As used by Our New Unhappy Lords
See how many you can spot in any newspaper or television news bulletin on any day:
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression
Originally Thirteen Techniques for Truth Suppression
by David Martin
Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a government. When the government lacks an effective, fact-based defense, other techniques must be employed. The success of these techniques depends heavily upon a cooperative, compliant press and a mere token opposition party.
Dummy up. If it’s not reported, if it’s not news, it didn’t happen.
Wax indignant. This is also known as the “how dare you?” gambit.
Characterize the charges as “rumours” or, better yet, “wild rumours.” If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to learn about the suspicious facts, it can only be through “rumours.” (If they tend to believe the “rumours” it must be because they are simply “paranoid” or “hysterical.”)
Knock down straw men. Deal only with the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Even better, create your own straw men. Make up wild rumours and give them lead play when you appear to debunk all the charges, real and fanciful alike.
Call the sceptics names like “conspiracy theorist,” “nut,” “ranter,” “kook,” “crackpot,” and of course, “rumour monger.” Be sure, too, to use heavily loaded verbs and adjectives when characterizing their charges and defending the “more reasonable” government and its defenders. You must then carefully avoid fair and open debate with any of the people you have thus maligned. For insurance, set up your own “sceptics” to shoot down.
Impugn motives. Attempt to marginalize the critics by suggesting strongly that they are not really interested in the truth but are simply pursuing a partisan political agenda or are out to make money (compared to over-compensated adherents to the government line who, presumably, are not).
Invoke authority. Here the controlled press and the sham opposition can be very useful.
Dismiss the charges as “old news.”
Come half-clean. This is also known as “confession and avoidance” or “taking the limited hangout route.” This way, you create the impression of candour and honesty while you admit only to relatively harmless, less-than-criminal “mistakes.” This stratagem often requires the embrace of a fall-back position quite different from the one originally taken. With effective damage control, the fall-back position need only be peddled by stooge skeptics to carefully limited markets.
Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable.
Reason backward, using the deductive method with a vengeance. With thoroughly rigorous deduction, troublesome evidence is irrelevant. For example: We have a completely free press. If they know of evidence that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) had prior knowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing they would have reported it. They haven’t reported it, so there was no prior knowledge by the BATF. Another variation on this theme involves the likelihood of a conspiracy leaker and a press that would report the leak.
Require the sceptics to solve the crime completely. For example: If Vince Foster was murdered, who did it and why?
Change the subject. This technique includes creating and/or publicizing distractions.
Scantly report incriminating facts, and then make nothing of them. This is sometimes referred to as “bump and run” reporting.
Baldly and brazenly lie. A favourite way of doing this is to attribute the “facts” furnished the public to a plausible-sounding, but anonymous, source.
Expanding further on numbers 4 and 5, have your own stooges “expose” scandals and champion popular causes. Their job is to pre-empt real opponents and to play 99-yard football. A variation is to pay rich people for the job who will pretend to spend their own money.
Flood the Internet with agents. This is the answer to the question, “What could possibly motivate a person to spend hour upon hour on Internet news groups defending the government and/or the press and harassing genuine critics?” Don’t the authorities have defenders enough in all the newspapers, magazines, radio, and television? One would think refusing to print critical letters and screening out serious callers or dumping them from radio talk shows would be control enough, but, obviously, it is not.
via Stumble Upon
Yet another ‘conspiracy theory’ has been proved true. (Picture: Sipa, AP images)
For years, conservatives, from bloggers and news sites to companies and political candidates have complained that Google, the dominant internet search engine, adjusts its search algorithms in order to manipulate results and ‘blank’ certain organisations and shades of opinion. Google has always denied the allegation charge, claiming there is no bias in the way that search results appear even though whistleblowing former employees have leaked documents showing it does, and tech analysts have offered statistical proof of malfeasance in listing search results.
According to the Wall Street Journal, (WSJ) Google’s protestations are as phoney as their search results.
The WSJ has published a report based on the findings of a major and far reaching investigation of Google’s search operation that involved interviews with hundred witnesses and examination of the tech corporation’s internal documents from the company. Investigators found that Google changed its search result listing algorithms 3,200 times last year (2018) with the aim of controlling what information users are offered links to. Much of that alteration was done in favor of promoting big business over small, as well as showing favor to big advertisers like eBay. But there were instances in which the company’s well known liberal and left wing political stance led to its weighting the algorithm against conservative and libertarian news and opinion too.
CNBC commented:
The company also blacklists one – issue campaign sites, as well as what it calls “hate sites,” (‘hate’ being whatever Google’s senior execs say it is, thus suggesting transgendered women are not ‘real’ women will be penalised, according to the investigation. They soft-pedal issues like abortion — which almost certainly hurts anti-abortion sites – and penalise Christian and Jewish religious sites while boosting sites promoting Islam.
Now a respected organisation such as the WSJ has recognised Google’s unethical corporate policy making, lack of credibility could quickly become huge problem for Google. Not only is it bad PR, but some Google executives may have perjured themselves in testimony before congressional committees.
National Review reports that Google also skews its search algorithms in other ways.
Ed Morrissey in PJ Media sums up the damage to democracy and independent businesses Google is doing.
When a powerful private company like Google, which through ill – considered political actions has been handed for too much influence over our access to information, trades neutrality for political influence and invites politicians to influence the way it does business, our many of our basic freedoms are put at risk .But Google’s parent company, Alphabet, like Facebook and other Silicon Valley behemoths, seems more intent on creating a global, cultural Marxist utopia than in doing honest business with the goal of making a modest profit. The founders and leaders of tese companies seem to believe they are above the law, and the fact that they can do something justifies doing it.
The WSJ investigation will no doubt give a boost to efforts by the EU competition commissioner, the governments of China, Japan, Russia, India and Philippines, and the 50 US state attorneys general currently looking into an anti-trust action against the tech giant. Perhaps Google’s fear of being broken up in accordance President Trump’s pledges to ‘drain the swamp’, or excluded from certain large and lucrative markets outside the US with will bring about a rethink of its policy, but I’m not betting on it.
More likely Google will continue to play dirty and try to defy attempts to apply some discipline to its activities which too often seem to stray outside the law and are always on that gery area on the edge of ethical behaviour.
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