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Our entire understanding of the world and current affairs is filtered through the mass
media, interpreted by journalists and so-called experts. Their views become our views
simply because we are not offered any alternatives

Trans-national corporations NEED to invent and sell new products, which we NEED to
consume, so that corporations may invent new products, which in turn we have to buy...

Media and marketing are the best accomplices of corporations in this brainwashing,
first by making us feel frustrated, inadequate and not "ok", and then by alluring us that we
just have to buy the latest worthless things in order to be "happy"

But media, while making us feel inadequate and "not in tune" with society,  is also actually
hypnotizing   us, in order to sell not merely products "hunger", but a consumer culture too.

Look at many Tv programs, particularly soap operas and junk programs.
Programs which stimulate, justify and even praise the lowest human feelings/behaviour and
the meanest possible human instincts: from emulation and envy to violence and voyeurism.
 
So, not only media is driving us to see ourselves as "not ok", but it is indeed "educating"
us to a dollar religion and a "junk"/"big brother" culture.

The Media is a diabolic/subliminal deception, since mass media, especially through television,
is a source not actively or critically attended to. (6)
We do not consciously or rationally attend to tv programs (6): so their effect is the same
as that of a collective hypnosis... 

The Media is actually and effectively spreading the New Word and Gospel, all over the universe.
(see also the New Commandments, in  CONSUMERISM )

The 46-year-old communications professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, founder of the groundbreaking Media Education Foundation, argues that our survival as a species is dependent on minimizing the threat from advertising and the commercial culture that spawns it

"The economic function of mass media is driven by advertising," he says. "It's to make sure products are sold and consumed. What happens when you stop looking at mass media as vehicles for the dissemination of ideas, and start looking at them as vehicles for capturing audience attention for advertisers?

"We are still blind to what mass media is really about.  they get their money from advertisers ..."

Advertising is not going to trigger apocalypse on its own, but as the propaganda of a market system, he says, it helps persuade society to subordinate other values to shoes and sweaters and SUVs.

"Advertising uses the images of a deeply desired social life that the market can't provide and link those to the things a market can provide.

from "Consumerism and the new capitalism" by R.Cronk, 1996  (2) :

Self-awareness and self-worth have been distorted. We are what we wear. In the New Capitalism's seduction of the television audience, the individuating personality identifies with advertising fantasies and consumer ideals. Who we are merges with roles and images portrayed in the media. Ever so subtly we are losing our ability to act independently of the justifications of consumerism.

Extensive exposure to duplicity in media advertising has weakened the grasp of consciousness on subjective knowledge of being (or any meaningful sense of truth).

extract from "The stupefaction of a nation" by Manuel Valenzuela, dec. 10, 2003  (3) :

Today, America's media is controlled exclusively by fewer than a dozen multinational conglomerates and their many interests

The television has become an opiate for the masses and a conduit from where conglomerates can dictate how society thinks, acts and evolves. Our habits and ethics are manipulated, our ideas and beliefs distorted

Propaganda, both corporate and governmental, has seemingly exploded with the ever-increasing consolidation of the media

Over time we become robots incapable of discerning or even seeking the truth in the news that is provided us

Apathetic puppets we have become, free thinking minds we have none.

from "Commercialism" by Lawrence Kelemen (4):

Doug Herzog, while serving as president of Fox Entertainment, thus justified the level of alcohol, sex, and violence on his network, saying, "This is all happening because society is evolving and changing, but the bottom line is people seem to be buying it."

As Dr. Neil Postman, chairman of the Department of Communications Arts at New York University, points out, "What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer."

from "The moral decline caused by consumerism" by Alan Pert   (5) :

The purpose of our mass culture is to foster false needs, negative values and escapist fantasy.Television, cinema, computers and such have become very sophisticated tools for the brainwashing of the population

Timothy Leary called the generations born after 1945 "electroids", that is, people programmed by electronic means

Jerry Mander, Kirkpatrick Sale and other writers have shown that many modern problems stem from the transnational corporations (TNCs), which are literally taking over the world.The purposes and techniques of the TNCs must be exposed.Their aim is to maximise their power and profits.Their method is destruction: destruction of forests, communities, and natural resources all around the world

We are living in a dying civilization.The evidence is all around.What sort of a society is it that brainwashes little children with consumer values, destroying innocence and true wonder?

In the long run we need a society that is based on spiritual principles. We need to heal our ties with Nature, and live within Nature in a reverent manner.Nature should be our guide and touchstone

extract from : Joyce Nelson, "The perfect Machine"   (6) : 

The fact is that mass media, especially through television, is a source not actively or critically attended to

Flicking on the TV, Krugman began monitoring the brain-waves of the subject What he found through repeated trials was that within about thirty seconds, the brain-waves switched from predominantly beta waves, indicating alert and conscious attention, to predominantly alpha waves, indicating an unfocused, receptive lack of attention: the state of aimless fantasy and daydreaming below the threshold of consciousness

What surprised Krugman, who had set out to test the effect of TV-viewing on the mind, was how rapidly the alpha-state emerged.

As Herbert Krugman noted, we do not consciously or rationally attend to the material resonating with our unconscious depths at the time of transmission

from "The hidden power of the media" by John Pilger, Socialist review, Sep. 1996  (7) :

During the Cold War, long before the collapse of the Soviet Union, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States and were astonished to find, after reading the newspapers and watching television, that all the opinions on the vital issues were the same. 'In our country', they said to their host, 'to get that result we have a dictatorship. We imprison people. How do you do it? What's the secret?'

The secret is that propaganda in liberal democracies, like the US and Britain, is much more thorough than in dictatorships. No imprisonment is required. No loss of fingernails is called for. There is another, far more effective way. Unlike totalitarian states, the conformity of information and opinion is insidious: its sameness implicit, ingrained, even celebrated.

quoting Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister  :

“The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious. The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly... it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”

 www.commondreams,org/views02/0223-01.htm   (Toronto Globe & mail 2/23/02)  (1)

www.westland.net/venice/art/cronk/consumer.htm           (R.Cronk, 1996)       (2)

 http://www.bigeye.com/stupefaction.htm      "apathetic puppets" (Manuel Valenzuela, 12/10/03)  (3) 

www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Commercialism.htm   (Lawrence Kelemen in Judaism online)  (4)

www.personal.usyd.edu.au/~apert/consume.html        (moral decline by Alan Pert)  (5)

http://dieoff.org/page24.htm           ("The perfect machine ", Joyce Nelson book)         (6)

http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr200/contents.htm  (John Pilger, sep 1996)  (7)