How Reality is Manufactured
Part 5 of the Indoctrination Series
Keep Calm and Carry On, British Ministry of Information, 1939. The same ministry where George Orwell worked from 1941-1943, and which he would later immortalize as the Ministry of Truth in his famous novel 1984.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.”
Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928)
The Western World
We live in a free world
For the West is the only true democracy where we can choose and evict our leaders at will
We have human rights
For our governments serve us and not the other way around
Our justice system works
For our courts serve justice and not a desired outcome
We have excellent education
For we teach our children to think critically and for themselves
We have the science
For our knowledge stands above dogma and ideological belief
We have free press
For our journalists are no mouthpieces for government propaganda
We have the right to protest
For we will not be silenced for speaking our minds
Our values are universal
Therefore it is our responsibility to liberate the rest of the world
And so we are always on the right side of history
Because history, of course, is written by us
We were raised on these beliefs from the day we were born. But who wrote the script in the first place?
The Black Mirror
After the Second World War, Europe lay in shambles and the United States, the only Western power to emerge unscathed, seized the moment to build a new world order. The United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, the IMF and World Bank, NATO and eventually the European Project, all institutions born from the noble conviction that we should prevent war at all costs.
The West built international law, but meant the law of the West. Because while we were building our architecture of freedom, sovereignty and human rights, from the very start we were doing the very things we claimed to stand against. Since 1945, the United States has been involved in dozens of regime changes and hundreds of military interventions. Coups, invasions, election interference, civil unrest, arming of rebel groups and economic warfare, carried out on every continent and against every country that went against US interests. We all remember the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that never existed, the destruction of Libya into a failed state and the jihadists we armed in Syria.
And yet, none of this is how we remember what happened.
Because the words we use tell a different story. When others invade a country, it is called imperialism. When we do it, it’s humanitarian intervention. When others blow up infrastructure or civilian targets, it’s terrorism. When we do it, it’s eliminating evil. When others meddle in foreign elections, we call it foreign interference. When we do it, it’s safeguarding democracy. And when others suppress dissent, it’s censorship. When we do it, it’s combating misinformation.
The language always shifts to protect the story. Because if we called our own actions by their real names, could we still maintain our worldview? And if we intervene, manipulate and fabricate narratives in foreign countries, who’s to say we would stop at our own borders?
The Toolbox
Pick up any three major newspapers on any given day. Turn on any two news channels. Open any mainstream news site. You will find the same stories, the same framing, the same experts and the same conclusions. To most people this consensus feels reassuring: if everyone agrees, it must be true.
Unfortunately, when it comes to information, it does not work that way. Consensus is not a sign of freedom, but a sign that alternative points of view are suppressed until one narrative remains. Like free science, a free press is a cauldron of disagreement. Different assumptions, norms and values, beliefs and convictions should lead to a myriad of different interpretations and conclusions. A press that speaks with one voice is no free press, but something else entirely.
Ever since COVID-19, a growing number of people have become aware that media and truthful reporting on controversial matters no longer go hand in hand. Still, the bulk of the population in any Western country turns on the eight o’clock news to learn what has happened around the globe. Few of them realize that what they are watching is not the result of independent journalism, but the end product of a set of propaganda techniques so ingrained in our society that most people don’t recognize the script. I have mapped this out into ten techniques, used in some combination by nearly every Western mainstream news outlet.
1. Diversion and the scary world syndrome: the news that makes the headlines determines what news does not. The largest news items are always filled with fear: war, terrorism, pandemics, scandals. It is a natural human instinct to focus on what feels urgent. Kept in a permanent state of anxiety, people no longer pay attention to the issues that affect their daily lives: the housing crisis, the cost of living spiraling out of control, government debt reaching unprecedented levels. Fear sells.
2. Omission: lying or presenting false information is the biggest sin for every reporter, but reporting incomplete stories is not. By removing context, leaving out inconvenient facts or ignoring alternative perspectives, a news story becomes just as misleading. The difference is that you are not being openly ‘lied’ to. You are just being offered a selection of the facts and, unless you investigate the topic yourself, you will not find out that you have only been presented a half-truth.
3. Appeal to authority: ‘experts state’, ‘research confirms’, ‘intelligence agencies have verified’. You never get an exact source, nor the background of what is confirmed or validated. But you don’t have to. Why would you think for yourself when someone more qualified than you already did that thinking for you? So, you don’t get the facts. Instead, you get the expert’s word that is subsequently treated as fact.
4. Framing: When an expert’s word is truth, then surely any critic or alternative perspective is false. Critics are dealt with in two ways. The preferred method is to deny them a platform altogether. When that fails, they are profiled. Instead of granting critics an interview, the journalist writes an article about them, using the opinions of their opponents to construct a character sketch. Technically, the story is accurate, since an opinion is an opinion. But the critic has no opportunity to put things in perspective and the public has already formed its judgment about the critic before ever hearing the critic speak.
5. Generalization: complex situations with deep historical roots, competing interests and legitimate perspectives are reduced to a single digestible storyline. There is no room for nuance or doubt. Anyone who questions the story is generalized in the same way: conspiracy theorist, denier, extremist. The story is simplified and so are its critics.
6. Emotionalization: the dead immigrant child on the beach, the crying mother, the burning building or a city in rubble with devastated people on the streets. A clear way to win the public over is by replacing analysis with gut-wrenching images that leave no room for anything but outrage. Once feelings have taken over, sticking to factual analysis or questioning the narrative makes you appear cold and inhuman.
7. Opinions as news: the framed, simplified, emotionalized story is then delivered to you as fact and an instruction manual. Journalists nowadays consider it essential to contextualize the news. However, they do so through the lens of their own beliefs.
8. False dichotomies: the simplified story is then further reduced to a choice. You are for sanctions or against global security. For the vaccine or against grandma. For climate policy or against the planet. Every complex issue is compressed into two options, only one of which is morally acceptable. The middle ground where most of the truth lives is eliminated.
9. Repetition: when every media outlet uses the same frame, cites the same experts and holds the same position, the story starts to feel like an established fact. Propagandists have long known that repetition turns any claim into truth. Repeat something often enough, from enough sources and questioning it begins to feel more unreasonable than believing it.
10. False consensus: repetition ultimately produces the bandwagon effect: if everyone says the same thing and all experts agree, then it must be true, right? But the consensus is not the result of independent verification. It is the weight of numbers: a single individual cannot be right if the majority already agrees. The end result is that the majority believes the same thing, a belief none of them would have arrived at independently.
But if these techniques are so widely used, why do so few people see them for what they are? That brings us to the propaganda machine.
The Propaganda Machine
In 1988, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman asked themselves how free, independent, privately owned media all produce the same narrative. They proposed a propaganda model built on five structural filters that systematically narrow what gets reported until only one narrative remains. Their model predates the internet and social media, but its core remains accurate today. I have taken the liberty to update their original framework to the digital age and compare it with present-day events. Seen from that perspective, the distinction between our free press and ordinary propaganda becomes very small indeed.
The First Filter: Financial Dependence
Western press outlets usually operate independently of government, but that does not make them financially independent. On the contrary, most Western media outlets are owned by a handful of conglomerates whose interests extend far beyond journalism. In the United States, six media giants control the vast majority of mainstream media. In Australia, the United Kingdom and most European countries, that number is one or two. The owners and shareholders of these conglomerates move in the same circles as politicians, bankers and the corporate sector, sharing the same worldview and interests. Together they shape the news you read, watch and hear on three different levels.
The first level is where the news originates: the wire services. Nearly every news outlet in the West draws its raw material from just three agencies:
Reuters, since 2008 part of Thomson Reuters Corporation, majority-owned by the Canadian Thomson family through their holding company Woodbridge, with the remaining shares spread across institutional investors led by BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street.
The Associated Press, a not-for-profit cooperative whose members are over a thousand US newspapers and broadcasters, most of which are themselves owned by the handful of conglomerates that dominate Western media. In those conglomerates, BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street are consistently among the largest shareholders.
Agence France-Presse, which operates outside the conglomerates and asset managers, but draws up to 40 percent of its funding from the French government, which also nominates three of the eighteen seats on its board.
The second level is ownership of the outlets themselves. Thousands of newspapers, channels and websites give the impression of a diverse media landscape, but many share the same owner. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp controls 59% of Australia’s metropolitan and national print media by readership, owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post in the United States, and The Sun and The Times in the United Kingdom. Politico, one of the most influential political news platforms in both the United States and Europe, is owned by the German Axel Springer group and controlled almost entirely by chief executive Mathias Döpfner and the Springer family. Politico makes its money with Politico Pro, a high-priced subscription service that sells real-time intelligence on legislation in the US and the EU to lobbyists, corporations, law firms and legislators. Journalists who work for Politico are required to subscribe to the company’s core principles, which are pro-Atlanticism, pro-EU and pro-global trade. Politico is a news service for big government and big business. The free site is what trickles down to the public.
Across the West, the pattern is the same: a handful of families and conglomerates own what most people read, watch and hear. Within these groups, outlets increasingly recycle each other’s articles, further narrowing the range of what gets reported.
The third level is the revenue model. Before the digital age, news outlets could count on large numbers of subscribers and advertisers. But with the rise of social media, subscriptions dwindled and advertisers found cheaper ways to reach their audiences. Across the Western world, newspaper advertising revenue has dropped by an estimated 70 to 80% since the turn of the century. To stay afloat, media outlets increasingly depend on government subsidies and donations from philanthropic organizations. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, has spent over $300 million funding journalism outlets ranging from The Guardian to the BBC to Der Spiegel, much of it earmarked for coverage of global health, vaccines, education reform and development.
The result is a system in which thousands of outlets appear independent but are owned by the same class of people, funded by the same interests and built on the same raw material. The diversity is in numbers only. In reality, they all drink from the same well.
The Second Filter: Source Dependence
Journalism depends on sources. And the most powerful sources work within governments, international organizations and intelligence services. To gain access to these sources, journalists must not bite the hand that feeds them. Those who challenge the narrative they have been given rarely get a second chance.
However, two recent developments show how far this dependence has gone. The first is the anonymous source. An increasing number of articles nowadays are built on ‘anonymous sources close to the president say’, ‘anonymous sources within the Pentagon state’, ‘senior EU bureaucrats point out’ and ‘intelligence agencies confirm’. You cannot verify it. You cannot challenge it. You don’t know who is speaking or what their interest is. What once was a tool to protect whistleblowers is increasingly used by those in power themselves to plant stories without accountability. The journalist thinks they have a scoop. In reality, they are the channel through which power speaks, while the appearance of independent reporting is preserved.
The second development is that government institutions increasingly decide who gets access at all. For example, the second Trump administration has revoked press credentials for media outlets it considers hostile, from the Associated Press to The New York Times. This is just one of many ways in which Western governments today push inconvenient voices to the margins of public debate.
When those in power can decide which journalists can report and what, they don’t need to censor the press. In order to stay relevant, the press is only too happy to censor itself.
The Third Filter: Flak and the Factcheck Industry
When Chomsky formulated his filters, critical journalism came at a personal price. Journalists who deviated from the accepted narrative faced organized pressure: complaints, smear campaigns, threats to their careers and reputations. Chomsky called this flak. That mechanism still exists today, but it has been professionalized into something far more effective.
Over the past decade, a new industry has emerged as an antidote to an increasingly skeptical population: the factcheck industry. Organizations like NewsGuard and Bellingcat present themselves as independent arbiters of truth, standing guard between the public and the dangerous tide of misinformation. In reality, these organizations are funded by governments, NGOs, defense agencies and foundations that have a direct interest in the outcome of their factchecks.
The result is that you don’t get a thorough factcheck. You get a label: false, misleading, lacks context. And if you look a little closer, most factchecks are not supported by independent investigation. The check itself is carried out using the official narrative as fact. The result is circular: an article criticizing the official narrative is false because the official narrative says so.
The consequences are, however, very real. Once a factchecker disapproves of an article or a social media post, the machinery kicks in. Algorithms suppress the content, platforms attach warning labels and advertisers pull away. Authors who persist in their criticism are flagged, demonetized or banned altogether. Over time, you will find it harder and harder to encounter alternative perspectives. They are not disproven, but simply weeded out. And when the facts can no longer be ignored, the official narrative simply adapts, with no acknowledgement that it said the opposite before.
The Fourth Filter: The Common Enemy
Every era needs a villain. Not necessarily a real one, but a story that is big enough and frightening enough to make the population rally behind its leaders and stop asking uncomfortable questions. During the Cold War, it was communism. Then came the war on drugs. After 9/11, it was terrorism. Then came Russian disinformation. Then the virus. Then climate change. Then right-wing populism. And today it is once again Russia and China, cast as existential threats to our way of life. The enemy changes, but its function never does: it provides the frame through which all public debate is filtered.
That frame does something very specific: it turns every policy question into a moral one. If you question war, you support the enemy. If you question vaccines, you endanger lives. If you question climate policy, you deny science. If you question immigration, you are a racist. There is no room for nuance, no space for legitimate disagreement. You are either on the right side or you are part of the problem.
Conjuring up an external enemy is one of the oldest techniques to divert attention from domestic problems and to silence critical voices at home by recasting them as part of the enemy. When this happens on such a large scale, the real question becomes how much our governments are trying to hide.
The Fifth Filter: The Algorithm
This is the filter Chomsky could not have foreseen. When social media emerged, it promised the democratization of information. Anyone could publish, anyone could reach an audience. For a brief moment, it looked like the end of media monopolies.
It turned out to be the opposite. Social media did not eliminate gatekeepers. They replaced visible ones with invisible ones and the result is increasingly disturbing. Below are the five most common mechanisms today.
1. Shadow banning: content that deviates from the accepted narrative is quietly suppressed. Your post is still there, but it reaches no one. Every tech giant uses shadow banning. Facebook has taken it a step further by throttling organic content to the point that your feed consists almost entirely of sponsored content and advertisements. Updates from your own network, especially from pages that publish dissenting content, simply no longer appear.
2. Search manipulation: Google was once the go-to tool for researching any topic and finding a range of perspectives. It is one of the reasons it came to control over 90% of the global search market. Today, you are presented with an AI-generated summary that gives you the preferred answer before you have even started looking. Below that come the sponsored results, and then the approved organic results. Alternative sources are still there, but pushed to page three and beyond, where almost no one looks.
3. Labelling: inconvenient posts are labelled with warnings like ‘this content may contain misleading information’ or ‘this post has been reported’, accompanied by pop-ups or links that direct you to the official sources. The label itself does not refute anything. It simply tells you not to trust anything you are about to read.
4. Demonetization: creators who are still too successful despite earlier measures are demonetized. They can still publish their work, but their earnings are cut off, effectively forcing them to choose between their voice and their livelihood.
5. Deplatforming: when everything else has failed, the creator is deplatformed. Accounts are suspended or permanently removed with nothing more than a reference to ‘community guidelines’. The digital infrastructure that people depend on for their livelihood is switched off without warning, without justification and without any possibility of recourse.
This is the most effective filter of all, because it is entirely automatic. There is no customer service in any meaningful sense, for you are not a customer but a user of a free service. When your account is restricted or removed, you receive an automated message referencing community guidelines or terms of service with no specification of what you did wrong. There is no one to call, no one to email, no case number and no human being reviewing your situation. Most platforms offer an appeal form, but that form feeds into the same automated system that flagged you in the first place. And if the appeal is denied, there is no next step. Your content, your network, your audience and in many cases your source of income simply vanish overnight.
We have now seen the machinery that shapes the news. In the next and final article of this series, we will examine whose interests it serves.
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The future you fear is already here. Recognize the script before it writes you out.
