Every television newscast is staged reality
by Jon Rappoport
August 18, 2014
Focus on the network evening news. This is where the staging is done well.
First, we have the image itself, the colors in foreground and background, the blend of restful and charged hues. The anchor and his/her smooth style.
Then we have the shifting of venue from the studio to reporters in the field, demonstrating the reach of coverage: the planet. As if this equals authenticity.
Actually, those reporters in the field rarely dig up information on location. A correspondent standing on a rooftop in Cairo could just as well be positioned in a bathroom in a Las Vegas McDonald’s. His report would be identical.
The managing editor, usually the elite news anchor, chooses the stories to cover and has the final word on their sequence.
The anchor goes on the air: “Our top story tonight, more signs of gridlock today on Capitol Hill, as legislators walked out of a session on federal budget negotiations…”
The viewer fills in the context for the story: “Oh yes, the government. Gridlock is bad. Just like traffic on the I-5. A bad thing. We want the government to get something done, but they’re not. These people are always arguing with each other. They don’t agree. They’re in conflict. Yes, conflict, just like on the cop shows.”
The anchor: “The Chinese government reports the new flu epidemic has spread to three provinces. Forty-two people have already died, and nearly a thousand are hospitalized…”
The viewer again supplies context, such as it is: “Flu. Dangerous. Epidemic. Could it arrive here? Get my flu shot. Do the Chinese doctors know what they’re doing? Crowded cities. Maybe more cases all of a sudden. Ten thousand, a hundred thousand.”
The anchor: “A new university study states that gun owners often stock up on weapons and ammunition, and this trend has jumped quickly since the Newtown, Connecticut, school-shooting tragedy…”
The viewer: “People with guns. Why do they need a dozen weapons? People in small towns. I don’t need a gun. The police have guns. Could I kill somebody if he broke into the house?”
The anchor: “Doctors at Yale University have made a discovery that could lead to new treatments in the battle against Autism…”
Viewer: “That would be good. More research. Laboratory. Germs. The brain.”
If, at the end of the newscast, the viewer bothered to review the stories and his own reactions to them, he would realize he’d learned almost nothing. But reflection is not the game.
In fact, the flow of the news stories has washed over him and created very little except a sense of (false) continuity.
It would never occur to him to wonder: are the squabbling political legislators really two branches of the same Party? Does government have the Constitutional right to incur this much debt? Where is all that money coming from? Taxes? Other sources? Who invents money?
Is the flu dangerous for most people? If not, why not? Do governments overstate case numbers? How do they actually test patients for the flu? Are the tests accurate? Are they just trying to convince us to get vaccines?
What happens when the government has overwhelming force and citizens have no guns?
When the researchers keep saying “may” and “could,” does that mean they’ve actually discovered something useful about Autism, or are they just hyping their own work and trying to get funding for their next project?
These are only a few of the many questions the typical viewer never considers.
Therefore, every story on the news broadcast achieves the goal of keeping the context small and narrow—night after night, year after year. The overall effect of this staging is small viewer, small viewer’s mind, small viewer’s understanding.
Billions of dollars are spent by the networks to build a reality the size of a room in a cheap motel.
Next we come to words over pictures. More and more, news broadcasts are using the rudimentary film technique of a voice narrating what the viewer is seeing on the screen.
People are shouting and running and falling in a street. The anchor or a field reporter says: “The country is in turmoil. Parliament has suspended sessions for the third day in a row, as the government decides what to do about uprisings aimed at forcing democratic elections…”
Well, the voice must be right, because we’re seeing the pictures. If the voice said the riots were due to garbage-pickup cancellations, the viewer would believe that, too.
How about this: two-day-old footage of runners approaching the finish line of the Boston Marathon. A puff of smoke rises at the right of the screen. A runner falls down in the street. The anchor is saying: “The FBI has announced a bomb made in a pressure cooker caused the injuries and deaths.”
Must be a pressure cooker. Ban pressure cookers. We saw the pictures and heard the voice explain.
We see Building #7 of the WTC collapse. Must have been the result of a fire. The anchor tells us so. Words over pictures.
We see footage of Lee Harvey Oswald inside the Dallas police station. The anchor tells he’s about to be transferred, under heavy guard, to another location. Oswald must be guilty, because we’re seeing him in a police station, and the anchor just said “under heavy guard.”
Staged news.
It mirrors what the human mind, in an infantile state, is always doing: looking at the world and seeking a brief summary to explain what that world is, at any given moment.
Since the dawn of time, untold billions of people have been urging a “television anchor” to “explain the pictures.”
The news gives them that precise thing, that precise solution, every night.
“Well, Mr. Jones,” the doctor says, as he pins X-rays to a screen in his office. “See this? Right here? We’ll need to start chemo immediately, and then we may have to remove most of your brain, and as a followup, take out one eye.”
Sure, why not? The patient saw the pictures and the anchor explained them.
After watching and listening to a month or two of news, planted with key words, the population is ready to see the President or one of his minions step up to a microphone and say, “Quantitative easing…sequester…”
Reaction? “Oh, yes, that’s right, I’ve heard those words before, it (whatever “it” is) must be okay.”
A month later, those two terms disappear, as if they’d never existed.
Eventually, people get the idea and do it for themselves. They see things, they invent one-liners to explain them.
They’re their own anchors. They short-cut and undermine their own experience with vapid summaries of what it all means.
At some point in time, the television audience begins to experience an itch. “If reality is the news, then maybe I could become a visible piece of reality. Maybe I could get on the news. What would I have to do? How can I stand out? What outlandish thing could I cook up?”
Anyone’s face could appear on the screen and flicker there and be driven into the minds of millions of people.
If not fortune, then at least fame.
An honest television news anchor, if one existed, would say:
“The battle over the government shutdown and its funding continue as a piece of planned chaos. Events like this are shaped well in advance by men who manipulate the One Political Party With Two Heads, and you, the viewer, are reacting predictably. You’re choosing sides. You’re angry. And I’m sitting here on most nights adding fuel to the fire. The fix is in, and I’m going along with it. Here in the studio, I’m staging the news about staged reality.”
The news is a movie of a movie.
And then, of course, when the news cuts to commercial, the fake products takes over:
“Well, every night they’re showing the same brand names, so those brands must be better than the unnamed alternatives.”
Which devolves into: “I like this commercial better than that commercial. This is a great commercial. Let’s have a contest and vote on the best commercial.”
Which devolves into: reality is an advertisement for itself.
“Hello. I’m staged reality and I’m doing ads to promote me.”
For “intelligent” viewers, there is another sober mainstream choice, a safety valve: PBS. That newscast tends to show more pictures from foreign lands.
“Yes, I watch PBS because they understand the planet is interconnected. It isn’t just about America. That’s good.”
Sure it’s good, if you want the same no-context or false-context reporting on events in other countries. Instead of the two minutes NBC might give you about momentous happenings in Iraq, PBS will give you three minutes, plus congenial experts commenting abstractly, employing longer words.
PBS’ experts seem kinder and gentler. “They’re nice and they’re more relaxed. I like that.”
Yes, the PBS experts are taking Valium, and they’re not drinking as much coffee as the NBC experts.
Brian Williams (NBC), the current champion of network anchors, seems to have downed one cup of coffee and half a Valium. He’s balanced. He’s neutral, he reveals a bit of an edge now and then, but we know he really cares, he just can’t show it because that would imply bias. And somehow (lighting, makeup), he’s forever young. He’s riding his bike down a country road tossing rolled-up newspapers on porches. It’s still morning in America…
Diane Sawyer (ABC) is for the weepers. If she’s not shedding a tear, she’s ready to. It’s there, in reserve. Her next gig should be on General Hospital.
Scott Pelley (CBS) is always ready to put on Dan Rather’s old tan bush jacket with the many pockets. And go out in the field, where it’s really happening. He’s the field surgeon who’ll do operations without an anesthetic if he has to. CBS producers keep beating him about the head and telling him he has to appear more human. They don’t have a drug for that yet.
This is the main cast of actors.
They deliver the long con every night on the tube, between commercials.
Staged.
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com
As usual, lots of food for thought, thank you! I’ll respectfully propose that Building 7 is a unique case. TV shows its videos very rarely, and almost never shows its resemblance to a controlled demolition: http://www2.ae911truth.org//ppt_web/2hour/slideshow.php?i=64&hires=1 . I’ll formulate the conspiracy theory that this is because it is extremely difficult to convince viewers of the destruction by an office fire while showing the video.
Maybe Building 7 is TV’s Achilles’ heel. But this is another story.
Love,
Switch off the American News. Never ever watch it again. It is crap.
It is easier to do this, if you live outside the US, where the news is (somewhat) less control, less part of an overall spin-plan, set by a very small group of Corporate-mindset people, trying to build a market for their products, and their bad deeds.
Damn straight, Jon. Its sad really… people are the problem yet people are the solution. How do you change the mindset of millions and help the 99% realize their true power in numbers when most are deluded, misguided and apathetic? I like to think that I have a grip on reality and an understanding of ‘how things operate”. But when I speak to people about these very things, quoting reliable sources and statistics and using as much tact and politiness that I can muster it washes over them like waves on the beach.
From my perspective a large chunk of people would rather merge into manufactured sub-groups and argue with other sub-groups because the system tells these people that they should not like each other. No one can even fathom that the problem is systemic, it has to be the blacks, illegal immigrants, democrats, republicans, etc… just pick your group of choice.
Unfortunately, most people dont care. Theyve been indoctorinated over generations within the fishbowl. There is no room for critical thought when the media, advertisments and our consumer capitalist culture have tied individualism in with products. Now most Americans think their identity is established by the clothes they wear, the soda they drink or the car they drive. Few even seem to think that true individualism is the concept of being able to think for oneself, to have the ability to construct a logical argument or idea born out of critical thought.
I could go on and on but Im done ranting now haha, good article Jon.
I don’t watch the news anymore or read time magezines or newspapers anymore, it is all crap. the internet is not much better when they can put a video up and saywhatever it is they want the video to mean, I mean a video could be 20 years old. at least the internet gives a voice to all and not just those who can manage to get on a tv network. or their article in a magazine or newspaper.
Oh it is really some special kind of pleasure when You really get angry, Jon! This is fine, wholehearted, wholesome ranting at its best. Babbling shills. Nitwits. Flunkeydom. Undergroundish jello.
Yes, to me, however cynical others may rate it, this is the fun wagon.
You have a fine stretegy, and You have the means to put it into play.
I think that You very well know that all too many people understand less than half of what You’re saying, but You deliberately – and cunningly! – just don’t care about such pettiness.
Oh, I’m getting into eulogy. This mustn’t be.
Anyway, what is special here is Your multidimensional approach, which is not only proclaimed, but shown in the language and especially in Your literary pieces, often strewn in between seemingly ordinary procedures, just finely done, a pleasure to read.
To me – seems I won’t make it out, for now, I don’t even want to – You are one of the foremost thinkers of our time.
Would you please print this out?
The more I read his works, the more I want to get the entire Matrix series, he’s written.
Thank You!
Love You!
Bear! [?]
I watched these “news” programs a few years ago and I noticed something odd with the produced stories: The background music. The scary stories had heavy dark music and the happy stories had light and happy music. It was like a pharmaceutical commercial where they tell you the ailment and show a sad person alone and dark music is in the background then introduce the product and the sun comes out, the music is happy, and the people are smiling with other people. It’s as if the audience is too stupid to associate tanks rolling over the landscape with burning cars as disturbing unless the dark music gives them a hint.
Good observation!….Oh wait! THIS JUST IN! NEWS ALERT! plus the music to signify urgency etc. You must admit, they are really good at conditioning our minds!
Perhaps somewhat off-topic, but I just saw that Rob Schneider tweeted about Robin Williams’ suicide being due to a drug he was taking to combat Parkinson’s. He was raging against the pharmaceutical industry, and even mainstream news has picked up on his comments…
Can’t wait to hear your take on this!
What happens when the government has overwhelming force and citizens have no guns?
http://www.dcclothesline.com/2014/08/19/document-army-preparing-use-lethal-force-unarmed-civilians-full-scale-riots-u-s/
Don’t forget CNN was exposed for green screening talking heads with fake backgrounds to appear to be on location. They must think it gives them more creditability if people think they are on the scene. Also former CNN staff have reported cases where embarrassing stories were buried in return for payoffs.
Well I feel I must say; Jon, you have done it again. Bringing to light that all too infallible mindset we as the consuming public fall into. It is easy don’t you think? I would bet you find yourself watching this barrage of disinformation and starting to believe it! Then reality kicks you in the head…wait a minute! hold the presses! I am Jon and I do not fall for this. Really though, thank you for ALL your writings. It gives me a sense of hope that the Masses are not as affected as we think (well that’s a statement right there that is difficult to define). I did notice one (mistake?) repeated in your article; [Most of America can’t imagine the evening news could look and sound any other way]. That part about the “Evening News”, I would guess that goes back along way, back when we were younger and it really was the, “Evening News”….Now I am afraid it’s the 24/7 NEWS Barrage! And, you didn’t mention Megan Kelly…
THIS!! > “THE NEWS IS A MOVIE OF A MOVIE.” Exactly! 😀
Late last Summer my brother was in town after the death of his wife (cancer); she had been “awake” to the NWO & was my only “fan” of the tons of emails I used to send out re same. Brother, however, has been “asleep” for 35 years. When I was telling him at his visit re the 9/11 Hoax, he “could not believe the news could be faked,” etc. After he left town I continued to ponder HOW could I explain to him/anyone that the news CAN be faked? And I came up with this scenario (which your Perfect One-Liner says it All! & in much less words! but here goes anyway). Imagine me talking to Bro at his next vacation/visit:
1. You decide to go see a matinee at the movies. Going in you KNOW what you will be seeing will be FAKE because it says “THEATER” over the entrance doorway. So you watch the fake “Disaster” movie. Then you go home.
2. It’s now near dinnertime so you prepare a meal, kick off your shoes, plop on the couch, & turn on the EVENING NEWS on your TV. They are reporting on a disaster two States away. After a few seconds you say, “Hmm, that guy looks familiar, hmm, & so does that lady, hmm, the scenery looks familiar, too, hmm … WAIT! What’s Going On?!! That disaster scene looks just like what I saw at the movies!! Where Am I? I’m Home, not at the movies! That’s MY TV, & that’s *Famous News Anchor* & THIS IS *THE NEWS,* so How Can They Be Showing a Scene from a Fake Disaster-Movie *AS* NEWS?!!”
3. Easy. The only difference between the Matinee at The Theater & The Events on The TV Evening News is YOUR EXPECTATION. You EXPECT to see UNreality at the Movies but You EXPECT to see REality on The TV News! That’s why it is SO EASY for TPTB (& their MSM cohorts) to FOOL Everybody regarding ANY subject or EVENT!
4. “Buuut buuut buuut….” (Bro stuttering in unbelief).
5. Hey, just remember this, Bro, no matter what happens in the future: “THE NEWS IS A MOVIE OF A MOVIE.” That’s a direct quote from highly acclaimed Investigative Reporter Jon Rappoport. You should check out his blog sometime, Brother! 🙂
(The End. You gave me a great ENDING/idea to add to my “Movies vs News” scenario for bro’s next visit, thanks! Great article all the way. Loved the headline so knew it would be a good one!)