[Mb-civic] FW: GOVERNMENT MAKES (UP) THE NEWS

[Michael Butler]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Peter Fleming" <peterfleming at earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2005 14:58:51 -0800
To: "'Peterg'" <peterfleming at earthlink.net>

Here is a revealing, short column by Jon Rappoport
  showing how much of the "news" is constructed.
And read about how to identify a new term, VNR
 ....... (Video New Release).



GOVERNMENT MAKES (UP) THE NEWS

JANUARY 8, 2004. We did it but we stopped it. It was a mistake. It won't
happen again. 

Typical lies when caught lying and cheating.

Government press people are spouting some of this these days.

Along with the Armstrong Williams scandal, it's oozing out that agencies
of the US gov have been making, through hired PR firms, VNRs and
shipping them out to TV stations for broadcast. Actually, there's
nothing to ship these days. A station can just grab footage off a
satellite. 

A VNR (Video News Release) is a brief piece of propaganda produced to
look just like a news segment. It cuts away to quick scenes of people
doing stuff, it has a voice-over or live "reporter" who is actually a
shill, and it covertly promotes a point of view.

Genetically-modified food is safe.

Medical researchers are making brilliant headway in the treatment of
cancer. 

Airlines are taking excellent safety measures against terrorism.

Whatever. 

Corporations often do VNRs.

The station that plays them can cut them up and use their own anchors,
or they can just play them whole, as if they are news.

Government, it's revealed, has been getting into the act using taxpayer
$$. For example, Howard Kurtz, in a recent Washington Post column, cited
a VNR sent out by the CDC on the flu vaccine. Oh yeah.

When confronted with this fact, a gov spokesman said the VNR was not
intended to be swallowed whole by TV stations and then spit out as news.
It was just footage.

Sure. That's why a VNR is so carefully crafted to LOOK like a news
segment. 

A clue to look for when trying to ID a VNR masquerading as news: check
out the cutaways. If you see a local station or even a network
broadcasting snips of researchers working in three different labs, and
then pills moving down an assembly line, and then a PhD peering into a
microscope at a high-security bio-lab...you may be looking at standard
file footage, but you may be looking at a VNR. A news outlet often does
not have the time or money to actually send vid crews to these places to
film little snips. 

VNRs are a natural outgrowth of the fact that "the real news" is often
home-grown VNR, put together by "real news people" to look like genuine
information. As opposed to lies and obfuscation.

I have cited, over the years, hundreds of examples of this on this site.
Off the top of my head, I'll give you one I haven't mentioned: miles and
miles and months and months of wall-to-wall coverage of the Scott
Peterson murder case by Court TV. Long before the verdict had been
reached, anchors and pundits were drooling about his guilt, as if they
hoped to be allowed to administer the lethal injection. Court TV is
often Prosecution TV.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com







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