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Media Distortion Quotes

Browse 34 quotes about Media Distortion.

Media Distortion Quotes

“The picture of the world that's presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality. The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies. It's all been a marvellous success from the point of view in deterring the threat of democracy, achieved under conditions of freedom, which is extremely interesting.”

MediaLiesDeceptionPropagandaMedia DistortionManufacturing ConsentEngineering Opinion
Book:Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
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“[Refers to 121 children taken into care in Cleveland due to suspected abuse (1987) and later returned to their parents] Sue Richardson, the child abuse consultant at the heart of the crisis, watched as cases began to unravel: “All the focus started to fall on the medical findings; other supportive evidence, mainly which we held in the social services department, started to be screened out. A situation developed where the cases either were proven or fell on the basis of medical evidence alone. Other evidence that was available to the court, very often then, never got put. We would have had statement from the child, the social workers and the child psychologist’s evidence from interviewing. We would have evidence of prior concerns, either from social workers or teachers, about the child’s behaviour or other symptoms that they might have been showing, which were completely aside from the medical findings. (Channel 4 1997) Ten years after the Cleveland crisis, Sue Richardson was adamant that evidence relating to children’s safety was not presented to the courts which subsequently returned those children to their parents: “I am saying that very clearly. In some cases, evidence was not put in the court. In other cases, agreements were made between lawyers not to put the case to the court at all, particularly as the crisis developed. Latterly, that children were sent home subject to informal agreements or agreements between lawyers. The cases never even got as far as the court. (Channel 4, 1997)” Nor is Richardson alone. Jayne Wynne, one of the Leeds paediatricians who had pioneered the use of RAD as an indicator of sexual abuse and who subsequently had detailed knowledge of many of the Cleveland children, remains concerned by the haphazard approach of the courts to their protection. I think the implication is that the children were left unprotected. The children who were being abused unfortunately returned to homes and the abuse may well have been ongoing. (Channel 4 1997)”

LawCrimeEvidenceDoctorsLiesAbusePropagandaManipulationChild AbuseSexual AbuseHypeChild Sexual AbuseAccusationLegalAbuse Of PowerVictimsClevelandAbusersSociety DenialCriminal Justice SystemMedia ManipulationAllegationsChild RapePedophiliaChild ProtectionAbused ChildrenMedia DistortionFalse AccusationPaedophile RingSystemic FailureFalse AllegationsSocial ServicesPedophile RingChild CustodyNspcc
Book:Creative Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: Challenges and Dilemmas
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“It is often said that Vietnam was the first television war. By the same token, Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media. By the summer of 1987 Cleveland had become above all, a hot media story. The Daily Mail, for example, had seven reporters, plus its northern editor, based in Middlesbrough full time. Most other news papers and television news teams followed suit. What were all the reporters looking for? Not children at risk. Not abusing adults. Aggrieved parents were the mother lode sought by these prospecting journalists. Many of these parents were only too happy to tell — and in some cases, it would appear, sell— their stories. Those stories are truly extraordinary. In many cases they bore almost no relation to the facts. Parents were allowed - encouraged to portray themselves as the innocent victims of a runaway witch-hunt and these accounts were duly fed to the public. Nowhere in any of the reporting is there any sign of counterbalancing information from child protection workers or the organisations that employed them. Throughout the summer of 1987 newspapers ‘reported’ what they termed a national scandal of innocent families torn apart. The claims were repeated in Parliament and then recycled as established ‘facts’ by the media. The result was that the courts themselves began to be paralysed by the power of this juggernaut of press reporting — ‘journalism’ which created and painstakingly fed a public mood which brooked no other version of the story. (p21)”

LawCrimeLiesAbusePropagandaChild AbuseHypeChild Sexual AbuseAccusationLegalAbuse Of PowerClevelandAbusersSociety DenialMedia ManipulationAllegationsChild RapePedophiliaWitch HuntChild ProtectionMedia DistortionFalse AccusationPaedophile RingSystemic FailureFalse AllegationsSocial ServicesPedophile RingChild Custody
Book:Creative Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: Challenges and Dilemmas
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“...Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media... Given that most of the hearings took place out of sight of the press, the following examples are taken from the recollection of child protection workers present in court. In one case, during a controversy that centred fundamentally around disputes over the meaning of RAD [reflex anal dilatation], a judge refused to allow ‘any evidence about children’s bottoms’ in his courtroom. A second judge — hearing an application to have their children returned by parents about whom social services had grave worries told the assembled lawyers that, as she lived in the area, she could not help but be influenced by what she read in the press. Hardly surprising then that child protection workers soon found courts not hearing their applications, cutting them short, or loosely supervising informal deals which allowed children to be sent back to parents, even in cases where there was explicit evidence of apparent abuse to be explained and dealt with. (p21) [reflex anal dilatation (RAD): a simple clue which is suggestive of anal penetration from outside. It had been recognised as a valuable weapon in the armoury of doctors examining children for many decades and was endorsed by both the British Medical Association and the Association of Police Surgeons. (p18)]”

LawCrimeDoctorsLiesAbusePropagandaChild AbuseHypeChild Sexual AbuseAccusationLegalAbuse Of PowerVictimsClevelandAbusersSociety DenialMedia ManipulationAllegationsChild RapePedophiliaChild ProtectionAbused ChildrenMedia DistortionFalse AccusationPaedophile RingSystemic FailureFalse AllegationsSocial ServicesPedophile RingChild Custody
Book:Creative Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: Challenges and Dilemmas
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“But nothing in my previous work had prepared me for the experience of reinvestigating Cleveland. It is worth — given the passage of time — recalling the basic architecture of the Crisis: 121 children from many different and largely unrelated families had been taken into the care of Cleveland County Council in the three short months of the summer of 1987. (p18) The key to resolving the puzzle of Cleveland was the children. What had actually happened to them? Had they been abused - or had the paediatricians and social workers (as public opinion held) been over-zealous and plain wrong? Curiously — particularly given its high profile, year-long sittings and £5 million cost — this was the one central issue never addressed by the Butler-Sloss judicial testimony and sifting of internal evidence, the inquiry's remit did not require it to answer the main question. Ten years after the crisis, my colleagues and I set about reconstructing the records of the 121 children at its heart to determine exactly what had happened to them... (p19) Eventually, though, we did assemble the data given to the Butler-Sloss Inquiry. This divided into two categories: the confidential material, presented in camera, and the transcripts of public sessions of the hearings. Putting the two together we assembled our own database on the children each identified only by the code-letters assigned to them by Butler-Sloss. When it was finished, this database told a startlingly different story from the public myth. In every case there was some prima fade evidence to suggest the possibility of abuse. Far from the media fiction of parents taking their children to Middlesbrough General Hospital for a tummy ache or a sore thumb and suddenly being presented with a diagnosis of child sexual abuse, the true story was of families known to social services for months or years, histories of physical and sexual abuse of siblings and of prior discussions with parents about these concerns. In several of the cases the children themselves had made detailed disclosures of abuse; many of the pre-verbal children displayed severe emotional or behavioural symptoms consistent with sexual abuse. There were even some families in which a convicted sex offender had moved in with mother and children. (p20)”

LawCrimeEvidenceDoctorsLiesAbusePropagandaManipulationChild AbuseHypeChild Sexual AbuseAccusationLegalAbuse Of PowerVictimsClevelandAbusersSociety DenialMedia ManipulationAllegationsChild RapePedophiliaChild ProtectionAbused ChildrenMedia DistortionFalse AccusationPaedophile RingSystemic FailureFalse AllegationsSocial ServicesPedophile RingChild Custody
Book:Creative Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: Challenges and Dilemmas
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“Never judge someone's character based on the words of another. Instead, study the motives behind the words of the person casting the bad judgment. An honest woman can sell tangerines all day and remain a good person until she dies, but there will always be naysayers who will try to convince you otherwise. Perhaps this woman did not give them something for free, or at a discount. Perhaps too, that she refused to stand with them when they were wrong — or just stood up for something she felt was right. And also, it could be that some bitter women are envious of her, or that she rejected the advances of some very proud men. Always trust your heart. If the Creator stood before a million men with the light of a million lamps, only a few would truly see him because truth is already alive in their hearts. Truth can only be seen by those with truth in them. He who does not have Truth in his heart, will always be blind to her.”

ThinkingCharacterGodLightTruthLawLyingPoliticsWomenJusticeOpinionKnowledgeHistorySocietyMediaIgnoranceJudgingIntegrityConscienceEvidenceCriticismEntertainmentCreatorProofInnocentReputationCivil RightsBitterGuiltyWitnessInnocenceWomanTelling The TruthGossipLieLampsLaw And OrderSeekDestroyTruth TellingJudging OthersRumoursTrialGuilty ConscienceRumorsPopular OpinionOpinions Of OthersTruth And JusticeLampJudicial SystemPressAccusationsInvestigateGossip QuotesMedia DistortionTrust Your HeartGossipingFalsely AccusedCharacter AssassinationTangerinesMisjudgmentDeceased PeopleMisjudgeSeek TruthJudging ActionsBlind To TruthMisjudgedRecognize TruthFalsely DestroyedGuilt By TrialHung JuryInestigatorsJury HearingRepuation Mangement
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“Take a little thought experiment. Imagine all the rampage school shooters in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas; now imagine they were black girls from poor families who lived instead in Chicago, New Haven, Newark, Philadelphia, or Providence. Can you picture the national debate, the headlines, the hand-wringing? There is no doubt we’d be having a national debate about inner-city poor black girls. The entire focus would be on race, class, and gender. The media would doubtless invent a new term for their behavior, as with wilding two decades ago. We’d hear about the culture of poverty, about how living in the city breeds crime and violence. We’d hear some pundits proclaim some putative natural tendency among blacks toward violence. Someone would likely even blame feminism for causing girls to become violent in a vain imitation of boys. Yet the obvious fact that virtually all the rampage school shooters were middle-class white boys barely broke a ripple in the torrent of public discussion. This uniformity cut across all other differences among the shooters: some came from intact families, others from single-parent homes; some boys had acted violently in the past, and others were quiet and unassuming; some boys also expressed rage at their parents (two killed their parents the same morning), and others seemed to live in happy families.”

ClassMediaAngerPrivilegeGunsClass StruggleWhite PrivilegeMedia BiasMedia DistortionSchool ShootingSchool ShootingsAngry Young ManAngry White Males
Book:Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era
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“Idealized media images of women are far from being the only important target when it comes to our beauty-sick culture, but their sheer ubiquity means we can't underestimate their impact. We also cannot pretend that what we see in the media doesn't shape our thoughts and behaviors. It might be tempting to think that your mind is locked behind some protective wall, safe from the influence of the media onslaught, but that's not how brains work. We are all affected by these images. Their influence is insidious, and there is no magic force field to keep it out.”

FeminismWomen S RightsMedia Distortion
Book:Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women
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“(Talking about the movement to deny the prevalence and effects of adult sexual exploitation of children) So what does this movement consist of? Who are the movers and shakers? Well molesters are in it, of course. There are web pages telling them how to defend themselves against accusations, to retain confidence about their ‘loving and natural’ feelings for children, with advice on what lawyers to approach, how to complain, how to harass those helping their children. Then there’s the Men’s Movements, their web pages throbbing with excitement if they find ‘proof’ of conspiracy between feminists, divorcing wives and therapists to victimise men, fathers and husbands. Then there are journalists. A few have been vitally important in the US and Britain in establishing the fightback, using their power and influence to distort the work of child protection professionals and campaign against children’s testimony. Then there are other journalists who dance in and out of the debates waggling their columns behind them, rarely observing basic journalistic manners, but who use this debate to service something else – a crack at the welfare state, standards, feminism, ‘touchy, feely, post-Diana victimhood’. Then there is the academic voice, landing in the middle of court cases or inquiries, offering ‘rational authority’. Then there is the government. During the entire period of discovery and denial, not one Cabinet minister made a statement about the prevalence of sexual abuse or the harm it caused. Finally there are the ‘retractors’. For this movement to take off, it had to have ‘human interest’ victims – the accused – and then a happy ending – the ‘retractors’. We are aware that those ‘retractors’ whose parents trail them to newspapers, television studios and conferences are struggling. Lest we forget, they recanted under palpable pressure.”

GovernmentPoliticalSufferingCrimeAbusePressureVictimDenialSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseRapeCoercionChild Sexual AbuseSurvivorsIncestCriminalVictimsAbusersSociety DenialMedia ManipulationJournalistsFalse MemoriesPedophilePower DynamicsChild ProtectionAccusationsRapistsMedia DistortionSex OffendersMisuse Of PowerPaedophileHidden MotivesCrusadeAccused AdultsRetractorsPoliticspolitics
Book:Stolen Voices: The People and Politics Behind the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony
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“Unless you have a free press in your country, there is no need to buy newspapers and there is no need to watch the news because there is no need to listen to the lies! And you already have one real information: You are being deceived by the people you are governed! This is an enough information for you!”

GovernmentMediaNewsMehmet Murat Ildan QuotesNewspapersFreedom Of ThoughtFreedom Of ExpressionFreedom Of The PressFree PressMedia ManipulationMedia BiasMedia DistortionFreedom Of OpinionMedia LiesFree Press Quotes
Author:Mehmet Murat Ildan
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“Several themes describe misconceptions about mental illness and corresponding stigmatizing attitudes. Media analyses of film and print have identified three: people with mental illness are homicidal maniacs who need to be feared; they have childlike perceptions of the world that should be marveled; or they are responsible for their illness because they have weak character (29-32)." World Psychiatry. 2002 Feb; 1(1): 16–20. PMCID: PMC1489832 Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness PATRICK W CORRIGAN and AMY C WATSON”

FearPrejudiceBlameMental HealthDiscriminationMental IllnessBiasStigmaStereotypesChildlikeMental Health StigmaMental DisorderMedia ManipulationMedia BiasSensationalismMedia DistortionStigmatizationStereotyped PrejudicesDangerousnessPsychiatric CommunityStereotypedMental Patient
Author:Patrick W. Corrigan
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“The hypothesis advanced by the propaganda model, excluded from debate as unthinkable, is that in dealing with the American wars in Indochina, the media were "unmindful", but highly "patriotic" in the special and misleading sense that they kept -- and keep -- closely to the perspective of official Washington and the closely related corporate elite, in conformity to the general "journalistic-literary-political culture" from which "the left" (meaning dissident opinion that questions jingoist assumptions) is virtually excluded. The propaganda model predicts that this should be generally true not only of the choice of topics covered and the way they are covered, but also, and far more crucially, of the general background of the presuppositions within which the issues are framed and the news presented. Insofar as there is debate among dominant elites, it will be reflected within the media, which in this narrow sense, may adopt an "adversarial stance" with regard to those holding office, reflecting elite dissatisfaction with current policy. Otherwise the media will depart from elite consensus only rarely and in limited ways. Even when large parts of the general public break free of the premises of the doctrinal system, as finally happened during the Indochina wars, real understanding based upon an alternative conception of the evolving history can be developed only with considerable effort by the most diligent and skeptical. And such understanding as can be reached through serious and often individual effort will be difficult to sustain or apply elsewhere, an extremely important matter for those who are truly concerned with democracy at home and "the influence of democracy abroad," in the real sense of these words.”

Media ManipulationMedia BiasMedia DistortionIndochinaChomskyManufacturing Consent
Book:Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
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“the media, at least in the U.S., tends to focus on pain pill use, abuse, and addiction by people who do not have chronic pain. Even if these stories offhandedly mention that these pills are used to treat pain in people whose physical pain does not go away, however, the stories of those who use pain medicine responsibly -- or, worse, accused of drug-seeking behavior because they need certain types of pills for chronic pain -- are usually overshadowed by the “How can we prevent pain pill addiction?” concern, instead of asking, “How can we treat chronic pain more effectively?”

AddictionChronic PainOpiatesSubstance AbuseMedia BiasMedia DistortionChronic Pain StigmaPain ReliefOpioid UsePain ManagementPain Killer PillsPain Killers
Author:Anna Hamilton
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“Because of media portrayals, clinicians may believe that dissociative identity disorder presents with dramatic, florid alternate identities with obvious state transitions (switching). These florid presentations occur in only about 5% of patients with dissociative identity disorder.(20) How ever, the vast majority of these patients have subtle presentations characterized by a mixture of dissociative and PTSD symptoms embedded with other symptoms, such as post-traumatic depression, substance abuse, somatoform symptoms, eating disorders, and self-destructive and impulsive behaviors.(2,10)”

StereotypeDissociative Identity DisorderMultiple Personality DisorderMultiple PersonalitiesDissociativeMedia DistortionMedia JournalismPosttraumatic Stress
Author:Bethany Brand
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“Each of us is a massive composite figure. We are constantly filtering a barrage of sounds and visual images. Newspapers headlines scream to gain our attention. The radio blasts out its top forty. Billboards proclaim the newest film stars. Fashion magazines tell us how to dress and act. Each day sprouts its insider news tidbits. Each news day the media mashes another international or domestic crisis into our mental pulp and soufflés the macramé of political scandal or social untidiness into edible sound bites for us mentally to digest. Inside each of us resides shavings from this visual and electronic onslaught. An unseemly deluge of external stimuli shapes our ego formation.”

MediaWhite NoiseMedia QuotesMedia DistortionSociety InfluenceCultural InfluenceWebbMedia Diet
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“Just before she was allowed to go to Buck, Blanche was photographed at least three times by Herb Schwartz of the Des Moines Register. The location was about one quarter of a mile from where Buck and Blanche were apprehended. Blanche is being held by Sheriff Loren Forbes in all three shots. In two of the shots she is standing quietly, looking toward Buck, who is lying on the ground nearby with a group of armed men stooping over him. In the third shot, which has been widely published, Blanche is struggling with Forbes and looking directly at the camera, screaming dramatically. In his notes, Schwartz commented that Blanche, in her semiblind state, saw him raising his camera and apparently thought it was a gun and that he was about to shoot Buck. Blanche is screaming at Schwartz.”

CapturedMedia ManipulationMedia DistortionBonnie And ClydeOutlaw HeroesFugitives On Run
Book:My Life with Bonnie and Clyde
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“The authors analyzed 695 news items. The content of 47.9% (n = 333) of the articles was not strictly related to mental illness, but rather clinical or psychiatric terms were used metaphorically, and frequently in a pejorative sense. The remaining 52.1% (n = 362) consisted of news items related specifically to mental illness. Of these, news items linking mental illness to danger were the most common (178 texts, 49.2%), specifically those associating mental illness with violent crime (130 texts, 35.9%) or a danger to others (126 texts, 34.8%). The results confirm the hypothesis that the press treats mental illness in a manner that encourages stigmatization. The authors appeal to the press's responsibility to society and advocate an active role in reducing the stigma towards mental illness. Reinforcing Stigmatization: Coverage of Mental Illness in Spanish Newspapers. Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives. Volume 19, Issue 11, 2014”

PrejudiceMental IllnessStigmaMedia ManipulationMedia DistortionMedia DistortionsSteroetype
Author:Enric Aragonès
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