Posted on 05/06/2013 3:37:27 PM PDT by ReformationFan
In the old Soviet Union, the oppressed subjects of regime had a phrase used to describe the news media: "There's no pravda in Izvestia and there's no izvestia in Pravda." In Russian, "Pravda," the leading Communist Party periodical, means "Truth," and "Izvestia," the principal state periodical, means "News."
The bosses of the Kremlin had no interest in their subjects knowing anything about the world or having any honest opinions expressed. Instead, the news media (also all cultural life, all educational institutions, all common means of ordinary people sharing anything together) was placed in the hands of bureaucratic flacks, well-trained in determining what constituted news and who had the legal monopoly on truth.
What happened in the Soviet media was the systematic suppression of all real news and a purging of all serious intellectual inquiry. All news made the party leaders look good, or it simply wasn't news. All facts supported the theme that the latest Five Year Plan was working marvelously, whatever the clear facts of ordinary Soviet life might say to the contrary.
Anything negative -- even items like airline crashes -- either was not mentioned or was consigned to fillers on page fifty of the news. Savvy Soviet subjects learned quickly to utterly ignore the front pages -- even the first twenty pages -- and to search and squint at the tiniest bits of news to find out what was really happening. The media, wholly controlled at every level by the dull Politburo functionaries who desired only to hold their power, perks, and coerced prestige, existed for a single purpose: prevent any real news from reaching the ordinary subject in the Soviet Union.
Isn't that the way things are in America today?
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
There’s no truth in the news and no news in the MSM.
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The psychotic scu&bags of the MSM are goosestepping their way to full-fledged status as the official
Ministry of Propaganda for the Democrat Party.
IMHO
Maybe not the best example. Without actual physical evidence (blue dress stain, for example), the media was going to keep the story at arm's length. As it was, Broaddrick and other accusers did appear on network television.
The media has been liberally biased for many decades, of course. Sometimes it was subtle, sometimes not so subtle. But in the past few years, it has truly crossed over into a new, more Soviet-style realm, where it has become part-and-parcel of the ruling class... the media has become total handmaidens of the ruling-class elite, being used as a malicious, blunt instrument against those that challenge it.
The first big clue for me was the way the media went after Joe the Plumber, for daring to ask a simple question that wound up making Obama look bad. Wasn’t it fifty news-trucks surrounding Joe’s house, with every reporter sifting through any bit of dirt on his tax-returns and marriage, in order to destroy his character and credibility? All while Obama’s sleazy Rezko dealings and Bill Ayres connections never got touched? Mind-boggling.
Secondly, the way the media tried pinning the blame on Sarah Palin of the mass-murder in Tucson within an hour of it happening. This was the most incendiary thing I’ve ever seen from the media. They kept showing the same loop of video footage, over and over... that of Gabby Giffords, some blood splattered on the pavement, the smiling photo of the young girl who was killed, and then Sarah Palin walking up to a podium at a tea party event. This juxtaposition of imagery, making a connection where there wasn’t one, was right out of the propaganda manual of silent Soviet filmmakers, as well as akin to the Nazi’s films in which footage of Jewish storefronts were juxtaposed with shots of rats scurrying around cans of garbage. Evil, evil stuff... the whole way the media behaved.
Never thought I’d see this sort of thing in America. But then again, America doesn’t seem like America anymore. Not anymore.
If not for the Internet, it’d be that way now here too.
The MSM has gone beyond the Soviet style media had has become much more like Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. Look at the MSM coverage of Gosnell murder trial...like it never happened. The Benghazi terrorist attack has been edited with any grain of truth being sent down the memory hole. If it were not for Fox News and Internet sources these events would have been totally buried.
Benghazi is an EXCELLENT example of how the media operates. They know FULL WELL that it can only end with the president looking bad...so they totally ignore it.
I also remember, as I’ve mentioned here before, that 3000 people (that’s three THOUSAND people) were arrested in one month in Wichita, Kansas. They were protesting a particularly brutal abortion ‘doctor’ and had shut down the city for an entire summer (1992). Did the media report? Actually they did, just like Pravda, they gave 2 paragraphs on Page A21 in the LA Times (where I lived back then). 100 people per day arrested, but nothing more than 2 paragraphs once in a while. The BIGGEST civil protests since Vietnam, but 2 paragraphs of an AP release.
That was all it took to convince me just who the media are. Unfortunately, the other 99.9% of the country, including the vast majority of FReepers still think that I’m nuts.
Benghazi is an EXCELLENT example of how the media operates. They know FULL WELL that it can only end with the president looking bad...so they totally ignore it.
I also remember, as I’ve mentioned here before, that 3000 people (that’s three THOUSAND people) were arrested in one month in Wichita, Kansas. They were protesting a particularly brutal abortion ‘doctor’ and had shut down the city for an entire summer (1992). Did the media report? Actually they did, just like Pravda, they gave 2 paragraphs on Page A21 in the LA Times (where I lived back then). 100 people per day arrested, but nothing more than 2 paragraphs once in a while. The BIGGEST civil protests since Vietnam, but 2 paragraphs of an AP release.
That was all it took to convince me just who the media are. Unfortunately, the other 99.9% of the country, including the vast majority of FReepers still think that I’m nuts.
I dunno, of late, I’ve been reading both Pravda and Izvestia, and their articles are complete and actually report stuff.
BTW, their opinion pieces seem to be spot on too. Yes, there still is a huge load of anti American sentiment, but sometimes you need to look at the criticism, swallow hard, try to understand if it is true or not.
Knee jerk rejection is NOT in the best interest. Many in countries of the old Eastern block are really angry we have taken a turn towards fascist collectivism.
IMHO, many Russians looked to the USA for guidance for years. And now, when they are at a point achieving their freedom, the US goes soviet.
I really feel sorry for those who immigrants who sacrificed everything to get here to our shores for freedom, only to be thrown back into the hell they thought they escaped.
Don’t make the mistake of equating today’s Pravda.com with its Soviet-era ancestor. It’s a different creature altogether, ever since the Communists regrouped on our side of the Atlantic.
“...ever since the Communists regrouped on our side of the Atlantic.”
Amen.
(With the epicenter being in Washington, D.C.)
IMHO
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