HOW TO MAKE SENSE OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES

© copyright by Rob Ager Dec 2010

 

CHAPTER FIVE
HOW DO CORPORATE MEDIA SOURCES DECIDE WHAT IS AND ISN'T A CONSPIRACY THEORY?

 

We don’t have access to the boardroom discussions of major news sources regarding their coverage of conspiracy theories, but what we can do is look collectively at their news articles. Fortunately, several news sources have saved me a lot of time and effort by compiling and publishing their own lists of what they believe to be the most popular “conspiracy theories”.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3483477/The-30-greatest-conspiracy-theories-part-1.html

  1. September 11th 2001
  2. Assassination of john F. Kennedy
  3. A flying saucer crashed at Roswell in 1947
  4. NASA faked the moon landing
  5. The Illuminati and the New World Order
  6. The Jesus Conspiracy
  7. Diana, Princess of Wales, was murdered
  8. Elvis Presley faked his own death
  9. Operation northwoods
  10. North American Union
  11. Shakespeare was somebody else
  12. The disappearance of Sherger
  13. Paul McCartney is dead
  14. The July 7th 2005 tube bombings
  15. The Moscow apartment bombings
  16. Black or unmarked helicopters
  17. Harold Wilson was a soviet agent
  18. The protocols of the elders of zion
  19. The peak oil conspiracy
  20. Pearl harbour was allowed to happen
  21. The Philadelphia Experiment
  22. Pan Am flight 103
  23. Fluoridation
  24. The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami
  25. Plastic coffins and concentration camps
  26. HAARP
  27. The aids virus was created in a laboratory
  28. Global warming is a hoax
  29. Chemtrails

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/conspiracy_files/default.stm

  1. 7/7
  2. 9/11
  3. Oklahoma bomb
  4. Lockerbie
  5. David Kelly

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/the-ten-best-conspiracy-theories-1695929.html?action=Popup

  1. Apollo Moon Landing
  2. 9/11 pentagon conspiracy
  3. Shakespeare is Sheik Zubair
  4. Free energy suppression
  5. Bermuda triangle
  6. New World Order
  7. Tin foil hat
  8. Roswell cover up
  9. Bermuda triangle
  10. Princess Diana’s death

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jul/31/1

  1. Area 51 exists to investigate aliens (48%)
  2. 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government (38%)
  3. Apollo landing was a hoax (35%)
  4. Diana and Dodi were murdered (32%)
  5. The Illuminati secret society and masons are trying to take over the world (25%)
  6. Scientologists rule Hollywood (17% )
  7. Barcodes are really intended to control people (7%)
  8. Microsoft sends messages via Wingdings (6%)
  9. US let Pearl Harbour happen (5%)
  10. The world is run by dinosaur-like reptiles (3%)

 

Note that these lists contain virtually no examples of conspiracy theories disseminated by governments, corporations or religious institutions – such as the European Witch Hunts, Al Queda sleeper cells, WMDs in Iraq, Iran and North Korea, or the Soviet Communist conspiracy of the cold war. Surely these should rank among the greatest conspiracy theories of all time because of their impact on human history.

The terms “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist” are basically empty catchphrases that have been adopted by major media institutions and filtered down into public awareness. The rules of how the terms are used in news reporting don’t match up with dictionary descriptions of the words “conspiracy” and “theory / theorist” or even the phrase “conspiracy theory”. If the dictionary descriptions were adhered to then the terms would lose their potency in news reporting because they would be applicable to far too many groups of people in far too many contexts. The term “conspiracy theory” if used logically and realistically would be about as useful as the terms “corruption allegation” or “suspected crime”.

What has instead happened with the term “conspiracy theory/theorist” is that it has become a language tool for creating instant polarization in debates of suspected corruption in which the accused is a government or other powerful institution. As soon as the term is used by one or more large media institutions in relation to a suspicion of high level corruption the debate shifts from a discussion of evidence to a discussion about the perceived characters of the people raising concerns of corruption. Because of this simple distortion of language, many important social and political issues have not yet been maturely and intelligently discussed in the limelight of mainstream media attention.

 

GO TO NEXT CHAPTER

GO TO PREVIOUS CHAPTER

GO TO CONTENTS PAGE

MAIN SITE PAGE