Fucking with Your Brain

The ongoing failure of the reality reframing industry

Published: 2024-11-04

---

Abusive Relationships

In Caitlin Johnstone's insightful articles on power relationships she has provided the best characterization I have found between Western legacy media (the "MSM") and its audience. The relationship bears striking similarity to that of an abusive relationship. The abusive MSM denies reality. It reframes the obvious into skewed, unhelpful perspectives. It amplifies some emotional aspects of some stories while omitting or minimizing others. It issues not so much propaganda as emotionally manipulative, reality reframing.

In October, 2024, the renowned US opinion surveyor, Gallup, issued the results for a re-run of a survey it had run three years previously. In October 2021 it found that 64% of polled US residents did not have even a "slight" degree of trust in its media. By 2024 that number had risen to 69%.

A US government funded media outlet, Voice of America (VoA), had the bravery to actually publish an article on the topic. Within it, all of the hallmarks of the state of US legacy media are re-issued. But first, note to yourself the most strikingly obvious implication of 69% of those polled having not even a "slight" degree of trust in US legacy media.

VoA framed the topic with their headline: "Fewer Americans trust the news; the question is why"

They begin their misframing with 'trust the news'. No, VoA. The mistrust is in the organisations which are issuing publications which they present as news. The rest of VoA’s title hints that they are going to explore the root causes of this seemingly terrible situation.

They open their article with this two sentence paragraph:

Polls show that Americans’ trust in news reporting is at an all-time low. And while the decline has many causes, it reflects both the changing media landscape and the values of media consumers.

The misframing continues with 'news reporting' instead of 'news media'. With this, VoA is taking itself out of the picture, along with all of the rest of the 'news' media. They continue by preparing the reader for an inconclusive analysis with 'many causes'. They conclude by pointing the finger at us, the 'media consumers'.

Returning to Caitlin's characterization, this reeks of victim blaming. It takes the actors, the publishers, out of the frame. They do include 'changing media landscape'. The purpose of this is to include 'social media' and independent media in the same bucket as the distrusted legacy media.

How are they going to convince people to just throw up their hands and continue consuming media which lies to them? Well, how about a "lesser of two evils" approach?

dissatisfaction with [...] coverage of conflicts such as the Iraq War or Israel's invasion of Gaza has also reduced trust in traditional news sources [...] driving [consumers] toward unreliable alternative sources.

Anything which is not legacy media is "unreliable".

But, VoA's Alex Gendler is not done. The article has one sub-headline which introduces the concluding section.

Do Americans want independent journalism?

Gendler includes this piece of wishful thinking:

A recent study by the Media Insight Project [to which no link is provided] found that common journalistic values such as [...] holding power to account or increasing public transparency do not enjoy majority support.

Yes, consumer, nobody other than you wants power held to account by an effective 4th estate! The cause of distrust in media is the 'changing landscape' and 'the values of media consumers'.

Please recall that initial understanding I asked you to log. VoA tells us that the problem is not because US legacy media have been lying to us for decades. Its us and our changing attitudes! Trust me, implores VoA’s Alex Gendler.

The War in Ukraine

One of this author's favourite 'unreliable alternative sources' is Moon of Alabama. Bernard, as with many others, observed a change in reframing issued by one of the leading opinion manipulators, the New York Times (NYT). To place this shift in context, Bernard broke the legacy media's reframing down into its three main phases by citing headlines and article content from multiple chronologically ordered articles at the NYT. The narrative shift ran:

1. Ukraine can win the war against (much larger in area and population and more capable in military technology and capacity) Russia

2. Its a stalemate

To now, the current:

3. Its not a stalemate anymore (and thus, unsaid, Russia is winning)

Professor Glenn Diesen of the University of Southeastern Norway identified the rotation of the opinion kaleidoscope a couple of days earlier from an article at The Economist. His analysis of the reframing provides additional detail and begins simply and clearly with "The media is changing the narrative as reality can no longer be ignored. Russia's coming victory has been obvious since at least the summer of 2023, yet this was ignored to keep the proxy war going."

We are witnessing an impressive demonstration of narrative control: For more than two years, the political-media elites have been chanting “Ukraine is winning” and denounced any dissent to their narrative as “Kremlin talking points” that aim to reduce support for the war. What was “Russian propaganda” yesterday is now suddenly the consensus of the collective media. Critical self-reflection is as absent as it was after the Russiagate reporting.

He continues by highlighting points made by informed former senior members of NATO militaries, like Col. Macgregor and Col. Jacques Baud. US wars which involve ground forces require long, expensive logistics chains. The 'enemy' needs to be defeated rapidly, which requires an initial phase of overwhelming force if the enemy consists of a state army. An example would be the 2003 illegal, US invasion of Iraq. Russia's entry into the border conflict in Ukraine does not bear this burden. Additionally, when Russia engages in a conflict which it sees as existential, it employs the whole of its state apparatus. Its strategy is not sudden overwhelming force, but a war of attrition. If its state apparatus is reasonably employed, it cannot lose against a smaller nation state like Ukraine.

Diesen quickly brings this understanding into focus:

The media deceived the public by presenting the stagnant frontlines as evidence that Russia was not winning. However, in a war of attrition, the direction of the war is measured by attrition rates – the losses on each side. Territorial control comes after the adversary has been exhausted as territorial expansion is very costly in such high-intensity warfare with powerful defensive lines. The attrition rates have throughout the war been extremely unfavourable to Ukraine, and they continuously get worse. The current collapse of the Ukrainian frontlines was very predictable as the manpower and weaponry have been exhausted.

Diesen moves to the emotional nature of the manipulation which has been run. Under the sub-title of "Narrative Control: Weaponising Empathy" he added:

Those who disagreed with the NATO’s mantra that “weapons are the way to peace” and instead suggested negotiations, were quickly dismissed as puppets of the Kremlin who did not care about Ukrainians. Support for continued fighting in a war that cannot be won has been the only acceptable expression of empathy.

No deviation from the emotional manipulation is allowed. One may either express the required narrative framing or be shunted into the only other legitimate characterization, “supporting the enemy". No middle ground of acknowledging the only possible outcome and calling for negotiations to lead to peace is allowed.

Reporting on high Ukrainian casualty rates threatened to undermine support for the war. Reporting on the failure of sanctions threatened to reduce public support for the sanctions. Reporting on the likely US destruction of Nord Stream threatened to create divisions within the military bloc. Reporting on the US and UK sabotage of the Minsk agreement and the Istanbul negotiations threatens the narrative of NATO merely attempting to “help” Ukraine. The public is offered the binary option of adhering either to the pro-Ukraine/NATO narrative or the pro-Russia narrative. Anyone challenging the narrative with inconvenient facts could thus be accused of supporting Moscow’s narrative. Reporting that Russia was winning was uncritically interpreted as taking Russia’s side.

For Western legacy media, facts cannot be facts. They must be characterized within a polarizing narrative being used to kill an entire generation of young Ukrainian men for the profit of Western arms manufacturers and to "weaken" Russia by destabilizing Russia's government, the Putin "regime".

Legacy Media are Weakening Themselves

It is legacy media which are "unreliable", at least more so than the rest of the news and opinion media ecosystem. The best media sources today exist outside of the legacy media. This newsletter uses legacy media only to document the persons or organisations involved in events with a place and time. The sources which are employed to provide useful interpretation and context come from outside of the manipulative mainstream. Common examples are Antiwar, Consortium News, Scheerpost, and interview programs like Dialogue Works and Judging Freedom on which former "officials" and independent analysts offer their perspective.

This is not accidental. Legacy media's persistence in reframing events away from reality has and continues to create a space space in which valuable, relevant analysis is offered. The question arises, why does legacy media continue its failure of manipulative, reframed narratives? The answer is simply that this is what they are paid to do. It also seems to please those who work in the apparatus. Thus, we learn that the manipulative reframing is sufficiently useful to those who pay for it to pay what they do. As any business operator knows, the NYT has no cost effective advertising.

A small window into the mindset behind this manipulative endeavour was recently written by Kit Klarenberg. He revisited a 1984 event at which strategies were developed to prevent Israel again suffering the international damage to its reputation after its 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

Differing approaches for the use of media to overcome our natural disgust at war have evolved over time. The embedding of media within the military, during the 2003 US criminal invasion of Iraq, was perhaps one of the most successful. Problems remained; the return of dead soldiers and possibly worse for the manipulators, the return of eloquent voices against war, former soldiers.

A counter to these problems was the use of proxy wars. The most extensive recent proxy war has been the fomented, ongoing, "dirty" war in Syria. To assist in selling this a new media construct was trialed by the MI-6 half of the Anglosphere’s “intelligence” apparatus. The "White Helmets" were a dominantly British funded and influenced operation which provided the images and videos of war to horrify Western populations into supporting the foreign funded and armed insurgency. So successful was this operation, for a time, that these paid insurgents, who followed the religious extremist war-criminals with whom they worked, were given an Academy Award by the US film industry. But, reality also followed them via the brave reporting of journalists, two of whom your author found inspiring: Vanessa Beeley and Eva K. Bartlett. The White Helmets construct was exposed by meticulous reporting from The Grayzone and other independent outlets.

The next proxy war was Ukraine which the US has again lost militarily. But, it would not have been possible to achieve the real victory, the extension of the war itself, without the support of the abusive legacy media. It serves its funders' purposes.

And yet, the legacy media is struggling, failing. That 64% distrust has grown. An entire industry, the mis-dis/information ecosystem has been funded to undermine alternative voices. More money is being spent to sure up the failing edifice of the narrative machine. This additional expense is evidence of the continued failure on top of the Gallup poll.

Wikileaks served as the canary in the coal mine for all of the harassment which is being targeted at independent media. Paypal and Stripe are blocking payments. Legacy media, like VoA, are issuing warnings for people to stay away from "unreliable" sources, which is hilarious. Channels are being deleted at Youtube with no warning, just a machine generated email which does not even identify the reason for the deletion. Vilification and slander are employed. Lawfare is used. Raids are made on journalists confiscating their communications electronics. Whistleblowers are incarcerated while the criminals walk free. Injustice is everywhere to be reported, especially so, because legacy Western media do not.

Walking Away

Distrust in legacy media is growing. People are making their own choices. Nobody likes being systematically lied to and manipulated.

Eventually, the abused walk away. Before long the legacy media will by lying only to themselves.

or support this work via Buy Me A Coffee or Patreon.

Sources

Media Changes Narrative as the Ukrainian Proxy War is Coming to an End, Glenn Diesen, Glenn's Substack, 2024-10-30

NY Times Announces Ukraine Narrative Change, b., Moon of Alabama, 2024-11-02

NY Times Concedes Ukraine is in Trouble, Larry C. Johnson, SONAR21, 2024-11-02

We Think This Dystopia Is Normal Like People In Abusive Relationships Think It's Normal, Caitlin Johnston, Caitlin's Newsletter, 2024-02-15

The Media Skew Public Perception By Manipulating People's Attention, Caitlin Johnston, Caitlin's Newsletter, 2024-06-09

So Much Of What The CIA Used To Do Covertly It Now Does Overtly, Caitlin Johnston, Caitlin's Newsletter, 2021-06-22

Fewer Americans trust the news; the question is why, Voice of America, 2024-10-24

Americans' Trust in Media Dips to Second Lowest on Record, Megan Brenan, Gallup, 2021-10-07

Americans' Trust in Media Remains at Trend Low, Megan Brenan, Gallup, 2024-10-17

How a Secluded 1984 Conference Forged Israel's Unprecedented Influence Over US Media, Kit Klarenberg, ScheerPost, 2024-11-01

Questions about BBC producer’s ties to UK intelligence follow ‘Mayday’ White Helmets whitewash, Kit Klarenberg, The Grayzone, 2021-04-07

Search: “White helmets” or OPCW at The Grayzone

Cognitive Infrastructure: The Plumbing of a Ministry of Truth, YesXorNo, 2022-11-02

Culture

Would I Lie To You?, Eurythmics (from their 1985 album “Be Yourself Tonight”), Eurythmics, uploaded 2009-10-24

---

Copyleft: CC0