Category Archives: Public Relations

Public relations outside the elite agencies

by Jon Rappoport

October 31, 2015

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“Public relations is all about coordinated actions over a sustained period of time. When it isn’t about that, you’re going to see a brief flame erupt and then die out, and you’re to see a great deal of time, energy, and money squandered on what could have been, but never will be.” (Notes for Discussions with Jack True, Jon Rappoport)

This is my second article on public relations. You can read the first one here.

In the past, I have had some critical things to say about PR efforts by non-mainstream groups.

Their work tends to be monochromatic. One-trick.

With knowledge, these groups could spend their money and time and energy more wisely.

When I consider taking on a client for PR work, I want to know if he can see his mission in terms of multiple vectors. This vision is essential, because coordinating various angles of approach is more effective than simply ringing the same bell over and over.

Two attitudes usually infect good and righteous causes, when they are forwarded from outside the establishment:

One: “We are the underdogs.”

Two: “We must convert mainstream people by matching what we say to what they can accept.”

Neither of these attitudes wins the day.

The first comes close to an admission of defeat; the second fails to realize that “what people can accept” is so superficial, trying to match it with PR will cause no more than a mild ripple in a pond.

Whether the PR campaign mainly concentrates on a flood of positive communication or an attack, the attitude needs to be very strong. It needs to project great energy.

In ads, a young bland woman walking toward the camera with a toothy smile, and a message that comes across like an operator standing by on the other end of an 800 number, isn’t going to do the trick.

There is currently a PR campaign underway (whose name I won’t mention), in which the desired audience is American mothers. The attitude is: “We have to be both polite and firm. We have to present them with objective facts, in order to change their minds.”

Perhaps that doesn’t sound too terrible, but I can assure you it will bring very few mothers into the fray on the side of the angels. They may agree with the PR messages, but they aren’t going to be motivated to do anything.

Net result: zero.

Likewise, polling target audiences is largely meaningless. It makes the PR people themselves look good, but that’s all.

Polling takes place in an artificial atmosphere: “I’m going to ask you a question, and then have you select, from four answers, your best choice…”

And what a polled audience thinks is their best choice, before and after a few rounds of really effective PR, will differ wildly.

PR for a good cause needs to deliver more than a message. It has to make a deep impact. Merely courting agreement comes up short.

Several years ago, I wrote a series of highly critical articles about the GMO “right to know what’s in your food” ballot initiative campaigns.

(To see two of these articles, go here and here. The complete archive is here.)

The leaders of the movement relied heavily on a number of polls, in which Americans repeatedly chose “right to know” as the preferred reason for wanting GMO labeling.

The ensuing TV ads taken out in several western states were mild and vapid.

Promises to educate people about the dangers of GMOs were never fulfilled across a broad spectrum of voters.

The leaders of the “right to know” movement had a plan: the ballot initiatives were the first step in what would later become a far more penetrating attack on Monsanto and the other biotech giants. But this attack has never materialized in a coordinated, timed, effective fashion.

The movement’s leaders, those who genuinely wanted to win, were lacking in the knowledge of how to operate a sustained PR campaign.

They spent a great deal of money on step one, and after that they began to react to Monsanto’s victories. Successful PR is not about reaction.

Authentic PR on behalf of a righteous cause changes many, many minds. Over time, it can turn a tide. At no point can those in charge back away and “do other things.” That would be the sign of a half-plan, a half-effort, and a great deal of confusion.

Then you’d begin to hear, “We’re under the gun, we need your help now more than ever,” and, “These are desperate times,” and “Step up now before it’s too late.”

Those statements are all versions of: “We’re the underdog.” Saying “underdog” may feel good, it may provoke sympathy, but it won’t win.

power outside the matrix

(To read about Jon’s collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)

I admire anyone who is trying to lead a campaign for a cause that is noble, no matter how badly it is going, but when the objective is winning, knowledge about PR, up-front, is indispensable. It makes all the difference.

It turns ineffective actions into a plan that can have extraordinary results.

We are not talking about performance trophies for showing up. We’re talking about breaking the tape and crossing the finish line.

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 NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

The art of public relations, and why it matters

by Jon Rappoport

October 30, 2015

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“Most PR tries to program people’s beliefs. True PR wakes people up to the truth.” (Notes for The Matrix Revealed, Jon Rappoport)

When I handle public relations for a client, the first thing I decide is whether I agree with his objectives. If so, I proceed. If not, I bow out.

This initial vetting is the most important thing I do. Granted, it’s not the normal approach PR agencies take, but it is mine.

PR is the art of persuasion. When it uses true facts alongside goals whose fulfillment would benefit people, help lift them up, and make them more self-sufficient, you are deploying a potentially powerful force.

Three basic questions are:

What does the client want to accomplish? Toward what audience is the PR being directed? Who is opposed to the client’s goal?

Once these issues are understood and clarified, a PR campaign can be designed.

The campaign follows two paths. The first is the obvious route: releasing information that promotes the client’s goals; obtaining press exposure (alternative and mainstream); drumming up support for the client by reaching individuals and groups who can wield influence; and sometimes, going after opponents who would try to block success.

Another path is less traveled. It is asymmetrical. Assessing the overall situation reveals opportunities an active imagination can take advantage of:

For example, suppose we have a situation where a local population is under the gun, as a result of constant corporate toxic-pesticide spraying.

There are other such populations, in distant places, who are facing the same dire problem.

Bring half-a-dozen representatives of these other populations to the town or island of the original client. Hold press conferences highlighting the widespread global crisis. Stream live video to alt. news websites all over the world. Put on the pressure. Name the criminal corporation.

At the same time, have individuals from these populations file lawsuits against the corporation, and publicize them.

If corrupt judges dismiss the lawsuits as frivolous, or illegal, that simply adds grist for the mill. Publicize that. Make that the occasion for more PR.

At the same time, produce and release videos that relentlessly expose the corporation in every possible truthful way: its pesticides are toxic; the science on which these chemicals are based is flawed, false, and corrupt; the corporation colludes with government agencies to curry favor. Etc., etc.

At the same time, find people who have been injured by the corporation and release their on-camera testimonies.

Coordinate all these actions. Time them to work in concert with each other.

This is how a real PR campaign begins. It’s just the opening salvo.

Don’t play defense. Go on a sustained offensive thrust, from a number of different directions.

Note: Never, ever rely on just one strategy, such as a ballot initiative or a class-action lawsuit. If you do, you’re playing on the opponent’s turf, where he is the expert and can control outcomes. He knows you’re coming. He knows how to turn you away. But if you’re showing up from half-a-dozen directions at once, you’re a different kind of asymmetrical creature. Unpredictable, powerful, agile.

Or…suppose the client wants to build a private educational center where students can learn trades, like carpentry, plumbing, electrical repair.

You can predict a certain amount of opposition from the town council, because politicians and bureaucrats always find ways to gum up the works and stall proposals, licenses, and permits.

In this case, one strategy is to assemble and release a huge amount of positive PR extolling the project. Overwhelm some of the objections before they can get off the ground.

In PR releases, nail down all the specific positive benefits of the educational center.

At the same time, secure the endorsement of as many community leaders, groups, and visible figures as you can.

At the same time, hold public events at which speakers explain the project and its rewards for the community.

Don’t stop there. Expand your vision:

As an inventive wrinkle, indicate that this center can become a model/example for the rest of the country. When it’s up and running, you will invite leaders from many towns and cities to show up and study the center and its operations, first-hand, so they can implement them back home and create jobs. Local businesses will benefit as these visitors spend money.

Consider even wider implications. Suppose a handful of local successful businesses join the operation, offering to show out-of-town visitors how to operate similar businesses in their own towns and cities.

Local media will jump at the chance to cover this positive project.

Meet with town council members, and paint a picture for them—educate them on how they can cooperate to make the project a smashing success, and rightly enhance their own standing and reputation. “We want you to be the best town council in America.” Why not?

Again—coordinate all these actions, and make them the opening salvo in the PR campaign.

If serious opponents of your plan are there, they’ll soon show up, and you’ll see who they are, and you can take action to neutralize their efforts.

There is much more to PR campaigns than I’m sketching here, but you get the idea.

There is nothing wrong with PR, if it’s done for the right reasons.

Here is a basic underlying principle for you: “not the one, the many.” There are always people who want a good outcome for a project or enterprise or campaign, but they are married to the notion that one big tactic will win the day. That’s how they think.

Your response: let them do what they’re doing. It will have some publicity value.

But you are a proponent of the many. You don’t believe that one answer is the key. This isn’t a high-school math class, in which a word-problem has only a single bottom-line solution.

This is a multi-dimensional world.

Your opponent has a tank the size of the Empire State Building. Are you going to drive your little tank and meet his in the middle of Times Square? Is that a winning plan?

People who believe it might be are laboring under a delusion fostered by the very people who own the giant tank.

But you’re smarter.

You have imagination.

You can operate outside that matrix.

power outside the matrix

(To read about Jon’s collection, Power Outside The Matrix, click here.)

Since your principles are righteous and honorable, why not support them with strategies that stand a chance of winning?

Yes, in any campaign there is always the risk of losing, but that doesn’t mean you should adopt the attitude that you’re a heroic loser who “at least tried his best, against titanic odds.”

Adopting that attitude seals your fate from the get-go.

Actually increasing your chances of winning is much, much better.

The game is afoot. The stakes are high.

The game is never over.

The closer you come to winning, the more you realize you’re engaged in more than a game.

Much more.

You’re moving life up to another level.

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 NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

How public relations led the GMO-labeling movement astray

How public relations led the GMO-labeling movement astray

by Jon Rappoport

November 18, 2013

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

It apparently started with polls.

The men who wanted to bankroll ballot initiatives mandating GMO labeling hired pollsters.

The question was, what message would resonate with voters?

The original pollsters (perhaps as early as 2011) tested all sorts of messages: “you have a right to know what’s in your food” was one of them.

Other messages were tougher. For example, they mentioned the effects of GMOs on health.

In every poll, the one message that came out far ahead was “you have a right to know what’s in your food.”

In 2012, the Mellman Group ran a poll for the group, Just Label It. 91% of the 1000 voters surveyed said they wanted GMO labeling, which was interpreted as “consumers have a right to know what’s in their food.”

So that became the single mantra in California and the state of Washington, and the ballot measures in both places lost.

I have questions about the Mellman survey. Obtaining 91% agreement on anything under the sun should raise doubts. Who were the voters that were polled? What questions did the pollsters ask? How did they ask them? How many of the voters actually understood what GMOs are? Most importantly, how solid was that 91% when it came time for a barrage of TV ads during a political campaign?

Polls can test people’s reactions to bland questions, but these reactions give you no clue about how they would respond if the issue were presented forcefully.

For example, you could ask people, “Are you concerned that GMO crops will affect small farmers?” Assuming these people even understand the connection between GMOs and farmers’ livelihoods is a major stretch.

So the people say, “No, I’m not motivated by that issue.”

But suppose you ran a TV ad in which a salt-of-the-earth farmer was standing on a barren piece of land, the camera zoomed in on him, and he showed his callused and worn hands to the audience and said:

“I am an American farmer. I’ve been on this land forty years. My family has been on this land every day for a hundred and fifty years. I’m a human being just like you. My relationship with Monsanto and their genetically engineered food ruined my farm, my future, and my life…”

You could make that ad (conveying the truth) knock people off their couches.

Then, if you asked those television viewers whether they thought GMO food and farmers’ livelihoods was an important issue, you’d get a completely different answer.

On an issue like GMO food, polls don’t really tell the story.

Suppose you had this TV ad: a mother and her little child stand on their lawn in front of the camera. The mother says, “See the rashes and lesions on my son’s body? Do you know where he got them? From the weed killer we sprayed out of a bottle. It’s called Roundup. It’s made by Monsanto. Do you want this for your child?”

You’ve got the beginning of a powerful and true piece of information, delivered in a way that goes beyond the impact of any poll question about chemicals and food.

Unfortunately, the men who bankrolled Prop 37 and 522 in CA and WA took the poll data at face value. They settled for “the right to know what’s in your food” and stopped there.

They thought they had a winner, the only winner.

They need to go back to the drawing board. They have to knock off those bland TV ads they ran in CA and WA and realize they have the opportunity to achieve something much greater.

They can show people the truth about Monsanto and cause the kind of outcome they’ve been hoping for.

If they have the courage for that kind of fight.

GMO labeling alone is not going to add up to a victory in the struggle against Monsanto. Some proponents of labeling admit this. They say, “But you see, we’re educating people about GMOs in the process.”

Well, do you want to really make an impact on people or do you just want to mess around? If you’re serious, forget the polls and the pollsters. Start producing TV ads that bite. Bite hard.

Use your money to detonate a real explosion in consciousness.

the matrix revealed

Here is the bottom line. The issue of food has two sides. On the one hand, you build an alternative universe in which people grow and sell and buy food that is sustaining and healthy. On the other hand, you attack the criminals who are degrading and poisoning the food supply.

One without the other doesn’t work.

TV ads must, and I mean must, attack Monsanto and the other big food-tech giants.

Gary Hirshberg, the CEO of Stonyfield Organic, is a founding partner of the Just Label It group which commissioned the Mellman poll. Of all the leaders in the labeling movement, Hirshberg is the most overtly political.

During the 2008 presidential campaign season, his home in New Hampshire was a mandatory stop for candidates. Hirshberg’s first choice for the Democratic nomination was Tom Vilsack until he dropped out of the race. Hirshberg hosted gatherings for John Edwards and Barack Obama, and eventually decided to support Obama.

Vilsack, of course, became the Secretary of Agriculture under President Obama. Vilsack is a staunch supporter of GMO food. During his term as governor of Iowa, Vilsack was given a Governor of the Year award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

Vilsack was an odd choice for Hirshberg to support for president, to say the least.

Hirshberg is the author of Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World. It’s safe to say he views revolution-by-the-consumer as an exceedingly powerful force.

I’m sure the Mellman poll confirmed his position that “right to know what’s in your food,” and GMO labeling, could tilt the marketplace against Monsanto.

It may be pretty to think so, but giving American consumers a clear choice about whether to buy GMO or non-GMO food, through labeling, isn’t, all by itself, going to push Monsanto up against the wall.

For that, an all-out attack is necessary. And it doesn’t doesn’t take a genius to pick the medium: TV ads.

The objective? To make Monsanto’s threat to health and life and liberty very real and very personal. To make that threat as imminent as it was when millions of students, in the 1960s, saw the military draft as their ticket to going to Vietnam to die.

After you’ve aired a few thousand plays of such attack ads against Monsanto, then you can do polls. Then you’ll see what people believe and think and feel in a new light.

Hirshberg serves as a co-chairman of an organization called AGree. Its objective is to “build consensus around solutions” to “critical issues facing the food and agriculture system.” As researcher Nick Brannigan has pointed out, AGree includes, among its foundation partners: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

It would be hard to find foundations more friendly to big corporate agriculture and GMOs. No doubt Hirshberg would say somebody has to walk into the lions’ den and try to change the system from the inside.

If that is his mission, it’s not surprising that he would support watered-down political ads that encourage GMO leveling, while failing to make a deeper impact on the public mind.

The labeling movement should be enlisting artists of all kinds to make ads that move people, that attack the poisoners of the food supply, that hold up to ridicule the corporate agenda of monopolizing and degrading the food of this planet.

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 NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Ellis Medavoy on NATO Summit Psyop

by Jon Rappoport

May 10, 2012

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It’s rare, these days, for me to get messages from retired propaganda master, Ellis Medavoy. He’s always been a difficult man. Now, he’s even tougher to coax out of his cave.

Nevertheless, because I’m persistent, I interview Ellis 28 times (290 pages) in my new collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED. The quality of his information on the nuts and bolts of The Matrix is priceless.

Today, I’m presenting a one-way conversation, in which Ellis begins by discussing the upcoming May 20-21 NATO Summit in Chicago. It’s the jumping-off point for one of his fantastic voyages. Then he and I go into Q&A format. Eventually, the conversation gets a bit contentious. I’m used to that with Ellis. He isn’t a drink that goes down easy, like chocolate milk. He’s like a few shots of gin.

ELLIS 1: Chicago. No-fly zone. Shoot down planes. Shut businesses. Station troops. Lock down apartment buildings. Tell business employees to dress like protestors to avoid assaults. Project evacuations.

Most observers looking at the Summit are missing the boat. There is NO consensus for a gigantic protest filled with violence in Chicago.

In the US, people have no particular opinion about NATO. It’s not G-8 or WTO. What NATO has actually been doing, covertly, for decades, in war zones, has occurred under the radar.

Reports out of Chicago are claiming the crowds of protestors are going to be much smaller than predicted.

Organizers are straining to get their people to march in the streets.

The G-8 conference was supposed to take place at the same time as the NATO Summit, which would have attracted big numbers of protestors to Chicago, but then Obama moved the G-8 to Camp David.

Michelle Obama will be hosting a few events for NATO spouses, and the president will show up in town. So what?

So that leaves three possibilities, all of which are psy-ops.

One, the crowds will be small, but the military/police/DHS and various other agencies will have a chance to do a live drill and see how their systems work and mesh…while scaring the citizenry of the city.

Two, related to One, this kind of gigantic military and law-enforcement presence (with accompanying media coverage) further conditions the population of America to martial-law conditions.

Or Three, behind the scenes, a violent op is being mounted by the very people who are pushing martial law. This incident will spark sufficient chaos to maintain the idea of “imminent and continuing threat to the Homeland” and justify crushing action by troops and cops. For example, these lunatic martial-law pushers might be putting together a threat against the president or the first lady. If so, and assuming the threat is contained, this will be a ploy to gain support for Obama’s re-election campaign. “Embattled heroic president vows to never surrender to terrorism…”

Unless protest organizers can manage to invent a march out of nothing, involving large numbers of people, most of whom will have virtually no idea what they’re doing in Chicago, you’re looking at the three scenarios above.

The NATO Summit jitters are a synthetic creation. As far as genuine public awareness of NATO is concerned, it provokes no images stronger than a march against Velveeta.

So this is all psy-op. It STARTED with announcements in the press about security measures that would be taken in the city. Get it? That’s where it STARTED. Those stories were planted. All of a sudden, before anyone cared about the Summit, we were told that security would be overwhelming. The security is really the only story.

They didn’t even fake a possible threat. They just said, “We’re going to blanket the city with security.”

This is also a covert announcement to potential protestors. The message is:

GET ORGANIZED. MARCH IN THE STREETS. DO SOMETHING BIG. WE WANT YOU TO DO SOMETHING BIG. GET YOUR BUTTS IN GEAR. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? YOU’RE LAGGING BEHIND. IF WE’RE GOING TO LOCK DOWN CHICAGO, YOU HAVE TO PLAY YOUR ROLE. YOU CAN’T JUST BRING OUT THREE HUNDRED PEOPLE. THAT WOULD BE AN EMBARRASSMENT. IF WE’RE SHUTTING DOWN CHICAGO, THERE MUST BE A GOOD REASON FOR IT. YOU’RE THE REASON, IF YOU SHOW UP IN HUGE NUMBERS. SO BE THAT REASON. THIS IS A GOLD-PLATED INVITATION TO YOU FROM US. MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN. DON’T LET US DOWN.

It’s backwards, sure. Many ops are backwards.

The press will never cover a psy-op because the press are part of that psy-op. The tool in the master’s hand doesn’t turn around and bite the master. THE PRESS EXISTS MAINLY TO PROMOTE PSY-OPS.

ELLIS 2: “Defense of the nation” is a much larger psy-op designed to convince the masses that there IS a nation, when in fact it has been stolen out from under them, and all that is left of any significant size is the partnership between huge corporations, banks, and government. Government is rapidly being assimilated into a globalist scheme and pattern of management. These are cartels.

You have to understand the mental and emotional quality of people who are hired to deliver the news. They’re basically dolts. But they’re a particular kind of dolt. They’re bright in certain ways. They’re quick on their feet. BUT they can’t grasp the possibility that the information being presented to them, the information they pass on to the public, is twisted at the source. They just can’t imagine that. They know about lies, sure. But the real nature and scope of a psy-op evades them. They are information hounds, you might say, and they NEED a reputable source for that information. They’re addicted to information and for them there has to be a constant stream of it, or they would go crazy. They have to fill their minds with news and pass on that news. That’s their itch and they have scratch it. So they need a place to go to get the information and they have to trust it. They need a place where the news pours out to them all the time. They have to have that. Their primary source is government. They rely on it. They accept it. If not, they would be at a loss, psychologically. They would have to start vetting every piece of news and that would take too much time. There wouldn’t be enough news. It’s exactly the situation a drug addict finds himself in. He has to have a dealer he trusts to be there, to have a supply of the drug.

The quality of the information or news or drugs is of secondary importance to the addict. I’ve known many newsmen and women in my time, and they mostly start out with their addiction when they are young. They’re fixated on the flow. They’re tied with a chain and anchor to the flow of news. They eat it up. They remember it. They are married to it.

Therefore, the very idea that most of the news they’re reporting has an agenda is anathema to them. They reject that proposition violently. Put a newsman on a desert island and he would go crazy. He’d start broadcasting to the bushes or the sand.

So if a particular stream of news comes into him about heavy, heavy security in Chicago for the NATO Summit, that’s a very good thing in itself. That’s information. He never questions WHY this news has no foundation. He never asks why Chicago is being targeted. That would be like a drug addict asking why the flow of heroin is suddenly picking up on the street. Would never happen.

Just as the audience for news has to be able to replace one story with the next, the newsman has to be able to do the same thing. When you stop to consider this ability, it’s again like the drug addict. It isn’t yesterday’s fix that’s important, it’s what’s going to happen right now.

All newspeople are dedicated to The Story, but they have to believe the stories are factual. If they started to realize they’re reporting fiction, they’d come apart at the seams. Their lives and their minds are founded on the idea of facts. It doesn’t really matter that the facts are fictions—the newspeople believe they’re facts. This is a very strong belief. It’s religious.

When you step back and think about this, it’s strange. Reporters want to have a death-grip on facts. Information is their addiction; pretended facts are their religion. Where do these people come from? What breeds them to be the way they are? They’re dysfunctional in a deep sense. From an early age, they’re mesmerized by “knowing what’s going on.” They’re the “know-what’s-going-on” people. It’s absolutely vital to them.

They’re perfect, perfect dupes.

Q & A with Ellis Medavoy:

Q (Jon): So the job of the propagandist is to make fiction look and feel like fact.

A (Ellis): Propagandists know who they’re feeding, and they know what morsel will be snapped up by these newspeople. They know how to shape the morsel and color it and flavor it so that it becomes a drug.

Q: The memories of these newspeople…

A: Are data banks. Their memories are all data all the time. The memories form their reality. INTERRUPTION of reality is the primary sin. It can’t be tolerated.

Q: What do you mean by interruption?

A: A place in the mind where a corrosive question or doubt is inserted about the nature or character of a fact. For the regular human, this can be dealt with, at least to some degree. For the newsman, this is like a hammer blowing time to pieces. The flow is interrupted. It would be like one of those old stock brokers, when he followed the second-to-second transmission of stock prices by looking at a narrow piece of paper tape. He’d hold the tape in his hands and read it as it came through, yards and yards of it. But suppose the tape came out of the machine blank for a few minutes. This is why some people can’t meditate. They’re instinctively afraid they might come upon a silent moment where thought stops.

Q: So to ask your own question back to you, where DO these newspeople come from?

A: They, at an early age, see power as the capacity to know “what’s going on.” They plug into that kind of power.

Q: It’s strange.

A: It’s superficial. It’s all about surface flow of information. They stick to the surface. What they’re looking at, what they’re fascinated by is a kind of theater. They’re looking at theater. I’ve known that for a long time. It was part of my job to know it, because then I could present stories that would get through to reporters in a form that would have that theatrical feel.

Q: The players know their roles.

A: The reporters know, their editors know, their reliable sources know, and people like me, who feed those reliable sources, are like directors. It’s hard to describe this, but there is a certain pulse and pace and feel to the way you should supply stories to sources or reporters or editors. You know when to go fast and when to go slow. You know how to plug into their sense of theater. Their need for theater.

Q: So the addiction of these newspeople has a theatrical dimension to it.

A: Have you ever seen a junkie operate? A great deal of his action and talk is theater. He presents theater and he wants theater back. The newsman confuses theater with facts. It’s all rolled up into a big space. I’ve sold stories to reporters based purely on the theatricality of my presentation. See, let me tell you something. When I talk to a reporter, I know I’m walking into a theater where the play is ALREADY underway. It never stops for a reporter. So I hit the ground running. I enter the scene mid-stream. I don’t think, “Now, I’m starting to pitch my lines, now the scene is beginning.” No. I’m intuiting and seeing where he [the reporter] is right now, in the middle of one of his scenes, so to speak, and I plug directly into that place, that moment. Do you understand? This is the subtlety of the art.

Q: You understand his psychology.

A: Yes, and I understand his flow. I read the signals. Oh, this is Death of a Salesman or Streetcar Named Desire, or Hamlet, and they just shoved me out on the stage, and I have to know how to match the emotions of the moment, where the scene has already been going on for five minutes. It sounds a little odd, but that’s how you play the game if you want to win. It could be a very quiet moment in the scene, and then I need to talk in a whisper. It could be the peak of the scene, where the emotions are running high, and I have to drive right in and be there for it, with my feelings turned on high, too.

Q: But behind that, you were doing something quite different.

A: Of course. I had my marching orders and my agenda.

Q: You know, it’s almost like you’re talking about frequencies.

A: I am. Propaganda runs on carrier waves. What are you using to transmit messages? What wave? I knew my targets: reporters and editors and their reliable sources. So I had to understand and tune into the frequencies they would accept. If you watch the best television news anchors, you see they’re adopting several tight emotional frequencies, and they use them to transmit, with their voices and demeanor, the news to the public. They use a nearly perfect imitation of several things: concern, objectivity, dignity, intelligence, with a bit of a rosy glow of sincerity and humanity. That’s the recipe.

Q: Imitation, you say.

A: Yes. They’re a cartoon. They create a cartoon persona. A very well crafted one. And the audience is a cartoon, too.

Q: Why is the audience a cartoon?

A: Because, underneath it all, they know they’re being conned. At some level, they realize it’s a show. So they pretend, and they do it well. They pretend they’re very involved.

Q: You can see that?

A: See it? I lived by it for many years. I staked my reputation on all of this, on everything I’m talking about here. It wasn’t just theory. I went into the trenches with my understanding, and I made it succeed.

Q: You’re talking about using your skills on people who report the news, who tell the public what’s going on.

A: As I just said, it’s all a cartoon. On both sides. Broadcasters and audience. You may not like it that I take a hard line on the audience, but too bad. The audience is faking it just as much as the newscasters. You have to admit there are levels to the mind.

Q: Meaning?

A: On one level, the audience appears to accept what the mainstream news is telling them. But on another level, as I’m saying for the third time, the audience knows it’s a fake. And why don’t they admit it? Why don’t they say, ‘I’m sitting here at night buying what I know is fake. I’m watching the screen and the anchor is giving me the news and I know it’s cooked.’ Why don’t people do that? Because they refuse to look at their own little drama of stimulation, in which they are titillated by what the newspeople are giving them. They don’t want that professionally produced titillation to go away.

Q: You may have heard of something called the Internet. It’s changing things.

A: Sounds vaguely familiar. Yes. The ground is splitting beneath the audience’s feet. I’m not a praying man, but I do something close to that every day, as regards The New York Times and NBC. I ask for them to go bankrupt. The Times is on the road to perdition and insolvency. If they go, it will make an interesting sound.

Q: Is your blood pressure okay? You’re a retired senior citizen.

A: I think I can hold my own.

Q: If you need to take a break, we can do that.

A: (laughs) Everybody needs to take his medicine.

Q: I can think of two or three meanings for that sentence.

A: See, I’m a little sick of people saying that the great unwashed masses of very fine people are being fooled and duped by the big bad controllers. It’s a mutual dance. I knew that thirty years ago. Everybody has to own up to his part in the cartoon, in the theatrical presentation. I know the difference between real victims and fake victims.

Q: What is that difference?

A: The real victims, in certain countries, are being taken out by massive corporations with their assisting government troops and all sorts of other support. The fake victims are sitting in front of television sets eating sugar and tuning right into the frequencies of the presentation of the news. They’re frequency addicts, and I’m very serious about that. This is exactly what they’re hooked on. Why do you think all this research on the brain is being done? To home in on the best frequencies for the insertion of information. That’s what we’re discussing here. But good newspeople already understand the frequency game. Intuitively. They understand it better than the brain researchers. And the audience needs that human face and voice to transmit the addicting frequencies to them. It isn’t just the old flicker rate of the TV or the frames per second or the illuminated screen. It’s the person delivering the news. He’s the prime force. He’s addicted to the frequencies he’s using! He’s addicted, too, and he’s transmitting and sharing his addiction with the audience.

Q: And what’s the cure for this addiction?

A: The world is resonating every day with what humans want. Here is what they want: they want to ingratiate themselves with each other. Ingratiation. Acceptance. Those are the frequencies. That’s the theme of the play. Those are the resonating frequencies. That’s how information is built and fabricated to invoke belief and faith. That’s the carrier wave, the resonance.

Q: When did you realize this?

A: When I was nine. But that’s a whole other story. Realizing it pushed me into the work I did. It also rescued me from continuing to do that work. I got out. You know what getting out means? It means I don’t any longer accept what I was doing, AND I refuse to accept the conditions that made it possible to do that work. I didn’t just get out part way. I got out all the way. I don’t buy the basic theme of the play or the ingratiating resonance anymore. I offloaded the whole thing. You know what? Tomorrow, if I wanted to, I could start a new religion. And it wouldn’t really involve any of the factual deceptions I used to use in my work. I could start a non-denominational religion based, say, entirely on charity. That’s all. And it would look like a very good thing. But I WOULD be using my ability to put out my messages on frequencies and resonances that would attract people. See? That’s how I’d build my audience. And I won’t do that. I know how to do it very, very well, but I won’t do that. That’s what getting out all the way means.

Q: You know—

A: I know a few solid truths. You can get people to sleepwalk from “bad things” to “good things” and they’re still sleepwalking. And that’s the real problem. That’s one element of The Matrix.

Q: Scientists tend to believe in operant conditioning. They believe people think and act according to one type of operant conditioning or another, and there are no other choices.

A: That’s right. That’s the problem. Waking up from the frequency game altogether is the real goal.

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 NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.