"The News" Makes You Vulnerable to Propaganda
The news isn't what you think it is. It is more than just reporting. Its more than just a vehicle for propaganda. The news creates the conditions that make you vulnerable to manipulation.
We are so used to the idea today that the news is biased, that the vast majority of reporters are not merely left leaning, but are actively an apparatus of the regime. We might even go so far as to say that the state itself is driven and controlled by the media. We talk about lies and distortions. There are those who believe in a kind of golden period of media neutrality, or near neutrality, where reporters stove to give just the facts, relaying the events to the reader, listener or watcher in a way where their own personal biases did not influence how the story was reported. There was supposed to be a clear boundary between “news” and “opinion.” What most people don’t realize is that while bias is a problem, one that cannot be gotten rid of or worked around, the real problem with “the news” is the news itself.
To get at this, we have to bore down into “the news” as a medium irrespective of its content. Ellul wants us to think about propaganda like the ocean with all of its curre…
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