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http://www.michaelparenti.org/MonopolyMedia.html
Michael Parenti Political Archive
May 2001
Monopoly Media Manipulation
By Michael Parenti
In a capitalist "democracy" like the United States, the corporate
news media faithfully reflect the dominant class ideology both in
their reportage and commentary. At the same time, these media leave
the impression that they are free and independent, capable of
balanced coverage and objective commentary. How they achieve these
seemingly contradictory but legitimating goals is a matter worthy of
study. Notables in the media industry claim that occasional
inaccuracies do occur in news coverage because of innocent error and
everyday production problems such as deadline pressures, budgetary
restraints, and the difficulty of reducing a complex story into a
concise report. Furthermore, no communication system can hope to
report everything, hence selectivity is needed.
To be sure, such pressures and problems do exist and honest mistakes
are made, but do they really explain the media's overall performance?
True the press must be selective, but what principle of selectivity
is involved? I would argue that media bias usually does not occur in
random fashion; rather it moves in more or less consistent
directions, favoring management over labor, corporations over
corporate critics, affluent whites over low income minorities,
officialdom over protestors, the two-party monopoly over leftist
third parties, privatization and free market "reforms" over public
sector development, U.S. dominance of the Third World over
revolutionary or populist social change, and conservative
commentators and columnists over progressive or radical ones.
Suppression by Omission
Some critics complain that the press is sensationalistic and
invasive. In fact, it is more often muted and evasive. More insidious
than the sensationalistic hype is the artful avoidance. Truly
sensational stories (as opposed to sensationalistic) are downplayed
or avoided outright. Sometimes the suppression includes not just
vital details but the entire story itself, even ones of major import.
Reports that might reflect poorly upon the national security state
are least likely to see the light of day. Thus we hear about
political repression perpetrated by officially designated "rogue"
governments, but information about the brutal murder and torture
practiced by U.S.-sponsored surrogate forces in the Third World, and
other crimes committed by the U.S. national security state are denied
public airing, being suppressed with a consistency that would be
called "totalitarian" were it to occur in some other countries.
The media downplay stories of momentous magnitude. In 1965 the
Indonesian military -- advised, equipped, trained, and financed by
the U.S. military and the CIA -- overthrew President Achmed Sukarno
and eradicated the Indonesian Communist Party and its allies, killing
half a million people (some estimates are as high as a million) in
what was the greatest act of political mass murder since the Nazi
Holocaust. The generals also destroyed hundreds of clinics,
libraries, schools, and community centers that had been established
by the Communists. Here was a sensational story if ever there was
one, but it took three months before it received passing mention in
Time magazine and yet another month before it was reported in the New
York Times (April 5, 1966), accompanied by an editorial that actually
praised the Indonesian military for "rightly playing its part with
utmost caution."
Over the course of forty years, the CIA involved itself with drug
traffickers in Italy, France, Corsica, Indochina, Afghanistan, and
Central and South America. Much of this activity was the object of
extended congressional investigation -- by Senator Church's committee
and Congressman Pike's committee in the 1970s, and Senator Kerry's
committee in the late 1980s. But the corporate capitalist media seem
not to have heard about it.
Attack and Destroy the Target
When omission proves to be an insufficient mode of censorship and a
story somehow begins to reach larger publics, the press moves from
artful avoidance to frontal assault in order to discredit the story.
In August 1996, the San Jose Mercury News, drawing from a year-long
investigation, ran an in-depth series about the CIA-contra crack
shipments that were flooding East Los Angeles. Holding true to form,
the major media mostly ignored the issue. But the Mercury News series
was picked up by some local and regional newspapers, and was flashed
across the world on the Internet copiously supplemented pertinent
documents and depositions supporting the charges against the CIA.
African American urban communities, afflicted by the crack epidemic,
were up in arms and wanted to know more. The story became difficult
to ignore. So, the major media began an all-out assault. A barrage of
hit pieces in the Washington Post and New York Times and on network
television and PBS assured us that there was no evidence of CIA
involvement, that the Mercury News series was "bad journalism," and
that its investigative reporter Gary Webb was irresponsibly playing
on the public's gullibility and conspiracy mania. By a process of
relentless attack and shameless mendacity, the major media exonerated
the CIA from any involvement in drug trafficking.
Labeling
Like all propagandists, mainstream media people seek to prefigure our
perception of a subject with a positive or negative label. Some
positive ones are: "stability," "the president's firm leadership," "a
strong defense," and "a healthy economy." Indeed, not many Americans
would want instability, wobbly presidential leadership, a weak
defense, and a sick economy. The label defines the subject without
having to deal with actual particulars that might lead us to a
different conclusion.
Some common negative labels are: "leftist guerrillas," "Islamic
terrorists," "conspiracy theories," "inner-city gangs," and "civil
disturbances." These, too, are seldom treated within a larger context
of social relations and issues. The press itself is facilely and
falsely labeled "the liberal media" by the hundreds of conservative
columnists, commentators, and talk-shows hosts who crowd the
communication universe while claiming to be shut out from it. Some
labels we will never be exposed to are "class power," "class
struggle," and "U.S. imperialism."
A new favorite among deceptive labels is "reforms," whose meaning is
inverted, being applied to any policy dedicated to undoing the
reforms that have been achieved after decades of popular struggle. So
the destruction of family assistance programs is labeled "welfare
reform." "Reforms" in Eastern Europe, and most recently in
Yugoslavia, have meant the heartless impoverishment of former
Communist countries, the dismantling of what remained of the public
economy, its deindustrialization and expropriation at fire sale
prices by a corporate investor class, complete with massive layoffs,
drastic cutbacks in public assistance and human services, and a
dramatic increase in unemployment and human suffering. "IMF reforms"
is a euphemism for the same kind of bruising cutbacks throughout the
Third World. As Edward Herman once noted, "reforms" are not the
solution, they are the problem.
In April 2001, the newly elected prime minister of Japan, Junichiro
Koisumi, was widely identified in the U.S. media as a "reformer." His
free-market "reforms" include the privatization of Japan's postal
saving system. Millions of Japanese have their life savings in the
postal system and the "reformer" Koisumi wants private investors to
be able to get their hands on these funds.
"Free market" has long been a pet label, evoking images of economic
plenitude and democracy. In reality, free-market policies undermine
the markets of local producers, provide state subsidies to
multinational corporations, destroy public sector services, and
create greater gaps between the wealthy few and the underprivileged
many.
Another favorite media label is "hardline." Anyone who resists free-
market "reforms," be it in Belarus, Italy, Peru, or Yugoslavia, is
labeled a "hardliner." An article in the New York Times (10/21/97)
used "hardline" and "hardliner" eleven times to describe Bosnian Serb
leaders who opposed attempts by NATO forces to close down
the "hardline Bosnian Serb broadcast network." The radio station in
question was the only one in all of Bosnia that offered a perspective
critical of Western intervention in Yugoslavia. The forceful closing
of this one remaining dissenting media voice was described by the
Times as "a step toward bringing about responsible news coverage in
Bosnia." The story did note "the apparent irony" of using foreign
soldiers for "silencing broadcasts in order to encourage free
speech." The NATO troops who carried out this repressive task were
identified with the positive label of "peacekeepers."
It is no accident that labels like "hardline" are never subjected to
precise definition. The efficacy of a label is that it not have a
specific content which can be held up to a test of evidence. Better
that it be self-referential, propagating an undefined but evocative
image.
Preemptive Assumption
Frequently the media accept as given the very policy position that
needs to be critically examined. Whenever the White House proposes an
increase in military spending, press discussion is limited to how
much more spending is needed, how much updating of weaponry; are we
doing enough or need we do still more? No media exposure is given to
those who hotly contest the already gargantuan arms budget in its
totality. It is assumed that U.S. forces must be deployed around the
world, and that hundreds of billions must be spent each year on this
global military system.
Likewise with media discussion of Social Security "reform," a
euphemism for the privatization and eventual abolition of a program
that is working well. The media preemptively assume the very dubious
position that needs to be debated: that the program, is in danger of
insolvency (in thirty years) and therefore in need of drastic
overhauling today. Social Security operates as a three-pronged human
service: in addition to retirement pensions, it provides survivors'
insurance (up until the age of 18) to children in families that have
lost their breadwinner, and it offers disability assistance to
persons of pre-retirement age who have sustained serious injury or
illness. But from existing press coverage you would not know this --
and most Americans do not.
Face-Value Transmission
Many labels are fabricated not by news media but by officialdom. U.S.
governmental and corporate leaders talk about "our global
leadership," "national security," "free markets," and "globalization"
when what they mean is "All Power to the Transnationals." The media
uncritically and dutifully accept these official views, transmitting
them to wider publics without any noticeable critical comment
regarding the actual content of the policy. Face-value transmission
has characterized the press's performance in almost every area of
domestic and foreign policy.
When challenged on this, reporters respond that they cannot inject
their own personal views into their reports. Actually, no one is
asking them to. My criticism is that they already do, and seldom
realize it. Their conventional ideological perceptions usually
coincide with those of their bosses and with officialdom in general,
making them face-value purveyors of the prevailing orthodoxy. This
uniformity of bias is perceived as "objectivity."
The alternative to challenging face-value transmission is not to
editorialize about the news but to question the assertions made by
officialdom, to consider critical data that might give credence to an
alternative view. Such an effort is not an editorial or ideological
pursuit but an empirical and investigative one, albeit one that is
not usually tolerated in the capitalist press beyond certain safely
limited parameters.
Slighting of Content
One has to marvel at how the corporate news media can give so much
emphasis to surface happenings, to style and process, and so little
to the substantive issues at stake. A glaring example is the way
elections are covered. The political campaign is reduced to a horse
race: Who will run? Who will get the nomination? Who will win the
election? News commentators sound like theater critics as they hold
forth on how this or that candidate projected a positive image, came
across effectively, and had a good rapport with the audience. The
actual issues are accorded scant attention, and the democratic
dialogue that is supposed to accompany a contest for public office
rarely is heard through the surface din.
Accounts of major strikes -- on those rare occasions the press
attends to labor struggles -- offer a similar slighting of content
while focusing heavily on process. We are told how many days the
strike has lasted, the inconvenience and cost to the public and the
economy, and how negotiations threaten to break down. Missing is any
reference to the substance of the conflict, the grievances that drive
workers reluctantly to the extreme expediency of a strike, such as,
cutbacks in wages and benefits, loss of seniority, safety issues, or
the unwillingness of management to negotiate a contract.
Media pundits often talk about the "larger picture." In fact, their
ability or willingness to link immediate events and issues to larger
social relations is almost nonexistent, nor would a broader analysis
be tolerated by their bosses. Instead, they regularly give us the
smaller picture, this being a way of slighting content and remaining
within politically safe boundaries. Thus the many demonstrations
against international free-trade agreements beginning with NAFTA and
GATT are reported, if at all, as contests between protestors and
police with little reference to the issues of democratic sovereignty
and unaccountable corporate power that impel the protestors.
Consider the press treatment of the suppression of the vote in
Florida during the 2000 presidential campaign. After a count of
ballots by the Miami Herald and USA Today, that took a limited view
of what was open to challenge, major media across the country
announced that Bush in fact won in Florida. Other investigations
indicate that such was not the case at all, but these remain largely
unpublicized. Furthermore, press treatment has focused almost
exclusively on problems relating to questionable counts, with much
discussion of ballot "dimples" and "chads." But in the aftermath,
hardly a word was uttered about the ballots that were never
collected, and the thousands of people who were disfranchised by the
repressive ploys of Florida officials and state troopers. Again, what
we got was the smaller (safer) picture, one that does not challenge
the legitimacy of the electoral process and the authorities who
preside over it.
False Balancing
In accordance with the canons of good journalism, the press is
supposed to tap competing sources to get both sides of an issue. In
fact, both sides are seldom accorded equal prominence. One study
found that on NPR, supposedly the most liberal of the mainstream
media, right-wing spokespeople are often interviewed alone, while
liberals -- on the less frequent occasions they appear -- are almost
always offset by conservatives. Furthermore, both sides of a story
are not usually all sides. The whole left-progressive and radical
portion of the opinion spectrum is amputated from the visible body
politic.
False balancing was evident in a BBC World Service report (December
11, 1997) that spoke of "a history of violence between Indonesian
forces and Timorese guerrillas" -- with not a hint that the
guerrillas were struggling for their lives against an Indonesian
invasion force that had slaughtered some 200,000 Timorese. Instead,
the genocidal invasion of East Timor was made to sound like a grudge
fight, with "killings on both sides." By imposing a neutralizing
gloss, the BBC announcer was introducing a serious distortion.
The U.S.-supported wars in Guatemala and El Salvador during the 1980s
were often treated with that same kind of false balancing. Both those
who burned villages and those who were having their villages burned
were depicted as equally involved in a contentious bloodletting.
While giving the appearance of being objective and neutral, one
actually neutralizes the subject matter and thereby drastically warps
it.
Follow-up Avoidance
When confronted with an unexpectedly dissident response, media hosts
quickly change the subject, or break for a commercial, or inject an
identifying announcement: "We are talking with [whomever]." The
purpose is to avoid going any further into a politically forbidden
topic no matter how much the unexpected response might seem to need a
follow-up query. An anchorperson for the BBC World Service (December
26, 1997) enthused: "Christmas in Cuba: For the first time in almost
forty years Cubans were able to celebrate Christmas and go to
church!" She then linked up with the BBC correspondent in Havana, who
observed, "A crowd of two thousand have gathered in the cathedral for
midnight mass. The whole thing is rather low key, very much like last
year." Very much like last year? Here was something that craved
clarification. Instead, the anchorperson quickly switched to another
question: "Can we expect a growth of freedom with the pope's visit?"
On a PBS talk show (January 22, 1998), host Charlie Rose asked a
guest, whose name I did not get, whether Castro was bitter about "the
historic failure of communism". No, the guest replied, Castro is
proud of what he believes communism has done for Cuba: advances in
health care and education, full employment, and the elimination of
the worst aspects of poverty. Rose fixed him with a ferocious glare,
then turned to another guest to ask: "What impact will the pope's
visit have in Cuba?" Rose ignored the errant guest for the rest of
the program.
Framing
The most effective propaganda relies on framing rather than on
falsehood. By bending the truth rather than breaking it, using
emphasis and other auxiliary embellishments, communicators can create
a desired impression without resorting to explicit advocacy and
without departing too far
from the appearance of objectivity. Framing is achieved in the way
the news is packaged, the amount of exposure, the placement (front
page or buried within, lead story or last), the tone of presentation
(sympathetic or slighting), the headlines and photographs, and, in
the case of broadcast media, the accompanying visual and auditory
effects.
Newscasters use themselves as auxiliary embellishments. They
cultivate a smooth delivery and try to convey an impression of
detachment that places them above the rough and tumble of their
subject matter. Television commentators and newspaper editorialists
and columnists affect a knowing tone designed to foster credibility
and an aura of certitude, or what might be called "authoritative
ignorance," as expressed in remarks like "How will this situation
end? Only time will tell." Or, "No one can say for sure." Trite
truisms are palmed off as penetrating truths. Newscasters learn to
fashion sentences like "Unless the strike is settled soon, the two
sides will be in for a long and bitter struggle." And "The space
launching will take place as scheduled if no unexpected problems
arise." And "Unless Congress acts soon, this bill is not likely to go
anywhere."
Stuff Just Happens
Many things are reported in the news but few are explained. Little is
said about how the social order is organized and for what purposes.
Instead we are left to see the world as do mainstream pundits, as a
scatter of events and personalities propelled by happenstance,
circumstance, confused intentions, bungled operations, and individual
ambition -- rarely by powerful class interests. Passive voice and
impersonal subject are essential rhetorical constructs for this mode
of evasion. So we read or hear that "fighting broke out in the
region," or "many people were killed in the disturbances," or "famine
is on the increase." Recessions apparently just happen like some
natural phenomenon ("our economy is in a slump"), having little to do
with the constant war of capital against labor and the contradictions
between productive power and earning power.
If we are to believe the media, stuff just happens.
Consider "globalization," a pet label that the press presents as a
natural and inevitable development. In fact, globalization is a
deliberate contrivance of multinational interests to undermine
democratic sovereignty throughout the world. International "free
trade" agreements set up international trade councils that are
elected by no one, are accountable to no one, operate in secrecy
without conflict of interest restrictions, and with the power to
overrule just about all labor, consumer, and environmental laws, and
all public services and regulations in all signatory nations. What we
actually are experiencing with GATT, NAFTA, FTAA, GATS, and the WTO
is deglobalization, an ever greater concentration of politico-
economic power in the hands of an international investor class, a
global coup d'etat that divests the peoples of the world of any trace
of protective democratic input.
In keeping with the liberal paradigm, the media never asks why things
happen the way they do. Social problems are rarely associated with
the politico-economic forces that create them. So we are taught to
truncate our own critical thinking. Imagine if we attempted something
different. Suppose we report, as is seldom reported, that the harshly
exploitative labor conditions existing in so many countries generally
has the backing of their respective military forces. Suppose further
that we cross another line and note that these rightwing military
forces are fully supported by the U.S. national security state. Then
suppose we cross that most serious line of all and instead of just
deploring this fact we also ask why successive U.S. administrations
have involved themselves in such unsavory pursuits throughout the
world. Suppose we conclude that the whole phenomenon is consistent
with a dedication to making the world safe for free-market corporate
capitalism, as measured by the kinds of countries that are helped and
the kinds that are attacked. Such an analysis almost certainly would
not be printed anywhere except in a few select radical publications.
We crossed too many lines. Because we tried to explain the particular
situation (bad labor conditions) in terms of a larger set of social
relations (corporate class power), our presentation would be rejected
out of hand as "Marxist" -- which indeed it is, as is much of reality
itself.
In sum, the news media's daily performance under what is
called "democratic capitalism" is not a failure but a skillfully
evasive success. We often hear that the press "got it wrong"
or "dropped the ball" on this or that story. In fact, the media do
their job remarkably well. Media people have a trained incapacity for
the whole truth. Their job is not to inform but disinform, not to
advance democratic discourse but to dilute and mute it. Their task is
to give every appearance of being conscientiously concerned about
events of the day, saying so much while meaning so little, offering
so many calories with so few nutrients. When we understand this, we
move from a liberal complaint about the press's sloppy performance to
a radical analysis of how the media maintain the dominant paradigm
with much craft and craftiness.
--
Michael Parenti's most recent books are To Kill a Nation:
The Attack on Yugoslavia (Verso) and History as Mystery
(City Lights).
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Original: Monopoly Media Manipulation: Parenti