Campaign Coverage

Editors at media outlets explain that they cover frontrunners because they’re frontrunners. What they rarely concede is that frontrunners are frontrunners because they get coverage, and that that process begins years before the first voter has even taken a second to consider who to support in a future election years from now.

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  • Exactly. We don’t have freedom from the press-ure of a constant focus on short-term events and knee-jerk responses to them. It seems as if we are witness to 2 groups – one wants to keeps everything the same or go backwards as fast as possible in the shortest time, and the other wants to break free from this. Meanwhile, it’s hard to be heard above the deafening herd! 🙂

  • The old Soviet Union leaders were amazed and jealous of US media’s propaganda success.

    Was the American propaganda technique so much superior to the Soviet methods, or was the target audience of American propaganda so much easier to manipulate and intellectually defenseless in the face of state propaganda?

    My guess is both were, and are still, true.

    Keep an eye on media coverage of the coming Sheep Count of November, 2016.

    • The citizens of the USSR *knew* they were being fed propaganda, and so discounted it. In the US, we’re conditioned to believe in the ‘free press’ and so are more likely to believe what we read.

      Over at Faux News, they’ve taken it one step further. They tell their audience what they want to believe. “Work hard and you, too can be rich” – the American Dream has become a pipe dream, but many people still believe in it.

      The right, especially, has been conditioned with religion and liberal bashing to the point where they disbelieve anything said by scientists (in league with the devil) and liberals (in league with scientists.)

      • I believe you used the word “believe” four times and that nails the problem.

        Americans are believers. They believe despite what they see. And they are forgetful, leaving space for more belief in that mental absence, avoiding the cognitive dissonance of believing two things in contradiction.

        The work of forgetting begins with not seeing.

      • I believe I started grasping for synonyms & gave it up. 😉

    • Again, more evidence that the Soviet Union was NOT quite what its most vicious enemies said it was.

      1) The USSR provided its citizens with a free, high quality education including critical thinking skills.

      2) The USSR did not “indoctrinate” its citizens or attempt to otherwise condition people to be stupid, religious and gullible ignoramuses.

      • Well, you’ve got to hand it to Nikita Khrushchev for spilling the beans on Stalin.

        The US has not yet seen a president willing to level with the people about US atrocities.

        Between the forgetful and the believers, Americans probably wouldn’t know what the president was talking about in the short time he was able to talk before a “lone wolf assassin” silenced him.

      • “1) The USSR provided its citizens with a free, high quality education including critical thinking skills.

        2) The USSR did not “indoctrinate” its citizens or attempt to otherwise condition people to be stupid, religious and gullible ignoramuses.”

        ergo, Trolecenter was not educated in the USSR.

        😉

      • Glenn,

        Khrushchev was wrong to slander Stalin. An American professor, Grover Furr, has disproved all of Khrushchev’s claims against Stalin in his so-called “secret speech.”

        I know this is shocking to Americans who take it as an article of faith that Stalin was completely evil and comparable to Hitler, but it’s simply not true. Try reading some of Stalin’s own words. Compare them to Hitler’s ravings in “Mein Kampf” and you will see a huge difference.

        Stalin gave a brief interview with “Pravda,” the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s newspaper, just after and in response to Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri in 1946. You might find it very interesting. Here is a link to my blog that gives a little background and provides further links to the full Churchill speech and the Stalin interview:

        https://prolecenter.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/the-cold-war-begins-churchills-fulton-speech-and-stalins-response/

      • If the US were really interested in “poisoning” Americans against Stalin, I wouldn’t be the only person I know who knows what the Holodomor is.

      • FlemingBalzac
        January 26, 2016 5:38 AM

        Stalin for The Godwin!

        You must be really naive to trust a propaganda outlet over the testimony of thousands of witnesses – from former Soviet officials, citizens and even Stalin’s daughter. Although, I’m sure you’d dismiss them as lies anyway.

      • FlemingBalzac,

        Thousands of witnesses, huh?

        Yes, Stalin’s daughter defected and was a CIA asset. It’s all documented. When she got to the US they held a press conference and when asked why she betrayed her father and left the USSR, one of the things she said was that Stalin didn’t allow his family special privileges. She apparently considered this to be an outrage.

        Stalin cleaned house. There was a faction in the Party and throughout the country that were not in favor of a move toward communism. The landlords wanted all their land back so they could charge crushing rents. The aristocracy wanted all their obscene wealth and privileges back; and the bourgeois merchants wanted to exploit the labor of the working class – earning massive profits off of the blood, sweat and tears of the proletariat and peasant masses – over 80% of the population.

        Everyone has an agenda. Stalin’s agenda was democratic. He wanted to make the working class majority the ruling class in Russia. The people who lost out were obviously furious.

      • Jack Heart,

        I encounter right-wing activists online all the time talking about the “holodomor.” It is a hoax.

        http://russia-insider.com/en/history/hoax-or-genocide-did-stalin-really-starve-10-million-ukrainians-1933/ri9182

      • Well, Prole, you don’t disappoint.

        Sadly, for you, everything Stalin and the Soviets did to those under their rule has been documented thoroughly enough that there’s really no denying it.

  • A thoughtful commentary about how the the punditry both within and without the corporate media in North America and Europe deals with disturbing phenomena can be found in Glenn Greenwald’s article entitled The seven stages of establishment backlash : Corbyn/Sanders edition : https://theintercept.com/2016/01/21/the-seven-stages-of-establishment-backlash-corbynsanders-edition/….

    Imagine Jeremy Bernard Corbyn leading a UK government (the Scots might even be persuaded to remain in the country in that event) and Bernard Solomon Sanders as president of the US – humanity might just possibly have a chance to survive the 21st century !…

    Henri

    • “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

      Mahatma Gandhi

      • Except Gandhi didn’t win. British colonialism was simply replaced with a more disguised, but just as harmful, neocolonialism.

      • No matter how one may regard India today, you are certainly correct, prolecenter, in that Indian society hardly resembles that which Mohandas Kharamchand Gandhi envisioned. Whether or not – or more accurately, to what degree – this is a good thing or a bad, is open to dispute – kicking the British out was, to my mind, a great achievement, but as you point out, the consequences have been mixed, at best….

        Henri

    • If Corbyn/Sanders get into power, there won’t be much left worth saving.

  • I’ve been blogging and posting comments for years and I have gone by the moniker (also the name of my blog) “Prole Center” for all that time. Never until last week have I been called “Trollcenter.” CrazyH first called me this. Later that day, while commenting on another website, I was called “Trollcenter” once again by someone else. Very curious. Coincidence? Maybe. The second incident appeared to be a different person because he/she posted under a different name, but perhaps it was the same person. I can only speculate, but CrazyH has admitted in the past that he has deliberately “trolled” me.

    CrazyH may not be what he seems.

    • Actually, I usually call you Trolecenter – slightly different spelling.

      I’ve been posting as Crazy H for nearly fifteen years. Although I do use different handles, I am not currently using any other for politics, etc. In all likelihood, someone else figured you out. (It’s not that hard)

      Good luck discrediting me to this crowd – not only have I been here longer, but I don’t have an agenda.

      • Shut up, girls. No one gives a fuck. And you’re both discredited to me anyway.

      • I suppose it’s pointless to note that using the word “girls” to insult men is both sexist and homophobic.

      • Ah, «JackHeart» has taken it upon herself/himself to moderate these threads -i e, the task of informing other participants when they are to «shut up», depending upon how much «credit» they happen to enjoy with her/him. Obviously the fact that Ted allows us carte blanche on these threads is too much for her/his tender sensibilities…. 😉

        In the event, CrazyH, you want an example of a real troll, you have one here….

        Henri

      • «I suppose it’s pointless to note that using the word “girls” to insult men is both sexist and homophobic.» Russell, describing so categorically and so accurately the traits that «JackHeart – willy-nilly» – reveals on these threads may perhaps be considered rather cruel ; not so much because you point out matters that other participants here have not long ago noticed, but because you force «JackHeart» herself/himself to confront them….

        Self-knowledge is, as we know, an arduous task, and in cases like that of «JackHeart», such knowledge is not always pleasant….

        Henri

      • Everyone has an agenda.

      • Oh, I said girls because when two men (presumably) get into a cat fight, they get called girls, and also because it would offend *your* tender sensibilities. So, Russell, it is pointless to point out because that was the point. A not so pointless point would be your silence in the past when your buddy CH hurled the same sort of attack my way. But hey, so long as someone on your side does it, it’s fine by you.

      • And I only speak for myself. You’re welcome to enjoy the threads dominated by CHs’ and proles’ aimless bickering.

      • @henri, yeah, I put Jack in the troll category long ago, but then I use the old fashioned definition of one who posts primarily to stir up trouble. Some mornings I check my email and see that he’s made a half-dozen inflammatory and derogatory posts whose sole purpose appears to be to provoke a fight, any fight.

        Although I play with his moniker, I actually consider Trolecenter to be a ‘shill’ in that he is obviously paid to pursue a specific agenda. If you read his BS, you’ll find he has only three topics:

        1) USSR Good
        2) USA Bad
        3) Bernie bad

        He’s always on target and he hammers on it incessantly, never deviating from the script.

        If he were seriously interested in socialism, he’d speak about it sometimes – he never does. It’s always “This wonderful thing happened in the USSR” (North Korea, China) or “Bernie is not a socialist.” A serious social reformer wold comment on other social issues, but he only pops up when Ted speaks of socialism, Sanders, or the election.

        He pretends to have a great deal of knowledge on a very limited set of subjects, yet if you probe him he shows that he has only a vary narrow amount of knowledge, and it’s all one-sided. One cannot understand the entire political spectrum if one only looks at one color. Try to engage him in a debate and he starts talking in circles and/or throwing out ad hominem attacks. Every try to argue politics with a car salesman? They’ve got so many gambits that draw you away from the actual point that you never get anywhere. He is *very* practiced in those gambits, one has to wonder why if his stated goal was really what he purports it to be.

        But more importantly, he is actively driving people away from the altar. If you want to promote socialism to Americans, very last thing in the world that you want to do is start talking about NK and Stalin. This is because 99% of Americans think that NK is a police state and Stalin was a murderous dictator. When you’ve got that sort of entrenched thinking, it doesn’t even matter if it’s true or flase. As a direct result, 95% of Americans believe that socialism means police state. Jack & Fleming both believe that down to the tips of their toes – yet Trole does not seek to disabuse them of those notions, but rather he reinforces them..

        So, he’s either working for the Republicans trying to discredit socialism by playing to their preconceived notions, OR he’s trying to promote the USSR as a member of the Russian Web Brigade

        Either way, his comments aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

      • CrazyH, I sincerely doubt that anybody pays prolecenter to post his messages to this thread, certainly not the current Russian government – http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/25/vladmir-putin-accuses-lenin-of-placing-a-time-bomb-under-russia – and most probably not the Republicans as well ; those who would agree with prolecenter’s criticism of certain of Mr Sander’s policies, which in part I do – are unlikely to prefer the alternatives offered by that particular party. (To avoid misunderstanding, let me say here that, as noted earlier, despite my criticism of these policies, I suspect that Mr Sanders is the last best hope for the US, just as Jeremy Corbyn is for the UK. That a fatuous troll like «Jack Heart» claims that «there won’t be much left worth saving» were these two to attain power in their respective countries serves to prove the point….

        Henri

      • You’re reading along in some forum, and somebody pops up and says, “I just got a great deal at this website” – do you believe that they are an civilian poster who just had to spontaneously share his shopping experience? Or do you think they were paid to make that post?

        If commercial enterprises can figure out how to use social media to their advantage – why not governments and political parties? The political shills most assuredly are out there. Prole’s behaviors defy rational explanation if you take them at face value. But they do fit the profile of a professional disinformation agent.

        http://www.whale.to/m/disin.html

      • Well, CrazyH, we shall simply have to agree to disagree here. I find, as noted above, it extremely unlikely that anyone – and certainly not the entities you mentioned – would pay prolecenter for his postings to this thread, nor do I find that prolecenter’s posts (I presume that these are what you refer to as «behaviours») «defy rational explanation». He subscribes to a belief system you don’t share ; so what ? As one Samuel Langhorne Clemens once pointed out, «it is difference of opinion that makes horse races». My impression is that prolecenter desires – and contributes to – a serious discussion on these threads, and while I may disagree with him on many counts, I appreciate what I believe to be his intent….

        Henri

      • fair enough – but out of curiosity, do you disbelieve in the notion of government/political shills altogether, or is it just this particular shill? (I know, I’m begging the question – but that’s another of TC’s annoying habits 😉

      • CrazyH, I’m quite prepared to believe that there are government/political shills who receive reimbursement for their contributions to various threads ; I simply doubt that our friend prolecenter is one of them. I could, of course, be wrong, and he might be financing his McMansion by means of Moscow gold – although, given current oil prices, he’d almost certainly have had to take a haircut – but, as noted, I deem it unlikely….

        Henri

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