"This article does not claim that the system functions robotically and by executive fiat so as to rule out all deviations. Instances of good reporting crop up, but never with enough persistence to prevail against the ocean of distortions and banalities that drown out the most serious messages. This usually suffices to stifle meaningful political action."
Introduction
Understanding
media in the U.S., as in most
modern nations today, is essentially
a political task.
The media are powerful engines
of influence, consciousness-raising,
and therefore public mobilization and public containment.
They have the power to make or
break people, issues, institutions, nations,
and even systems, when underlying crises render them more vulnerable to shifts in public opinion. This is rather
obvious by now, in the aftermath of so many foreign adventures sold to the public as great crusades, or the curious passivity of the masses in the face of domestic policies designed to benefit no one but the ultra-rich, but since the
chief aim of Cyrano is
to educate the public about the
current state of the media and
its horrific impact
on our vanishing democracy,
we have found it useful to compile
a simple tool, a catalog of media
biases and operating assumptions
that shed ample light on the
problem.
Essentially, the
American media face a critical choice. The deterioration of American society due to longstanding structural contradictions is pushing them—and the public—to accept the realization that an impartial information system can't serve two different
--and in this case, deeply antagonistic--masters. In all class-divided
societies such as the United
States, the interests of the rich and the interests of the common citizen, let alone the poor, are in direct and irreconcilable opposition, locked in a zero sum: what one gains, the other loses. Thus the media have
reached their great fork on the road: either they
tell the truth about
the fundamental issues confronting
society, thereby serving the
interests of "the
people," or they more or
less deliberately fail to do
so, thereby serving the
strategic interests of the ruling
oligarchy, who—incidentally—also happen to own the media. In fact, private commercial
ownership is the single most powerful factor shaping the quality of the media's output. Other explanations seem grossly inadequate,
misleading, or downright contrived
by comparison. Now, some people are wise to the actual role played by the media, but the overwhelming majority, though suspicious and largely alienated, remain passive and confused.
How is such a colossal feat of imposture and pacification accomplished? The corporate system has perfected a communications machinery ruled by powerful, widely accepted myths that prop up the legitimacy of the system by hiding and whitewashing its antisocial flaws. This article does not claim that the system functions robotically and by executive fiat so as to rule out all deviations. The latter do crop up, but never with enough persistence to prevail against the ocean of distortions and banalities that drown out the most serious messages. This usually suffices to stifle meaningful political action. Ironically, these deviations are actually "tonics" to the media system, enhancing its credibility, for they tend to convince the casual observer that the media are indeed independent of government or ownership control.
Our catalog
is the product of a huge number
of well-documented
observations.
Still, social realities must
be measured on balance, and by
this standard the purported independence
of mainstream US journalists,
the claim by the "Free Press" to ideological autonomy, or even
a meaningful adversarial position,
must be regarded as baseless.
Our method was
simple. In each topical area
we tried to ascertain if the
positions embraced by the military-industrial
complex in accordance with its
perceived short- and long-term
needs were eventually reflected
by the media. As intimated above,
the evidence turned out to be
surprisingly uniform and more
copious than we expected. In
most, it not all, cases where
the image and perhaps the very
fortune of the capitalist system
was at stake, the media dutifully
followed the line prescribed
by the corporate-governmental
elites. In this framework, the
well-publicized departures from
the ''national" consensus
usually involved matters of tactics,
timing, or taste, never essential
values and goals.
The assembled
data show that the American media
operate principally as instruments for
political and economic marketing on
a very broad stage as befits
a global superpower with interests
in literally every corner of
the world. American ideological
marketing is heavily concentrated
around the following themes:
A--The
presentation of capitalism as
the best of all possible systems,
and the natural culmination of
all political evolution, and
of American culture as currently
constituted as the best of all
possible worlds. After capitalism, only more and better capitalism;
B--The
equating of capitalism with "Americanness, " truth, the
defense of civilization, decency,
social justice, egalitarianism,
and authentic democracy (all
claims easily contradicted by
the accumulated record and plutocracy's inherently anti-democratic dynamic);
C--The
active legitimating and selling
of capitalism's domestic and
international policies, its governing
institutions, top leadership,
and mode of politics (esp. ritualized
elections);
D--The softselling
and whitewashing of inequitable
power and economic distributions,
worldwide;
E--Promoting the notion that, with all its imperfections, the American marketplace (capitalist marketplace in general) is the most democratic and fair mechanism to regulate the economy, since every purchase represents a "consumer vote of preference for a particular product and price."
F--The active endorsement of "constant and infinite growth" as a sign of progress in a finite world. This is an 18th Century notion embraced in the early stages of capitalism, when humans could not possibly envision a collision between their unrelenting economic activity and the planet's ecological survival. If nothing else, the unremitting pursuit of constant growth in a finite world is the trait that marks capitalism off as a certifiably insane system, yet scarcely a word is ever heard in the media to alert the public to this dangerous peculiarity, whose fruits we are finally beginning to see in the mounting levels of pollution and global climate change.
All the above
functions require a continuing
barrage of messages supportive
of capitalism's principal values
and assumptions (i.e., individualism,
unchallenged unlimited wealth
accumulation, "unchangeable" human
nature, etc.), plus a well-rehearsed
set of equally flattering historical
narratives. On the other hand,
a deep-running negative bias is normally attached to
all items dealing with capitalism's
arch-rival, socialism, or any
attempts to change in meaningful
ways the kind of status
quo favored
by the American elites. Themes
A through F can be safely described
as the unwritten "Commercial Constitution"of the American infotainment system.
Classifying some of the techniques
The successful
insertion of ideological slant
into the information mainstream
requires a variety of approaches.
For the sake of an informal classification, we offer below a number of disinformation "categories" (using "disinformation" in its broader sense to imply any instance of deliberate propaganda for political benefit) that obtain in much of the "Western press," but which appear in highly concentrated form throughout the U.S. media:
1. Principal Operating Falsehoods
2. Systematic Topical Distortions
3. Historical Lobotomies
4. Disinformation
5. Downplays
6. Suppressions
7. Ahistoricalism
8. Superficiality
9. Selective Sourcing
10. Fragmentation
11. Saturation/Hysteria Whipping
As stated, these categories
are merely descriptive
aids; they do not exhaust the actual list of
possible manipulation approaches, nor are they advanced here as part of some grandiose academic insight, as they are rather obvious to any intelligent observer, and their relative "invisibility" is precisely the product of the blindness and conformity enforced by the system we criticize. Moreover,
it should be kept in mind that
some of these approaches are
likely to overlap
in regard to some issues. By their very nature they cannot
be mutually exclusive.
1.
Principal Operating Falsehoods
(POF; henceforth also
referred to as ''poffery")--The
handling of U.S. Foreign Policy
(USFP) affords an excellent example
of a critical area practically
blanketed by poffery. Here both
the actual historical record,
unsavory methods, and objectives
pursued by the American leadership
for almost a century have been
and continue to be dutifully "laundered" and
sold to the public as selfless
crusades necessitated by our
national security, moral imperatives,
etc. USFP is normally depicted
as the sincere national attempt
to do good in an often ungrateful
world. The goals are described
as preserving democracy, freedom,
and "the American Way of
Life," a polite coinage
for capitalism. Other POFs include
the denial of class conflict
in the U.S. ("harmony" of business
and labor interests); the presentation
of government and media as "impartial agencies
above class or group interests,
and the presentation of economic
freedom (business's freedom
to operate as it pleases) as
inseparable and indistinguishable
from political and civil freedoms,
a pseudo-fact eloquently exposed
by the obscene thriving of multinationals
throughout a Third World plagued
by military fascism.
2.
Distortions (D)--Usually this category connotes
facts reported out of context,
or the media's concentration
on only negative or positive
aspects of a particular story,
depending on whether it is a
capitalist or socialist ox that
is getting gored.
3.
Historical Lobotomies (HL)--These
relate to the presentation
of certain important issues,
events, and ideas without the
minimum depth, impartiality,
or simple truthfulness required
for correct and full understanding.
Some well-known examples include
the political paternity of
fascism (an embarrassing "secret" to
be sure); the actual causes
and origins of the Cold War
and ongoing arms race ("Soviet
aggression ... .. desire for
world domination," and
similar explanations); causes
for upheaval and revolution in
the Third World, origins of the
Korean and Vietnam wars, and
many others.
4.
Disinformation (Di)--This
category chiefly involves the
sympathetic and uncritical dissemination
of outright lies and fabrications
furnished or planted in the media
system by pro-capitalist sources,
especially governmental and
paramilitary agencies such
as the CIA, the Pentagon, right-wing
think tanks, and international
and domestic propaganda "assets.''
(Consider here the contributions
of such notorious sources of "information" as
Robert Moss, Arnaud de Borchgrave,
Claire Sterling, the Buckley
clan, and others, and their
impressive access to media and
governmental ears.)
5.
Downplays (Dn)--This
simply implies that, as a rule,
important issues, ideas, and
news inimical to capitalist
interests are accorded hostile
and totally inadequate coverage.
Through downplay an embarrassing
news story is rendered harmless,
as it barely scratches the consciousness
of an already overloaded public.
Downplay is a technique chiefly
favored by the most prestigious
media, i.e., The New York Times,
Washington Post, CBS, etc., who
use it as a face-saving device
("That
item? Oh, yeah, we covered it.").
Downplays can be qualitative,
quantitative, or both. A qualitative
downplay usually requires resource
to inadequate topical depth and
blacked out contexts. Quantitative
downplays (far more common) operate
on the basis of inadequate frequency
and/or sheer scarcity of physical
coverage. (One or two inches
on page A21 of the Times, or
no more than a flash in the pan
in the nightly TV news show.)
A case of consistent downplay,
bordering on suppression, involves
the massacre of East Timorese
patriots by Indonesia, a Pentagon
client. Downplays can also be
classified as "friendly" (when
America's sins and errors are
covered up), or "hostile," when
an enemy's good points and accomplishments
receive short shrift. (Cf. "saturation
coverage," below.)
6.
Suppressions (S)--A
suppression involves the total
blackout of a particular item.
Washington's active participation
in the training of wholesale
(state) terrorists and torturers,
for the ostensible purpose of
promoting a social climate conducive
to "economic
development," is a fine
example of suppression. (The
programs are carried out routinely
by CIA or CIA-connected personnel,
under the auspices of innocuous
sounding fronts such as the notorious
Office of Public Safety that
trained police personnel.) The actual objectives of U.S. foreign
policy are also the target of
systematic suppression.
7.
Ahistoricalism (Ah)--This
trait denotes the inability
and/or unwillingness of the
capitalist dominated media
to see certain sensitive events,
social systems or institutions
as dynamic, perennially changing
entities. In capitalist eyes
certain systems (especially capitalism
itself) are almost eternal givens.
They cannot really evolve, change,
mature or die as all other
systems have
done before. This
tends to underwrite a static
vision of history, which of course
favors things as they are. Thus,
after capitalism, the media can
only accept more and better capitalism. Anything
else is heresy, madness or worse.
This way of seeing things has
powerful repercussions. For example,
most defenders of capitalism
refuse to admit that competition
in the marketplace is a self-liquidating
concept, as by operating freely
it invariably ends up devouring
itself. (As capitalism ages the
many small and competitive firms
that exist in its youth tend
to be replaced by far fewer and
more powerful firms; in other
words the system moves in the
irreversible direction of monopoly
and megacorporations. Any law
or laws contradicting this essential
tendency are bound to fail, since--barring
strong government intervention--the
tendency will time and again
reassert itself and recreate
the problem.)
Another common instance of ahistoricalism
typical of the American
media is their way of covering
or explaining revolutionary turmoil
and processes. The "violence" of
the left, guerrillas, and other
irregulars, is almost always
depicted in invidious terms,
sensationalized and decried,
but no real useful information
is given about the longstanding
unbearable social conditionsthat preceded the explosion
and which gave rise to the desperate
armed struggle. The inevitable
implication is, therefore, that
the subversives are perversely
and recklessly upsetting a "nice," "moderate," and
basically viable society where
recourse to armed resistance
is not necessary, and where one
only needs to strengthen the
center.
8.
Superficiality (Sp)--Superficial
treatment is traditionally
applied to the description
of problems afflicting American
society or similarly organized
societies. Since real news
analysis (i.e., in-depth, no-holds-barred
investigation) is shunned or
suspect as not sufficiently "objective
and professional," etc.,
only the symptoms of
problems are permitted circulation.
Most of the actual causes are
thus conveniently kept out of
sight. Thus while the public
raves and rants against "crime" (especially
the violent, unorganized variety), "poverty," and
other social ills, their causal
connection to the very matrix
of income and employment opportunities
under the present system is rarely
examined. The Brazilian bishops
have said that to study capitalism
seriously is to indict it. The
American media intuitively know
this, and reflect it in their
evasive routines.
9.
Selective Sourcing (Sel)--The
American media display pronounced
preferences with regard to "sourcing," a
matter that then easily influences
their reporting. In most situations
the favored sectors will include
the "establishment" side
of an issue--from government
officials to wealthy contacts.
In the U.S. itself, the most-favored
sectors include the top layers
of the elected and career governments
(President, closest aides, top
congresspeople and bureaucrats),
prominent corporate leaders and
their spokespeople, and a vast
stable of paracapitalist
individuals and institutions
clearly involved in the elegant
manufacture and dissemination
of supportive propaganda (Irving
Kristol, David Horowitz, and
Norman Podhoretz come to mind
in the first category; Freedom
House, the Heritage Foundation
and The American Enterprise Institute
are good examples of the latter).
All these capitalist propaganda "assets" are
aided and supported by a huge
network of lesser known figures
and institutions, and lavishly
financed by some of the most
rabidly rightwing corporations
and plutocrats in the U.S. Their
most typical products involve
the blueprinting of cryptofascist
plans and policies, and the weaving
of "new" social theories and
"facts" that aid in the legitimating
of injustice, exploitation, and
existing vast disparities in wealth
and power. The media, almost
uniformly, distribute their wares
uncritically, and, we should add,
much too often servilely.
A
second class of favored sources
comprises what we might call
the "witnesses to history
crowd." Here the media lean
toward the utilization of a veritable
chorus of disgruntled voices.
Anyone with a complaint about
socialism is almost automatically
qualified. This category has
often included anti-Castro Cubans
and Vietnamese refugees,
who have eloquently "assessed"
revolutionary progress in their
homelands; the
testimony of harried businessmen
in countries undergoing socialist
transformations (Nicaragua's
Robelo comes to mind as a recent
example); and the mournful voices
of dissent so often heard from
behind the Iron Curtain. It scarcely
needs mentioning that while all
these foreign witnesses have more than
their ample say in the US media--and
this is not to deny that some complaints
are perfectly valid--real American
critics and dissenters rarely
get a chance to present their
views to their compatriots. A
similar informational limbo is
reserved for foreign supporters
of regimes disapproved of. Few
issues escape this treatment.
10.
Fragmentation (Fr)--Also
called focalization, this mode
of mass communication relies
on "the machine-gun-like
recitation of numerous unrelated
items," many of which possess
clearly dissonant emotional and
importance values, with advertising
compounding the problem. As Herbert
Schiller notes elsewhere in this
issue, "the
total indifference with which
advertising treats any political
or social event, insisting on
intruding no matter what else
is being presented, reduces all
social phenomena to bizarre and
meaningless happenings." The
net effect of all this is a mounting
inability on the part of the
public to grasp issues in their
totality, a fact that inhibits
understanding and blocks emotional
buildups which might otherwise
result in public mobilizations.
Finally, fragmentation is often
accompanied by immediacy:
the reporting or discussion of
events as soon after their occurrence
as possible. This speed of delivery,
which only further aggravates
the evanescent structure
of all information, and which
contributes directly to mental
overloads, emotional numbness,
and the illusion of being well
informed, can be seen as a direct
consequence of converting news
into commodities subject to competitive
merchandising ("scoopism"). Fragmentation
is the principal, if not exclusive,
mode of mass communication utilized
by the US television system.
11.
Saturation (Sat)--11. Saturation (Sat)--A propaganda technique usually reserved for the whipping up of national consensus through opinion waves, or public hysteria, or for the episodic rekindling of standing mythologies used in the ideological war with socialism, Saturation is normally--but not exclusively--initiated by the American government, particularly the presidential office, which through a variety of postures, channels, and pronouncements signals to the media that a chosen subject is suitable for informational carpetbombing. In the recent past we have been witness to (friendly) saturation coverage accorded the return of the Vietnam POWs (which served to rebuild patriotic fervor and further legitimate the war); the return of the Iran hostages (which largely pushed aside and mystified the miserable historical record we had chalked up in that country); the plight of Lech Walesa and Solidarity in Poland, a topic which even merited a hypocritical congressionally approved propaganda extravaganza, "Let Poland Be Poland," (panned by the international publics), and the cynical selling of the electoral farce in El Salvador--no doubt a necessary prelude to further U.S. involvement in that nation under the pretext of "providing help to people who so desperately want democracy and freedom." Other cases in the last few years include the passing away of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul, which were treated to levels of truly hysterical coverage verging on instant canonization. And just a few days ago (Jan 2007) we saw the outrageous amount of space and insufferable redundancy devoted by television and print media to the death of Gerald Ford.
Cases of hostile
saturation also abound. The Japanese,
perhaps more so than the Germans,
were thoroughly dehumanized during
World War I1, while the Chinese--not
to mention the North Vietnamese
and NLF in South Vietnam during
the Indochina wars--were the
subject of semiobsessional negative
treatment in the years immediately
after the end of World War II
and the Korean War. (The Chinese
image changed rather abruptly
when Nixon began to woo China
as a possible counterweight to
the Soviets. This sudden about-face
in the media's tone toward the "Yellow
Peril," "the Red Chinese
threat," and similar scarewords,
demonstrated, once again, the intimate ideological
connection binding the American
media and the nation's power
structure.)
All
of the above techniques appear
singly or severally in various
topical areas, according to need,
and some, such as ahistoricalism
and fragmentation appear in most
items of news and entertainment.
They are simply inherent in the
capitalist way of thinking and
therefore have been totally incorporated
in the corporate media grammar.
In future issues
we plan to introduce our readers
to similar "dissections" of
Soviet, Cuban and Chinese media,
with comparative evaluations
relating to esthetic aspects
and social and historical effects.
Also, we shall try to present
overviews of Arab and Israeli
mass communications systems;
and surveys of Third World, Japanese,
and Western European models.*
The Deliberate Waste of A Critical Resource
The self-limiting vices enumerated above and which are for the most part inherent in the presentation of topics by the corporate media create an enormous opportunity for honest journalists and social communicators, people who prefer not to take money under false pretenses. Just as Mother Jones' editor Adam Hochschild suggested, there is an "almost total absence of competition in terms of quality investigative journalism." [See AT LONG LAST CYRANO].
The topics that the professional media should be covering truthfully and in earnest, so as to permit the American public to arrive at fair and just policy decisions when they are really needed, not after many decades of generalized suffering and monstrous crimes, should be the basic curriculum of all self-respecting journalism schools, not to mention any responsible news outlet. They can be summed up in the following dozen tenets:
PRIORITY TOPICS FOR A NEW SERIOUS JOURNALISM
Who we are, what our intentions are toward the rest of the world;
Who "they" are, and how they really live;
Where the real threats to our national security actually come from and what options we have;
The nature of the economic system we live under;
Who really governs us and with what results;
How other countries are governed (truthfully, for a change) and with what results;
The actual nature and origins of "hostile" systems around the world (especially socialism) and their performance;
Our true role in the world, notably among poorer nations, and the methods we use to advance our elite's objectives, objectives automatically wrapped in the flag;
The actual causes of war and turmoil in the world today, and of revolutions and counter-revolutions;
The appropriate responses to aggression and exploitation ... the list need not stop here, but this is a good start.
The truth about job creation and job destruction, and the role of technology in employment and environmental areas;
Wider discussion and coverage of environmental and moral topics —including our treatment of animals—which are currently neglected, ignored, or manipulated by the system.
The adoption of such an admittedly revolutionary curriculum naturally is not likely to happen before the system itself is substantively revised. The gaps in coverage, the distortions, are not so much accidental as integral to the health and prosperity of the system. They can't be corrected without endangering its very survival. In sum, when the American people finally start getting the right answers to these questions, the system, as we know it, will begin to collapse. No wonder, then, that disinformation is as necessary to the system as truth is to us. So, what next? There are no shortcuts to the problem at hand. For this phase of the struggle, truthful communications must bloom. Mass education about the issues of the day must become everyone's job, everyone's passion. So start compiling your own catalog of media biases, and the answers we need to hear. Make participation in alternative media resources a top priority: feed them news items, feed them cash, if you can, and give them some of your time. But make sure before you start that you're not seeing the world upside down.
