17 Techniques for Truth Suppression

by DCDave

Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a government. When the government lacks an effective, fact-based defence, other techniques must be employed. The success of these techniques depends heavily upon a cooperative, compliant press and a mere token opposition party. Then there is

Dummy up. If it's not reported, if it's not news, it didn't happen.

Wax indignant. This is also known as the "How dare you?" gambit.

Characterize the charges as "rumours" or, better yet, "wild rumours." If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to learn about the suspicious facts, it can only be through "rumours." (If they tend to believe the "rumours" it must be because they are simply "paranoid" or "hysterical.")

Knock down straw men. Deal only with the weakest aspects of the weakest charges. Even better, create your own straw men. Make up wild rumours (or plant false stories) and give them lead play when you appear to debunk all the charges, real and fanciful alike.

Call the sceptics names like "conspiracy theorist," "nutcase," "ranter," "kook," "crackpot," and, of course, "rumour monger." Be sure, too, to use heavily loaded verbs and adjectives when characterizing their charges and defending the "more reasonable" government and its defenders. You must then carefully avoid fair and open debate with any of the people you have thus maligned. For insurance, set up your own "sceptics" to shoot down.

Impugn motives. Attempt to marginalize the critics by suggesting strongly that they are not really interested in the truth but are simply pursuing a partisan political agenda or are out to make money (compared to over-compensated adherents to the government line who, presumably, are not).

Invoke authority. Here the controlled press and the sham opposition can be very useful. Dismiss the charges as "old news."

Come half-clean. This is also known as "confession and avoidance" or "taking the limited hangout route." This way, you create the impression of candour and honesty while you admit only to relatively harmless, less-than-criminal "mistakes." This stratagem often requires the embrace of a fall-back position quite different from the one originally taken. With effective damage control, the fall-back position need only be peddled by stooge sceptics to carefully limited markets. Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable. Reason backward, using the deductive method with a vengeance. With thoroughly rigorous deduction, troublesome evidence is irrelevant. E.g. We have a completely free press. If evidence exists that the Vince Foster "suicide" note was forged, they would have reported it. They haven't reported it so there is no such evidence. Another variation on this theme involves the likelihood of a conspiracy leaker and a press who would report the leak.

Require the sceptics to solve the crime completely. E.g. If Foster was murdered, who did it and why? Change the subject. This technique includes creating and/or publicizing distractions.

Lightly report incriminating facts, and then make nothing of them. This is sometimes referred to as "bump and run" reporting. Baldly and brazenly lie. A favourite way of doing this is to attribute the "facts" furnished the public to a plausible-sounding, but anonymous, source.

Expanding further on numbers 4 and 5, have your own stooges "expose" scandals and champion popular causes. Their job is to pre-empt real opponents and to play 99-yard football. A variation is to pay rich people for the job who will pretend to spend their own money. Flood the Internet with agents. This is the answer to the question, "What could possibly motivate a person to spend hour upon hour on Internet news groups defending the government and/or the press and harassing genuine critics?" Don't the authorities have defenders enough in all the newspapers, magazines, radio, and television? One would think refusing to print critical letters and screening out serious callers or dumping them from radio talk shows would be control enough, but, obviously, it is not.

 This is a revision of:-

13 Techniques for Truth Suppression
and of
14 Techniques for Truth Suppression
and again of
15 Techniques for Truth Suppression

David Martin
THE GREAT SPECKLED BIRD

The Bird The Bird Columns DCDave's Homepage DCDave's Column DCDave's Column 3

 

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Or see what John Swinton [ 1829 - 1901 ], a journalist had to say circa 1883:-
There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an "Independent Press"! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.

 

 

Errors & omissions, broken links, cock ups, over-emphasis, malice [ real or imaginary ] or whatever; if you find any I am open to comment.

Email me at Mike Emery. All financial contributions are cheerfully accepted. If you want to keep it private, use my PGP key.  Home

Updated  on  Thursday, 17 August 2023 11:11:52