From: gary@ke4zv.uucp (Gary Coffman)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,alt.news-media,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: CNN Anchor Admits Pro-Clinton Bias
Date: 29 Sep 92 14:48:33 GMT
Reply-To: gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group

In article <lc6en9INNgf@spim.mti.sgi.com> mpolen@suntory.mti.sgi.com (Michael Polen) writes:
>Gary Coffman) writes:
>|> the large audience that did watch that popular program. The people who 
>|> actually produce TV programming know from experience that ratings and 
>|> ideology are almost completely decoupled. They can preach almost any
>|> message they want and still attract a large audience desired by some
>|> advertiser. All it requires is slick production and clever writing.
>|> TV news is very much the same, people watch even as they complain of 
>|> bias. Like any Big Lie, after they hear it enough times they come to 
>|> accept at least part of it. That's the basis of most advertising
>|> campaigns. It's often true that the most offensive commercials are
>|> also the most effective.
>|> 
>This belies logic.   Ratings measure watchers and advertisers
>pay for shows with watchers.  So your only argument must be that people
>will continually watch things they disagree with, dislike, and that
>assault their basic beliefs.  I cannot accept that statement.  I
>find that it is very easy to find something I do like, and regularly
>switch to it.  I know many who say that they "never watch network TV,
>only PBS."  It's baloney, in many cases.  They know too much about
>what is going on on the shows they don't watch.

Yes and that's evidence that slick packaging and promotion can sell
iceboxes to eskimos, even if they deny buying them to their friends.
Most of us know that the supermarket tabloids are lying, but they
do it entertainingly enough that we buy them anyway. Though we
probably tuck them in the bottom of our shopping bags, like dirty 
magazines, for fear some other member of the intelligencia will see 
them and think us fools. Similarly, the blood and circus material
that fills local TV news attracts us while it repells us. We watch
even when we consciously know the information we are being fed is
slanted. Our pride tells us we are too smart to fall for the propaganda,
but we do anyway because propaganda works at a subconscious level and
our subconsciouses *are* impressionable.

All of us like to claim we read only Consumer Reports to learn how
to make purchasing decisions, but market research shows that repetitive
advertising works. The more obnoxious the ad, if done in a suitably
clever way, the more effective it is in sticking in our subconscious.
When we see the product, our mind tells us we've heard of it, but forgets
the obnoxious connection, and we buy. This is the basis of all good
propaganda campaigns, to plant concepts in our minds that we will
subconsciously co-opt as being our own thoughts.

Propaganda doesn't even have to be overtly intended. In fact, much of
the very best propaganda isn't. It's a subconscious transference of
the producer's belief system into the consumer's belief system. Working
below the level of the conscious censor, we usually don't even realize
anything is happening until we wake up one day wondering how we could
have held such silly old beliefs as "family values" or "no sex before
marriage" or any of a number of other views that aren't politically
correct in the new order.

Gary
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.homosexuality