Campaigns control the message

The White House operates an extremely busy press office with a highly developed system for promoting material to enhance the president’s prominence. Any positive event within the executive — right down to lower-level agencies that otherwise don’t get much notice — is emphasized in press releases, conference calls, photo-ops and other created means.

Murdoch dominance created climate for press abuses, says Rusbridger

Guardian editor urges Leveson inquiry to consider 'dangers to democracy' of media power being concentrated in too few hands

The Powerful Control Media Coverage, Not Journalists - Business - The Atlantic Wire

The Powerful Control Media Coverage, Not Journalists - Business - The Atlantic Wire

Rupert Murdoch quits as News International director

'Move fuels rumours of sell-off of UK newspapers despite media mogul's reassurance that he is 'fully committed' as chairman'  The Guardian

The Pentagon's grip on Hollywood

Watch here...

The military entertainment complex is an old phenomenon that binds Hollywood with the US military. Known as militainment, it serves both parties well. Filmmakers get access to high tech weaponry - helicopters, jet planes and air craft carriers while the Pentagon gets free and positive publicity.

The latest offering to come from this relationship is Act of Valor and it takes the collaboration one step further. The producers get more than just equipment – they have cast active-duty military personnel in the lead roles, prompting critics to say the lines have become so blurred that it is hard to see where Hollywood ends and Pentagon propaganda begins.  (from Al-Jazeera)



Enemy Image

Enemy Image overviews the history of the portrayal of war in television news from an American perspective. The film starts with the coverage of Vietnam where reports happened with little supervision, control or interference. Following this, The Pentagon takes action to control access by journalists to battle areas in subsequent invasions, such as the Invasion of Grenada — where journalists were excluded completely — to the first Gulf War, where news packages were provided directly from the military, to the embedded churnalism of the invasion of Iraq. Shown is the progressive tightening of control by the US military on the contact journalists have with soldiers and civilians in the war zone, in order that “never again will television raise the moral and political questions that face a people during war.”

Google reports 'alarming' rise in censorship by governments

Search engine company has said there has been a troubling increase in requests to remove political content from the internet

Here!

More Media documentaries!

Watch at least the first 15 mins of 'Orwell Rolls in his Grave'.  Full of fun facts about media control etc!
thoughtmaybe    this website has loads of excellent stuff.

Lots of media documentaries here!  such as this one Operation Saddam — America’s Propaganda War

More Leveson Inquiry...

Here...

'Ownership is the key to the corruption of the media

Murdoch's grip on British politics was the product of corporate control of the press. Ending it is a democratic necessity...'  (from The Guardian)


The Sun and David Cameron - 'We're in this together'

Media Control – 20th Century

Some quotes from a book I’ve read on your behalf that relate to the A2 Media unit, power and control of the media – how the media influences the government and vice versa.

Rex Leeper, head  of the Foreign Office News Department, Feb 1935, ‘We really must find some way of guiding the BBC’s foreign comment more than we do’

Rupert Murdoch was altogether different from most of the newspaper magnates who dominated British journalism during the twentieth century.  Most of them had big political ideas they were determined to propagate, using their newspapers and the influence they had over public opinion and the political elite...Murdoch’s commercial position, by contrast, dictated the political position his editors were obliged to follow...it was always clear that his papers would support whatever line Murdoch thought would help his group’s profits.

Howlin' Mad Murdoch

After the Falklands, The Sun was Margaret Thatcher’s heavy artillery...The Daily Mail provided her with support which...addressed middle-class voters...But The Sun could bring new people to her cause in large numbers...

Thatcher's other heavy artillery!  Ha ha!  Do you see what I did there?  Brilliant!
 I'm wasted here, I really am.  Pearls among swine, darling, pearls among swine.

In the wake of the Falklands War Mrs Thatcher was unbeatable, yet Neil Kinnock (Labour Leader) represented a genuine long-term threat; and The Sun went to work on him...(later front pages included) ‘If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights’

Rupert Murdoch changed the character of every single newspaper he bought; even the News of the World.  When he met senior staff he told them ‘I didn’t come all this way not to interfere’.  One of the paper’s editors is quoted...as saying ‘He would come into the office and literally rewrite leaders which were not supporting the hard Thatcherite line’...’Murdoch, the paper spread out before him, would jab his finger at some article...and snarl ‘What do you want to print rubbish like that for?’ or, pointing to the byline of a correspondent, assert that ‘That man’s a Commie’

Kelvin MacKenzie, (Editor of The Sun in 1980’s), describes the typical Sun reader ‘He’s the bloke you see in the pub, a right old fascist, wants to send the wogs back, buy his poxy council house, he’s afraid of the unions, afraid of the Russians, hates the queers  and the weirdos and the drug dealers’.

Bucket of S***

When John Major (Prime Minister after Margaret Thatcher) called MacKenzie to ask about the Sun’s coverage of him, MacKenzie replied ‘Well, John, let me put it this way. I’ve got a large bucket of shit lying on my desk and tomorrow morning I’m going to pour it all over your head’

Alistair Campbell...wrote a book about his time in Downing Street, ‘The Spin Doctor’s Diary’...’Nobody ever said ‘We have to do this because Murdoch supports it’. But his views were always heard.  And they were heard ahead of many Cabinet ministers’.



Moody



Peter Mandelson, (spin doctor for Tony Blair) ‘Of course we want to use the media, but the media will be our tools, our servants; we are no longer content to let them be our persecutors’.

Sinister

All (except my notes in brackets) from John Simpson ‘Unreliable Sources – How the 20^th Century was reported’

The Battle of Orgreave - BBC doctored footage?

An example from history of the media, in this case the BBC, allegedly doctoring footage to back the government of the time.  Below, a few links for background info and an italicised quote from one to give you a brief intro...

1  2  3


In 1984, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) went on strike. On 18 June, thousands of miners bravely defended themselves from police batons, snatch squads and cavalry charges in a field outside Orgreave coking plant near Rotherham in Yorkshire. Scandalously, the BBC – acting as part of the state’s propaganda machine – reversed the footage of the attack so that it looked as if the miners instigated the violence. The BBC was forced to issue an apology for this ‘mistake’ – but only in 1991.


China does it too, of course...

China TV 'substitutes Top Gun for air force footage'

Ownership and control of the Media - mind map

Net Delusion - CIA edits Wikipedia

This happened a few years ago but it's still interesting.

Wikipedia 'shows CIA page edits'    Daily Telegraph  The Guardian

Media Effects - Psywar - Chomsky

A loose assortment of links for you, starting with some straightforward stuff about media effects:

1   2

Here's an essay by Mr Chomsky on  What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream

The real mass media are basically trying to divert people. Let them do something else, but don’t bother us (us being the people who run the show). Let them get interested in professional sports, for example. Let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and their problems or something like that. Anything, as long as it isn’t serious. Of course, the serious stuff is for the big guys. "We" take care of that.


And a documentary called PSYWAR which may or may not be made by a conspiracy theorist/911 truther.  Here are a couple of reviews discussing it 1   2

Is the Internet really good for democracy? BOOK 'The Net Delusion' by Evgeny Morozov

We've been looking at media control and power in A2 lessons and 'The Net Delusion' is a good example of the argument that the new media forms are not going to be as much as a force for freedom as we might hope.  The author argues that the internet is not as close to samizdat as we might have been led to believe.

“Where new media and the Internet truly excel is in suppressing boredom.  Previously, boredom was one of the few truly effective ways to politicize the population denied release values for channeling their discontent, but this is no longer the case.” (p. 80)  He continues on: “Those of us rooting for the further spread of democracy around the globe must stop dreaming and face reality: The Internet has provided so many cheap and easily available entertainment fixes to those living under authoritarianism that is has become considerably harder to get people to care about politics at all.” (p. 81)




Check out the links for reviews and discussion, and there's a video of the author discussing 'How the net aids dictatorships' as well. 

Book website     Excerpts from the book   Review in The Guardian   Review from Behind The Spin

More detailed review and discussion here, with more links included at end

VIDEO The Author talks

Is digital activism an effective medium for change? Malcolm Gladwell 2010


AND as an added bonus, taken from the list in the post below this one, here's ANOTHER TED TALK that seems to be taking the OPPOSING VIEW!  How cool is that?!  (answer: very).

How cellphones, twitter, facebook can make history   a TED Talk by Clay Shirky that demonstrates how emerging social tools “help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors.”

Media Control and Ownership

Media ownership and 'Thought Control' in UK...watch here

Milliband calls for review of media ownership...watch here

Edinburgh TV Festival: James Murdoch attacks the BBC in MacTaggart lecture ...watch here

BBC Analysis: Murdoch and media ownership in UK...read here

Online Book - 'Getting the message - News, Truth and Power'

Read here

Media - Films and Documentaries to watch

Starsuckers

Weapons of mass deception

Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the Media

Audio - Noam Chomsky - Propaganda & Control of the Public Mind


2Pac Sociology Lesson


Press ownership and control...

Independent Media In A Time Of War

Part 1 of 3



These three are particulary concerned with political manipulation by the media, clips are from youtube but why not try and watch the whole film, it's unlikely to kill you.

Wag The Dog

Bob Roberts

Primary Colors


Also, The Corporation is worth watching, as is No Logo and The Century of the Self - Episode 4 - Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering

Media

Short video about the changes in Media over the last few decades

The changing place of media in everyday life

Cliff Notes on Role and Influence of Media, mainly A2 but also useful for AS

The Role and Influence of Mass Media

Short pdf on Media Ownership and Control for A2:

Media Ownership and Control

Marxist Media Theory, A2:

Marxist Media Theory

Media revision AS (for AQA but still useful info and could be useful revision for A2 as well)

Media Revision



Article on how US Military influences film making, A2

David Sirota 1

Another Sirota article about how the things we watch affect us, A2

David Sirota 2

Related to the above, pdf on Video Games and The Military Entertainment Complex, A2

Video Games