Having not watched television news for about two weeks following 9/11 besides the occasional silent news being shown in various restaurants, I was aghast at what I had seen over the past week on TV.

We still do not have television reception here at home by choice, so I have peeked in on other folk’s televisions to see what has been transpiring in New Orleans. Last Tuesday was the first look, and what I saw was the New Orleans black population running amok. Ten minutes was enough, and I moved on. Various conversations led me to realize that other people felt that only the blacks were looting, and the news had confirmed this for them. Curiously, I asked Caroline to phone her mother in Germany; in the German media, it was shown that both blacks and whites were looting – interesting.

By Friday, my curiosity was getting to me, so I made arrangements to visit someone to watch what a majority of Americans were seeing. On the way, I turned around, thinking that seeing the despair would lend nothing positive to my day. On Saturday, I could hold out no longer, and upon visiting a friend, I tuned in to Fox News and was shocked and astounded. Not by the images of the destruction of New Orleans but by manipulation from the media.

Fox News was playing melodramatic music, taking the news out of “news” and presenting a performance piece meant to wrench emotional reactions from its audience. Piecing together heroic and tragic pictures juxtaposed against dramatic music smacks of propaganda trying to manipulate a population of viewers into having particular “programmed” emotional responses. This must serve some purpose that the ‘powers that be’ within the corporate organization have found to be effective in attracting viewers; for me, I was repulsed.

Consider the definition of propaganda, quoted from Wikipedia, “Propaganda is a specific type of message presentation aimed at serving an agenda.” In this instance, the agenda is to reshape the views of the audience from that of betrayal through negligence from elected leaders into recognition that heroes are working to save the less fortunate, of soldiers and law enforcement taking a tearful-eyed victim on their shoulder, or a lonely boy hugging a trusted dog, all the while longing music kicks at the human reflex to feel sympathy – a radical manipulation if you ask me.

Next, from Wikipedia, regarding the purpose of propaganda, “The aim of propaganda is to influence people’s opinions actively, rather than to merely communicate the facts about something.” Excuse me, but the “news” is supposed to be about facts; even in this age of Fox News and the obvious slant to a conservative agenda, these people have an obligation to present the news as facts, with the audience deciding the meaning of those facts for themselves, instead what we have is music placed against heart-wrenching imagery causing viewers to reflect from an emotional stance instead of a purely logical one.

Hoping this was an aberration, I quickly turned off the sound and went about our visit with this friend. On Sunday, though, I found myself at my mother’s house, where my family was watching the events unfolding in New Orleans. The TV was tuned to MSNBC, and within minutes of our arrival, the “news” was being presented to the Coldplay song “The Scientist” with “moving” images from the disaster. This is beyond the pale; Americans are being manipulated by stupidity and yet continue to tune into this drivel.

When Hitler commissioned Leni Riefenstahl to present the images of heroism to a dramatic soundtrack and called the film “Triumph of the Will,” we denounced the movie as propaganda, thoroughly condemning the usage of such blatant manipulation. Today, our news organizations are free to use the same tactics against the citizenry of the United States so long as it builds patriotism and takes our collective mind off transgressions and weaknesses displayed by our government.

This is such obvious corporate protection of the images and feelings that the population might otherwise have of the government, and in exchange, the government throws tax breaks, shelters, and laws that benefit the wealthy who own and control these corporations so that a status quo allows both to thrive at the expense of us the less privileged middle-class majority of citizens who are all victims of our own stupidity to continuously be manipulated by such ugly propaganda.