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New Documentary Explores Subconscious Manipulation by Corporations and Others

by Rebekah Wilce — August 18, 2011 - 5:54pm
  • Topics: Advertising, Video News Releases, Corporations, Media, Propaganda, Public Relations, U.S. Government
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    It's our responsibility as journalists to let the public know who is paid by what corporation, or if they're representing the government. Otherwise, it's unforgivable. The media is our lens on the world. And it is absolutely critical we trust the media. Because, ultimately, when people are terrorized, when people are targeted, when people are marginalized, that does not make any of us safer.

    - Amy Goodman, interview in "Programming the Nation?" documentary

    "Programming the Nation?" Movie PosterAmy Goodman, Noam Chomsky, and Congressman Dennis Kucinich are among a diverse group interviewed in Jeff Warrick's new documentary, "Programming the Nation." The film is being released by the International Film Circuit and opens Friday, August 19th, at Quad Cinema in New York City. Warrick both directed and produced the film.

    The film discusses the history of subliminal messaging and advertising in America -- in music, in movies, in advertising, in the stores where we shop, by the military, by the media, by corporations, and by public figures. It presents a visual history of well-established practices of subliminal advertising, such as the 2007 quick flash of a McDonald's ad during the show "Iron Chef," reported at the time by CBS' "Inside Edition," to corporate and government use of "video news releases" (VNRs), a story that PRWatch broke in 2006. It also explores, with a less critical eye, contentious theories that the government is trying to influence human behavior and weather patterns with electromagnetic waves.

    Judge for yourself. Have advertisers, pop culture, and the government succeeded in "Programming the Nation?" To find out more, watch the trailer below or find a screening near you.

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    Mind Control

    Submitted by usedtobsupermom (not verified) on August 30, 2011 - 10:32am.

    Between 2004-2007 the publication "The Progressive Populist" in it's Dispatches section had this to report: The U.S. Government got a patent on mind control.

    Sorry, I don't know which issue it is, I have years of them put away & don't have time to go though them at this time.

    programming the nation

    Submitted by fritz (not verified) on August 22, 2011 - 7:23am.

    isn't subliminal messaging a bit too much effort to produce any more?
    isn't it easier to overtly dumb down the nation because we don't teach our kids because we are forced to try (and inevitibly fail) to raise the nation's kids because both parent's have had to work for the last thirty years in order to feed the plutocracy?
    isn't it easier to pay mouthpeice minions to overtly repeat the same bullet points hourly without interruption 24 hours at a time until these dumbed downs learn by old fashioned rote what to chant as they goose-step down the boulevard on command?
    if conspiracy theory is the aim of the day, I'd like to know why media is so spectacularly impotent when it comes to political and economic reporting which have devolved into p-espn and money honey tripe while the nation is collapsing. and also, why is media so spectacularly impotent when it comes to policing itself? in my humble opinion, resources would be infinitely better spent mulling the realities of what is killing us instead of the theories.

    media

    Submitted by Gregory L Kruse (not verified) on August 31, 2011 - 12:51pm.

    That's easy. Who owns the media? If you know enough to be aware that the plutocracy has been eating our lunch for 30 years, you must know how they get it from us. But plutocracy assumes that there is a government. I read a few years ago about a parasite that takes over the brain of lobsters or something and makes it go and do whatever the parasite wants. The parasite in our politics is the corporations and the government is the host. Corporations only need governments to do wars and crowd control. This is a new twist on the old empire game which has never ended. This new empire is truly global, non-governmental, and utterly immoral.