[ExI] Big Media is turning into Big Brother

[BillK]

Sky wants to socially re-engineer its viewers. Time to switch channels.
BRENDAN O'NEILL   CHIEF POLITICAL WRITER
9th November 2021

<https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/11/09/big-media-is-turning-into-big-brother/>
(This article is about UK media, but I'm sure the USA media is already
well aware of these techniques).

Quotes:
TV news used to be about informing people. Now it’s about manipulating
us. Now it’s about socially engineering us to make us more green. Now
its ambition is to be a ‘powerful tool of persuasion' in order to
transform viewers from the polluting pests we currently are into the
eco-switched-on citizens of the future. At least that’s the conclusion
one is forced to draw from the deeply chilling report commissioned by
Sky and authored by the Behavioural Insights Team, which is part-owned
by the Cabinet Office. Broadcasters must help to change the ‘attitudes
and behaviours of citizens’, the report declares. If this brazenly
stated, Big Brother-style crusade to reorder the minds of the
TV-viewing masses doesn’t have you reaching for the ‘Off’ button on
your remote control, I don’t know what will.

‘We just want to nudge you towards cleaner, healthier ways of living’
sounds better than ‘We want to re-engineer your thoughts and habits to
bring them into line with what we consider to be correct moral
behaviour’.

This emphasis on subtly sewing political and moral instruction into
the background of pretty much everything is central to the ideology of
nudge. Whether it’s nudge policies designed to change our food choices
or the behavioural science that was deployed to ensure public
obedience during the lockdown, the idea is that this social pressure –
sorry, social modelling – must always be deployed in as natural and
gentle a way as possible. People shouldn’t even really notice it, the
nudging elites say. This captures just how authoritarian and
anti-democratic nudge has become.
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Remember - Big Brother knows best what is good for you!

BillK