The Impact of Media Propaganda

Posts on this blog have repeatedly exposed intentional misreporting of news events by the major media.  Often this takes the form of a reporter or news editor simply excluding important information because it would conflict with a narrative that the network or newspaper is advancing.  Sometimes the facts are actually doctored.  As noted in 2012, when Hispanic neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman shot black teenager Treyvon Martin after Martin attacked him.  The New York Times initially reported that a white man had shot an unarmed black man.  Later, when  Zimmerman’s ethnicity was correctly reported on local news the national media identified him as a “white Hispanic.”  Later, NBC  broadcast an audio recording of Zimmerman’s 911 call reporting on a suspicious person (Martin).  The network edited out the dispatcher asking the race of the suspect and pieced together Zimmerman’s statements “This guy looks like he’s up to no good.  He looks black.”  Mission accomplished….the message most people heard was “white guy shoots unarmed black kid.”  There were few headlines when, months later, a jury concluded that Zimmerman acted in self defense,

The same widespread misreporting occurred in August of 2014 when a veteran Ferguson, Missouri police officer shot and killed a 6’4″, 290 lb. black teenager who slugged him, tired to take his gun, and then charged him in front of witnesses.  It was immediately reported that unarmed black man had been shot and killed by a white police officer.  The teen’s buddy lied to reporters, telling them that Michael Brown had his hands up when he was shot.  No reporter bothered to talk with other witnesses, and the story led the national news for over a month as rioters tore downtown Ferguson apart.  Two months later when a grand jury refused to charge Officer Wilson with a crime after black witnesses confirmed his story, many people still believed the major media and there were even more riots.  “Hands up don’t shoot,” although a bald faced lie, remains the mantra among liberal members of Congress, Hollywood celebrities, Black Lives Matter and professional athletes today.

When the dominant news sources work in tandem to manipulate facts in support of a narrative, its called propaganda.  How effective has this propaganda been in influencing public opinion?   In February of this year two PHDs at the Skeptic Research Center released a survey of 980 respondents who identified as liberal, very liberal, moderate, conservative or very conservative.  They were asked to estimate how many unarmed black men were killed by police in 2019.  The choices were 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000 or more. Of those identifying as very liberal more than 53% estimated that the police killed between 1000 and 10,000 unarmed black men that year.  Over 39% identifying as liberal agreed as did 25% of moderates, 13% of conservatives and just over 20.5% of those who identified as very conservative.   The number of unarmed black men actually killed by police in 2019 was between 13 and 27.

This completely false narrative has resulted in major policy changes in policing and sentencing, the killing of dozens of police officers, dramatic increases in violent crime, and the looting and burning of hundreds of business and government buildings in virtually every large city in the country.   Let’s hope we’ve arrived at the point in time which President Lincoln identified in 1854 when he said “you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”