The Psychological Warfare Techniques of the U.S. Media

by Michael A. Hoffman II Copyright©1998

Dear Michael,

If anybody knows, you do: what is the deal with this massive manhunt for the so-called "survivalists" in Utah and Colorado?

Why are the media yelping so? Unfortunately, policemen are killed in the line of duty almost everyday. What is so special about this case?

Stan, Louisiana

Dear Stan

Because, with their proficiency with weapons and choice of attire, these fugitives represent a symbolic counter-army; a totem of the seething resentments and enormous energies of the native-born American people whose silence is occasionally broken by spectacular outbursts of rage, such as this one.

The corporate media fetishize this as deviltry, enhancing the tensions of polar opposition all the more.

This is not to say that these men are not themselves programmed or processed in some manner by the government itself. But the hysterical media reaction in such cases is certainly instructive.

Another example of such a reaction is the recent, alleged, torture-unto-death of that unfortunate black man in Texas. If guilty, the three white perpetrators should certainly be executed and the world made a better place.

However, in any given month an Afro-American, for reasons of racial animosity, shoots, bludgeons, tortures or rapes unto death a white American. In those atrocities the story usually gets only local media coverage and accounts of the assailant's racial motivation are often minimized or suppressed altogether.

Or if a report of the crime committed by the black racist does somehow reach the national scene, it is reported in ambiguous terms, in shades of moral gray, with token commiseration for the white victim, but with a great deal of sympathy and understanding for the black perpetrator who, it will undoubtedly be reported, was at some point in his life, "victimized by white racism."

Hence, by the yardstick of the establishment media and the Federal government, racist black attacks are "retribution" for past injustice, while racist white attacks are "vile hate crimes" without mitigation.

A similar media strategem can be observed in their reporting in the Middle East, where Israeli air force bombings of Shiite villages in Lebanon, in which Lebanese civilians are often killed, are described as "retaliation" for Arab attacks. Whereas when Arabs attack Israeli civilians, these are reported as acts of "terrorism" pure and simple.

America's corporate news media long ago ceased to be a source of objective information and are in fact a weapon of psychological warfare. I ought to know, since for a time I wrote the wire stories of the Associated Press.

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