How much of the History Channel is Propaganda?

[eablair3]

Just wondering on people's opinions on how much of the history channel is propaganda? All? Most? A Lot? A little? None?

I noticed that on Saturday afternoon evening the HC is airing shows apparently made in 2003 after the U.S. invaded Iraq. HC will show "torture chambers", and other things that the U.S. military must have allowed them to film.

I was just wondering in peoples' opinions, how much of the HC is just propaganda? It is owned by one of the major media conglomerates, Viacom, iirc. I can't recall seeing too many shows or any at all on HC that exposed corruption in government or business, etc.

[Syn_Dem]

1. I dont think exposing political corruption falls

under the jurisdiction of the History Channel. I think thats more C-SPAN.

[eablair3]

2. that's not the main thing I was asking

The main point of my post was to ask how much propaganda people thought was on the History Channel?

I realize that a channel like the History Channel would likely show history. I did not mean to say or to imply that the History Channel should go out and expose current corruption in government or business. With that one sentence I was referring to my perception that there does not seem to be many shows on the HC that show corruption in business or government, on a historical basis. Surely, there has been corruption in the history of government and busines. But, I never see any shows about that on the HC. That is what I was referring to.

I never seem to see any shows on the history channel shown in the vein or from a viewpoint of say something like Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States."

My main question is to ask others' opinions about propaganda and the HC. Care to voice yours?

[TreasonousBastard]

3. A lot.

I don't watch it much any more. A lot of the "history" was dumbed down, and much of the rest seemed a bit slanted.

Or dumbed down AND slanted.

Sometimes, it seems it's just an update of those old "Victory at Sea" shows during the wee hours of the 50's and 60's.

[Mikimouse]

4. Watch carefully...

Over the course of the past year, they have shown several segments that were seemingly meant to erode the legacy of John Kennedy. It struck me as rather odd at first, but as the frequency of the 'who slept with JFK' style programs increased, it appeared to be consistent with a movement to associate Kennedy with immorality. Not terribly surprising; disappointing, but not surprising.:mad:

[chesley]

6. Sex sells

n/t

[HaThorAtor]

5. If there is propaganda - it is *all* propaganda

Mass media wörk perfectly as they are abused to.

I am afraid you in the US now are faced with the most massive and disgusting and perverted propaganda attack since the one we had with Goebbels. Now you can imagine how it worked.

Greetings from Good Old Europe

[eablair3]

9. thanks

hello Good Old Europe,

greetings from the Land of the Free -- the "Homeland" of Donald Rumsfeld where we have the Homeland Security Department, the "PATRIOT ACT", secret intelligence courts that issue secret search warrants, investigative agencies that secretly search what we read at libararies and what we buy at bookstores, ... the land of the "no-fly" lists, the "terrorist" lists, the military tribunals, the "enemy combatants", ... and the greatest concentration of huge corporate media conglomerates in the history of the world, ... all with the intent of promoting their interests.

They call it "public relations" now, instead of "propaganda", a term determined to be too much associated with Goebbels.

thanks for the post.

How many people or what percentage of people in Europe (or the different countries in Europe) realize what you posted?

[HaThorAtor]

11. over 50% believe US-government is involved in WTC-assaults

Here in Germany two weeks ago there appeared in print two books (Fakten, Fälschungen und die unterdrückten Beweise des 11.9 und Die CIA und der 11. September. Internationaler Terror und die Rolle der Geheimdienste) with the central theme of the 'catastrophic and catalyzing event' that happened 11th september, 2001. Both of them are bestsellers. Many people connected to the web do know the strategic paper of the PNAC Rebuilding Americas Defenses and are convinced that all warlike actions since then including the WTC and Pentagon attacks do follow a well prepared diabolic masterplan. Islamistic terrorists are regarded as a plague, but in this case as the scapegoat in order to provocate a clash of the cultures.

Propaganda to us is nothing new. Also for you it is not. It just has been more subtle in your past so that you maybe did not realize it. The actual lack of subtility to me seems to be a proof that traditional mass media are abused to try to "win a blitzkrieg" against the internet, and the weapons are propaganda weapons of the traditional mass media. The world is teared in two parts of mankind: web literate or not. The 'nots' are helplessly committed to the massive and global propaganda attack since 9/11.

Anyway we had a broadcast in Germany´s official channel ARD, a partly political TV-magazine sequel called Panorama on 21st of August. One feature was titled Juden, BKA und CIA - Absurde Verschwörungstheorien zum 11. September (in english: Jews, BKA and CIA - absurd theories of conspiracy around 11th of September).

In this feature the authors use a lot of rhetorical and propagandistic tricks to defame the books. That was strange, because they promoted them by defaming them in a very transparent and clumsy way. It was too obvious that any sceptics of the official version (It was Usama, lets roll!) should be defamed as "anti-Semite" which is not in any way content of the mentioned books.

Anyway. Some weeks ago the German magazine Die Zeit published an opinion poll and asserted, that 19% of the Germans believe US-government is somehow involved in the assaults, Germans under the age of 30 even 35%.

The website poll of Panorama by now registers a fraction of nearly 60% according this oppinion. The overwhelming boost might be the answer of the exemplary and plump propaganda tricks of the feature. Because we know them.

This does not really represent peoples opinion here. Most of the people are just disgusted by the daily news and feel badly informed by the traditional media. But I do not know anyone here who takes Dubya for a great and honorable man. Most of us wish him and his mob to hell.

Greetings from Good Old Europe

[HaThorAtor]

12. "Isolation" of Germany

I forgot:

Germany is not "isolated" in Europe as the Bush-Junta (this term was created by the British author John Le Carré) tries to present.

Blair is tumbling.

Italy's Berlusconi is widely known as a crook with obscure contacts to the Italian Mafia.

Spain's Aznar is widely critisized in the Spanish people and will very probably not be reelected

The humble attitude of the representatives of the states of "new Europe" east of us do not represent the population. They just need US investions...

Europe is not and will not be "with Bush"

Greetings from Good Old Europe

PS.: We had our Reichstagsbrand already in 1933

[eablair3]

13. Reichstag

thanks for the insight. Much of what you posted kind of reminded me of an article I read a while back by Thom Hartmann:

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0316-08.htm

I thought it was a really interesting article at the time.

[JohnKleeb]

14. another german welcome aboard from a part Kraut Yank

my last is German and thanks for telling me what I already know.

[HaThorAtor]

15. I hope you make your electors know too

I am convinced that some of you know the circumstances I have remembered. I think it is better to remember them once too often than once too seldom. Repetition is one of the weapons against the propaganda tank in the mass media.

[eauclaireliberal]

20. RE: ""Isolation" of Germany"

I have often speculated that Dumbass is stuck in some wild WWII fantasy, much the same way that when we guys have our "Rock-n-roll fantasies." You know, smoking a lot of pot, growing your hair long, eating oreo cookies and air-guitaring to anything from Hendrix to Metallica. Trying to convince everyone your gonna be a star.

Thing is, though-most of us grow up. I'm no Carlos Santana, and Dubya sure as hell ain't FDR.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. A couple of years ago

they became the World War II Channel. It was as if they were trying to get people all nostalgic for "the good war," (something which people who lived through it are not nostalgic for) and to soften people up for new military adventures.

I also caught them in an outright Reaganite lie. They had a series on the event of various years, and one of them was on 1982. They stated on that series that Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was murdered by leftist guerillas. This was nonsense, and should have been flagged as such by everyone who was alive and following current events at that time.

Archbishop Romero was a spokesman for human rights and preached against the atrocites carried about by the Reagan-supported military government. Although he was gunned down at the altar during an Easter service in a crowded cathedral, no one seemed to be able to catch his murderers. Even the mainstream media attributed his murder to the "right wing death squads," mysterious groups that were everywhere, that murdered 200 people a month, and that the police somehow just never were able to catch a single member of. Yeah, right.

In other words, the History Channel program lied. Romero was murdered by agents of the Reagan-backed military government of El Salvador.

No other explanation has any credibility outside the most rabid, right-wing circles, i.e. the Ann Coulter wing of the Republican party.

[eablair3]

8. agreed ... "worthy and unworthy victims"

I agree with your statements about the right-wing death squads being backed by Reagan and his regime, but in all fairness, Jimmy Carter's group backed them, too.

It's amazing all the evidence that seems to exist about the right-wing death squads murdering Archbishop Oscar Romero. Roberto D'Aubisson and his group drawing straws to see who gets the "honor" of murdering the bishop. This is something you won't see the History Channel touch, like you say.

I remember from reading Herman & Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" their discussion and analysis of "worthy" and "unworthy" victims. They even compared the corporate media's treatment of the priest killed in Poland at the time (Popieluszko) to the murdering of Romero. They documented all the U.S. media coverage given to Popieluszko and how evil the "Evil Empire" of the Soviets was and compared it to the media converage given to Romero. It was very very powerful analysis.

Just this past weekend, the History Channel was running a series of shows on Iraq and how terrible Saddam was, how the troops found all sort of torture apparatus this spring, how terrible his sons were, and how they found all sorts of mass graves, etc etc. It just made think of the "worthy" and "unworthy" victims. People are still being killed today in Columbia, Palestine, etc, but the media doesn't cover those people at all, and they are being killed with U.S. weapons and money. And, I wondered how many people did Saddam kill? I have seen figures that the U.S. backed and trained military in El Salvador alone killed more than 70,000 people. You don't see any shows about that. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by the U.S. backed and trained forces in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Columbia, Peru, etc in the 1980s and '90s.

And, during all those Saddam shows they ran this weekend, they didn't mention how the U.S. backed Saddam in the 1980s and supplied him with weapons, including chemical weapons, that he used to kill people. They didn't show Donald Rumsfeld going to Iraq in the early 80's to meet with Saddam and shake his hands. And, of course they didn't show how the U.S. backed U.N. sanctions killed children in teh 1990s by denying them medicines, all while Saddam consoldated his power. It didn't show any of the civlians killed by U.S. bombs in the last 10-11 years. The HC didn't show any of these things.

It was just pure propaganda to me. It's amazing how media outlets and channels like the History Channel can get away with this type of stuff, and essentially engage in a re-writing of history. "I know it happened this way, ... I saw it on the History Channel."

[Kolesar]

10. Where are the segments on Labor History?

The could do excellent stories on the Homestead, Pa steel strike, the Reuther Brothers who founded the United Auto Workers, Caesar Chavez and the California farm workers. Instead we get "Hitler's Henchmen"

I think I did see stories on the Triangle Shirt Waist factory fire and on the Teamsters, but they concentrated on the sleaze in the Teamsters.

[Specterx]

16. None

I can't remember an HC show I've ever thought was real propoganda. I've seen plenty of shows that featured segments about unions and such, but it's always been presented in a pretty neutral fashion. They use WW2 as a topic because it's something you can get a good show out of. Honestly, would you rather watch Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, or History of American Unions Part 6?

[Kolesar]

17. I got hooked on union history because of a history class assignment

I took United States history as an elective in college. The teacher assigned us to write a book review of a book that was on a list. I picked out a book about the Little Steel Strike of 1951. In that year, the unions decided to strike all of the second tier steel companies, excluding U.S. Steel. USS was also known as "Big Steel" because it was more than half of US production.

[Cherry Lauren]

18. I used to watch the HC...

..until all the anti-Saddam programs started coming on. I read the program descriptions and it seemed like one big "Let's all justify the slaughter of Iraqi citizens, deaths of US soldiers, and destablization of the entire world by saying that Saddam and his cohorts were very bad men."

Of course they were very bad men. DUH. Everyone knew that.

What they failed to mention were atrocities perpetrated by governments that have the backing of the United States:

-Latin America: Read a history of South America written by a non-America. It will shock you and horrify you to discover all the terrible things we're directly responsible for.

-Israel: Read an American newspaper and you hear about Palestinians killing Israeli children. Read a European newspaper and you see that the Palestinian attack was in response to one of the same nature perpetrated by Israeli militant groups.

-China: Read about what they do to their dissidents. Read about their methods of population control. Read about the widespread poverty. Then take note that the free-traders are too busy brown-nosing (in the most literal sense) to even care about what's going on there.

It's one thing to talk about history, it's another entirely to spread blind "Golly gee-whiz, we're the BEST" propoganda. They'll go on and on for days about World War II. "Gee, we saved the world!" Programs regarding Korea and Vietnam are conspicuously absent along with the "other" WWII: the Pacific campaign, especially the fallout from the atomic bombs America dropped on the Japanese. "Gee, look at us slaughter Asians indiscriminately!" It's sick.

Not to mention every profile of historical figures they do is a Republican Love-Fest. And when they talked about the Kennedys, all they talked about were their love lives and mafia ties. :eyes:

I still enjoy programs like "History's Mysteries" and ones that focus on ancient cultures, but I take everything they say about America with a shaker full of salt.

[SoCalDem]

19. That's what HC has evolved into..

It used to be interesting to watch, but it's so blatant now.. and when they did the George HW Bush love-in, they lost me for good:(

Welcome to DU :hi:

[AquariDem]

24. Give Howard Zinn his own show!

It could be like A People's History of the United States, only partly dramatized and with first-person accounts from people in various progressive movements. (sigh)..and I'd also like a billion in cash, while I'm at it. :)

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

21. Depends on the show

They did a good one about the Crusades, explaining Saladin The Great's role in making the Holy Land safe for all, and exposing the atrocities of the Christian invaders. I was pleasantly surprised that they actually showed Muslims in a favorable light.

[DrGonzoLives]

22. Most of it

Most of the time, it's the "Ain't America's Military Great" show, with plenty of "America is always right and fights for freedom around the world!" stuff interspersed throughout it. Then, they show plenty of fluff, then more "Rah, Rah, Military!"

And it's funny that ever since the report came out saying NASA needs to change it's "culture of invincibility" they have been showing a documentary about NASA being scrappy and preventing disaster, as well as "Apollo 11." Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

[AquariDem]

23. Well, it is the War Channel

I enjoy (well, I find interesting) the documentaries on the lives of the Nazis, as well as the whole "20th Century" documentary series. But it seems like most of the day is devoted to bragging about a certain American aircraft carrier or, well, talking about different kinds of guns. I don't know if it's so much pro-American propaganda as simply the glorification of war in general. Either way, :puke: .

[PATRICK]

25. Pop history

fluffed out with experts and visuals. Doesn't the Disney conglom own this? one of the big Corporate Pravda chains does. You know how Disney treats history. The same dual effect of entertainment fluff first, hyped history second, good history third or accidental to meet the time slot gaps.

I mean the biography segments started out as general movers and shakers and then declined into movie star bios. If it's lite and all American it's HC fodder.

[chadm]

26. All

Everything serves the same purpose.