Status Updates From Inventing Reality: The Poli...

the New Left "underground" newspapers that sprang up during the late 60s were harassed and attacked by police, FBI, & CIA. News offices were broken into, ransacked, and even bombed; files & typewriters were stolen; telephones were tapped…

Newsstands were persuaded not to handle underground papers; landlords suddenly doubled the rent; & the IRS sought lists of contributors of radical publications for tax violations

“Even if the public is not persuaded by the message, it is "softened up" somewhat, making the next mobilization of bias much easier.

The story is never fully refuted in the press. A debunking report that might surface as the issue dies down never eradicates the effects of the original sensationalist headlines.

Factual refutations don’t cancel out the residual feelings of alien threat and sinister menace.”

“Most of the press is energetically receptive [to state-sponsored conspiracy narratives]. And it is the press that creates opinion visibility in the public arena, if not always opinion conviction among the public itself.

This opinion visibility, the visible images and audible opinions circulating in the media and among political leaders, lay the groundwork for specific domestic and foreign policies.”

“The Houston Post pleaded, "Let Hitler try his hand." CBS interviewed Frederick Birchall, who said the Nazis were not intending "any slaughter of their enemies or racial oppression in any vital degree."

With that keen eye for the irrelevant that is the hallmark of American journalism, he observed that Hitler was a vegetarian & a nonsmoker, attributes that were supposedly indicative of a benign nature."

“The press cannot completely ignore the realities that affect the daily lives of millions of people and hope to retain the public's trust. A press that does nothing more than propagate a narrow, right-wing ideology, ignoring economic problems to give only sunny reports on the health of the economy and sing hosannahs to the blessings of private enterprise…”

“hosannahs to the blessings of P.E” goes crazy