Manipulated Consumers, Not Informed Citizens

By Dan Hagen

Advertising is about manipulating the public, while journalism is about informing the public. Advertising, not journalism, is now the dominant mode of discourse in the United States.
George W. Bush, for example, was sold to the American people entirely as a product, as the image of a great leader who was, paradoxically, a “regular guy” with whom you’d like to have a beer — not as the reality of a combat-dodging C student and serial business failure who’d spent most of his adult life drunk. 
As is now the rule, the American people bought the image and ignored the reality, in part because they now see themselves as consumers, not as citizens. 
And the corporate news media, despite their pompous professional posturing, are often really just the snake-oil salesmen pitching to the rubes.