4:4 Further thoughts on 'spin' and the media.

Since this is perhaps the key area for your attention, and since ‘spin’ and control of television and newspapers is the most important single area to make your power absolute, it is worth considering this just a little more.

The influence of newspapers and television is immense, so people should constantly be shown positive images of their own country and negative ones of your enemies. We have noted that this is particularly well followed in America, where many citizens know very little about the rest of the world, the vast majority have no passports, and where the media often portrays your enemies in a very negative light. Those who are your competitors, places like China, even if they are not conspicuously part of the conspiracy of Evil, should be treated superficially and negatively.

A very good technique you have noted on American television it to mix trivial news with serious matters, so that everything is reduced to one banal level. Show a little film of your bombing of some foreign city, then a short clip of a local sports game or festival, and so on. When there are hundreds of television channels and every item on the news is very short, it will be very difficult for people to concentrate on any items or learn much.

If you combine this, as you do, with a broadcasting culture where there is just a statement of opinion, with no counter-objections or argument (as is most beautifully shown in your presidential election debates), the chance of questioning of your approach will be minimal. Add in the strongly pro-government stance of most of your news channels, and this will create a particular kind of mix of apathy and nationalism which is much to be applauded. It is just as effective, though more discrete, than the total censorship that was practiced in the Second World War.

We would recommend this American approach to other countries. If the television stations are directly state controlled, as we believe has now become the case in Russia, there is no problem. If they persist in some wilful independence, this should be eroded as fast as possible. We saw a good technique for doing this in action in Britain recently.

The former over-mighty subject, the BBC, was smashed and laid low by clever advisors to the Prime Minister. They discovered a chink, a possible or at least unprovable (at that time) statement early one morning. The fact that after the reporter in question, the Head of the BBC and many of the top executives had been sacked and the corporation brought to heel, it was discovered that the statement was correct, that the Prime Minister had indeed exaggerated or ‘sexed up’ the threat was forgotten. The independent voice standing against power was seriously weakened, so your, and God’s, will was done.