Television, Advertisement, and the World on Terrorism

TELEVISION , advertising and TERRORISM

2007

History of written by the victors ' This was said by the late Winston Churchill , who also said There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world , and the worst of it is that half of them are true

Today , the victors are the large multi-national corporate interests many of which have the net worth of small countries , who currently have a stranglehold on American democracy and threaten democracy and freedom throughout the world . Their version of history ' is being told through what passes for

media today : the television , radio and news outlets , all own by five major corporations , which no longer offer anything resembling news ' but rather infotainment ' on the travails of Britney Spears and the ongoing soap opera of Brad , Angelina and Jennifer , sensational stories of young white women disappearing in far off places and dead people whose bodies are kept functioning by machines , and - most nefariously - lick-spittle propaganda for the current corporatist administration that so hates its own citizens that it has sold off its entire infrastructure to foreign investors and sent the poorest of its citizens to fight and die an illegal war and occupation for the benefit of these same corporate interests who have profited enormously from the bloodshed

One lesson that the current neo-conservative fascists have learned well is that fear maintains control over the masses . The corporate whoremasters to whom they are beholden also realize that fear sells Consider the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School . Thirty-three young people died that day in what was a needless tragedy . On the other hand hundreds of people in Kosovo also died that same day in what was the heaviest bombing campaign of the U .S . Balkan intervention (Moore , 02 While the Columbine High School shooting spree was indeed a tragedy , it was a localized one that - in normal times - would have been of more interest to those directly involved . On the other hand , the bombing of a civilian population by one 's own government is of great import to the entire nation and the world , with huge implications . The problem is Kosovo is a remote place that most Americans have never heard of (it 's actually the Serbian analogue to Gettysburg . Columbine on the other hand is closer to home - and thanks to a media technique popularly known as spin ' it 's only a small matter to convince Americans that the same thing could easily happen to them . At the same time , it completely takes attention away from government activities that We The People might not approve of

Fear as an advertising technique is nothing new . In fact , few people today fail to realize that the use of deodorants and diet foods ' did not predate the rise of consumer culture during the 1920 's . A classic ad for a low-fat food was titled CONDEMNING SHADOWS ' and featured the silhouette of an overweight woman with double chins . And how many ads over the years include the phrase DON 'T LET...