Public business is now done this way in “democracy,” thanks to media that can capture emotional moments, usually posed and contrived. A successful politician, such as Barack Obama, exploits them with genius, and a cool confidence that the public has a very low attention span. They will only remember emotional moments. Angela Merkel herself usually does a better job, but nothing much can be done about an ambush. She did her best to diffuse it. She’s a pro: I’m sure she knew exactly what the game was; that she’d been set up. From working in the media, I have seen such set-ups many times: all the cameras flashing on cue. Tricks of editing and camera angle are used to enhance the “teachable moment”; to condense the narrative into a hard rock of emotion, aimed directly at the boogeyperson’s head. For the media people are pros, too. They know how to adjust the “optics.” Pretty young woman crying: that will sway everyone except the tiny minority who know something about the subject. And they are now tarred with the same brush.
Huge changes in public life can be effected with big money, careful organization, and ruthless attention to “optics.”
David Warren, “Authority”, Essays in Idleness, 2015-07-17.
June 24, 2017
QotD: Manipulation of public opinion using “optics”
Filed under: Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: AngelaMerkel, BarackObama, Propaganda, TV — Nicholas @ 01:00
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