What is the media doing to us? In Bartow’s article, “Behind TV Analysis, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” we hear about another instance where the American people are being “brainwashed” by our government. George Carlin, an American stand-up comedian, speaks about our government in one of his acts and says, “The government doesn’t want critical thinking, that doesn’t help them. They own the biggest media companies; they control all the media and information; they spend billions of dollars lobbying. They want people who are just smart enough to work machines and file paper work but dumb enough to passively accept shitty jobs. IT’S A BIG CLUB AND YOU AIN’T IN IT,” (Youtube). While watching this clip and others that I researched, I feel that the government does not care even a little bit about the people.
According to the reading, the government has been controlling analysts’ (retired military officers) words and ideas through media so that Americans are only receiving information controlled by government.. To get a further understanding of the Pentagon military analyst program that ran from 2002-2008, Wikipedia explains that, “the goal of the operation is to spread the administration’s talking point on Iraq by briefing retired commanders for network and cable television appearance,” (Wikepedia). The biggest media corporations such as Fox News, NBC, and CNN broadcasted many analysts who spoke about the war in Iraq and how we, as Americans, should support the war. Bartow writes, “Members of Ms. Clarke’s staff marveled at the way the analysts seamlessly incorporated material from talking points and briefings as if it was their own.” And a quote from staff member, Mr. Krueger, says, “You could see they were talking verbatim what the secretary was saying or what the technical specialists were saying. And they were saying it over and over and over,” (Barstow, 2008).
I found a cartoon that represents the government’s control over analysts, media, and us. Barstow writes in a later article, “Another military analyst, the report said, told investigators that the outreach program’s intent ‘was to move everyone’s mouth on TV as a sock puppet,’” (Barstow, 2011).
In Barstow’s 2011 article, “Pentagon Finds No Fault in Ties to TV Analysts,” he explains that an inquiry was done on the Pentagon in order to detect any wrongdoing with the program, but the inquiry showed that there was none (Barstow, 2011).
The more I read and understand the concept of these analysts and the government’s motives, the more I feel that they do not care for us one bit. In my eyes, (with support of multiple sources) they see us as puppets, and think they can easily pull our strings to agree with any information they give us. I am not into politics and do not read much into it, but I do feel that this is truly what the government is like, they do not care only for themselves and they are gaining more control of us little by little.
While reading the articles about the analysts, I wondered what must have been going through their heads about being told exactly what to say. It’s a shame that they submitted themselves to what seems like a “wrongdoing” and I wonder if they felt that they had an obligation to do so being that they were working for the Department of Defense.
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