Wednesday 13 July 2016

Enemy Propaganda Determines the Content of the Media

Recently I got bored of the usually radio stations I listen to on the way to work, so I tuned into a country music station. I listened to it for about a week, and made some general observations about country music.

I noticed that a great deal of country music songs reference truck ownership, such as the joys of driving a truck down a dirt road. I thought it was rather infantile and shallow to prattle on about having a good time with a commodity like that. Unfortunately, song after song followed that pattern, although sometimes about boat ownership instead. And at every commercial segment, there was at least one advertisement for a truck or car dealership. 

I began to think that country music was lame, until I heard some country music on a college radio station. The music they played was soulful. It was about hard times as well as good times. I wondered why I hadn't heard such music on the main country music station. A search of the ownership of a main country music station uncovered that it was owned by a group that also owns 25 car dealerships, each of which would happily sell a pick-up truck.

Pick-up trucks, as with most other vehicles cause a lot of pollution in both their manufacture and operation. Their increased use also leads to the building of more roads, which wipes out land which could have other uses. Their use of petrol leads to geopolitical conflicts, oil spills, and greenhouse gas concentration increases. Accordingly, a message which tells people to purchase such a commodity is a harmful propaganda message - an enemy propaganda message.

For the radio station and auto dealer group, they want to hammer this message of truck purchasing into people's heads as much as they can. Thus for them, a 20-second commercial just isn't enough. And so, the songs themselves become 3-minute additions to their arsenal of propaganda messaging. A song about other aspects of life unrelated to the commodity fetish is not going to work to get people disposed to buying a truck, so those songs are not played by the main station, effectively censoring them out.

I would not be surprised if a modern country music artist was really just a hack backed by a public relations marketing firm working on behalf of the auto industry.


"We are the most propagandized people in history." -John Stauber

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