Controlling the narrative
Journalism at one time was an honorable field in which a person’s bias did not influence what they were reporting. Reporters were trained to investigate a story and confirm the facts. They would present those facts while also providing supporting data. Those days seem to be long gone.
The stories presented today have become associated with a political or special interest position instead of an item being reported, providing facts and then letting the reader or listener decide where they stand on the issue. Today, the major news media outlets focus their efforts on telling you what to think instead of allowing you to think for yourself.
Today’s major news media outlets spend more time trying to influence you to agree with their position based on emotionally motivated reasons than factual ones.
How did today’s news media outlets get to this point? (CLICK ON THE VIDEO TO LEARN MORE) It didn’t 
happen over night. An interview with an investigative journalist who spent 30 years at CBS as well as CNN (when it was a true news organization) reveals that political interest as well as special interest groups began to take over the news rooms a couple of decades ago. It then began to enter into the news rooms such as CBS and CNN. They became effective at taking over a large segment of the media and news industry and began to control what was being reported. They utilized social media, PR firms, bullying and twitter to stop the stories and contraversionalize them to include the reporter and stop these important factual stories. These tactics influenced the news managers to change the stories or slant them in a way that it would not be factual or just not air them at all. Basically the factual aspects of these stories would be censored in one way or another.
This is especially evident today as social media outlets censor views and information that does not align with their narratives or views. Its better known as “Cancel Culture“.
5 time Emmy Award winning investigative Journalist Sharyl Attkinson shared her experience with her investigation in the early 2000s that dealt with the connection between vaccine’s and autism. During that period there was a huge unexplained increase in autism and private government documents had connected the autism with vaccines in some cases. This was a very important issue even if it effected on a small amount of the population. She goes on to reveal how that story was successfully changed through the partnerships of pharmaceutical companies with political interest and corporate interest. She goes on to state that the story would even be reported today even though the problem has gotten worse. Behind the scenes there were secret meetings between CBS producers and the pharmaceutical companies, PR firms and Law Firms etc. that successfully slanted the stories and then finally got them halted.
Today many of the these types of groups come under so many different names like Media Matters for America or The Citizens of Ethics and Responsibility in Washington etc. These groups were investigated and connected to a single person or entity. These were basically the same groups putting out the same propaganda and narratives. In essence, the same press releases would be put out on to some outrage or story and repeated over and over so that people can begin to think that its actually a true story. Next thing you know, these narratives have manipulated the news cycle. The following quote is credited to Joseph Goebbels who was Hitler’s Nazi propaganda chief, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” (CLICK ON THE VIDEO TO SEE AN EXCERPT OF THE MOVIE, “MONOPOLY: WHO OWNS THE WORLD” TO LEARN HOW NARRATIVES ARE REPEATED AND WHERE THEY ORIGINATE)
A more recent example of a false narrative would be that of the Covid mRNA vaccines in which they were touted to be safe and effect. Now we are learning that numerous adverse side-effects are not only being reported but were known and kept from the public’s view by the pharmaceutical companies in their initial studies. Additionally, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database lists the various adverse reactions but keep in mind this is only about 1% of actual adverse events from the vaccines. A medical group of doctors called “Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency” filed a Freedom of Information Act request against the FDA to release all medical documents related to the authorization of the Pfizer vaccine. Please note that with past vaccines it has taken on average 10-15 years before it obtains an FDA authorization but with regards to the Covid vaccine, it took only 108 days. Back in November 2021, the FDA requested to a federal judge to allow 55 years to fully release all vaccine data they held concerning the approval of the Pfizer vaccine. In early January 2022, a federal judge ruled against this request and ordered that all safety related data to be released within 8 months. With the files that have been released upon the date of this blog numerous side effects and issues have been noted in these documents. After digging through the data it was revealed that there were 158K adverse events, 1.2K deaths and 42K case reports in the first 3 months!. Keep in mind that the narrative was safe and effective but the facts reveal otherwise.
A Pew research study reveals that more people distrust the news media and their made up stories.
Even today, we have various websites that are considered as “Fact Checkers” like Politifact, Snopes, Factcheck.org. These are the so called resources that many go to in an attempt to verify the truth on certain issues or stories. What we’ve found is that the same PR firms and special interest groups actually own these fact checking sources and in most cases are biased not towards the truth but only towards the narrative they are attempting to spread. Question: Why are we continuing to listen and believe the narratives from sources we already say that we don’t trust??
Here are few things you can do to minimize believing false narratives/news:
- Check the Source – View the web address for suspect URLs. Are there spelling errors.
- Develop a critical thinking mindset – Ask, why is the story written? Is it to persuade me of a certain viewpoint? most false narratives are written to create “shock value” to illicit a strong reaction such as fear or anger. We also know today that our higher education establishments do not teach critical thinking. They have become indoctrination establishments that tout a one-sided view point.
- Examine the Evidence – Many people share things that they’ve heard from the various news outlets and in actuality are really helping to spread the false narratives by not checking the facts.
Economist Dr. Thomas Sowell asks the question, why do people believe many of these false narratives especially when no factual data is provided to support much of their claims?
I believe that is the single most important question we ALL need to ask ourselves when reviewing information from the media.