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talkpoliticsHello, dear gullible, hysteria-prone dupes critically-thinking sceptics! I'mma tell you a cool story that's much in line with the monthly topic. Until 1991, "Ku-Ku" had been just one of the more extraordinary youth publicist TV shows that we had here. It was made entirely by students, it had a puppet anchor, it had some awesome spoofs with fresh ideas in them, it had lots of satire, and it used to provoke the public and try to instill a culture of anti-conformism with the youth, at a time when our society was still making its very first few steps away from communism, and into the vast unknown of democracy.
Until December 22, 1991. Then the first really huge media scandal broke out, and it shook the whole country. No surprise, it involved the Ku-Ku Show. The daily broadcast of the show was suddenly interrupted in what turned out to be a simulated TV stunt that the public proved totally unprepared for. Or maybe it was just way too prepared. See, the regular news anchor for the day suddenly appeared on the TV screen, saying in a very serious tone that "...we want to assure the citizens that nothing too frightening has happened in Kozloduy". Now, Kozloduy has been our only nuclear power station, and the populace was still pretty frightened from what had happened in Chernobyl just a few years prior.
All the staff of the Ku-Ku show (which was now getting interrupted by this breaking news that "nothing bad had happened"), managed to present the whole situation in a stunningly plausible way, mimicking the "shy insincerity" that would've been used by a national media if something bad had really happened in Kozloduy. Using the real news anchor of the national television added the needed plausibility.
The effect on the populace by far exceeded what they had expected. The public, which had gotten pretty much used to "reading between the lines", instantly went into mass hysteria. 9/10 of the population which had seen the broadcast, were convinced that the nuclear station had indeed exploded, and a radioactive contamination was imminent. Even the correspondents of the foreign media were convinced. Knowing the manipulative character of the Bulgarian mass media, they didn't even bother to double-check the "news" at least from a second source, but instead they hurried to spread the sensation. Among the tricked foreign media were ZDF, Reuters, the Spanish telegraph agency, France Press and many many more.
The country's prime minister at the time (of the newly elected Democratic Union who had just ousted the "reformed" communist [now Socialist] party for the first time), later admitted he had learned about the "event" from his mother. She had watched the news on the TV and she told him "Sonny, something has happened in Kozloduy!!!" And he didn't hesitate to believe it.
The public scandal was HUGE. All major newspapers (and even the local ones) came out with mass Anathema on their first pages on the next day. The official version of the government was that the "Ku-Ku" guys had been instigated to forge this enormous manipulation by the communists, in order to destabilize the government. Which is utterly ironic, since it was the students and especially the Ku-Ku show who had helped the Democrats come to power just a few months earlier, by organizing mass protests against the Socialists which culminated with a march on the Communist Party Headquarters and the subsequent torching and looting of the first floor of the building.
The Speaker of Parliament at the time (a Democrat), who had initially made an attempt to block the special Ku-Ku broadcast from airing (in an episode of state censorship which again reeked of irony), was astounded to find out that he wasn't clear "from where the television gets switched off"! So, instead he created a special parliamentary committee, assigned with the task to make a thorough investigation of the case.
Amidst all this noise and screaming, the explanations of the Ku-Ku writers remained largely unheard. And those were simple:
1) First and foremost, they wanted to demonstrate how powerful and without alternative a national television channel can be, one that has a monopoly position on the media market, and which is directly controlled by the government. In the same line of thought was the final (and farewell) video of the Ku-Ku Show itself: "I Got The Power", where a collage of the faces of the most prominent TV anchors at the time was being displayed, under the sounds of the famous rap song.
2) Secondly, by repeating the tested formula of Orson Wells and his radioplay "War of the Worlds" where a certain radio station had caused mass panic in the US about some imaginary Martian invasion, they were trying to encourage the auditory to be sceptical to everything they're being served by the mass media. But probably they had gone too far in the authenticity of their display, or maybe they had hit a nerve with the populace, at a moment when it was already pretty nervous on the subject of nuclear disasters, due to the fresh memory of Chernobyl.
3) And here comes the most important part, IMO. With this stunt they were aiming to demonstrate the complete unpreparedness of the state to deal with a possible industrial accident of such a large scale. Only a few weeks after the scandal, another TV team ventured to investigate about the state of most nuclear shelters, and they were shocked to find out that most of them had already been turned into nightclubs, bars, and commercial stores. They found there was a severe shortage of equipment like gas masks, there were no appropriate information materials that would educate the populace about how they should react in such situations. The Emergency Departments all across the country were utterly unprepared for dealing with mass panic, real disaster situations, etc. There wasn't enough fuel for the vehicles which were supposed to evacuate the people living in the immediate vicinity of the nuclear station (most of the fuel and equipment had already been stolen, illegally traded, etc).
So in a way, this whole episode taught us more than one precious lesson at a time. It also showed how easy it is to cause mass hysteria if you push the right buttons at the right moment in the right way. But the good thing is, this incident was probably one of the factors that contributed to the liberalization of the media market in the country, which saw the emergence of a number of top-quality private medias which started competing on the great scene. And most importantly (for me), it taught people yet another lesson of critical thinking, taking everything you hear on the news with a healthy chunk of salt, and being sceptical about "official" information. We're a pretty sceptical nation, by any means, and this was probably the final trigger which showed us that Nothing Is Exactly What It Seems.
Ps. Most of the guys who had been involved with the student's TV show Ku-Ku, went on to become some of the most prominent politicians, media people, journalists, comedians, showmen and TV pundits of the new, post-communist era in the country. Some of them are among the central figures in our society even today.
Pps. "Ku-Ku" means cuckoo, and is a word we use for a crackpot, someone nutty. In a way, we all were, at the dawn of democracy.
Until December 22, 1991. Then the first really huge media scandal broke out, and it shook the whole country. No surprise, it involved the Ku-Ku Show. The daily broadcast of the show was suddenly interrupted in what turned out to be a simulated TV stunt that the public proved totally unprepared for. Or maybe it was just way too prepared. See, the regular news anchor for the day suddenly appeared on the TV screen, saying in a very serious tone that "...we want to assure the citizens that nothing too frightening has happened in Kozloduy". Now, Kozloduy has been our only nuclear power station, and the populace was still pretty frightened from what had happened in Chernobyl just a few years prior.
All the staff of the Ku-Ku show (which was now getting interrupted by this breaking news that "nothing bad had happened"), managed to present the whole situation in a stunningly plausible way, mimicking the "shy insincerity" that would've been used by a national media if something bad had really happened in Kozloduy. Using the real news anchor of the national television added the needed plausibility.
The effect on the populace by far exceeded what they had expected. The public, which had gotten pretty much used to "reading between the lines", instantly went into mass hysteria. 9/10 of the population which had seen the broadcast, were convinced that the nuclear station had indeed exploded, and a radioactive contamination was imminent. Even the correspondents of the foreign media were convinced. Knowing the manipulative character of the Bulgarian mass media, they didn't even bother to double-check the "news" at least from a second source, but instead they hurried to spread the sensation. Among the tricked foreign media were ZDF, Reuters, the Spanish telegraph agency, France Press and many many more.
The country's prime minister at the time (of the newly elected Democratic Union who had just ousted the "reformed" communist [now Socialist] party for the first time), later admitted he had learned about the "event" from his mother. She had watched the news on the TV and she told him "Sonny, something has happened in Kozloduy!!!" And he didn't hesitate to believe it.
The public scandal was HUGE. All major newspapers (and even the local ones) came out with mass Anathema on their first pages on the next day. The official version of the government was that the "Ku-Ku" guys had been instigated to forge this enormous manipulation by the communists, in order to destabilize the government. Which is utterly ironic, since it was the students and especially the Ku-Ku show who had helped the Democrats come to power just a few months earlier, by organizing mass protests against the Socialists which culminated with a march on the Communist Party Headquarters and the subsequent torching and looting of the first floor of the building.
The Speaker of Parliament at the time (a Democrat), who had initially made an attempt to block the special Ku-Ku broadcast from airing (in an episode of state censorship which again reeked of irony), was astounded to find out that he wasn't clear "from where the television gets switched off"! So, instead he created a special parliamentary committee, assigned with the task to make a thorough investigation of the case.
Amidst all this noise and screaming, the explanations of the Ku-Ku writers remained largely unheard. And those were simple:
1) First and foremost, they wanted to demonstrate how powerful and without alternative a national television channel can be, one that has a monopoly position on the media market, and which is directly controlled by the government. In the same line of thought was the final (and farewell) video of the Ku-Ku Show itself: "I Got The Power", where a collage of the faces of the most prominent TV anchors at the time was being displayed, under the sounds of the famous rap song.
2) Secondly, by repeating the tested formula of Orson Wells and his radioplay "War of the Worlds" where a certain radio station had caused mass panic in the US about some imaginary Martian invasion, they were trying to encourage the auditory to be sceptical to everything they're being served by the mass media. But probably they had gone too far in the authenticity of their display, or maybe they had hit a nerve with the populace, at a moment when it was already pretty nervous on the subject of nuclear disasters, due to the fresh memory of Chernobyl.
3) And here comes the most important part, IMO. With this stunt they were aiming to demonstrate the complete unpreparedness of the state to deal with a possible industrial accident of such a large scale. Only a few weeks after the scandal, another TV team ventured to investigate about the state of most nuclear shelters, and they were shocked to find out that most of them had already been turned into nightclubs, bars, and commercial stores. They found there was a severe shortage of equipment like gas masks, there were no appropriate information materials that would educate the populace about how they should react in such situations. The Emergency Departments all across the country were utterly unprepared for dealing with mass panic, real disaster situations, etc. There wasn't enough fuel for the vehicles which were supposed to evacuate the people living in the immediate vicinity of the nuclear station (most of the fuel and equipment had already been stolen, illegally traded, etc).
So in a way, this whole episode taught us more than one precious lesson at a time. It also showed how easy it is to cause mass hysteria if you push the right buttons at the right moment in the right way. But the good thing is, this incident was probably one of the factors that contributed to the liberalization of the media market in the country, which saw the emergence of a number of top-quality private medias which started competing on the great scene. And most importantly (for me), it taught people yet another lesson of critical thinking, taking everything you hear on the news with a healthy chunk of salt, and being sceptical about "official" information. We're a pretty sceptical nation, by any means, and this was probably the final trigger which showed us that Nothing Is Exactly What It Seems.
Ps. Most of the guys who had been involved with the student's TV show Ku-Ku, went on to become some of the most prominent politicians, media people, journalists, comedians, showmen and TV pundits of the new, post-communist era in the country. Some of them are among the central figures in our society even today.
Pps. "Ku-Ku" means cuckoo, and is a word we use for a crackpot, someone nutty. In a way, we all were, at the dawn of democracy.
(no subject)
Date: 6/11/11 15:49 (UTC)I remember a few years ago there was a big meeting to protest the removal of a miniscule cross from the county seal in Los Angeles. Since there were going to be so many speakers it was suggested that when in agreement, instead of applauding, to save time, just raise hands. So the next day on the front page of the Times was a picture of a number of people with their hands in the air, and the caption to the effect of Religious fanatics cram council chambers.
I heard about this on the radio from a prominent Jewish talk show host, who had been one of the speakers (for keeping the cross, oddly enough) as an example how media can manipulate (charismatic types who wave their hands in the air, are often dismissed as fanatics). A couple of days later an agnostic friend of mine (who had saved the paper) waves it in front of my face, saying look how crazy you religious people are. To be fair, in the article itself it explained exactly what was going on...in paragraph 24 on page 17 :). The somewhat ironical thing about the whole hullabaloo, is the suit was brought (to change the Seal) because of the religious implications, the cross represented the founding of the city by Catholic Priests, is that the main figure on the seal was the Roman goddess of agraculture.
(no subject)
Date: 6/11/11 16:09 (UTC)GWB & Rummy would like to agree with you.
(no subject)
Date: 6/11/11 16:10 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/11/11 16:57 (UTC)Having a number of friends and relatives deeply involved in film editing and news, I am sceptical to the point of not watching TV news, or you-tube videos.
(no subject)
Date: 6/11/11 17:07 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/11/11 17:11 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/11/11 16:11 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/11/11 18:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/11/11 21:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/11/11 21:40 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/11/11 21:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/11/11 10:55 (UTC)my brother in law recently told me " the problem with political and economic theories is that they take no account of human psychology".
He went on to explain how people do very serious things , like go to war and buy up property , for the most illogical and irrational of reasons.
those who get on well in politics are not often the most intelligent and rational, but people like Adolf Hitler, who know how to milk a crowd for it's feelings and sympathies.
(no subject)
Date: 7/11/11 11:55 (UTC)