How Television News Creates the Illusion of Knowledge

							How Television News Creates the Illusion
of Knowledge
Jon Rappoport
Infowars.com
January 28, 2013




In analyzing network coverage of the Sandy Hook murders, I had no intention of doing a series of
articles on television news, but the opportunity to deconstruct the overall grand illusion was
compelling.
Click for larger image
A number of articles later, I want to discuss yet another sleight-of-hand trick. The myth of “coverage.”
It’s familiar to every viewer. Scott Pelley, in seamless fashion, might say, “Our top story tonight, the
widening conflict in Syria. For the latest on the Assad government crackdown, our coverage begins
with Clarissa Ward in Damascus…” .
Clarissa Ward has entered the country secretly, posing as a tourist. She carries a small camera. In
interviews with rebels, she discovers that a) there is a conflict, b) people are being arrested c) there is a
funeral for a person who was killed by government soldiers, d) defiance among the citizenry is
growing.
In other words, she tells us almost nothing.
But CBS is imparting the impression that her report is important. After all, it’s not just anchor Scott
Pelley in the studio. It’s a journalist in the field, up close and personal. It’s coverage.
Here are a few of the many things we don’t learn from either Pelley or Ward. Who is behind the
rebellion in Syria? What is their real goal? What covert role is the US playing? Why are there al Qaeda
personnel there?
But who cares? We have coverage. A key
hole view. It’s wonderful. It’s exciting for
two minutes. If we’re already brainwashed.
Coverage in television means you have the
money, crew, resources, and stand-up
reporters you can send out into the field.
That’s all it means. It has nothing to do with
information.
CNN made its reputation by coverage, from
one end of the planet to the other. Yet, what
did we really learn in all those years? We
learned that, by straining to the point of
hernia, a cable network could present news
non-stop, 24/7.
The trick of coverage is the smooth
transition from anchor in the studio to
reporter in the field. The reporter is
standing in front of something that vaguely
resembles or represents what we imagine
the locale contains. A large squat
government building, a tower, a
marketplace, a river, a skyline.
At some point during the meaningless report, the screen splits and we see both the anchor and the
reporter. This yields the impression of two concerned professionals discussing something significant.
Then we’re back to the reporter in the field filling up the whole screen.
The anchor closes with a question or two.
“Denise, have you seen any tanks in the area?”
“No Wolf, not in the last hour. But we have reports from last night of shelling in the village.”
Well, isn’t this marvelous. Wolf is in Atlanta and Denise is in Patagonia. And they’re talking to each
other in real time. Therefore, they must be on top of what’s going on.
“Denise, we understand medical help arrived a short time ago.”
“Yes, Wolf. Out in the desert, in tents, surgeons are performing emergency operations on the wounded.”
Well, what else is there to know? They’ve covered it.
In a twist on this performance, Denise might say, “Government officials are cautiously optimistic about
repelling the invading force.” We cut to an interview conducted by Denise, in a hotel room, a few hours
earlier.
She’s sitting across from a man in a suit. He’s the minister of information for the ruling party.
Denise: Is it true, Dr. Oobladee, that rebels groups in the suburbs have taken over several branch offices
of the central bank?
Dr. Oob: We don’t believe that’s accurate. Our soldiers have been providing security for families in the
area.
                                                                               Denise: And their
                                                                               fortifications are secure?
                                                                               Dr. Oob: They’ve trained
                                                                               for this mission, yes.
                                                                               Cut back to Denise
                                                                               standing where she was
                                                                               standing before.
                                                                               “Wolf, as the night wears
                                                                               on, we hear sporadic
                                                                               gunfire from the civic
                                                                               center. It’s a repeat of the
                                                                               last three evenings. The
                                                                               rebels are determined to
                                                                               make a stand and not give
                                                                               up further ground, in this
                                                                               war that enters its sixth
                                                                               month…”
                                                                               Cut back to the studio in
                                                                               Atlanta.
“Thank you, Denise. We’ll take a break and be back in a minute to discuss the upcoming controversial
film, Cold War in a Hat, starring George Clooney.”
We went from Atlanta to a street corner in the capital of Patagonia and then to a hotel room in the city,
and then back to the street corner, then to Atlanta, off to a commercial, and then back to the studio for
teasers on a new film. The technology and the technique are indeed impressive. The knowledge
imparted is hovering at absolute zero, but it doesn’t matter. They have coverage.
It’s on the order of a magician sawing a woman in a box in half, after which the box is opened and
found to be empty.
Coverage can also be simultaneous. In the
middle of the screen is the anchor, head and
shoulders, talking about the latest shooting.
In the upper left-hand corner is a little static
scene of three police cars with flashing lights
sitting near a strand of yellow tape across a
front yard. At the bottom of the screen is a
moving line of text recapping headlines of
the hour. Coverage. Look at all that. They
must know what they’re doing.
Then we have the bonanza of coverage, a
story that deals cards to several reporters in
the field at different locations. As always, the
anchor retains control. He may have two or
three reporters on screen at the same time
after they individually file their thirty-second
pieces.
                                                       There is a bit of crosstalk. The anchor mediates.
                                                       The shipment of frozen food was tainted.
                                                       Therefore, we have a reporter standing in front of
                                                       FDA headquarters in Maryland, another reporter
                                                       in front of the manufacturer’s home office in
                                                       Indiana, and a third reporter outside a hospital
                                                       emergency room in San Francisco, where a child
                                                       is having his stomach pumped. There is also a
                                                       three-second clip of a lab in which workers in
                                                       white coats and masks are moving around, and a
                                                       clip of a moving assembly line which presumably
                                                       has something to do with the production of the
                                                       tainted product.
                                                       The whole story, as the network tells it, could be
                                                       compressed down to 20 seconds, total. But they
want coverage.
On election night, a network could simply show three or four newsmen sitting around in shirtsleeves
smoking cigars and talking about the Jets for a few hours, after which one of them says, “Obama just
won.”
But instead, we get the circus. A half-dozen stand-ups from various campaign headquarters, a numbers
guru with a high-tech map as big as a movie screen pulling up counties in the studio, an anchor
“bringing it all together,” and pundits weighing in with sage estimates. Team coverage. The “best in the
business.”
I love hearing Wolf Blitzer utter that line. It makes me think of a guy
selling expired cheese. But after all, he has a right to promote his
people. He’s not just in a studio, he’s in The Situation Room. Where
there is coverage.
The height of absurdity is achieved during a violent storm. A reporter
has to be standing out in the rain and vicious wind, water seeping into
his shoes, holding an umbrella in one hand and a mic in the other,
looking for all the world like the umbrella is going to take him up into
the sky.
The storm could be shot from inside a store at ground level, and the
reporter could be sitting in a chair next to the cash register peering out
through the window, but that wouldn’t really be coverage.
If you were to compare the anchor/reporter-in-the-field relationship of
40 years ago to today, you’d see a stark difference. In days of yore, it
was exceedingly clunky and clumsy. It was one anchor and one
reporter, but at least the man in the field was expected to have
something to say. Now it’s all flash and intercutting. Now it’s the
technique. The facile blending. The rapid interchange of image. It’s
nothing made into something.
Segueways and blends are far more important than content. The
newspeople are there merely to illustrate smoothness and transition. Brian Williams (NBC) is the
champion operator for this mode. He is the doctor who can impart to you a diagnosis of a disease that
                                                             doesn’t exist, but you don’t care. He’s a fine
                                                             waiter in an expensive restaurant who will
                                                             deliver three small items in the center of a
                                                             very large plate and make you feel honored.
                                                             He’s a golfer with such a fine swing you don’t
                                                             care how many strokes he takes to get to the
                                                             green. When he shifts to his man or woman in
                                                             the field, you feel he’s conferring knighthood.
                                                             Brian knows coverage.
                                                             There is a phenomenon that ought to be called
                                                             minus-coverage coverage. Sandy Hook gave
                                                             us wall-to-wall everything without exposing a
                                                             single fact behind a fact. We saw nothing but
                                                             Sandy Hook for two days on end, with stand-
                                                             ups from every hand on deck, and yet we
                                                             learned almost zero after the first few hours.
In the second Gulf War, we were bombarded with studio and field reports, but we saw no engagement
or conflict that exposed both sides in simultaneous action against each other. Embedded reporters had
to pledge the life of their first-born they wouldn’t break a rule laid down for journalists by the Army
command.
Modern network coverage does one important thing. It
establishes a standard by which other news is measured.
For most viewers, if the news can’t display full
technique, full smoothness, full effortless transition, it
must be lacking in some important, though undefined,
way.
Coverage is almost synonymous with transition. How
the news moves from anchor to reporter(s) and back is
Value. This is highly significant because it mirrors
what a good hypnotist is able to do. If he’s a real pro,
he doesn’t just put someone in a trance and talk to
him, he puts him under and then moves from one topic
to another—without breaking the trance. This is a
skill.
In fact, the hypnotist’s transitions are a vital aspect of
the process itself. The patient feels the guidance as the
scene changes before his eyes. The hypnotist (or news
anchor) is presenting scene after scene and extending
time without causing a jarring ripple in the still lake of
consciousness.
Coverage.
Whatever a person learns in a trance state, while, for
example, watching the news, functions somewhat
differently from what he learns while he is awake.
Trance learning tends to settle in as a lens, as a way of
thereafter viewing the world. It doesn’t add content or
knowledge so much as it produces a viewpoint that
generates an attitude toward reality.
As in: THESE are the parameters of reality, but THOSE
aren’t. I care THIS much, I don’t care THAT much. I
care in THIS way, not in THAT way. I’m at THIS
distance from what is happening, not at THAT distance.
To enhance this level of teaching, the major networks
utilize technology and personnel in the direction of
making each edition of the national news, every night,
one seamless ribbon of flowing river, with
straightaways, corners, turns, adjustments; never
breaking, never ceasing until the last breath of the
anchor and the closing music fadeout.
That’s coverage.
And the next challenge for them is the integration of
commercials, so the viewer truly doesn’t register a shift
of consciousness during those moments.
Some day, people will look back on the news of today
and say, “How could they have altered the mood during commercials? That was ridiculous. They were
really primitive, weren’t they? What were they they thinking? The whole idea is to have one
uninterrupted experience.”
The blue hues in the news studio set will match up perfectly with the blues in the commercials. The
sound and tone of the anchor’s voice will be mirrored by the narrator of the commercial. The pace of
the commercial will match the pace of the news.
In fact, it’s already starting to happen. If you watch shows via a DVR, you might notice that fast-
forwarding through commercials is a different experience these days. It used to be a cinch to stop the
fast-forward when the show began again, because the colors and shapes of the commercials were so
different from those of the show. But now, not so much. The commercials are tuned more closely to the
programs.
Some day, the meaning of network coverage will include commercials. The one unending stream will
sustain the light trance of the viewer.
Major corporate advertisers will realize they don’t want to jolt the viewer out of the show; they want to
leave him in the trance. In other words, corporations won’t be so concerned about competing against
other corporations. With these companies coming, more and more, under centralized ownership, under
the control of big banks, the whole idea will be to tune the attitude of the viewer toward “corporate
buying” in general.
Every huge corporation, allied with big government, will aim to condition the viewing audience to the
State Oligarchy. Coverage in the Matrix.
Editor’s note: Alex Jones goes on record with his thoughts and analysis of the Sandy Hook
shooting. He highlights some red flags, and shows the CNN track record of faking news reports
and working with Military Intelligence.


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