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Merchants of Doubt (The Movie)

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Merchants of Doubt (The Movie)

Unread postby dinopello » Tue 17 Mar 2015, 20:56:02

This sounds like it will be interesting.

I seems similar to the 2010 Book that has been discussed here in other threads (not sure if it is based on the book):
Trailer: Merchants of Doubt

Unlike that 2008 film, which took on the machinery of American agribusiness and its trafficking in junk food, “Merchants of Doubt” isn’t about a product that you can buy at the store. Rather, Kenner says, it’s about something less tangible if no less bad for you, should you swallow it. It’s sold in courtrooms and the halls of Congress, he says, on television and, occasionally, in newspapers.

Call it confusion, mislabeled as clarity.

The germ of Kenner’s latest project, a simultaneously entertaining and inciting exposé of professional charlatanism — practiced, most saliently, by those hired to make the case that global warming isn’t real, or at least that there is no scientific consensus on it — sprouted in the director’s head during the making of “Food, Inc.”

“I went to a hearing on whether we should label cloned meat,” Kenner recalls. “There was someone there who stood up and said, ‘I think it would be way too confusing, for the consumer, to give them that kind of information.’ I thought, ‘I’ve never heard something like that before.’ It was the representative of some meat company. I looked up and thought, ‘Who could this be?’ ”

“It takes a lot of . . . talent to do that,” says Kenner, pausing before the word “talent” just long enough to make a reporter think he’s about to say “cojones.”

He isn’t being entirely ironic. Kenner, 65, does admire people such as Marc Morano, a professional climate-change denier and founder of the Climate Depot Web site who is, arguably, the star of Kenner’s film. After a stint in the 1990s reporting for Rush Limbaugh, Morano worked briefly as a flack for Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who famously called global warming a “hoax.”

As Kenner sees it, on any issue, there are typically three groups: true believers; nonbelievers; and the vast, confused middle. It’s not the middle’s fault it’s confused: Kenner blames the Marc Moranos of the world, who are paid to sow not just doubt but fear. (“Fear is a big part of it,” he says.) The media share much of the blame. Kenner singles out newspapers — this one in particular — for his harshest criticism of what he calls their tradition of “false balance”: the insistence on always presenting two sides of an issue, even when there aren’t two.


Or, you can read the book

“A well-documented, pulls-no-punches account of how science works and how political motives can hijack the process by which scientific information is disseminated to the public.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Last edited by dinopello on Tue 17 Mar 2015, 21:05:52, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Merchants of Doubt

Unread postby Lore » Tue 17 Mar 2015, 21:03:07

As Jack Nicholson said in a Few Good Men; " You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You ..."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FnO3igOkOk
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
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Re: Merchants of Doubt (The Movie)

Unread postby williamwindley676 » Wed 18 Mar 2015, 08:12:11

Sounds interesting for sure. If anything, it should be a good demonstration about how the "truth" is highly malleable.
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Re: Merchants of Doubt (The Movie)

Unread postby Paulo1 » Wed 18 Mar 2015, 09:09:32

Scary shit.

Reminds me of 'Pacification' when they talked about Viet Nam destruction. 'Liberation'.

After awhile language used to sneakily distort real meaning and discourse changes the listeners. That is why you have to look in people's eyes and trust your gut feelings with people and what they say. Average Joe just doesn't care about details as long as they stumble into the next day and get by. Young families are too busy trying to cope and survive.

Wait until 2016 US election kicks off in earnest. Then you'll read and hear some whoppers!! :-D
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Re: Merchants of Doubt (The Movie)

Unread postby drgoodword » Fri 20 Mar 2015, 01:45:14

Edward Bernays would be proud.
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