The Open Boat

Media

"We can no longer trust our cultural guidance in any comprehensive manner."

Reverend Fr. Thomas Berry, C.P.

People living in the United States today are inescapably barraged on every front by messages concocted by corporate interests. Chemical and pharmaceutical concerns particularly make use of all media outlets because they need to maintain illusions in the face of what is becoming overwhelming evidence of toxicity and inefficiacy - that's a big word meaning 'they don't really work'.

[Read here] a brief expose on the drug industry and news media by Hans Ruesch. Ruesch, a best-selling author - whose credits included two popular movies based on his books - had his work purposely buried from the public eye when he began to write about the drug industry.
[Ruesch on the web]

At the same time communication between neighbors and individuals is hampered by contrived fear messages. People can no longer learn any new information from each other when they only credit news fed to them by corporations via various outlets. Essentially, people have become dependant on corporations for their view of reality --- in every area of their lives. We need only look at one or two commercials on television to understand what a very bad idea this is.

The major newspapers, keystone of democractic government, have all been acquired by large money interests, and are now in the hands of only six business entities, with ties to chemical / pharmaceutical concerns; this in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

Movies and television, where people turn for relaxation and entertainment, have been controlled by large business interests from their inception. Much of what passes for 'pure art' is used purposely to 'teach' the public information and attitudes that will be helpful to corporate agendas. (see Adorno)

Democracy is based on the idea that if all ideas are given free play in the public mind, the best approximation of the truth will rise to the top. Democracy places its faith in the individual; believing that given all the information that is available, without bias and prejudice, people choose what is best for themselves and others. So people are dependant on their press and other media in a key way to maintain their democracy and make appropriate decisions. Conglomerate ownership of the media has crippled its important irreplaceable function in our society.

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. "

Professor Noam Chomsky, MIT
[Ayn Rand's 'The Package Deal']

Corporate control of media outlets has enabled powerful financial interests to deliver large amounts of propaganda to the public under the guise of useful information. Attempting to educate a naive public, concerned citizens have organized media watch groups. One item on their agenda calls for media literacy courses in high school and college to enable young people to develop some natural resistance to propaganda and retain critical independant thinking abilities. Read here, the seven basic techniques beginning students will be taught to recognize. [The Propaganda Primer]

Men...there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness;...till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly.

George Eliot
Middlemarch

Corporate interests have used every media venu possible to deliver propaganda to the public on chemical sensitivity. The most blatant and destructive use of propaganda against the chemically sensitive has been the technique of "Name Calling". The chemically sensitive are called "psychologically ill" by chemical / pharmaceutical industry "experts" and the public is susceptible to this label.

People, dependant on the conventional medical industry for the integrity of their body and mind, optimistically and falsely believe that the medical establishment is staffed by people too thorough, caring, and responsible to ever indulge in negligent "Name Calling" or to gullibly accept it from their peers.

Click button below for specific examples of destructive propaganda about chemical sensitivity. Newspaper Television Movies Internet

Propaganda

Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate thinking, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the author. What really separates propaganda from most normal communication is the means by which the message attempts to shape opinion or behavior, which is often subtle and insidious.

Propaganda often begins by deliberately evoking a strong emotion in people, by presenting a concept or object universally objectionable [or universally attractive], then suggesting an illogical or non-intuitive relationship between this object and the object of propaganda.

Effective propaganda cloaks its intended purpose so the public believes they came to the resulting idea independently. This makes television programs and movies an excellent vehicle for propaganda - since they are considered 'pure art' by the public. Inside documents show that the chemical / pharmaceutical industry has been aware of this potential for abuse and made use of it for a long time.

"It was, of course, the astounding success of propaganda during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind."

Edward Bernays
Propaganda

Public Relations Firms

Explains James Sandrolini in 'Propaganda: The Art of War':

"Edward Bernays, the modern master of propaganda and a PR genius, was the Viennese-born nephew of Sigmund Freud. After the war, propaganda had developed a sinister reputation, so Bernays coined the term Public Relations as a positive alternative.

Bernays took propaganda seriously for his career work: he combined individual and social psychology, public opinion studies, political persuasion and advertising to construct "necessary illusions" which filtered out to the masses as "reality".

Bernays proudly referred to this all-important social process as the "engineering of consent". All of this had little, if anything, to do with real democracy. The objective for Bernays was to provide government and media outlets with powerful tools for social persuasion and control. As a matter of fact, so impressed was he with Bernays' early works Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928) that Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels relied heavily upon them... in the 1930s."

Sixty percent of news stories, including those in The Washington Post and The New York Times, are generated by Public Relations firms. In None But All of Us, Bill Moyers gives a suprising example of how these stories can be produced to meet the agendas of the clients who pay for them regardless of whether they are, a) true; or b) in the public interest. James Sandrolini of Chicago Media Watch writes, "With no obligation to the public, these PR guns for hire are free to go about their duty, often creating information out of nothing, mixing fact with fiction."

"A compilation by the magazine Advertising Age showed that as far back as 1948 the larger companies in America spent over one trillion dollars for advertising. "Of this staggering sum the interlocking Rockefeller-Morgan interests (gone over entirely to Rockefeller after Morgan' s death) controlled about 80 percent, and utilized it to manipulate public information on health and drug matters - then and even more recklessly now."

Hans Ruesch
The Drug Story, "