FPI / September 27, 2019
Corporate WATCH
By Joe SchaefferPlanned Parenthood director of arts and entertainment engagement Caren Spruch told The Washington Post in an article published Sept. 23 that she has advised film and television show creators on over 150 projects over the years. Spruch sees her efforts as a way to, as the article puts it, set "a new standard for stories about abortion."
Well that's certainly a more benign way to say the word "propaganda." Spruch is far from the only abortion evangelist seeking to exploit mass entertainment to enact social change.
A leading population control organization that works closely with international abortion providers openly utilizes original radio and television programming to promote its agenda in nations throughout the world. And prominent corporations are helping it accomplish its manipulative mission.
"What is real and what is fiction? A good story helps us forget the line that separates the two. And that's where it gets its power," a video by the Population Media Center states. The unabashedly Orwellian tone is rather stunning as the video frankly lays out a roadmap for mass social engineering through the medium of popular entertainment.
"PMC uses a rigorous theory-driven communications method that can be replicated in any community," the video declares. "Using a radio serial drama for entertainment is far more than entertainment. And I think PMC has recognized that from the beginning," Victoria Jennings, Director of the Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University, gushes as she praises the group in the video.
"The work that they do is very much based on behavior-change theory solidly founded on evidence. So it can really make a difference," Jennings adds.
PMC's founder is William Ryerson, a longtime advocate of zero population growth who formerly served as a Planned Parenthood executive. The forces of abortion and population control clearly see mass entertainment as a key weapon in attempting to overturn traditional religious, moral and cultural opposition to its agenda. The Cultural Marxist machinery is clearly laid out by PMC itself.
The organization calls what it does "Social Impact Entertainment." It identifies three goals in the assault on traditional customs and values in the various nations that are targeted:
- Social norm change
- Individual behavior change
- At scale demand generation
It's fascinating to see that one of PMC's board members, Virginia Carter, is an old hand at using popular entertainment as naked propaganda, having worked on various American television hit programs in the 1970s. "Virginia was a top entertainment executive with Norman Lear’s production company, helping to develop popular shows such as All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, One Day At A Time, Facts of Life, and The Jeffersons," her bio at PMC reads.
Maude, a spin-off of Lear's massive hit show All in the Family, is infamous for airing the first episode in American television history centered on abortion. That show, titled "Maude's Dilemma," and its subtle-as-a-jackhammer pro-abortion message aired as a two-part episode in November 1972, a mere two months before the United States Supreme Court handed down its murderous Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion throughout America on Jan. 22, 1973.
Since then, some 60 million unborn babies have been slaughtered in our nation. "Maude's Dilemma" is frequently cited even today as a "watershed moment" in American television history. Such is the power of entertainment propaganda, or "social impact entertainment," as PMC would put it.
The organization says it functions in over 50 countries and claims to have reached 500 million people, airing original programming meant to stealthily support population control. Much of its work is done in Central and South America and Africa but PMC has been active in the U.S. as well.
A show titled East Los High, aimed at Hispanic teens in America, aired on the online network Hulu from 2013 to 2017 and earned six Daytime Emmy nominations. "The series, a modern-day teen telenovela about a fictional Latinx high school, was innovative, addictive and hugely popular," an article on the PMC website boasts. "It was also an original creation of an entertainment-based theory of social change unique to PMC."
"Set in a fictional East Los Angeles neighborhood, ELH’s original characters spoke to lifestyle and health choices, especially in the area of sexual and reproductive health," the article states. "ELH rose to be one of the top five shows on Hulu during its first season, and its social impact has been documented and reviewed in publications like The American Journal of Public Health." PMC bragged that the successful debut season of East Los High saw a noticeable increase in teens seeking services at Planned Parenthood locations.
"During the first month of airing, more than 27,000 people used a Planned Parenthood widget from eastloshigh.com. "Of the more than 27,000 people who used a Planned Parenthood widget in the first month, 55% were new visits to Planned Parenthood." This is the action template PMC uses for its varied programming around the world.
One of its key NGO partners is Marie Stopes International, an organization wholeheartedly devoted to advancing abortion on a global scale.
"Providing access to safe abortion and post-abortion care is at the core of our mission. Marie Stopes International provided more than 4.8 million safe abortion and post-abortion care services in 2018," the group states in its 2018 global impact report.
PMC describes how Marie Stopes International is helping produce an original radio entertainment program in Uganda called Akakunizo ("Jigsaw Puzzle").
If you don't want to give your money to major corporations that "partner" with a population control propaganda outlet working hand-in-hand with an international abortion provider, then you will want to avoid giving several prominent companies your business. The full list can be seen here, and it includes usual leftist culprits Ben & Jerry's ice cream but also well-known brands such as Bayer, Burger King, Colgate-Palmolive and MTV Latin America.
MTV is owned by Viacom, which owns an extensive array of media outlets. CBS and Viacom announced a merger in August, leading to the formation of yet another media supergoliath.
Online network Hulu is also listed as a PMC partner. Hulu is owned by Disney, with Comcast's NBC Universal serving as a minority stakeholder. The forces of globalism are unsurprisingly tantalized by the promising nature of "social impact entertainment."
The globalist Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program extolled the notion in a July article titled "The Power of Serial Dramas: Popular Characters Help Change Attitudes and Behaviors."
The article detailed an event on the topic hosted by the Wilson Center, which is funded by U.S. taxpayers and a long list of major corporate donors (see link in previous sentence).
“We are all convinced that educational entertainment is the way to go now,” Anselme Muzalia Wimye, Program Quality Director at Search for Common Ground in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, told the gathering, which included an address by PMC head Ryerson.
Subtitles for the article describing this conference contained spookily authoritarian overtones.
"Emotional Response as a Change Agent" and "Narrative Persuasion" make no bones about the attempt to manipulate the masses through entertainment. Millions of Americans have cut the cord on cable television, stopped going to the movies and even abandoned professional sports as entertainment due to the ham-fisted social engineering propaganda that dominate these entities today.
With so many of these entertainment outlets spuriously denying any intentional effort to use their offerings as a deliberate weapon in the cultural wars plaguing the West today, it is almost refreshing to see Planned Parenthood and the PMC come out and admit what has been going on for far too long.
Mass entertainment is openly being wielded as a club by Cultural Marxists. And Burger King and a toothpaste maker are joining in the effort. Ain't global capitalism grand?
Joe Schaeffer is the former Managing Editor of The Washington Times National Weekly Edition. His columns appear at WorldTribune.com, LibertyNation.com and FreePressInternational.org.
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