According to the 1,200+ page revised Department of Defense "Law of War Manual" (PDF) released in June of 2015, journalists are considered "unprivileged belligerents," which is a term that replaced the Bush-era term of "unlawful combatants," who in some cases, specifically if they do not toe the official "propaganda," can be considered spies that are subject to "indefinite incarceration, military tribunals and extrajudicial execution."
This was highlighted by veteran war correspondent Don North in August 2015, with his primary focus on journalists reporting on military operations, but it brings up a serious concern of the allowable use of propaganda by the U.S. government as part of their strategic communications,"merging psy-ops, propaganda and P.R. in order to manage the perceptions of Americans and the world’s public."
“Reporting on military operations can be very similar to collecting intelligence or even spying,” the manual says, calling on journalists to “act openly and with the permission of relevant authorities.” The manual notes that governments “may need to censor journalists’ work or take other security measures so that journalists do not reveal sensitive information to the enemy.”
The manual’s new language reflects a long-term growing hostility within the U.S. military toward unencumbered reporting about battlefield operations as well as a deepening interest in “information warfare,” the idea that control over what the public gets to hear and see is an important way of ensuring continued popular support for a conflict at home and undermining the enemy abroad.
But allowing this manual to stand as guidance for commanders, government lawyers and leaders of foreign nations would severely damage press freedoms, not only for Americans but internationally. It would drastically inhibit the news media ability to cover future wars honestly and keep the public informed, which is after all what both U.S. government officials and journalists say they want.
Sputnik News highlights that NATO will now be using that very same template:
"This growing fascination with 'strategic communication' has given rise to NATO's new temple to information technology, called 'The NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence' or STRATCOM, located in Latvia, a former Soviet republic that is now on the front lines of the tensions with Russia," North observed.
MEDIA COMPLIANCE - READING FROM THE APPROVED "SCRIPT"
While these controversial revisions have been subject to intense criticism, to which many have already reported on, we also see how the national news, the MSM, which is supposed to be independent rather than state run, also reads off an approved script in order to herd the masses and control perception on everything from government, education, healthcare, banking, the military and religion.
This whole topic of government propaganda, not just in war reporting but in our every day lives was addressed in an outstanding presentation I first saw in November 2014, which begins with the statement "The current state of human society and culture in the 21st century is not the result of organic evolution, but by careful, long term calculated design."
The presentation goes on to quote Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic and political activist:
“I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions are generated.”
The presentation, seen below, explains how the mainstream media has been, and still is, being used to push Washington's "propaganda," to control the masses and how it applies to every aspect of life.
BOTTOM LINE - IT IS ALL ABOUT PROPAGANDA
The presentation will hit home for those that ask themselves "how did we get here?" How did culture change so much that what was right suddenly become "wrong" and what was considered wrong is suddenly "mainstream?"
It is all about propaganda, or what Russell described as "mass psychology," from war reporting and the government's tight-fisted control, by threat of imprisonment or even death for reporting the truth versus the official propganada, to the national word for word scripts so-call independent journalists are reading from.
Every single aspect of our lives is being control by a luciferian government with the full compliance of the MSM.
At the 2:19 minute mark, using actual news clips, we see exactly how the MSM reads off the same script.....literally and word for word.
