MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski just erased any lingering doubts the corporate press serves almost wholly to vomit propaganda in order to control public perception, in a rather stupefying statement during an exchange with Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough about President Trump possibly “trying to undermine the media.”
“Exactly. That is exactly what I hear,” Scarborough stated. “What Yamiche said is what I hear from all the Trump supporters that I talk to who were Trump voters and are still Trump supporters. They go, ‘Yeah you guys are going crazy. He’s doing — what are you so surprised about? He is doing exactly what he said he is going to do.’”
“Well, I think that the dangerous, you know,” Brzezinski replied, “edges here are that he is trying to undermine the media and trying to make up his own facts. And it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think. And that, that is our job.”
Pause and consider what Brzezinski actually said — whether or not the latter sentence constituted a Freudian slip.
A corporate media presstitute — whose game of career musical chairs saw her leaving mainstream, right-wing Fox News for mainstream, left-wing MSNBC — just told the American public it’s the media’s job to “control exactly what people think.”
That statement comprises the most blatant — if perhaps tacit — evidence pro-U.S. government propaganda measures passed with the 2017 NDAA have already begun.
Mass media has for decades entrenched itself surreptitiously on the side of the ruling political establishment, using the tool of feigned neutrality to manipulate the public into thinking its reports aren’t thoroughly infused with whatever the current agenda might be.
Apparently Brzezinski and her corporate press ilk finally feel the same looming threat of censorship burdening alternative and independent outlets, which have experienced as much throughout the last election cycle. What they conveniently forget, however, is Trump salivating over media control differs negligibly from calls by the same mainstream outlets during that election season not to give credence to information revealed by WikiLeaks — nor to disseminate the (accurate) reports based on those documents proffered by alternative media.
Indeed, this dissonant, hypocritical indignation over Trump’s unmistakable effort to tailor information to suit his agenda, however justified the observation is, handily demarcates a battle between the old guard of corporate media turned government mouthpiece and the new guard of an authoritarian administration testing limits of information control.
Two arms of the same arrogant censor.
But censorship of the free press has been a grave concern of independent media for months, as corporate outlets scampered to deem any reporting on multiple scandals involving the DNC and candidate Hillary Clinton ‘fake news’ — or even Russian propaganda — no matter the proven validity of the information.
That soft censorship might have suited the interests of the previous political establishment’s favored narrative — and provided a comfortable impunity for mainstream press to sanctimoniously skewer independent reporting — but the lack of foresight the oppression would eventually come full circle to apply across the board is laughable.
Perhaps MSNBC and other behemoth organizations underestimated the extreme executive powers former President Obama bequeathed to Trump — as well as Trump’s leeway in implementing more.
MSNBC’s offense at the manipulation of facts and fictions rings hollow when it and other mainstream outlets evince an established pattern of the same. That’s at least fairly close to — if not exactly — the pot calling the kettle black.
However, pointing out astonishing hypocrisy in demands for soft and hard censorship could these days be a new sport, the examples happen with such frequency. Instead, both sides — the corporate press and the political establishment, including Trump — have ramped up the measures necessary to guarantee freedom of the press will decline in coming years without hypervigilance.
And hypervigilance is an absolute necessity, now that there is no room to deny the sordid and unseemly marriage of censorship and propaganda — facilitating control of the public mind — championed openly by corporate America’s loyal lapdogs: media and government.
Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared.
Image Credit: Banksy
Maybe she let it slip, to warn us?
The article titled wrong. The whole statement was taken out of context. The title should be written as, ‘why would the media let Trump nonfactual statements go unchallenged; not how could the media’s job be to “control exactly what people think.’
They are spot on
Her statement WAS the context. Hard to listen to a paid media horn tell us the President is trying to tell us his version of facts when “that’s our job,” and misinterpret the context. She’s incensed Trump has the audacity to tell a different story from the one she’s been instructed to tell.
It’s their (Joe’s and Mika’s) job to sell us Starbucks coffee. It’s Trump’s job to figure out how to salvage the country, he’s starting by presenting us with another interpretation of past and current events.
Our media would have us believe everything they told us about 9/11 and Iraq WMD was true despite witnesses, blatant falsehoods, and glaring evidential holes in the official story. Our media would have us believe in a badly Photoshopped birth certificate and a phony Social Security number and sealed college and employment records. Our media would have us believe Hillary Clinton won the election despite clear evidence she both cheated AND lost according to US election law. Our media would have us believe Trump is clearly a sexual monster for talking about women, while philandering (and frequently accused rapist) Bill Clinton was ambushed by the Republicans, that it was okay for a sitting President to lie about the meaning of the word “is” while, by his own signature, selling our free press out to the likes of Rupert Murdoch, ushering in NAFTA, and doing away with the American people’s legal protections against rapacious bankers gambling with our hard-earned nest eggs (the repeal of Glass-Steagall); many once hard-working retirees are now broke, because of Bill Clinton, and cant get jobs, because of NAFTA, and you don’t hear about it because our media are now owned by six corporations who don’t want you to.
But that’s not the President’s job, to claim any of this stuff has anything to do with why America is no longer great. That’s the context of Mika’s statement. Mika Brzezinski’s old enough to know how things work. And she said it’s the job of the media to control our perceptions of events, NOT the US President’s. She…said…that…on…the…air. On national TV.
I don’t appreciate anyone “controlling” me in any way I don’t assent to, I haven’t since JFK. I certainly don’t think Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough are qualified for the job of managing my perceptions. I don’t think Donald Trump is, either. But I’m willing to listen to another viewpoint than the establishment nonsense I’ve been subjected to since LBJ and Richard Nixon (and especially since William Clinton and BOTH George Bush’s). I’m encouraged in my dotage that more and more Americans are waking up to the fact that they’ve been conned by our so-called “free” media for years. Not real hope, but perhaps a glimmering of hope…the Internet has given me that since September 11, 2001. (I think the PTB made a misjudgment, there. They thought they owned our perceptions, then doubled down with Afghanistan and Iraq. And they did the same with the last election–but apparently the American public did not all graduate from Common Core or spend our free educational time watching talking heads on TV.)
don’t watch. simple. turn it off, change the channel !
what channel would you change it to? turn it off? – nah, i like to hear the lies, so i know what im up against.
I agree. If you know the boob tube is spewing propaganda and you continue to watch it, then you’re consenting to it.
Mika, must be related to Zbigniew Brzezinski the idiot that wrote the re-dick-u-lus ‘The Grand Chessboard’.
Sounds like the same idiocracy.
They believe their own spew, horse scat.
She is
Mika Brzezinski and her father are members of the Rockefeller/CFR. Also Charles “Joe” Scarborough, Maria Bartiromo, Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell, Marvin Kalb, and Tom Brokaw. See member lists at cfr dot org.
“…People who idolize the media are, at the best, naïve:
‘The simple [naïve] believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going.’ (Proverbs 14:15)
‘We are to live “by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of Yahweh.’ (Deuteronomy 8:3).
“The word of everyone else should be judged by “the mouth of two or three witnesses” (2 Corinthians 13:1).
“Howard Beal of Network described the media:
‘If you want truth, don’t come to us. We will tell you anything but the truth. Go to God.… Go to your gurus, go to yourselves. But, don’t come to us.… Your lives are real, we are an illusion.’36
“That is what an idol is: an illusion…. The impression of an independent press in America is part of the illusion. In 1898, at an annual dinner of the American Press Association, John Swinton, the one-time editor-in-chief of the New York Times, was called upon to toast journalism and America’s free press. He responded in a surprising way:
‘There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns.’38
‘You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150.00 a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with—others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things—and any of you who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the street looking for another job. The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to revile, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread. You know this and I know it, and what folly is this to be toasting an “Independent Press.” We are tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.’39….”
For more, see “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images,” the second in a series of 10 free online booklets on each of the Ten Commandments and their respective statutes and judgments. Click on my name, then our website. Go to our Online Books page and scroll down to title.
Totally in character for MSNBC. Obama’s and Hillary’s lies were not news. MSNBC, even more than CNN (if that was possible), gave Obama and Hillary a pass on everything.
MSNBC’s mission was and still is – only report things that support and re-affirm their own world view.
So, for MSNBC and CNN and other MSM, coordinating and cooperating with Hillary’s campaign and the DNC was as normal as breathing. To have acted otherwise would have betrayed their ideals — and those ideals had noting to do with truth or objectivity.
Things that do not exist in their world:
That Obama lied about anything
That Trump can be right about anything
That Hillary was dishonest about anything.
That Networks and “journalists” should not help “their” candidate
That there was anything wrong with the DNC setting up Bernie to help Hillary
That “undocumented” immigrants have broken any laws
Crimes committed by illegal immigrants
That Muslims chose to become radicalized instead of it being caused by Islama-phobia
That Evil can come from anywhere except white people/Christians/gun owners/veterans/Trump supporters
That any other idea, policy, or life experience is worthy of serious consideration
That Trump supporters can be anything but ignorant, uneducated, racists
That Radical Islamic terrorism even exists
Any crimes committed by the 73 immigrants from the seven countries on the temporary immigration ban
Be-headings of Christians by ISIS
Voter fraud
Voting by non-citizens
And the list goes on. Once you recognize that – everything they do makes sense. Totally dishonest and biased, but it makes sense.
if you will sit and analyze the news for a few hours this week. with dispassion. you will note that about 20% is advertising for drugs you dont need for problems you did not know you have. the rest is a waste of time and social engineering to convince you to see things from only one point of view.
pick up a book or set your own filters on any news service on the topics that are of importance to you…. most of what is reported is not of any value to you or your life.