the news and the falsies

The Center for Media and Democracy has released its 2008 Falsies Awards.

The Falsies are our attempt to shine an unflattering light on those responsible for polluting the information environment over the past year.

The Golden Falsie for 2008 goes to The Propaganda Pundits:

You could call it General (ret.) Misinformation — the Pentagon's successful effort to turn retired military officers into the Bush Administration's "message force multipliers," mostly on broadcast and cable television. "You could see that they were messaging," one former Defense Department official explained to New York Times journalist David Barstow, who first reported on the covert program. "You could see they were taking verbatim what the [Defense] secretary was saying … and they were saying it over and over."

ME: I just can't stand television news, in general, yet I have to be under its beam almost every day. At the supermarket check-out, getting a coffee at McDonald's, waiting for an airplane, the televisions are always there and they are always on. It's like the telescreens in George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. They are always there, they are always on, and they are always "on message". Even if I don't look at them, I can hear their beat. Even worse, I hear people making comments, and sometimes arguing with each other, over the mindless drivel that comes out of them. This helps spend down people's energy so that there's little left for real thinking. Even if you don't believe what you're hearing from the "telescreens", the effect is there. At least something is going to seep into your brain and begin its work.

The online retailer, Thinkgeek, sells two items that will shut off many TV's, the Micro Spy Remote, and the TV-B-Gone. Maybe I should get one of them! Then again, the clandestine authorities may have already blocked the TV's from being susceptible to any "foreign" waves. :devil: