to raw perception.

BigB
BigB
Mar 10, 2019 11:48 AM
Reply to  Robbobbobin

Robbobbobin

Thank you.

Western Thought – now pan-global, especially at the cognitive elite level – and its modern uncivilisation is but a sky-castle erected on a bunch of propositions; based on a bunch of propositions, based on a bunch of propositions… …based on baseless Foundational and Essential axiomatic separateness.

When compared to the Bodhicitta of mindfulness: the world of discrimination never was.

When we cut off discrimination from the root: nothing is lost. Nothing falls away. Nothing is negated. Nothing is nihilated. Nothing disappears. Nothing appears.

The world is as it always is: Tathata.

Western Thought says nothing about nothing: violently, cruelly, and coercively.

We live in a world of peace: but for our violent description of it.

We are already inter-connected within a communion of diversified life: but for our description of it.

This is a cruel propagandic deception and self-deception.

The medium of transmission, coordination, and communication of violence is language.

We cannot, and need not necessarily, invent a new language. But we could better index propositions of peace and nonduality. We could also better reflect the true embodied experience of reality – and map that experience to the metaphors that we use to communicate. We need not be silent.

The advocacy for the extended Sangha community of peace begins and ends here.

Whether anyone will listen is another matter! 😀

nick weech
nick weech
Mar 8, 2019 12:21 PM

We are no better than my parents were.
See Prof Jerry Kroth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfo5gPG72KM
Education?

Robbobbobin
Robbobbobin
Mar 8, 2019 11:42 PM
Reply to  nick weech

You noticed?!

In this par-for-the-course world I invite you to extend your attention to the impressive efforts of the toddlers who recently gave world wide exposure to the agitated concerns of their 20th century parents (immanent heat death of mankind)), as toddlers–for want of better direction–are wont to do, in the tradition of all history’s generals fighting their next war against the enemies and with the weapons of their last war, as yet unsullied by the updates that rank heat death as only one of many more immanent deliverers of species extinction, several of which might yet pip the current hot favourite at the stone cold post.

Fair trigger-words alert: every time I repost the old Yankee death row alert, “Dead men walking”, downvoters everywhere rush in to fall on their buttons, so go for it suckers at the single-concern tit of yesterday’s perceived problems – what you’re looking for looks like this: 👎(see below). And another shot at it for the devotees of yesterday’s received wisdom as today’s whole truth: 👎. Only third time luck will help now? OK, look here→ in finding answers to most of the world’s biggest badest issues, the eternal constant “propaganda works” is only theoretically the most easily factored out, so hit this: hit 👎(below). Still not found it? FAIL: 👍.

Mikalina
Mikalina
Mar 9, 2019 3:50 PM
Reply to  Robbobbobin

To be fair, ‘propaganda’ as propaganda is a bit 3D chess-like. As I keep saying, you are dealing with brain damaged people……

Narrative
Narrative
Mar 8, 2019 11:43 AM

Very informative article. Thank you very much!

The bias in favour of US/NATA, is it because of heavily heavily on the biggest news agencies .. or .. they rely on the biggest news agencies because that is the agenda that must be followed??

Narrative
Narrative
Mar 8, 2019 1:00 PM
Reply to  Narrative

should be:

The bias in favour of US/NATO, is it because of heavily relying on the biggest news agencies .. or .. they rely on the biggest news agencies because that is the agenda that must be followed??

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Mar 8, 2019 11:24 AM

One of the most disturbing features of the mass and ongoing indoctrination programme is that the powers that be, or quite a significant number of them, actually believe in their own bullshit. Believing in your own bullshit nearly always had baleful consequences (e.g., the Nazis and their thousand-year Reich). Unfortunately, we increasingly live in a world of make-believe, Alice-in-Wonderland, virtual reality. In this world certain things that are happening – say, the IDF killing Palestinian kids – either didn’t or doesn’t happen or in any event was of no import. Like squashing a bug really
.
There is also, for example, the widespread belief that in the event of a nuclear war America will not suffer any collateral damage or blow-back because its missile defence shield guarantees its safety. Here is how William J Perry, US Secretary of Defence 1994-97 thought of that piece of nonsense: ‘’ … nuclear weapons unleashed in a large-scale attack, bring a sure destruction, one so massive as to rule out any successful defence. Defence in conflict, a traditional mode of thinking, is here no longer plausible. In a nuclear war, the long-standing ‘’norm’’ of reliance in defence has become a self-deception, a most human and understandable one and one rooted into the aversion of the new reality.’’ (My Journey at the Nuclear Brink).

The populations of the Anglo-Zionist bloc are being reduced to credulous infants being force fed a version of Orwell’s daily two-minutes-hate against the evil empire.

This is going to end very badly in a civilizational catastrophe. There is nothing new about establishment propaganda, to be sure the dominant ideas are those of the dominant. As Marx pointed out:

‘’The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, that is, the class which is the ruling material force in society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time as the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.’’ (The German Ideology).

The ruling class as such were always the big bourgeoisie. But in order to buttress is social position it needed the support of the petit-bourgeois stratum: journalists, politicians, middle-rank business executives, most of the intelligentsia and corporate and state bureaucracies. In our own age it would be true to say that this group has gone over en masse to the ruling bourgeoisie. The term Trahison De Clerc (Treason of the Intellectuals) coined by Julien Benda was an apt description of this vassalized class formation. They are the ‘outer-party’ the purveyors of orthodoxy and the party-line, sniffers out of any contrary opinions and suppressors of facts and free speech. This group of intellectual Berserkers present a characteristic fundamentally different from rational debates based on factual evidence. They seek not only to be in the right but also to demolish the basis of their opponents social and political existence. BY ALL MEANS POSSIBLE.

Neo-conservatism and its apologists are little more than a death-cult, with alarming similarities to Whabbism. Theirs is a war against humanity and a war against nature. If it’s any consolation, I have news for them – Nature is going to win.

axisofoil
axisofoil
Mar 8, 2019 8:17 AM
axisofoil
axisofoil
Mar 8, 2019 8:05 AM

Long, but worth watching
https://youtu.be/nao53PcFLus

Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
Mar 8, 2019 7:19 AM

This is the reason I value the MSM at zero nowadays. I literally do not trust any of the major outlets at all.

I consider the BBC utterly worthless and as for the print media in the UK, the less said, the better.

George Cornell
George Cornell
Mar 8, 2019 4:11 PM
Reply to  Rhys Jaggar

Utterly worthless? Not that good! By systematically warping the news they warrant a negative value -and constitute a threat to society and individual freedom.
Great article, hugely helpful.

0use4msm
0use4msm
Mar 8, 2019 5:59 AM

Amazing nuts ‘n’ bolts breakdown. Probably the most important article I’ve read on this site so far. My takeaway is that the Pentagon has 2.5 times as many PR specialists as the three main news agencies have in combined staff (the latter including accountants and whatnot).

mark
mark
Mar 8, 2019 3:09 AM

All the above is quite true but the situation is immeasurably worse than suggested.
The output of the MSM is at best completely worthless as a source of information.
Its only real function is the dissemination of state controlled and Deep State propaganda.
Its contribution is entirely negative and harmful.
Any other source of information, whether it be alternate media, personal knowledge, personal intuition, hunches and guesswork, Ouija boards, crystal balls, or soothsayers, is eminently more reliable. The Fake News MSM should be avoided entirely.

US media is controlled by 6 conglomerates, all of them Zionist owned and controlled. Even without this element, which is mirrored in all western countries, and which also applies to news agencies, these organisations reflect the needs and the wishes of powerful vested corporate interests.

Leading media operators are directly state controlled and state funded, like the BBC, Deutsche Welle, France 24, PBS, Voice of America, and many more. They are basically just state propaganda mouthpieces. The BBC receives £3,700 million of state funding a year, and millions more from the EU. The previous Director General, Thompson, held private meetings with Netanyahu where he gave him a commitment that no criticism of Israel would ever appear on the BBC.

A great deal of the MSM goes far beyond general bias, distortion, and censorship by omission. It has long since abandoned any pretence of balance, objectivity, integrity and ethical standards. A great deal of its output is deliberately false and mendacious. Much of the content is supplied direct by intelligence organisations to corrupt and compromised journalists, like the late Ulfkotte at FAZ in Germany, who are on their payroll. Journalists know on what side their bread is buttered and what has to be left unsaid if they wish to remain employed.

Western Media are now caught out lying so frequently that it barely registers any longer. The examples are legion. Footage of the bodies of Middle Eastern civilians was presented as “Syrian civilians murdered by the evil dictator Assad.” It was in fact stock footage of Iraqi civilians killed in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. This sort of thing is now a daily occurrence. Pro government rallies are screened as anti government demonstrations.

Antonym
Antonym
Mar 8, 2019 4:21 AM
Reply to  mark

Even mark (and melosevic) is Zionist controlled: his daily (hourly?) antisemitism spouting here (and elsewhere?) is providing ample ammunition into the hands of those claiming Corbyn suffers from the same phobia.
Who profits?

Willem
Willem
Mar 8, 2019 6:41 AM
Reply to  Antonym

Dutch Journalists Luyendijk was pretty sincere in his 2009 book about his reporting from The Middle East: I.e. having no idea about what he was reporting about, he just followed the press release of an agency in his own words. He is also pretty sincere about his friend who after reading Luyendijk’s book

‘had relalized that, for decades, what he’d been watching and listening to on the news was pure theatre.’

What he is not sincere about is that he, 10 years later still doesn’t know what the world is about (you should read his Twitter account to get a feeling how close to the ‘shared decision of truth’ this journalist is, thinks, amongst others that articles from the Guardian, for which he writes once in a while, is ‘very good’) https://mobile.twitter.com/jorisluyendijk?

Yet Luyendijk acts as an independent journalist who knows every dirty secret about the media when asked by the same media to tell the ‘dirty’ stories (his take: amazingly stupid decisions, and never: pre-concocted stories that deliberately get it wrong)

Makes me wonder if Luijendijk still has friends?

I would feel betrayed as a friend by Luyendijk’s performances in the media.

For Luijendijk money and fame seems more important than telling the truth, even to friends, if he still has friends.

Fair dinkum
Fair dinkum
Mar 8, 2019 6:57 AM
Reply to  Antonym

‘Who profits?’
The bootlickers, like them
Not the shitkickers, like us.

mark
mark
Mar 8, 2019 3:31 PM
Reply to  Antonym

Oy vey! The truth is “anti semitic”!! Close it down!!!

Mucho
Mucho
Mar 8, 2019 5:03 PM
Reply to  Antonym

What are your thoughts on this horrific antisemitism, Antonym?

George Cornell
George Cornell
Mar 9, 2019 11:39 AM
Reply to  Mucho

A brave man giving a brave speech.

Mucho
Mucho
Mar 9, 2019 3:05 PM
Reply to  George Cornell

I was more referreing to the IDF beating the shit out of the Orthodox Jews on the streets of Israel at the end, but brave speech indeed

Wilmers31
Wilmers31
Mar 8, 2019 2:58 AM

From a time when the guardian still felt some responsibility:

. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/feb/17/mondaymediasection.iraq

Tom Curley’s speech in Kansas upon his retirement from the AP was scathing about Iraq and Bush’s pressure on AP – vanished from the net.

I worked for Associated Press from 1966 and 1968 in Frankfurt (German desk) and know what they did.

mark
mark
Mar 8, 2019 3:14 AM
Reply to  Wilmers31

There were a small number of US journalists who expressed doubts about the wisdom of invading Iraq in 2003, including some of the calibre of Chris Hedges. They were immediately dismissed. Any journalist criticising Israel in the mildest terms will invariably suffer the same fate. That is the reality of our “free press.”

Fair dinkum
Fair dinkum
Mar 8, 2019 2:16 AM

Confirmation of the CON.
Even savage dogs don’t bite the hands that feed them.