When most people watch the news on TV, they see and listen to the news anchor, but they do not observe the little details at the background or on the screens. For example, they don't observe the graphic elements on the screens, the rotating texts, the moving headlines, background image changes, the anchor's body position, eye contact, dressing code, hand signs, the color codes, the tone of voice, the linguistic power cues and other details. All these elements are part of the story and contribute in conveying a message, a narrative.

In fact, if you pay close attention, there are so many "little" things going on at the same time when you watch the news or any TV program, and at a so fast rate, that is impossible for the conscious mind to process all information. This is all done deliberately by the media agencies and it is known as the art of subliminal programming. A hypnotist uses the same method to hypnotize a patient. An illusionist or actor does the same to deceive the audience.
 
Professional news anchors are experts in acting and most of them have studied the tricks used by hypnotists (e.g. starring at the camera, using certain autoritative body guestures etc.) This field is officially called "Neurolinguistic Programming" (NLP) and its a benign scientific term name for the art of illusion and mind control used by actors, journalists, politicians, lawyers, illusionists, hypnotists, and others. All NLP practitioners, such as the news anchors you watch on TV, are seasoned programmers, able to manipulate and program the viewers' minds. If you are unfamiliar with NLP, I suggest you to read about it [e.g. http://nlpj2017.fbk.eu/ ]. It is a cross-disciplinary field that uses techniques from communication, behavior sciences, linguistics, neural sciences, psychotherapy and hypnosis.

NLP is especially used by news anchors all the time in order to become more persuasive. As a matter of fact, this form of trickery is their main job. As a pianist's job is to play the piano, a news anchor's job is to play with the viewer's mind! Anchors don't care about the content of the message being conveyed. Their daily job is to get a script given to them by the editorial office and propagate it to the audience as convincingly as possible. If the script is about promoting fear of a non-existent virus, then they will unquestionably obey the order, because they have been trained by their NLP teachers NOT to think about the content. They are like professional actors and hypnotists. They can talk about economy, without having knowledge about economics, and they talk about a pandemic without having kwnoledge about immunology.

The same holds for journalists and anchors alike working for the big corporations, as well as for politicians funded by lobbyist interests. This is why you never see any of them questioning the script, or giving their opinions. For this matter, they have lost capability of critical thinking. They have become obedient instruments of their bosses (the news media or big companies owners), who by the way happen to be a very small number of corporations. You can read about the concentration of media ownership here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership
 
As a result of the above, it is fair to say that the whole news broadcasting operation is a mind control factory, which is highly centralized and controlled by the elite same people pulling the strings, and it is always agenda based! They have bought 99% of media outlets, hence, whatever media channel you choose, you will listen to the same narrative with slight inconsequential variations. Even the dialogues and interviews and expert opinions are highly scripted. This is of course far from objective news, but very few people realize the deception, since the news are considers "official" sources of information and the governments are also part of this scheme. Bottom line is that the mainstream media don't care about the truth. Their role is to tell you what to think and how to react, in order to help the elite class control the masses by gaining their consent to their agendas.

Investigative journalism is a bit different, but it comes with two flavors. Controlled and Independent. Those journalists working for the establishment, they never question the narrative too. They are smarter than the "parrot" journalists, but they are paid to cover certain stories according to their bosses perspectives. They are given bullet points to help them write a story within a certain framework and if their article fits the news agency agenda then, and only then, it gets published. Agendas may include supporting a certain politician (left or right), advocating lobbyists and group leaders, writing financial news to influence the markets, pushing for gun control laws, supporting abortions rights, advocating surveillance laws or privacy restrictions, helping push for hate speech laws and centralized control of information, discrediting opposition as conspiracists etc. always benefiting the elites rather than society at large. There remains only a very small fraction of independent journalists who critically and truthfully investigate topics and write articles without any interest in mind. These hardly get any paycheck, except for donations or support from the people, because they are not given the chance to publish their articles in mainstream big media outlets. Instead, they have their own independent news sites, known as alternative media.

Unfortunately, the most thickheaded TV viewer will still prefer watching only mainstream media rather than examining alternative sources. The typical viewer will say "why should I trust a source with 100 followers, when the mainstream media have hundreds of thousands of followers?", and thus will prefer to go with the flow, as if the truth is only a matter of scale. This is called television programming. People are literally programmed to think, feel and act the way the media owners wants them to. It's not good to judge people, but I have to say that people who rely on the television for their daily dose of truth are the less critical thinkers on the planet. They are unable to think out of the box and pretty much unable to think for themselves too. They also often feel insulted when they view or hear anything against their programming. This is how you know they are programmed/hypnotized, because they are not willing to know anything but the mainstream sources. It's the exact same way the audience is captivated by an illusionist. They will program their lives, according to the programming, e.g. they will wear masks, they will follow the social distancing rules and even snitch their neighbors.

For a long time, this kind of television manipulation worked well. Hence the popular quote "Those who control the media controls the minds of the people."   When the Internet came out, this paradigm was challenged, because the Internet was a de facto more interactive medium and the hypnotism trickery was not that effective. People started waking up and stopped depending on the big corporate news. As a result, the alternative media were spread and the Internet was mainly a source to get independent information as opposed to bid corporations and government controlled  mainstream media (newspapers,magazines and TV). Because of Internet, mainstream media had lost the majority of their viewership. This COULD have awakened the masses, if more people started questioning their programming, but it didn't happen because 1. most people didn't have enough time to read and investigate the alternative sources of information , and 2. the big media companies realized the power of alternative media and created the so called "controlled opposition" inside the alternative media. This had as a result a great confusion within the "alternative narrative", as the big media paid journalists (called shills) working for them to deliberately mix truths with lies. Their goal was to regain back their viewership and to achieve this they labeled ALL alternative news venues as "conspiracy theories" or "fake news". Gradually, the controlled "conspiracy theories" and "fake news" propagated by shills of the big media became disproportionate to the real truths of independent sources and this created a condition where it became very difficult for the average person to untangle the mess. Hence the trust of the uninformed public returned to the mainstream sources of information.

And this is how the mainstream media continue to manipulate our thoughts up to today and people keep putting their trust in them, even though the they feel the mainstream media aren't telling the truth, they have no choice but to trust the "authoritative" sources. I know it sounds disappointing that they're able to do that, but most people don't have time to investigate the validity of information. Plus, when every single newspaper, magazine, radio/TV and main internet outlet of information (Facebook, Youtube, Twitter) repeats the same narrative (e.g. social distancing if important, shutting down of the economy is necessary, staying at home saves lives), it seems as though the truth is objective. What most people forget is that ALL mainstream news outlets belong to the same five corporations [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership]. It's the propaganda machine that the powers that be have put in place, working in tandem the Governments and the big corporations, that is no different than the propaganda of Communist China.

That is all for now, I hoped you enjoyed these thoughts. In the next article, I will discuss more on the fake "alternative sources" controlled by the big media, and how to not be deceived by them.

Stay strong friends. God Bless you, grace and peace be multiplied!