1
D.3 How does wealth influence the mass media?
3
In a word, massively. This, in turn, influences the way people see the
4
world and, as a result, the media is a key means by which the general
5
population come to accept, and support, "the arrangements of the
6
social, economic, and political order." The media, in other words "are
7
vigilant guardians protecting privilege from the threat of public
8
understanding and participation." This process ensures that state
9
violence is not necessary to maintain the system as "more subtle means
10
are required: the manufacture of consent, [and] deceiving the masses
11
with 'necessary illusions." [Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions, pp.
12
13-4 and p. 19] The media, in other words, are a key means of ensuring
13
that the dominant ideas within society are those of the dominant class.
15
Noam Chomsky has helped develop a detailed and sophisticated analyse of
16
how the wealthy and powerful use the media to propagandise in their own
17
interests behind a mask of objective news reporting. Along with Edward
18
Herman, he has developed the "Propaganda Model" of the media works.
19
Herman and Chomsky expound this analysis in their book Manufacturing
20
Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, whose main theses we
21
will summarise in this section (unless otherwise indicated all quotes
22
are from this work). We do not suggest that we can present anything
23
other than a summary here and, as such, we urge readers to consult
24
Manufacturing Consent itself for a full description and extensive
25
supporting evidence. We would also recommend Chomsky's Necessary
26
Illusions for a further discussion of this model of the media.
28
Chomsky and Herman's "propaganda model" of the media postulates a set
29
of five "filters" that act to screen the news and other material
30
disseminated by the media. These "filters" result in a media that
31
reflects elite viewpoints and interests and mobilises "support for the
32
special interests that dominate the state and private activity."
33
[Manufacturing Consent, p. xi] These "filters" are: (1) the size,
34
concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the
35
dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source
36
of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information
37
provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by
38
these primary sources and agents of power; (4) "flak" (negative
39
responses to a media report) as a means of disciplining the media; and
40
(5) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism. It is
41
these filters which ensure that genuine objectivity is usually lacking
42
in the media (needless to say, some media, such as Fox news and the
43
right-wing newspapers like the UK's Sun, Telegraph and Daily Mail, do
44
not even try to present an objective perspective).
46
"The raw material of news must pass through successive filters leaving
47
only the cleansed residue fit to print," Chomsky and Herman maintain.
48
The filters "fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the
49
definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain
50
the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns." [p.
51
2] We will briefly consider the nature of these five filters below
52
before refuting two common objections to the model. As with Chomsky and
53
Herman, examples are mostly from the US media. For more extensive
54
analysis, we would recommend two organisations which study and critique
55
the performance of the media from a perspective informed by the
56
"propaganda model." These are the American Fairness & Accuracy In
57
Reporting (FAIR) and the UK based MediaLens (neither, it should be
58
pointed out, are anarchist organisations).
60
Before discussing the "propaganda model", we will present a few
61
examples by FAIR to show how the media reflects the interests of the
62
ruling class. War usually provides the most obvious evidence for the
63
biases in the media. For example, Steve Rendall and Tara Broughel
64
analysed the US news media during the first stage of the 2003 invasion
65
of Iraq and found that official voices dominated it "while opponents of
66
the war have been notably underrepresented," Nearly two-thirds of all
67
sources were pro-war, rising to 71% of US guests. Anti-war voices were
68
a mere 10% of all sources, but just 6% of non-Iraqi sources and 3% of
69
US sources. "Thus viewers were more than six times as likely to see a
70
pro-war source as one who was anti-war; with U.S. guests alone, the
71
ratio increases to 25 to 1." Unsurprisingly, official voices,
72
"including current and former government employees, whether civilian or
73
military, dominated network newscasts" (63% of overall sources). Some
74
analysts did criticise certain aspects of the military planning, but
75
such "the rare criticisms were clearly motivated by a desire to see
76
U.S. military efforts succeed." While dissent was quite visible in
77
America, "the networks largely ignored anti-war opinion." FAIR found
78
that just 3% of US sources represented or expressed opposition to the
79
war in spite of the fact more than one in four Americans opposed it. In
80
summary, "none of the networks offered anything resembling
81
proportionate coverage of anti-war voices". ["Amplifying Officials,
82
Squelching Dissent", Extra! May/June 2003]
84
This perspective is common during war time, with the media's rule of
85
thumb being, essentially, that to support the war is to be objective,
86
while to be anti-war is to carry a bias. The media repeats the
87
sanitised language of the state, relying on official sources to inform
88
the public. Truth-seeking independence was far from the media agenda
89
and so they made it easier for governments to do what they always do,
90
that is lie. Rather than challenge the agenda of the state, the media
91
simply foisted them onto the general population. Genuine criticism only
92
starts to appear when the costs of a conflict become so high that
93
elements of the ruling class start to question tactics and strategy.
94
Until that happens, any criticism is minor (and within a generally
95
pro-war perspective) and the media acts essentially as the fourth
96
branch of the government rather than a Fourth Estate. The Iraq war, it
97
should be noted, was an excellent example of this process at work.
98
Initially, the media simply amplified elite needs, uncritically
99
reporting the Bush Administration's pathetic "evidence" of Iraqi WMD
100
(which quickly became exposed as the nonsense it was). Only when the
101
war became too much of a burden did critical views start being heard
102
and then only in a context of being supportive of the goals of the
105
This analysis applies as much to domestic issues. For example, Janine
106
Jackson reported how most of the media fell in step with the Bush
107
Administration's attempts in 2006 to trumpet a "booming" U.S. economy
108
in the face of public disbelief. As she notes, there were "obvious
109
reasons [for] the majority of Americans dissent . . . Most American
110
households are not, in fact, seeing their economic fortunes improve.
111
GDP is up, but virtually all the growth has gone into corporate profits
112
and the incomes of the highest economic brackets. Wages and incomes for
113
average workers, adjusted for inflation, are down in recent years; the
114
median income for non-elderly households is down 4.8 percent since 2000
115
. . .The poverty rate is rising, as is the number of people in debt."
116
Yet "rather than confront these realities, and explore the implications
117
of the White House's efforts to deny them, most mainstream media
118
instead assisted the Bush team's PR by themselves feigning confusion
119
over the gap between the official view and the public mood." They did
120
so by presenting "the majority of Americans' understanding of their own
121
economic situation . . . as somehow disconnected from reality, ascribed
122
to 'pessimism,' ignorance or irrationality . . . But why these ordinary
123
workers, representing the majority of households, should not be
124
considered the arbiters of whether or not 'the economy' is good is
125
never explained." Barring a few exceptions, the media did not "reflect
126
the concerns of average salaried workers at least as much as those of
127
the investor class." Needless to say, which capitalist economists were
128
allowed space to discuss their ideas, progressive economists did not.
129
["Good News! The Rich Get Richer: Lack of applause for falling wages is
130
media mystery," Extra!, March/April 2006] Given the nature and role of
131
the media, this reporting comes as no surprise.
133
We stress again, before continuing, that this is a summary of Herman's
134
and Chomsky's thesis and we cannot hope to present the wealth of
135
evidence and argument available in either Manufacturing Consent or
136
Necessary Illusions. We recommend either of these books for more
137
information on and evidence to support the "propaganda model" of the
138
media. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes in this section of the
139
FAQ are from Herman and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent.
141
D.3.1 How does the structure of the media affect its content?
143
Even a century ago, the number of media with any substantial outreach
144
was limited by the large size of the necessary investment, and this
145
limitation has become increasingly effective over time. As in any well
146
developed market, this means that there are very effective natural
147
barriers to entry into the media industry. Due to this process of
148
concentration, the ownership of the major media has become increasingly
149
concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. As Ben Bagdikian's stresses in
150
his 1987 book Media Monopoly, the 29 largest media systems account for
151
over half of the output of all newspapers, and most of the sales and
152
audiences in magazines, broadcasting, books, and movies. The "top tier"
153
of these -- somewhere between 10 and 24 systems -- along with the
154
government and wire services, "defines the news agenda and supplies
155
much of the national and international news to the lower tiers of the
156
media, and thus for the general public." [p. 5] Since then, media
157
concentration has increased, both nationally and on a global level.
158
Bagdikian's 2004 book, The New Media Monopoly, showed that since 1983
159
the number of corporations controlling most newspapers, magazines, book
160
publishers, movie studios, and electronic media have shrunk from 50 to
161
five global-dimension firms, operating with many of the characteristics
162
of a cartel -- Time-Warner, Disney, News Corporation, Viacom and
163
Germany-based Bertelsmann.
165
These "top-tier companies are large, profit-seeking corporations, owned
166
and controlled by very wealthy people . . . Many of these companies are
167
fully integrated into the financial market" which means that "the
168
pressures of stockholders, directors and bankers to focus on the bottom
169
line are powerful." [p. 5] These pressures have intensified in recent
170
years as media stocks have become market favourites and as deregulation
171
has increased profitability and so the threat of take-overs. These
172
ensure that these "control groups obviously have a special take on the
173
status quo by virtue of their wealth and their strategic position in
174
one of the great institutions of society. And they exercise the power
175
of this strategic position, if only by establishing the general aims of
176
the company and choosing its top management." [p. 8]
178
The media giants have also diversified into other fields. For example
179
GE, and Westinghouse, both owners of major television networks, are
180
huge, diversified multinational companies heavily involved in the
181
controversial areas of weapons production and nuclear power. GE and
182
Westinghouse depend on the government to subsidise their nuclear power
183
and military research and development, and to create a favourable
184
climate for their overseas sales and investments. Similar dependence on
185
the government affect other media.
187
Because they are large corporations with international investment
188
interests, the major media tend to have a right-wing political bias. In
189
addition, members of the business class own most of the mass media, the
190
bulk of which depends for their existence on advertising revenue (which
191
in turn comes from private business). Business also provides a
192
substantial share of "experts" for news programmes and generates
193
massive "flak." Claims that the media are "left-leaning" are sheer
194
disinformation manufactured by the "flak" organisations described below
195
(in [1]section D.3.4). Thus Herman and Chomsky:
197
"the dominant media forms are quite large businesses; they are
198
controlled by very wealthy people or by managers who are subject to
199
sharp constraints by owners and other market-profit-oriented forces;
200
and they are closely interlocked, and have important common
201
interests, with other major corporations, banks, and government.
202
This is the first powerful filter that effects news choices." [p.
205
Needless to say, reporters and editors will be selected based upon how
206
well their work reflects the interests and needs of their employers.
207
Thus a radical reporter and a more mainstream one both of the same
208
skills and abilities would have very different careers within the
209
industry. Unless the radical reporter toned down their copy, they are
210
unlikely to see it printed unedited or unchanged. Thus the structure
211
within the media firm will tend to penalise radical viewpoints,
212
encouraging an acceptance of the status quo in order to further a
213
career. This selection process ensures that owners do not need to order
214
editors or reporters what to do -- to be successful they will have to
215
internalise the values of their employers.
217
D.3.2 What is the effect of advertising on the mass media?
219
The main business of the media is to sell audiences to advertisers.
220
Advertisers thus acquire a kind of de facto licensing authority, since
221
without their support the media would cease to be economically viable.
222
And it is affluent audiences that get advertisers interested. As
223
Chomsky and Herman put it, the "idea that the drive for large audiences
224
makes the mass media 'democratic' thus suffers from the initial
225
weakness that its political analogue is a voting system weighted by
228
As regards TV, in addition to "discrimination against unfriendly media
229
institutions, advertisers also choose selectively among programs on the
230
basis of their own principles. With rare exceptions these are
231
culturally and politically conservative. Large corporate advertisers on
232
television will rarely sponsor programs that engage in serious
233
criticisms of corporate activities." Accordingly, large corporate
234
advertisers almost never sponsor programs that contain serious
235
criticisms of corporate activities, such as negative ecological
236
impacts, the workings of the military-industrial complex, or corporate
237
support of and benefits from Third World dictatorships. This means that
238
TV companies "learn over time that such programs will not sell and
239
would have to be carried at a financial sacrifice, and that, in
240
addition, they may offend powerful advertisers." More generally,
241
advertisers will want "to avoid programs with serious complexities and
242
disturbing controversies that interfere with the 'buying mood.'" [p.
245
Political discrimination is therefore structured into advertising
246
allocations by wealthy companies with an emphasis on people with money
247
to buy. In addition, "many companies will always refuse to do business
248
with ideological enemies and those whom they perceive as damaging their
249
interests." Thus overt discrimination adds to the force of the "voting
250
system weighted by income." This has had the effect of placing working
251
class and radical papers at a serious disadvantage. Without access to
252
advertising revenue, even the most popular paper will fold or price
253
itself out of the market. Chomsky and Herman cite the British
254
pro-labour and pro-union Daily Herald as an example of this process. At
255
its peak, the Daily Herald had almost double the readership of The
256
Times, the Financial Times and The Guardian combined, yet even with
257
8.1% of the national circulation it got 3.5% of net advertising revenue
258
and so could not survive on the "free market." As Herman and Chomsky
259
note, a "mass movement without any major media support, and subject to
260
a great deal of active press hostility, suffers a serious disability,
261
and struggles against grave odds." With the folding of the Daily
262
Herald, the labour movement lost its voice in the mainstream media.
263
[pp. 17-8 and pp. 15-16]
265
Thus advertising is an effective filter for news choice (and, indeed,
266
survival in the market).
268
D.3.3 Why do the media rely on government and business "experts" for
271
As Herman and Chomsky stress, basic economics explains why the mass
272
media "are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of
273
information" as well as "reciprocity of interest." The media need "a
274
steady, reliable flow of raw material of news. They have daily news
275
demands and imperative news schedules that they must meet." They cannot
276
afford to have reporters and cameras at all locations and so economics
277
"dictates that they concentrate their resources where significant news
278
often occurs." [p. 18] This means that bottom-line considerations
279
dictate that the media concentrate their resources where news, rumours
280
and leaks are plentiful, and where regular press conferences are held.
281
The White House, Pentagon, and the State Department, in Washington,
282
D.C., are centres of such activity on a national scale, while city hall
283
and police departments are their local equivalents. In addition, trade
284
groups, businesses and corporations also provide regular stories that
285
are deemed as newsworthy and from credible sources.
287
In other words, government and corporate sources have the great merit
288
of being recognisable and credible by their status and prestige;
289
moreover, they have the most money available to produce a flow of news
290
that the media can use. For example, the Pentagon has a
291
public-information service employing many thousands of people, spending
292
hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and far outspending not
293
only the public-information resources of any dissenting individual or
294
group but the aggregate of such groups. Only the corporate sector has
295
the resources to produce public information and propaganda on the scale
296
of the Pentagon and other government bodies. The Chamber of Commerce, a
297
business collective, had a 1983 budget for research, communications,
298
and political activities of $65 million. Besides the US Chamber of
299
Commerce, there are thousands of state and local chambers of commerce
300
and trade associations also engaged in public relations and lobbying
301
activities. As we noted in [2]section D.2, the corporate funding of PR
302
is massive. Thus "business corporations and trade groups are also
303
regular purveyors of stories deemed newsworthy. These bureaucracies
304
turn out a large volume of material that meets the demands of news
305
organisations for reliable, scheduled flows." [p. 19]
307
To maintain their pre-eminent position as sources, government and
308
business-news agencies expend much effort to make things easy for news
309
organisations. They provide the media organisations with facilities in
310
which to gather, give journalists advance copies of speeches and
311
upcoming reports; schedule press conferences at hours convenient for
312
those needing to meet news deadlines; write press releases in language
313
that can be used with little editing; and carefully organise press
314
conferences and photo-opportunity sessions. This means that, in effect,
315
"the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidise the mass media, and
316
gain special access by their contribution to reducing the media's costs
317
of acquiring the raw materials of, and producing, news." [p. 22]
319
This economic dependency also allows corporations and the state to
320
influence the media. The most obvious way is by using their "personal
321
relationships, threats, and rewards to further influence and coerce the
322
media. The media may feel obligated to carry extremely dubious stories
323
and mute criticism in order not to offend sources and disturb a close
324
relationship. It is very difficult to call authorities on whom one
325
depends for daily news liars, even if they tell whoppers." Critical
326
sources may be avoided not only due to the higher costs in finding them
327
and establishing their credibility, but because the established
328
"primary sources may be offended and may even threaten the media with
329
using them." [p. 22] As well as refusing to co-operate on shows or
330
reports which include critics, corporations and governments may
331
threaten the media with loss of access if they ask too many critical
332
questions or delve into inappropriate areas.
334
In addition, "more important, powerful sources regularly take advantage
335
of media routines and dependency to 'manage' the media, to manipulate
336
them into following a special agenda and framework . . . Part of this
337
management process consists of inundating the media with stories, which
338
serve sometimes to foist a particular line and frame on the media . . .
339
and at other times to chase unwanted stories off the front page or out
340
of the media altogether." [p. 23]
342
The dominance of official sources would, of course, be weakened by the
343
existence of highly respectable unofficial sources that gave dissident
344
views with great authority. To alleviate this problem, the power elite
345
uses the strategy of "co-opting the experts" -- that is, putting them
346
on the payroll as consultants, funding their research, and organising
347
think tanks that will hire them directly and help disseminate the
348
messages deemed essential to elite interests. "Experts" on TV panel
349
discussions and news programs are often drawn from such organisations,
350
whose funding comes primarily from the corporate sector and wealthy
351
families -- a fact that is, of course, never mentioned on the programs
352
where they appear. This allows business, for example, to sell its
353
interests as objective and academic while, in fact, they provide a thin
354
veneer to mask partisan work which draws the proper conclusions desired
355
by their pay masters.
357
This process of creating a mass of experts readily available to the
358
media "has been carried out on a deliberate and a massive scale." These
359
ensure that "the corporate viewpoint" is effectively spread as the
360
experts work is "funded and their outputs . . . disseminated to the
361
media by a sophisticated propaganda effort. The corporate funding and
362
clear ideological purpose in the overall effort had no discernible
363
effect on the credibility of the intellectuals so mobilised; on the
364
contrary, the funding and pushing of their ideas catapulted them into
365
the press." [p. 23 and p. 24]
367
D.3.4 How is "flak" used as a means of disciplining the media?
369
"Flak" is a term used by Herman and Chomsky to refer "to negative
370
responses to a media statement or program." Such responses may be
371
expressed as phone calls, letters, telegrams, e-mail messages,
372
petitions, lawsuits, speeches, bills before Congress, or "other modes
373
of complaint, threat, or punishment." Flak may be generated centrally,
374
by organisations, or it may come from the independent actions of
375
individuals (sometimes encouraged to act by media hacks such as
376
right-wing talk show hosts or newspapers). "If flak is produced on a
377
large-scale, or by individuals or groups with substantial resources, it
378
can be both uncomfortable and costly to the media." [p. 26]
380
This is for many reasons. Positions need to be defended within and
381
outwith an organisation, sometimes in front of legislatures and
382
(perhaps) in the courts. Advertisers are very concerned to avoid
383
offending constituencies who might produce flak, and their demands for
384
inoffensive programming exerts pressure on the media to avoid certain
385
kinds of facts, positions, or programs that are likely to call forth
386
flak. This can have a strong deterrence factor, with media
387
organisations avoiding certain subjects and sources simply to avoid
388
having to deal with the inevitable flak they will receive from the
389
usual sources. The ability to produce flak "is related to power," as it
390
is expensive to generate on scale which is actually effective. [p. 26]
391
Unsurprisingly, this means that the most effective flak comes from
392
business and government who have the funds to produce it on a large
395
The government itself is "a major producer of flak, regularly
396
assailing, threatening, and 'correcting' the media, trying to contain
397
any deviations from the established line in foreign or domestic
398
policy." However, the right-wing plays a major role in deliberately
399
creating flak. For example, during the 1970s and 1980s, the corporate
400
community sponsored the creation of such institutions as the American
401
Legal Foundation, the Capital Legal Foundation, the Media Institute,
402
the Center for Media and Public Affairs, and Accuracy in Media (AIM),
403
which may be regarded as organisations designed for the specific
404
purpose of producing flak. Freedom House is an older US organisation
405
which had a broader design but whose flak-producing activities became a
406
model for the more recent organisations. The Media Institute, for
407
instance, was set up in 1972 and is funded by wealthy corporate
408
patrons, sponsoring media monitoring projects, conferences, and studies
409
of the media. The main focus of its studies and conferences has been
410
the alleged failure of the media to portray business accurately and to
411
give adequate weight to the business point of view, but it also
412
sponsors works which "expose" alleged left-wing bias in the mass media.
415
And, it should be noted, while the flak machines "steadily attack the
416
media, the media treats them well. They receive respectful attention,
417
and their propagandistic role and links to a large corporate program
418
are rarely mentioned or analysed." [p. 28] Indeed, such attacks "are
419
often not unwelcome, first because response is simple or superfluous;
420
and second, because debate over this issue helps entrench the belief
421
that the media are . . . independent and objective, with high standards
422
of professional integrity and openness to all reasonable views" which
423
is "quite acceptable to established power and privilege -- even to the
424
media elites themselves, who are not averse to the charge that they may
425
have gone to far in pursuing their cantankerous and obstreperous ways
426
in defiance of orthodoxy and power." Ultimately, such flak "can only be
427
understood as a demand that the media should not even reflect the range
428
of debate over tactical questions among the dominant elites, but should
429
serve only those segments that happen to manage the state at a
430
particular moment, and should do so with proper enthusiasm and optimism
431
about the causes -- noble by definition -- in which state power is
432
engaged." [Chomsky, Necessary Illusions, p. 13 and p. 11]
434
D.3.5 Why is "anticommunism" used as control mechanism?
436
The final filter which Herman and Chomsky discuss is the ideology of
437
anticommunism. "Communism" is of course regarded as the ultimate evil
438
by the corporate rich, since the ideas of collective ownership of
439
productive assets "threatens the very root of their class position and
440
superior status." As the concept is "fuzzy," it can be widely applied
441
and "can be used against anybody advocating policies that threaten
442
property interests." [p. 29] Hence the attacks on third-world
443
nationalists as "socialists" and the steady expansion of "communism" to
444
apply to any form of socialism, social democracy, reformism, trade
445
unionism or even "liberalism" (i.e. any movement which aims to give
446
workers more bargaining power or allow ordinary citizens more voice in
447
public policy decisions).
449
Hence the ideology of anticommunism has been very useful, because it
450
can be used to discredit anybody advocating policies regarded as
451
harmful to corporate interests. It also helps to divide the Left and
452
labour movements, justifies support for pro-US fascist regimes abroad
453
as "lesser evils" than communism, and discourages liberals from
454
opposing such regimes for fear of being branded as heretics from the
455
national religion. This process has been aided immensely by the obvious
456
fact that the "communist" regimes (i.e. Stalinist dictatorships) have
459
Since the collapse of the USSR and related states in 1989, the utility
460
of anticommunism has lost some of its power. Of course, there are still
461
a few official communist enemy states, like North Korea, Cuba, and
462
China, but these are not quite the threat the USSR was. North Korea and
463
Cuba are too impoverished to threaten the world's only super-power
464
(that so many Americans think that Cuba was ever a threat says a lot
465
about the power of propaganda). China is problematic, as Western
466
corporations now have access to, and can exploit, its resources,
467
markets and cheap labour. As such, criticism of China will be mooted,
468
unless it starts to hinder US corporations or become too much of an
471
So we can still expect, to some degree, abuses or human rights
472
violations in these countries are systematically played up by the media
473
while similar abuses in client states are downplayed or ignored.
474
Chomsky and Herman refer to the victims of abuses in enemy states as
475
worthy victims, while victims who suffer at the hands of US clients or
476
friends are unworthy victims. Stories about worthy victims are often
477
made the subject of sustained propaganda campaigns, to score political
478
points against enemies. For example:
480
"If the government of corporate community and the media feel that a
481
story is useful as well as dramatic, they focus on it intensively
482
and use it to enlighten the public. This was true, for example, of
483
the shooting down by the Soviets of the Korean airliner KAL 007 in
484
early September 1983, which permitted an extended campaign of
485
denigration of an official enemy and greatly advanced Reagan
486
administration arms plans."
488
"In sharp contrast, the shooting down by Israel of a Libyan civilian
489
airliner in February 1973 led to no outcry in the West, no
490
denunciations for 'cold-blooded murder,' and no boycott. This
491
difference in treatment was explained by the New York Times
492
precisely on the grounds of utility: 'No useful purpose is served by
493
an acrimonious debate over the assignment of blame for the downing
494
of a Libyan airliner in the Sinai peninsula last week.' There was a
495
very 'useful purpose' served by focusing on the Soviet act, and a
496
massive propaganda campaign ensued."
499
As noted, since the end of the Cold War, anti-communism has not been
500
used as extensively as it once was to mobilise support for elite
501
crusades. Other enemies have to be found and so the "Drug War" or
502
"anti-terrorism" now often provide the public with "official enemies"
503
to hate and fear. Thus the Drug War was the excuse for the Bush
504
administration's invasion of Panama, and "fighting narco-terrorists"
505
has more recently been the official reason for shipping military
506
hardware and surveillance equipment to Mexico (where it's actually
507
being used against the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, whose uprising is
508
threatening to destabilise the country and endanger US investments).
509
After 9/11, terrorism became the key means of forcing support for
510
policies. The mantra "you are either with us or with the terrorists"
511
was used to bolster support and reduce criticism for both imperial
512
adventures as well as a whole range of regressive domestic policies.
514
Whether any of these new enemies will prove to be as useful as
515
anticommunism remains to be seen. It is likely, particularly given how
516
"communism" has become so vague as to include liberal and social
517
democratic ideas, that it will remain the bogey man of choice --
518
particularly as many within the population both at home and abroad
519
continue to support left-wing ideas and organisations. Given the track
520
record of neo-liberalism across the globe, being able to tar its
521
opponents as "communists" will remain a useful tool.
523
D.3.6 Isn't the "propaganda model" a conspiracy theory?
525
No, far from it. Chomsky and Herman explicitly address this charge in
526
Manufacturing Consent and explain why it is a false one:
528
"Institutional critiques such as we present in this book are
529
commonly dismissed by establishment commentators as 'conspiracy
530
theories,' but this is merely an evasion. We do not use any kind of
531
'conspiracy' hypothesis to explain mass-media performance. In fact,
532
our treatment is much closer to a 'free market' analysis, with the
533
results largely an outcome of the workings of market forces." [p.
536
They go on to suggest what some of these "market forces" are. One of
537
the most important is the weeding-out process that determines who gets
538
the journalistic jobs in the major media: "Most biased choices in the
539
media arise from the preselection of right-thinking people,
540
internalised preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the
541
constraints of ownership, organisation, market, and political power."
542
This is the key, as the model "helps us to understand how media
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personnel adapt, and are adapted, to systemic demands. Given the
544
imperatives of corporate organisation and the workings of the various
545
filters, conformity to the needs and interests of privileged sectors is
546
essential to success." This means that those who do not display the
547
requisite values and perspectives will be regarded as irresponsible
548
and/or ideological and, consequently, will not succeed (barring a few
549
exceptions). In other words, those who "adapt, perhaps quite honestly,
550
will then be able to assert, accurately, that they perceive no
551
pressures to conform. The media are indeed free . . . for those who
552
have internalised the required values and perspectives." [p. xii and p.
555
In other words, important media employees learn to internalise the
556
values of their bosses: "Censorship is largely self-censorship, by
557
reporters and commentators who adjust to the realities of source and
558
media organisational requirements, and by people at higher levels
559
within media organisations who are chosen to implement, and have
560
usually internalised, the constraints imposed by proprietary and other
561
market and governmental centres of power." But, it may be asked, isn't
562
it still a conspiracy theory to suggest that media leaders all have
563
similar values? Not at all. Such leaders "do similar things because
564
they see the world through the same lenses, are subject to similar
565
constraints and incentives, and thus feature stories or maintain
566
silence together in tacit collective action and leader-follower
569
The fact that media leaders share the same fundamental values does not
570
mean, however, that the media are a solid monolith on all issues. The
571
powerful often disagree on the tactics needed "to attain generally
572
shared aims, [and this gets] reflected in media debate. But views that
573
challenge fundamental premises or suggest that the observed modes of
574
exercise of state power are based on systemic factors will be excluded
575
from the mass media even when elite controversy over tactics rages
576
fiercely." [p. xii] This means that viewpoints which question the
577
legitimacy of elite aims or suggest that state power is being exercised
578
in elite interests rather than the "national" interest will be excluded
579
from the mass media. As such, we would expect the media to encourage
580
debate within accepted bounds simply because the ruling class is not
581
monolithic and while they agree on keeping the system going, they
582
disagree on the best way to do so.
584
Therefore the "propaganda model" has as little in common with a
585
"conspiracy theory" as saying that the management of General Motors
586
acts to maintain and increase its profits. As Chomsky notes, "[t]o
587
confront power is costly and difficult; high standards of evidence and
588
argument are imposed, and critical analysis is naturally not welcomed
589
by those who are in a position to react vigorously and to determine the
590
array of rewards and punishments. Conformity to a 'patriotic agenda,'
591
in contrast, imposes no such costs." This means that "conformity is the
592
easy way, and the path to privilege and prestige . . . It is a natural
593
expectation, on uncontroversial assumptions, that the major media and
594
other ideological institutions will generally reflect the perspectives
595
and interests of established power." [Necessary Illusions, pp. 8-9 and
598
D.3.7 Isn't the model contradicted by the media reporting government and
601
As noted above, the claim that the media are "adversarial" or (more
602
implausibly) that they have a "left-wing bias" is due to right-wing PR
603
organisations. This means that some "inconvenient facts" are
604
occasionally allowed to pass through the filters in order to give the
605
appearance of "objectivity" -- precisely so the media can deny charges
606
of engaging in propaganda. As Chomsky and Herman put it: "the
607
'naturalness' of these processes, with inconvenient facts allowed
608
sparingly and within the proper framework of assumptions, and
609
fundamental dissent virtually excluded from the mass media (but
610
permitted in a marginalised press), makes for a propaganda system that
611
is far more credible and effective in putting over a patriotic agenda
612
than one with official censorship." [p. xiv]
614
To support their case against the "adversarial" nature of the media,
615
Herman and Chomsky look into the claims of such right-wing media PR
616
machines as Freedom House. However, it is soon discovered that "the
617
very examples offered in praise of the media for their independence, or
618
criticism of their excessive zeal, illustrate exactly the opposite."
619
Such flak, while being worthless as serious analysis, does help to
620
reinforce the myth of an "adversarial media" and so is taken seriously
621
by the media. By saying that both right and left attack them, the media
622
presents themselves as neutral, balanced and objective -- a position
623
which is valid only if both criticisms are valid and of equal worth.
624
This is not the case, as Herman and Chomsky prove, both in terms of
625
evidence and underlying aims and principles. Ultimately, the attacks by
626
the right on the media are based on the concern "to protect state
627
authority from an intrusive public" and so "condemn the media for lack
628
of sufficient enthusiasm in supporting official crusades." In other
629
words, that the "existing level of subordination to state authority is
630
often deemed unsatisfactory." [p. xiv and p. 301] The right-wing notion
631
that the media are "liberal" or "left-wing" says far more about the
632
authoritarian vision and aims of the right than the reality of the
635
Therefore the "adversarial" nature of the media is a myth, but this is
636
not to imply that the media does not present critical analysis. Herman
637
and Chomsky in fact argue that the "mass media are not a solid monolith
638
on all issues." and do not deny that it does present facts (which they
639
do sometimes themselves cite). This "affords the opportunity for a
640
classic non sequitur, in which the citations of facts from the
641
mainstream press by a critic of the press is offered as a triumphant
642
'proof' that the criticism is self-refuting, and that media coverage of
643
disputed issues is indeed adequate." But, as they argue, "[t]hat the
644
media provide some facts about an issue . . . proves absolutely nothing
645
about the adequacy or accuracy of that coverage. The mass media do, in
646
fact, literally suppress a great deal . . . But even more important in
647
this context is the question given to a fact - its placement, tone, and
648
repetitions, the framework within which it is presented, and the
649
related facts that accompany it and give it meaning (or provide
650
understanding) . . . there is no merit to the pretence that because
651
certain facts may be found by a diligent and sceptical researcher, the
652
absence of radical bias and de facto suppression is thereby
653
demonstrated." [p. xii and pp xiv-xv]
655
As they stress, the media in a democratic system is different from one
656
in a dictatorship and so they "do not function in the manner of the
657
propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit --
658
indeed, encourage -- spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long
659
as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and
660
principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as
661
to be internalised largely without awareness." Within this context,
662
"facts that tend to undermine the government line, if they are properly
663
understood, can be found." Indeed, it is "possible that the volume of
664
inconvenient facts can expand, as it did during the Vietnam War, in
665
response to the growth of a critical constituency (which included elite
666
elements from 1968). Even in this exceptional case, however, it was
667
very rare for news and commentary to find their way into the mass media
668
if they failed to conform to the framework of established dogma
669
(postulating benevolent U.S aims, the United States responding to
670
aggression and terror, etc.)" While during the war and after,
671
"apologists for state policy commonly pointed to the inconvenient
672
facts, the periodic 'pessimism' of media pundits, and the debates over
673
tactics as showing that the media were 'adversarial' and even 'lost'
674
the war," in fact these "allegations are ludicrous." [p. 302 and p.
675
xiv] A similar process, it should be noted, occurred during the
676
invasion and occupation of Iraq.
678
To summarise, as Chomsky notes "what is essential is the power to set
679
the agenda." This means that debate "cannot be stilled, and indeed, in
680
a properly functioning system of propaganda, it should not be, because
681
it has a system-reinforcing character if constrained within proper
682
bounds. What is essential is to set the bounds firmly. Controversy may
683
rage as long as it adheres to the presuppositions that define the
684
consensus of elites, and it should furthermore be encourages within
685
these bounds, this helping to establish these doctrines as the very
686
condition of thinkable thought while reinforcing the belief that
687
freedom reigns." [Necessary Illusions, p. 48]
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