Media Complicity
Part Five: No Longer the Media's Patsy
Media Complicity: Parts One, Two, Three, and Four
Earlier in this series, you’ve read that all major TV networks chose not to air a prime time national address by President Joe Biden in 2022 warning Americans they were in danger of losing their democracy if Trump regained the White House.
You read that in the months prior to the 2024 presidential election these same TV networks (and major U.S. newspapers) failed to mention that dozens of experts in mental health believed that Donald Trump is highly symptomatic of a socially dangerous mental pathology known as malignant narcissism.
Just days ago, America’s largest corporate owners of TV stations in cities across our country, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, Inc. and Nexstar Media Group, Inc. refused to air comedian Jimmy Kimmel, a high-profile critic of the Trump regime, in his show’s return after being suspended in part due to Trump Administration censorship.
Nexstar is currently trying to gain the approval of Trump’s FCC for a six billion dollar merger with another corporate owner of regional TV stations. If approved, over 80% of all TV stations in America would be owned or controlled by conglomerates that independent media watchdogs deem to be Right-wing biased.
If this merger is approved, Americans would continue to be told—even more so—only what promotes the wishes and goals of Conservative corporate and oligarch agendas.
Make no mistake. We all of us are in a war for control of our minds and our lives, and that includes MAGA and the Right regardless if they know it or believe it. That MAGA is MAGA and so mentally and emotionally divorced from other Americans is a symptom of that war that reveals how badly we’re losing it.
The key to freeing our minds and regaining our country concerns the universal human susceptibility to employ motivated reasoning—emotionally biased rationalizations—when we encounter news, events, or information that’s relevant to our beliefs or what we want to believe is true.
Consider the refusal to air Kimmel’s return.
Sinclair and Nexstar claimed their refusal to air Kimmel’s show reportedly stemmed from his purportedly insensitive remarks concerning MAGA and Kirk’s alleged killer, a registered Republican. Some media reports have characterized Kimmel’s statement as labeling the suspect as being part of “the MAGA gang,” What Kimmel said was this:
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
As you can see, Kimmel never said the man belonged to MAGA but rather that MAGA was desperate to characterize him as “anything other than one of them,” so they could blame Kirk’s murder on Liberals.
The twisting of Kimmel’s words and their meaning to promote an agenda is a perfect example of how news can be “spun” to affect how it’s received by the public through appealing to its wish to believe what it wants to believe, i.e., its motivated reasoning.
Had these corporations told the public, “We’re not putting Kimmel on the air, because we don’t like what he says and we don’t want you to hear it,” viewers who care about America’s Constitution, free speech, and their democracy, including Conservatives, might have been alarmed enough to stop and think.
Whereas to say in affect, ‘Kimmel was insensitive about the murder of a beloved moral activist,” told tens of millions of viewers what they wanted to believe about Kimmel and the Left—a reason their emotions could embrace—while preempting ‘First Amendment” objections by blaming Kimmel for Kimmel’s suspension.
In America’s mega-corporate media world, it’s all about spinning the news, framing it, priming it, ‘both sides’ reporting, ambiguous content, or keeping unwanted truths from reaching you. The first five of these techniques exploit our readiness to interpret whatever we hear, see, or encounter to fit how we wish to see it. The last—withholding what they don’t want us to know—concerns the limits of self-deception.
Bursting the motivated reasoning bubble
While humans may be inclined to interpret the news to support our beliefs, biases, convenience, ambitions, or egos—some realities are so stark and so profound they might pierce our psychological defenses or worldview denials. For example:
Might many Americans, especially the 89 million voting-eligible Americans who chose not to vote in 2024, have paid attention had they been told or allowed to hear:
that President Joe Biden believed they could lose their democracy and legal rights if Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office.
that dozens of nationally respected psychiatrists and psychologists believed that Trump is mentally incapable of caring if his actions cause others to suffer, that people have worth to Trump only as far as they serve his uses, that ‘right and wrong’ to Trump means only what’s ‘good or bad’ for Trump, and he’s unable to reliably discern realities from his fantasies or fiction.
that owners of mainstream corporate media intend to control virtually ALL of what you see, hear, or read in the news—as revealed by their censure of Jimmy Kimmel and their wish to place over 80% of America’s TV stations under Right wing corporate control—to ensure that they alone have access to your minds.
Because some realities might be too alarming to the public and too dangerous to ignore, for the good of mega-corporations and the ultra-wealthy, such realities remain unsaid.
Motivated reasoning and everything else.
Consider how the media exploits our proclivity to rationalize news, information, and events to fit our beliefs, egos, and convenience:
‘Both sides’ reporting encourages both sides of our divided society to cherry-pick only what supports their beliefs. Under the guise of being sensitive to the public’s diverse worldview beliefs, ‘both sides’ reporting promotes social division, worsens it, and further entrenches it.
The effectiveness of ‘spinning’ the news to make it appear to be something it’s not or to suggest socially divisive implications depends solely on appealing to the viewer’s emotions through confirming what they want to believe is true.
At the same time, those who recognize the news is being spun to promote corporate or worldview agendas have further reason to mistrust the media and not follow it, which promotes social apathy and non-involvement.
‘Framing’ the news and issues: Consider ‘stem cells.’ Between 2001 and 2006, everything we read or saw concerning stem cells and cloning framed them as “religious values versus miracle cures.” Framing them so…
told the Left what it wanted to believe about the Right—that Conservatives were religious zealots who cared nothing for the sick, disabled, or dying.
told the Right what it wanted to believe about the Left—that Liberals care nothing about prenatal life except as something to exploit.
kept us all from considering their realistic medical worth or the vast financial implications for research-related industries, like Pharma and BIO, if research resources were diverted for decades down primrose research paths.
in retrospect, of the seven medical conditions once used as pretexts for stem cells and cloning, none have been cured by stem cells despite tens of billions being spent on their research. Since 2006, these seven conditions have generated over $1 trillion in drug revenues. If they remain uncured through 2033, marketplace projections expect them to yield a further $1.3 trillion.
To summarize: exploiting motivated reasoning, the media frames factual realities that could threaten the wealth or power of Corporate America and the ultra-rich—such as the stark, black & white facts of climate change, gun deaths in schools, the pandemic, January 6th, and everything concerning Trump and his regime—as mere matters of worldview ‘opinion.’
Mental Self-defense
Beginning at 5:09 into this video and over the minute that follows, you can see how a media conglomerate dispenses its uniform corporate rant to tens of millions of unsuspecting viewers.
‘Freedom of the press’ does not merely mean that reporters should be free from government censorship. It should mean, but doesn’t, that reporters are free to tell us bluntly what is true of our world and what we need to hear regardless if we like it or if their employers like it.
What it should not mean, but does, is that the corporate media and the Press are free to manipulate the public however they can to promote the wealth, power, and goals of corporations and rich elites.
America’s Press is no longer free.
So how can we defend our minds from media control? In every seemingly divisive issue or news report, I suggest we ask ourselves…
if beneath its emotional worldview aspects whether large amounts of money or political power are at stake.
if we feel an automatic urge to accept, reject, or interpret the news because of how it aligns with our existing beliefs or what we want to believe is true.
who benefits if we accept or interpret the news as we feel compelled to accept it, for example…
does it lead us to think we’re powerless, that nothing we can do could make a difference, and our most sensible course would be to just ignore the world and focus on our lives and enjoyment?
does it seem to confirm that people whose beliefs or lifestyles differ from ours are wrong in their beliefs, and they must be our social enemies?
who benefits if the news as its presented inflames social division and exploits it?
I suggest point #5 because America’s corporate media is increasingly a propaganda tool for controlling the masses and not a commercial institution serving the public’s good, and as novelist Aldous Huxley said:
“The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that other sets of people are human.”
My other suggestions all concern being aware of how the news affects us through how we may want to see it, because Eric Hoffer, a Conservative philosopher who once warned of the eventual rise of an American ‘Hitler,’ nails what corporate media is all about with this insightful quote:
“Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.”
Try not to see the world as you’re led to see it daily—only as you want to see it or through your emotional lens. Try to see what’s really there and why it’s important that you see it for what it is and not how its spun for your easy consumption.
Our world and our future need us to escape our mental matrix.
#ResistNow
James Kelly
Media Complicity: Parts One, Two, Three, and Four
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James’s Bio
A unique set of circumstances brought me to a point in 2002 when I picked up a phone, called a switchboard in Washington D.C., and dramatically changed my life’s focus and path. These circumstances included:
the problem-solving and communication skills I developed through a twenty-year railroad career as a signals installer, locomotive electrician, and train dispatcher.
my lifelong total disinterest and non-involvement in politics, religion, or worldview issues.
a 1997 auto accident that left me paralyzed and determined to use the above-mentioned skills to study and understand scientific research involving spinal cord injury (SCI).
my alarm over inaccurate statements regarding stem cells and SCI research made in testimony to the U.S. Senate on March 5th 2002.
That phone call led to my becoming a “pro-cures” patient activist for several years in the stem cells and cloning debates. My involvement included:
thrice serving as a White House surrogate stem cells spokesperson,
debating the medical value of cloning at the New York Academies of Science,
debating the medical worth of embryonic stem cells and cloning on CNN,
testifying before state and federal government committees,
communicating daily for several years with lobbyists, congressional staffs, members of the President’s Council on Bioethics, and White House staff.
Just as my becoming paralyzed led to my intensive study of SCI research, which led to my ‘stem cells’ involvement, I remain socially active against economic fascism and wrote a non-fiction book (“Weaponized Division: Exploiting Beliefs for Profits and Power”) due to:
what I learned through my former exposure to Conservative lobbyists, politicians, and the research industry,
my continued and expanded study of peer-reviewed research,
my observations during the stem cells debates and since of how politicians, industry spokespersons, worldview leaders, and the media target our hopes, fears, and beliefs in order to promote and exploit social division,
America’s harmful and tragic continued division over climate change, clean energy, gun control, Covid-19, and Donald Trump.
I remain socially active and am hosting this site because I’ve witnessed how a universal aspect of the human psyche renders us vulnerable to manipulation and social control by people who deceive themselves (through the same aspect of psychology) to see nothing wrong with their actions, goals, or beliefs. I’m doing this because my conscience insists that I do it.
Thank you, Jim, for doing your due diligence on the media, the onslaught of misinformation and disinformation, and how we must protect our minds from being overtaken.