Professional liar and business strategist Ryan Holiday was on C2C recently talking about how media manipulators control and distort the news. He declares, "Look, this is exactly what's happening, and I know that it's happening because I've personally done it."
He shared a media manipulation story as a marketer for the film I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. He lacked money and media access, so he manufactured a "controversy" around the film. After buying cheap billboards for the movie, for example, he vandalized his ads and sent anonymous pictures of the handiwork to local news blogs. The story spread throughout the Internet and, "It created this nationwide backlash against the movie that generated millions and millions of advertising impressions," he brags.
Holiday also decried the lack of oversight by the mainstream media when it comes to verifying the veracity of their sources. He cited a social network used by journalists to find "sources" to say what they need said for their stories. He then confessed that he spent the last six months on the site posing as an expert on topics he knew nothing about.
He was subsequently cited as a source by nearly two dozen media outlets, including ABC News, MSNBC, and even the New York Times. But Holiday is quick to note that he used his real name during his "experiment." Not one of the news organizations investigated his background, which would have quickly shown that he was an author on media manipulation and not the expert he claimed to be.
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