BD, I know I’m about to repeat myself but I’m telling you – when I was younger I often wondered how was it possible for Hitler (and his Nazi regime) to convince nearly an ENTIRE NATION of “Non-Jewish” people to follow Him into the depths of H*ll? (support the Holocaust)

And the sad Truth is…now I know. It was easy.

Like many journalists, these anchors have spent years, even decades, building reputations for truth and integrity. And then Sinclair, the largest owner of local TV stations in the nation, was requiring them to read scripted lines, including “some media outlets publish these same fake stories…without checking their facts first,” and “… some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agendas to control exactly what people think.”

One local anchor told CNN’s Brian Stelter, “I felt like a POW recording a message,” while another said, “At my station, everyone was uncomfortable doing it.”

It’s hard not to feel sorry for them. No doubt many of them felt trapped. If they refused their bosses’ demands, they could get fired.

Sinclair’s order was in many ways making working conditions intolerable for these anchors. In the United States, when employers make conditions unbearable or unpleasant, there has long been an option that workers can pursue: form a union and seek protections through a union contract.

If Sinclair’s anchors and other journalists unionize, they can demand a contract provision that gives them a right to refuse to read statements they reasonably believe to be false or propaganda. One can call this a conscience clause or a clause to protect one’s reputation for truth and integrity.

Truth my friend you are living up to your name and telling the whole TRUTH with everything you wrote today. And DJ my man this is a excellent topic to discuss because it really is scary when you think about it. Trump has been trying to control the media and what they report since he started. Now we see he has help with this Sinclair mess. If we didn’t have freedom of press in this country then we would be just like North Korea and only believing what we are told to believe. That is what Trump wants and Truth you are right about if you tell a lie long enough people will believe it. That is already happening now. Trump talks about how great he is and how great he is doing and people believe it. They can’t back it up but they still believe it no matter what. I hope this whole mess with Sinclair blows up in their face. Maybe it will wake some of these dummies up that believe anything they hear.

Excerpts:
There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyways always yield to the stronger, and this will always be ‘the man in the street.’ Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.

Intellectual activity is a danger to the building of character.

The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitive. In the long run basic results in influencing public opinion will be achieved only by the man who is able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep forever repeating them in this simplified form, despite the objections of the intellectuals.

What you want in a media system is ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity.

It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.

We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear’s work, that is its affair. We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.

We have made the Reich by propaganda.

Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.

Not every item of news should be published. Rather must those who control news policies endeavor to make every item of news serve a certain purpose.

Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state, for every form of power politics and any dictatorship-run state has its roots in the street.

Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place. […]

Sources: Calvin College German Propaganda Archives; Jewish Virtual Library. Southern Methodist Univ (SMU)