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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/what-george-carlin-taught-us-about-media-propaganda-by-omission/

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What George Carlin taught us about media propaganda by omission

Written by Jeff Cohen / Common Dreams September 16, 2019

In the old George Carlin joke, the TV sportscaster announces: “Here’s a partial score from the West Coast – Los Angeles 6.”

For a brilliant comedian like Carlin—who skewered corporate power, class structure and political/media propaganda—that’s one of his more innocuous jokes. But it’s sharply relevant today as corporate TV news outlets serve up a series of partial scores. Call it “propaganda by omission.”

Take the coverage that followed Thursday’s Democratic debate. Bernie Sanders didn’t object in the debate when Joe Biden hung a price tag on Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan of $30 trillion (over 10 years). Sanders responded by offering the other score: “That’s right, Joe. Status quo over 10 years will be $50 trillion. Every study done shows that Medicare for All is the most cost-effective approach to providing health care to every man, woman, and child in this country.”

The $50 trillion figure for continuing the status quo (actually $47 trillion) comes from the “National Health Expenditure Fact Sheet” of the federal government’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

I checked the post-debate news coverage. As in the Carlin joke, I found many references to the partial score: the $30-32 trillion estimated cost of Sanders’ legislation. But not the other score: the more costly estimate of sticking with a system in which health insurance is provided by for-profit corporations.

I watched, for example, the next day’s in-depth report on CBS Evening News lasting a full two minutes. (That’s “in-depth” nowadays on nightly newscasts.) The $32 trillion estimate was prominent, but the other score was omitted—no estimate for staying with the status quo. When the report ended, anchor Nora O’Donnell accentuated the bias by saying: “That’s an expensive plan, Ed. Thank you.”

CBS opened its report speaking of “government-run healthcare plans being touted by liberal Democrats.” It’s well-known that “government-run healthcare“ is a GOP/Fox News/insurance industry talking point. As is “government takeover” of healthcare. Just ask GOP propagandist Frank Luntz.

Of course, when Medicare simply provides the coverage—whether to older people today or everyone tomorrow—that’s NOT “government-run healthcare.”

As I recently wrote to the Los Angeles Times in response to a biased poll question: “Doctors and hospitals are private today within Medicare in the U.S. (I know because I’m old enough to be on Medicare)—and they would remain so under a Medicare for All system, just as doctors and hospitals are private today under Canada’s Medicare for All system. Insurance is government-provided; not the healthcare itself.”

It’s easy to explain why Medicare for All is more cost-effective than the corporate-insurance system. Less bureaucracy and wasteful paperwork. No sales commissions. No exorbitant CEO compensation—averaging $18 million per healthcare CEO last year. No insurance company profits; the “big 8 health insurers” raked in $7 billion in one quarter last year.

But confusion, not clarity, is the job of TV news—which is so heavily sponsored by drug and healthcare companies. (Night after night, big pharma is the main sponsor of network newscasts.) And confusion is the job of industry ads and corporate politicians like Biden, who receives more healthcare industry donations than any other Democratic candidate.

That’s why we keep getting partial scores.

Besides the reduction in financial cost, imagine the reduction in human cost—hardship and anxiety—if our country joined every other wealthy country in achieving truly universal health coverage.

Which bring us to a partial score on another crisis causing hardship and anxiety today: climate change. The Green New Deal proposal in Congress to address the problem, while creating millions of high-paying jobs, has been savaged as “too expensive”—with Mitch McConnell and Republicans incessantly invoking a concocted and ridiculous figure of $93 trillion.

As with Medicare for All, moneyed elites want to omit the other score—the price tag of sticking with the status quo into a future that Bill McKibben describes as “a modern Dark Ages.” From science-denying Republicans to solution-denying corporate Democrats who seek a go-slow “middle-ground,” there’s an attempt to downplay the more expensive cost of deny and delay, including: rising seas and rivers, more damaging hurricanes and floods, worsening droughts and wildfires, buckling bridges and roads, increased air pollution and hospitalizations, premature deaths, crop failures, extinct species, spread of new diseases, intensified migration and more brutal civil wars.

McKibben argues that the Green New Deal “costs pennies on the dollar” compared to the bleak and costly future predicted by scientists. McKibben, of course, doesn’t sponsor TV news. The fossil fuel industry does.

In a country as wealthy as ours—when progressive proposals to address the crises of climate, healthcare and social inequality are routinely shot down by corporate politicians and media as “too expensive”—George Carlin’s quip reminds us to demand the other score: the horrific cost of our unequal and unsustainable status quo.

Jeff Cohen was associate professor of journalism and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and former board member of Progressive Democrats of America. In 2002, he was a producer and pundit at MSNBC (overseen by NBC News). He is the author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media – and a cofounder of the online action group, www.RootsAction.org. His website is here: //jeffcohen.org.

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AlterNet was founded in the fall of 1987 by the Institute for Alternative Journalism (IAJ),^[8][1] which was incorporated in December 1983 with a mission to serve as a clearinghouse for important local stories generated by the members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN).

The founding editor of AlterNet was Alan Green, who with his deputy, Margaret Engle, created print and electronic mechanisms to syndicate both the works of AAN papers and freelance contributors, among them Michael Moore and Abbie Hoffman. Engle took over for Green in 1989 and ran the news service until 1993, in that time dramatically expanding AlterNet's base of contributors and client newspapers. Upon her resignation, Engle was succeeded by Don Hazen, who had been hired by IAJ in 1991 to be its first executive director. AlterNet publishes a combination of policy critiques, investigative reports and analysis, grassroots success stories, and personal narratives. Christine Triano was associate director of the Institute for Alternative Journalism, in 1996.^[9][10]

Media Heroes are annual awards by the Institute for Alternative Journalism.^[5] Frederick Clarkson was named among the "Media Heroes of 1992"^[11] James Danky was named a Media Hero in 1993.^[12] In 1995, Media Heroes awards went to Public Media Center, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Institute for Global Communications, Janine Jackson, Laura Flanders,^[13] CounterSpin, Gary Delgado, David Barsamian,^[14] Alternative Radio, Haiti Truth Team, Salim Muwakkil, John Schwartz, and Artists for a Hate Free America were presented in MediaCulture Review, January/February 1995^[15]

In 1996, Leslie Savan was named one of "The Top Ten Media Heroes".^[16] Patricia Scott, and Julie Drizin were named to the "Top Ten Media Heroes of 1996"^[17] Paul Klite, Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Media Watch, received a Media Hero Award from the Institute for Alternative Journalism in 1996.^[18] Amy Goodman, Bob Herbert, Detroit Sunday Journal, Gary Webb, Herbert Schiller, James Ridgeway, Karl Grossman, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Norman Solomon, and Urvashi Vaid received the 1997 Media Hero Award.^[19] In 1997, Media Heroes awards were presented at the second Media & Democracy Congress.^[5] The Institute for Alternative Journalism named Barsamian one of its Top Ten Media Heroes.

The IAJ became the Independent Media Institute some time before December 1999.^[20] After the sale of AlterNet to the new company, AlterNet Media in April 2018, the Independent Media Institute^[21][22] (IMI) launched a series of new programs^[23] including the Make It Right Project.

Acquisition

On April 9, 2018, it was announced that AlterNet was acquired by owners of Raw Story, an online news organization, under the newly created company AlterNet Media. In an online statement, Raw Story founder John K. Byrne stated, "AlterNet will continue to carry content from the Independent Media Institute, its prior owner. Thus, much of the content you expect will remain the same. You will see articles by former AlterNet writers appearing with the Independent Media Institute byline." AlterNet Media later acquired the New Civil Rights Movement.^[24][25][26]

John K. Byrne (born March 24, 1981) is an American publisher and writer. He is co-owner of Raw Story Media and AlterNet Media, which publish the online progressive political news sites RawStory.com and AlterNet.org respectively.^[1] Prior to Raw Story, he wrote briefly for The Boston Globe and McClatchy Newspapers and has been published in The Atlantic.^[2]

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Change is coming as Trump awakens a sleeping giant

Robert ReichApril 13, 2026

The past terrifying week has caused me to wonder: How did America ever get to a point where one man, backed by the military might of the United States, could credibly threaten death to an entire civilization?

I’m also wondering how 19 super-rich American households could have added $1.8 trillion to their wealth in just the last 24 months — roughly the size of the economy of Australia — while the rate of child poverty in the U.S. has more than doubled, from a low of 5.2 percent in 2021 to over 13 percent now?

How have we come so perilously close to climate catastrophe, with spring temperatures in the Western United States already shattering records — and yet governments are spending over a trillion dollars a year subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and banks have channeled over $3 trillion to fossil fuel companies since the Paris Agreement, while there are almost no funds to protect living ecosystems?

How have we allowed artificial intelligence, the most powerful technology the world has ever seen, to threaten millions of jobs; make vulnerable the software that runs our financial, energy, and defense systems; and potentially destroy the human race — while allowing it to amass so much political power that it eludes all guardrails and regulations?

I have served at the highest levels of the U.S. government. I’ve watched our political and economic systems grow and change over the last 50 years, and I’ve spent much of that time writing about their evolution. I’ve never been reluctant to accuse those in power of abusing their authority.

While I have some ideas about how and why our system has sacrificed democracy and critical thought to the false gods of greed and growth (anyone interested in my tentative thoughts is more than welcome to read my recent Coming Up Short), I cannot state with certainty how we arrived at this point.

Yet notwithstanding how we got here, how do we change course? I refuse to accept that we cannot, or that it’s too late.

On Friday, I taught students who are seeking degrees in public policy. They wanted to know why — given all this — I remain optimistic.

I told them that I have faith in the goodness and reasonableness of the American people when they become aware of huge problems that threaten our and the world’s existence. And that the problems I’ve mentioned have now reached such size and dangerousness that the public can no longer ignore them.

We are, I think, coming to a tipping point in how we understand the challenges to our continued existence.

As author Jeremy Lent has written:

“A civilization built on a different foundation would start from an acknowledgment that the deep interconnectedness of all life is not romantic aspiration but scientific fact — confirmed by complexity science, systems biology, and Earth science, and affirmed by wisdom traditions of cultures that never lost that understanding.

From this recognition, different goals follow: not perpetual growth but setting the conditions for all people to flourish on a regenerated Earth. Not maximization of returns on capital but the kind of reciprocal, mutualistic relationship with living systems that makes long-term human wellbeing possible.

There is no blueprint that will save us. No one person or group can design in advance what such a civilization will look like in its particulars. But a framework of core principles can orient us — the way a distant horizon orients a traveler moving through unmarked terrain.

You may not yet see the exact path, but knowing the general direction changes everything about which opportunities you embrace and which you recognize as alluring detours.

The trance that keeps us from seeing this is powerful. But it has been broken before. Every paradigm that once seemed like reality itself — the divine right of kings, the natural inferiority of women, the Earth at the center of the universe — turned out to be a myth that was shattered.”

I agree with Lent. It’s time to eschew the myths that contributed to the reelection of the most dangerous person ever to occupy the White House, myths that continue to limit our beliefs and imaginations: that widening inequality and an ever-larger military are necessary and inevitable, that we need a billionaire oligarchy to guide our economy and a “strongman” to lead our government, that a political revolution founded on returning American democracy to the ideal of self-government would be too destabilizing, that continued growth of the Gross Domestic Product is an unmitigated good, and that more “productivity” and “efficiency” are always beneficial.

The most dangerous myth of all is that there is no alternative to the path we’re on, that we have no control over our destiny, and that, just as it was inevitable that we came to where are, our unraveling is similarly inevitable.

I refuse to accept this deterministic myth. The first act of genuine systemic change is to stop believing it.

It’s been a terrifying week, but one that is awakening millions of people.

Thank you for being an ally in seeking a better world.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Report typos and corrections to: feedback@alternet.org.

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From terrorist manifesto to K-12 curricula

Democratic lawmakers pointed to far-right groups’ usage of cultural Marxism in relation to antisemitic beliefs.

“If you look up the term cultural Marxism, what comes up is the term cultural Marxism refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory, so that’s also concerning to me,” Palm Beach Democratic Rep. Katherine Waldron said during the Choice and Innovation subcommittee meeting last week. “I’m all for kids learning about government and political systems. But I would be against this very specific terminology in training or in trying to educate them on this.”

Marilyn Mayo, a senior research fellow with ADL’s Center on Extremism, said in a statement to Florida Phoenix that antisemites also use the term to reinforce their longstanding antisemitic trope that communism is “Jewish.”

“‘Cultural Marxism’ is a term, typically used by right-wing ideologues, to attack an array of ideas and concepts they oppose, including multiculturalism, globalism, feminism, and LGBTQ+ rights, among others. The term often functions as an antisemitic dog whistle or codeword,” Mayo wrote in the statement.

“Promoters of the term often invoke a conspiracy theory that falsely claims such progressive ideas originated with the so-called Frankfurt School, a leftist intellectual collective active in Germany between the two World Wars. Exploiting the fact that a number of the Frankfurt School intellectuals were Jewish, antisemitic versions of this conspiracy theory link the Frankfurt School, and thus ‘cultural Marxism’ itself, to Jews, claiming that Jews seek to subvert and weaken Western (and Christian) society by imposing their left-wing and politically correct (or ‘woke’) views.”

Over the years, cultural Marxism has gone from being linked with the far-right through terrorists’ manifestos to seeping into the vocabulary of mainstream politicians, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has said he views wokeness as a form of cultural Marxism.

“Most of the most violent, the deadliest acts of hate, perpetrated against Jewish people especially in the United States in the last 10 to 15 years have been by far-right extremists. We don’t have cultural Marxists shooting up synagogues. If it were the case, then we should talk about it, but it isn’t,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. “You have white supremacists, anti-government extremists who are embracing antisemitism. Of course, antisemitism is on the far-left as well. There has been a rapid, marked increase in antisemitic rhetoric coming out of the far-left as well.”

The terrorist who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011 and another who killed a woman in the attack at the California Chabad of Poway synagogue in 2019 left manifestos denouncing cultural Marxism’s effect on Europe and blaming Jews for coming up with it, respectively.

Groups like the Proud Boys have also used cultural Marxism as a catch-all term for anyone they view as an enemy, Lewis said.

“What we’ve seen in recent years has been an intentional effort, by far-right extremists to launder antisemitism, launder white supremacy, launder anti-LGBTQ narratives and hate speech against everyone who’s not effectively in this in-group, which is largely white, largely Christian,” he said.

Dangers of communism

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, published a 45-page report in 2022 about how cultural Marxism threatens the U.S. In it, the think tank states cultural Marxists have infiltrated the country through college campuses and public schools. They also credit DeSantis for showing a path to dismantle cultural Marxism.

“Today’s cultural Marxists believe that the reason economic, social, cultural, academic, and health outcomes (to name just a few) show persistent racial disparities is because of a pervasive, systemic racism that can only be eliminated by smashing the system itself,” the report states.

Subcommittee chair Republican Rep. Alex Rizo of Miami-Dade, last week defended the bill, stating that students don’t learn enough about communism.

“When we talk about antisemitism I equate antisemitism a lot with communism. … I love that this bill will come up with some sort of curriculum to start teaching what communism really does other than an economic theory that was brought up by Marx and Engels, two philosophers, and I use that term very loosely, in the 19th century. Because we do have curriculum in almost every single grade level K through 12 that talks about the sins of slavery, that talks about the horrors of the Holocaust, but does not yet really address the over 100 million people who were victimized, murdered, displaced in about 100 years worth of communism in our society,” he said.

The Florida Department of Education standards related to communism include the evaluation of economic systems in seventh grade and the identification of political ideologies (communism and totalitarianism) that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy in high school.

Lawmakers also discussed last week how the material would be taught in an age-appropriate manner to younger students. Republican Rep. Thad Altman of Brevard said his wife, a first-grade teacher at a Catholic school, teaches kids through hands-on simulations.

“I think these kids understand capitalism and communism more than a lot of college students, especially if they go to an Ivy League,” he said.

Other things students would learn about through the House bill or analysis include atrocities committed in foreign countries under the guidance of communism, the Cultural Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, the communist policies of Cuba, and the spread of communist ideologies throughout Latin America.

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