They could have just as easily written "Israel Kills Hundreds of Palestinians in Central Gaza Attack; 4 Hostages Rescued" and it would have been just as true, but then public attention would have been drawn in the opposite direction.
The New York Times never, ever draws public attention in that direction; the slanting only ever goes one way.
Rather than making up whole-cloth lies and losing all credibility in the mainstream public, the mass media will generally rely on distortions like the above which skew public perception without actually technically lying.
It's just that that information is deemphasized and quickly shuffled out of public attention by the propagandists who run those outlets, allowing them to technically tell the truth while still manipulating the overarching narrative about what's going on in the world.
The propagandists who edit outlets like The New York Times are able to skew public perception in favor of the empire because they understand that human experience is dominated by the movements of attention, so if they can manipulate those movements of attention, they can manipulate how people perceive the world.
One might experience a meadow with a pleasant breeze, a chirping bird in a tree, a grasshopper zipping across their path, and a sky of phenomenal beauty, while the other might experience the meadow as a distant and barely-noticed backdrop to their mental concerns for their future, their grievances about the past, their imaginary arguments with a family member, and a catchy song they've got stuck in their head. After someone dies people often talk about the things they did in life - their accomplishments, their legacy, how many children they raised, what they did for work - but really the kind of life someone lived has less to do with the things they did than the way their attention moved.
Our perception of the world is dominated by the movements of our attention, which means that our perception of the world can be changed by manipulating those movements.
No comments:
Post a Comment