Associated Propaganda?

[libertypirate]

Associated Propaganda?

By Wayne Collins [e-mail]

This was the first publicly available news response I found from AP (Associated Press) on the Jeff Gannon story. It perfectly llustrates how the presentation of information can skew our individual view of the story being told, and how we unknowingly fall for it every time. Maybe we can do something about that.

Let me show you the difference between propaganda and news.

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Reporter Quits Amid Credential Questions

Thursday February 10, 2005 6:31 PM


WASHINGTON (AP) - A writer who attracted attention by asking President Bush a loaded question at a news conference last month has resigned amid questions about his identity and background.

James D. Guckert, who wrote under the name Jeff Gannon, said on his Web site that he was leaving ``because of the attention being paid to me.'' He had been Washington bureau chief for Talon News outlet associated with another Web site, GOPUSA.

Guckert frequently attended White House press briefings over the last two years and asked pointedly conservative questions. Called on by Bush at a Jan. 26 news conference, Guckert said Senate Democratic leaders were painting a bleak picture of the economy and he asked Bush how the president would work ``with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality.''

The question prompted scrutiny, particularly from bloggers. Guckert was linked with online domain addresses suggestive of gay pornography. Guckert, a former resident of Wilmington, Del., told The (Wilmington) News Journal newspaper that he had registered the domain names for a client while he was working to set up a Web-hosting business.
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Now don’t blink it is very subtle.

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Reporter Quits Amid Credential Questions

Thursday February 10, 2005 6:31 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) - A conservative writer who attracted attention by asking President Bush a loaded question at a news conference last month has resigned amid questions about his identity and background.

James D. Guckert, who wrote under the name Jeff Gannon, said on his Web site that he was leaving ``because of the attention being paid to me.'' He had been Washington bureau chief for Talon News, a conservative online news outlet associated with another Web site, GOPUSA.

Guckert frequently attended White House press briefings over the last two years and asked pointedly conservative questions. Called on by Bush at a Jan. 26 news conference, Guckert said Senate Democratic leaders were painting a bleak picture of the economy and he asked Bush how the president would work ``with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality.''

The question prompted scrutiny, particularly from liberal bloggers. Guckert was linked with online domain addresses suggestive of gay pornography. Guckert, a former resident of Wilmington, Del., told The (Wilmington) News Journal newspaper that he had registered the domain names for a client while he was working to set up a Web-hosting business.

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Each is a story but because I took the emotional hooks out of the first one they read completely different.

It is important that you know propaganda is like character building designed to invoke an emotional connection to something about a specific character. The first character Gannon/Guckert is viewed differently depending on your emotional response to the words “A conservative writer”. If you are a conservative you would tend to identify more favorably to the character and if you were liberal you would see him less favorably. This is just how people associate with other people by what is common between them.

I had a Spanish teacher in community college that always reiterated this in class repetition is the process of recollection, thank you for grinding this into me. Anyway you all get the point it is about reinforcing a response, behavior, or thought in this case what you have in common with the character. In each of the first three paragraphs the reference to conservative appears “A conservative writer“, “a conservative online news outlet”, and “pointedly conservative questions”. Each statement is reinforcing what you stereotypically believe about a conservative and associating your beliefs to each of the previous statements.

When you get to the words “liberal bloggers” and they associate the word liberal to the character bloggers it engages how you feel about liberals and labels the character with your felt response. The bloggers, writer, news outlet, and even the questions are characters and because of how you perceive them you afford them your trust or skepticism.

There are also instances of misinformation used to describe some of the scenery and props, they help portray the story. When they quote him saying “because of the attention being paid to me.”, they actually changed the punctuation in the sentence which changed the meaning. On the jeffgannon.com site the sentence originally ends “paid to me, and my family.” I can’t think of a reason why cut out that, but changing the meaning of someone’s statement doesn’t quite add up. I checked the jeffgannon.com site and now the text on it has been altered to match the quoted statement.

There is also a more notable error surrounding the problems with Mr. Gannon’s website addresses they portrayed them as your average vanilla gay porn sites. When in reality the names alone advertise homosexual prostitution of military men (militaryescortsM4M.com). If you are conservative you more then likely don’t sympathies with Mr. Gannon\Guckert and provably not going to look at anything about this any more seriously, possibly ever. The liberal on the other hand is going to get stuck in the details which will turn off the conservatives because they really don’t care. Altering the details could encourage the idea that there is two versions of the story when notably there should not be this problem if this were journalism.

Although we all read the same text we build characters individually, and because of how we perceive the world and others determines the story we build. This happens to all of us without fail; it is part of who we are to associate the world to what we already think of it. Fortunately though there is something that can be done to fight it and expose it. When you read your news try to subtract those extra words and ask yourself if it would change your opinion of the characters being portrayed or change its meaning of the information being presented.

I am not sure if this piece was just easy to see it or not, but I think I will be paying a little closer attention to the next report off the wire. I hope that many conservatives have the opportunity to understand this problem and reiterate it to other like minded folks. This is not a liberal/conservative issue this is really an American issue. The fault here should not be associated to anyone’s perceived notion of whom or what was the cause of this type of reporting. In
fact I am certain that they will brush every thing off as coincidence and that it is not meant to be manipulative. In fact though I know it does matter and until unlike minded folks demand that it stops I don’t think it will.

There is one thing I that I think is more significant than anything else about this case. First all background information about Jeff Gannon was removed from the internet right as the bloggers got interested and now all his work has been removed. Why?

The original wire I found from AP
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4791753,00.html

What’s left of JeffGannon.com
http://www.jeffgannon.com

I posted the text here:

http://home.comcast.net/~libertypirate/AssociatedPropaganda.txt

[RBHam]

1. You nailed them, sir!

The AP has always been the "official propagandists" of the American empire.

Stick with UPI.

[libertypirate]

6. Unfortunatly there is the moonie thing with UPI

Thanks
lp

PS. What do you think happens when 60 affiliates co-brand with that AP article?

Answer: Turn one bad piece of news into 60, and you know it's from AP so it must be right.

[Melodybe]

2. So true, JS has pointed out them doing that plenty of times.

Good work Liberty Pirate, people should pay attention to the use of language, it is one of the best weapons they use on the American people.

[AngelAsuka]

3. Propaganda

Well said and shown, libertypirate. I must admit to having to reread the article a couple of times to notice the subtlety in it, but your analysis is a bullseye. Thanks for the important object lesson...at least, it was important to me. :)

:yourock:

~~AA~~

[EFerrari]

4. Authorized Propaganda.

Coined the nick watching their "reporting" on the "glitches" in Ohio. Just about the time they started calling my ilk "dissidents".

Nice work.

[libertypirate]

7. Thanks... Idea!

do you have anyof those reports still stored in your computers cache?

I would like to take a look to see if any is propagandized.

lp

[EFerrari]

8. I can check. If not, I remember they appeared about 10 days

after the faux election, and I'm sure the AP has archives.

They were thoroughly spun and sanitized.

[The Minus World]

5. Good Analysis - More Critical Thinking...

The sleight of hand used within mainstream media channels - the subtle manipulation, not of the basic content, but of how it is packaged and presented - is the home of every "Devil in the Details". The evocative usage of political labels, such as, "conservative writer" and "liberal bloggers" creates an atmosphere of persecution.

To a paranoid right-wing mind, it's almost an outright affirmation that there is, in fact, a vast left-wing conspiracy bent on discrediting any and all conservative voices in the media. It shifts the focus from Gannon/Guckert's almost non-existent qualifications, and the staggering implications of the White House allowing this nobody to attend Q&A sessions with the President, and instead highlights the outing itself.

In fact, this article contains very little raw information about the Gannon scandal. Sure, one might be informed of the matter after reading either piece, but would likely be less perturbed as one who was presented the story without the inappropriate political "framing". This should be an outrage, regardless of which side of the aisle you're on.

The article pays attention, not to the larger set of apolitical implications one would regularly ponder, but on the very narrow and subjective "liberals vs. conservatives" aspect of it.