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Street Roots • April 1-7, 2016
Street Roots • April 1-7, 2016
News
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Filmmaker Jen Senko explains the ‘epidemic of right-wing media indoctrination — how it originated, how it divides us, and how to respond
BY JOANNE ZUHL
. STAFF WRITER
Joanne Zuhl.: There have been other films
criticizing right-wing media. But bringing your
father into it makes it palpable.
■y en Senko acknowledges that
I brainwashing is a strong term, but it’s
J.S.: Right. I didn’t want to leave the
I the one she thinks best describes what
emotion
out of it. That’s so very much a part
■ happened to her father.
of it.
^^\fter growing up with Walter Cronkite
telling it how it was, Senko’s father switched
J.Z.: This is not just some right-wing organic
allegiance to the new brand of media,
phenomenon. This was media by design. This .
heralded in by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
was a concerted effort. Give us an overview of
And with that transition, she said, he went
how this really jelled with a great deal of
from being a fairly non-political Democrat to a
intention.
hate-spewing right-wing conservative,
distributing canned ultra
J.S.: It started in 1964, when
conservative emails and
Lyndon Johnson beat Barry
starting fights with his now
Goldwater by a landside and
alienated family.
pundits were saying the right
It wasn’t just that he
wing is dead. They said, “How
adopted a different political
can we strike back? How can we
view. He was a different
get people to vote Republican
person, an entirely different
and think that Republican
character, she said, one who
interests are best for them, even
was always angry, insulting
though they’re not?” It started
immigrants, women,
with
the media, with media
homosexuals and anything Fox
watch groups calling the media
told him to.
liberal - to get that so ingrained
^They talk Ip
He’s the everyman in
people about how in people’s minds. They were
Senko’saward-winning
very successful in that. It just
documentary “The
something like
builds and builds.
Brainwashing of My Dad,”
Fox News works.
And we have Roger Ailes
which was released theatrically
It activates the
helping
Nixon, trying to make
last month and is now
amygdala, and
him appealing to the average
available through video-on-
<m«e that xeptillan person and more appealing on
demiYra
The film
narrated
leoci! part of ffee teain is TV. And his memo balled “How
Matthew Modine and features activated, rational to put the GOP on TV news,”
was an early blueprint, if you will,
the art of Bill Plympton.
thinking goes out for Fox News.
But this film is not just the
the window. n
And I should really call it right
sad story of a family driven
wing,
rather than Republican.
apart by polarizing media
JEN SENKO,
Because when I was young,
tactics. Senko’s father is a
CREATOR OF
"THE BRAINWASHING Republicans were people next-
synecdoche of sorts - an
OF MY DAD"
door you had barbecues with.
example of something small
illustrating something much bigger, in this
J.Z.: Not the Republicans of today.
case the nationwide erosion of our democracy
and the rise of corporate rule.
A filmmaker by trade, Senko extends her
research into the political and corporate
origins of this transformation and its
implications for the country, which she said is
in the midst of “an epidemic.”
Jen Senko: My dad could be any dad. My
dad is many dads. My dad is many moms,
sisters, brothers. What he represents is the
broken families and the broken countries that
have occurred because of this destructive
media. For people who doubt how powerful
media can be, they only have to look at
Rwanda and the hate radio they had which
drove the Hutus and the Tutsis to killing their
own family members and friends. It’s just
very powerful. So I look at this media through
the lens of my dad. And I think that’s one
reason why people can relate to it That title
jumps out at people. Because that’s what it
feels like. They contact me, knowing
intuitively what it is about. It is a relief to
hear somebody say that word, even those not
attached to it. In fact, I had many people,
mostly liberals, try to talk me out of using the
word brainwashing. But I had decided on that
a long time ago, and the way people
responded to it, people in the trenches, made
me know that this is the right title.
J.S.: No! They were normal people! There
wasn’t any big deal. Now it’s like teams.
Probably one of the biggest things was the
Lewis Powell memo, called “Attack of the
American Free Enterprise System.”
Conservatism wasn’t popular. Neither was
business. You had somebody like Ralph Nader
pointing out where business was screwing
over the little people. And the business
community was worried about this. So Powell
sent this memo to the Chamber of
Commerce, laying out the ways they could get
the idea of free-market ideology out into the
ethosphere so that people would believe it.
The idea was to get professors and
universities to teach their ideology. And to
buy media to get their ideas out there. Let’s
start publishing houses so we can get journals
and our own, quote-unquote, facts out there.
It all pushed this right-wing ideology, and it
became pretty extreme. I don’t even know
that Powell intended for it to be that extreme.
And they came up with the think tanks that
would come out with these findings that
would always back up that the free market is
just market
There were lots of things like this along the
way: the abolishment of the Fairness Doctrine
and the Telecommunications Reform Act
which was a bipartisan act that happened
BRAINWASHED
any longer.
J.S.: I would say they were slow learners.
They were amateurs. First of all, they don’t
have the money behind them, and they had no
idea what they were up against. It was like
flies running into tanks. There’s just no
comparison. You had billions flooding into
these think tanks to back up the thoughts. It
was so beautifully completely conceived if you
take the hideousness out of it. The left just
couldn’t compete. So anyone who says the left
has tried to be comparable, they failed
miserably. I don’t think anybody had the idea
of the vastness of it, either.
J.Z.: You talked about the Powell memo. Are
there other watershed moments in media that
you think really illustrate when we turned a
comer?
J.S.: The Fairness Doctrine was established
in 1949 after America saw how insidious Nazi
Germany could be with their propaganda. But
that was abolished in 1987, and lo and behold,
1988, Rush Limbaugh goes national. There’s
money behind the right-wing guys. That was a
watershed moment. Also the
Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996.
Clinton and even Newt Gingrich were in it It
was called the “reform” act because the
Telecommunications Act itself was also to
prevent one person or one group from having
control oyer people’s opinions, that the
airwaves are supposed to be for the public. So
what the reform act did was to allow for
consolidation, and coincidentally, later that
same year, in 1996, Fox was created by
Rupert Murdoch.
You know, I hear from people all over the
world saying we’re having the same problem.
Rupert Murdoch is taking over our media and
pushing this really right-wing agenda. It’s not
just us.
J.Z.: And certainly this election cycle: The
GOP frontrunner by a mile is a man who is not
only a proven liar, but one who publicly calls
other people liars. It’s entertainment, but no one
seems to care what’s true or not anymore. You
can find sources that argue both sides of
anything, facts be damned. What is your
perspective on the GOP election this year?
“The Brainwashing of My Dad” features animations by Portland artist Bill Plympton.
under Bill Clinton, but you had all the media
companies by then just flooding both the
parties with money.
J.S.: Family values that really end up
dividing the family and dividing the country.
J.Z.: But it also seems like the hate speech -
that is just window dressing for the real goal.
J.Z.: And now the Powell Doctrine has grown
up into the Citizens United decision (in which
the Supreme Court held that political spending
is a form of protected speech).
J.S.: Business power. You see people voting
on their moral interests and against their own
economic interests. And isn’t it interesting
too, it just came out about Nixon and the drug
war. That the drug war was just to paint
hippies as no-good pot smokers and blacks as
dangerous drug users. It just goes to show
you that, yeah, there are conspiracies, and
conspiracy is a bad word for good reason. A
conspiracy really just means a plan made in
secret, and a rather nefarious one, and this
was a very successful one.
J.S.: If you saw a tree, the Citizens United
decision would be a really big branch of it.
, J.Z.: And this is the ’70s, when a lot of this
was coming together, and you had the ’60s
generation coming into its own. There was a
generational battle.
- J.S.: Oh, it scared the shit out of them.
J.Z.: It’s fine to mix in business, but then you
mix in a values system, the family values.
COURTESY OF JSENKO PRODUCTIONS
In an image from the documentary “The Brainwashing of My Dad,” pollster Frank Luntz, left,
shares the screen with Fox News’ Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly.
J.Z.: Liberals have tried to play the same
game, too. I remember Air America (the liberal
talk-radio network), which I don’t think exists
J.S.: Well, as everybody else is realizing,
the right created a monster, and now he’s
biting them in the ass.
Who’s at fault largely is the media. First the
media that created him, and then the media -
that paid more attention to him than a sane
Bernie Sanders. It’s because it’s about
ratings. News shouldn’t be about ratings. It
should be boring like in my parents day when
they were watching Walter Cronkrite.
J.Z.: Where the only set design is a clock on
the wall.
J.S.: Exactly. We talk about the tactics in
the movie, and one of the tactics is these
circus-type colors and images, and moving
lights - the scroll. It’s mesmerizing, hypnotic.
To make it look legit, but it’s not.
J.Z.: You’ve heard from many other people
who have experienced this, too. What do you go
through when you hear those stories?
J.S.: It’s amazing. It’s astounding. I feel so
bad for these people. They’re desperate.
Pretty much the common denominator is
anger that their parent or loved one, husbands
sometimes - you can’t talk to them. You can’t
reach them, because they’re angry and that
somehow they find a way, no matter what the
conversation is, to bring up their political
views, as if the house is on fire and they have
to tell you about it It’s heartbreaking to me.
I write everybody back who writes me
because I know how they’re feeling. I know
what they’re going through. I know how
frustrating it is.
J.Z.: Did you find that it was more
widespread than you thought?
J.S.: Oh yeah. I was really troubled by that.
I was astounded by that. I had no idea. I
would say for every sixth person you talk to,
there is somebody who knows somebody it
happened to. It’s frightening. It’s really
frightening. It’s like mass propaganda on just
a huge scale.
J.Z.: Who are the most vulnerable? It seems to
resonate with some and drives others to
maddening anger. Have you figured out what
that line is?
J.S.: My dad had his master’s in electronic
engineering. He wasn^
what l would say about himis
reflective. He was also gullible. You could tell
him things, and he wouldn’t question them.
Sort of a naivete about him. Like Roger Ailes
says, the reason TV works is the thinking is
done for you. Plus it’s intoxicating. You’re in a
heightened state of fight or flight. Your
adrenals are going, and there’s an addictive
quality to that.
J.Z.: What recourse is there?
J.S.: I think that there’s a bunch of
different things we can do. I did meet a group
along the way called HearYourselfThink.org.
We kind of teamed up because they talk to
people about how something like Fox News
works. It activates the amygdala, and once
that reptilian part of the brain is activated,
rational thinking goes out the window. So
they have ideas about reaching the person.
Asking them questions. Presenting them with
facts, as long as you do it in a calm way. You
can’t just say, no you’re wrong, because then
it just becomes a heated argument.
Also, there are people pushing to get the
Fairness Doctrine reinstated. Hopefully
people will know what the
Telecommunications Act was and push for .the
reform part to be thrown out. There are little
things people can do, like on Code Pink’s site,
there’s a petition you can sign to get Fox out
of the YMCA on a national level.
J.Z.: That’s a good point, everywhere you go,
every waiting room or hotel breakfast lounge has
Fox in it.
J.S.: Everyone has to speak up. We can’t
always be comfortable. And read and support
independent media!
joanne@streetroots. org