A Brief Guide To Media Manipulation

Or .. Finally they reported on the issue I care about .. but why does it still stink?

The following works for radio, TV and written formats.

There are two kinds of people who hear the news story. Those that will read the whole thing, and those that will only read the headline and maybe the first paragraph. It’s roughly the same for audio, some listeners will listen avidly, some will tune out after a few seconds.

Rule Number 1 : The bias in the headline matters.
If you’re reporting something that you don’t support, be careful to slant the headline in a non-committal or dismissive way. Add words like “claimed” or “supposed” to discredit the news you don’t like.

Rule Number 2 : The first sound / text chunk matters almost as much as the headline. So start this section with the viewpoint that you support. A quote from the government spokesperson will tend to do fine here if you’re defending the government line. It’ll come pre packaged with denial, bogus statistics and a dismissive attitude about the whole thing.

The Middle Bit : Here’s where you have to put a few words about the protest / complaint / opposing view. Try and keep it dismissive, again using words that undermine the opposing view’s authority or credibility. Sadly you do need to put this bit in fairly often just to keep the lunatic social media types happy.
Note : If you’re reporting US sanctioned news, or Israel’s viewpoint, you can just ignore the opposing opinion here entirely, or keep it to a sentence or two.

Rule Number 3 : The ending is almost as important as the headline as well. Some pesky people will have actually listened or read right the way though to the end of the news piece, psychologically though, you can pull out the ace card here. End the piece with the government approved official line, again discrediting anything you may have had to report in the first place. The overall result is now vastly in your own favour. It starts and ends with your bias. Contains enough of the opposing view that you can point and say “But we did report fairly”, and yet overall leads the listener or viewer with the overall impression that it’s a storm over nothing and people are being silly.

Rule Number 4 : Repeat this for every news story, every day, all the time.

Congratulations! You are now producing news reports that entirely support your editor’s sanctioned point of view. This probably means you’ve made some rich people happy somewhere and can continue to be gainfully employed.

Challenge : Now you know the golden rules of modern reporting, particularly by the BBC, listen to some BBC news items on government performance or foreign affairs and see if you can spot the 4 golden rules at play.

Note : When playing this game with BBC news reports, please beware of the “Dacre Effect” or “UKIPing”. This occurs when the current government isn’t being right wing enough for your current editor’s tastes, or factions within the Tory party are attempting a traditional back stabbing. Bonus points here for keeping the lunatic social media types happy by having a critical tone, while they fail to notice you are in fact promoting a change that might bring Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson a bit more power. It’s a win win!

Now go get some champagne you lovely reporter type. It’s ok, it’s on the license payer. Enjoy!