New World Notes - The News as Propaganda

This week on New World Notes: radio program #218, May 8, from 12:00 to 12:30 p.m., host Kenneth Dowst looks at news as propaganda.

First, veteran news critic Jeff Cohen explains how the news media mislead the public to serve the interests of Established Power. He focuses on two related techniques: (1) presenting a very narrow spectrum of opinion (while pretending to cover "both sides") and (2) ignoring all voices--including experts'--that contradict government and corporate claims. War opponents especially. Interestingly, he concludes--from empirical studies he helped conduct--that NPR and PBS are no different from the commercial networks in these matters.

Then--courtesy of Project Censored--we look at some important stories that the major news media decided not to report.

Jeff Cohen's remarks are taken from a half-hour interview on Barry Vogel's Radio Curious. Many thanks to Barry and the show. Find the complete interview--and hundreds of other installments--at www.radiocurious.org.

Jeff Cohen was a founder of the media watchgroup Fairness and Accuracy in Media (FAIR) -- www.fair.org. See also: www.jeffcohen.org and www.projectcensored.org.