I have long thought that there needs to be a serious, in-depth analysis conducted of the entertainment media, since it's powerful effect on the general public seems to often be overlooked with all the attention spent on deconstructing the news. That isn't to say that sites like FAIR, Media Matters and The Daily Howler don't play an absolutely vital role in keeping a daily watch on the various tactics of spin & outright propaganda that permeate the news. Indeed, this is where most of the focus should be, since the news media is taken as an authoritative source for informing the public on especially the political reality in which we live.

But what about the rest of the Media that most of us spend a far greater amount of the time watching? How do television comedies, dramas and commercials shape our views of ourselves, our values, our society, our country and its place in the World? We often watch these shows for entertainment and relaxation -- with the idea that this allows us some "escapism" into "mindless entertainment." But should we be so quick to switch our minds off whenever we watch television just for entertainment?

Since I was a teenager, I have thought that much of television serves to reinforce social conventions and attitudes. I have mostly regarded the "idiot box" or "the boob tube" as doing something far more insidious than just dumbing people down, or "rotting their brains" -- or, in other words, acting as purely a distraction. It always seemed to me that television instilled outright conformity, and even (unwittingly?) promoted the agenda of those in power. Think about how many television shows play on, and even amplify, fears about terrorism beyond the point of what is rational.

We know for a fact that there have been government programs to directly insert propaganda into entertainment programming, as in the ONDCP paying TV Networks for planting anti-drug messages into popular shows. Most obvious has been the CIA's development and oversight of TV shows to enhance the Agency's image -- with "Alias," "The Company" and "24." The forerunner of course was the FBI's role behind the scenes of "The FBI," with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. With these examples in mind, I once called in a question to Media Critic Mark Crispin Miller while he was on the Mike Malloy Show. I asked him how much he thought there is deliberate infusion of propaganda into the entertainment media. Or is it more just what is discussed in the theory of semiotics -- that entertainment simply draws on what are the hot topics of the day -- and in so doing mirrors (with some distortion) society. Miller said there is some of both at work. As he put it, earlier propagandists such as Goebbels and the Stalinists understood that by seeding the culture with propagandistic messages, they could use the popular culture as a megaphone.

But the main point is, that it really isn't where any of this is coming from that really counts, but rather what effect it has on each individual viewer, regardless of the source. Sure, it would be great if some investigative reporter dug in there to find out if there are any covert programs to deliberately manage public perception through the entertainment media* (and chances are that would just be a wild goose chase). But ultimately what it is about is how you and I are influenced by the television shows and commercials that we watch.

So to that end I am starting a new blog, which will be about what impressions I get from my television watching -- be it something that strikes me as being from a liberal slant, or a conservative one -- or if it is simply to do with promoting conformity for the sake of consumerism, etc. In some, if not most cases, it could be something purely innocuous, or actually beneficial. In this way, I hope that others who read this blog will be inspired to watch television more critically and even share their own experiences while watching TV shows and commercials. What I really want to do is create a dialogue where people are really discussing how they feel television is affecting their view of themselves and the World. The point, as I once read in "The Signs of Our Times," a book on semiotics by UCLA professor Jack Solomon,  is for us "not to get hoodwinked."

*(Covert programs to manage the news media have been exposed in the past by journalists, and even through Congressional hearings. For example, there was "The Mighty Wurlitzer", propaganda operations under Reagan's Office of Public Diplomacy -- and similar activities during the Kosovo War of the Clinton administration [see "War Gets the Monica Treatment", Steven Brill, Brill's Content, July/August 1999.)
(For more on "The Mighty Wurlitzer," see Carl's Bernstein's famous 1977 article originally published in Rolling Stone.)