                 D.3 How does wealth influence the mass media?

   In a word, massively. This, in turn, influences the way people see the
   world and, as a result, the media is a key means by which the general
   population come to accept, and support, "the arrangements of the
   social, economic, and political order." The media, in other words "are
   vigilant guardians protecting privilege from the threat of public
   understanding and participation." This process ensures that state
   violence is not necessary to maintain the system as "more subtle means
   are required: the manufacture of consent, [and] deceiving the masses
   with 'necessary illusions." [Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions, pp.
   13-4 and p. 19] The media, in other words, are a key means of ensuring
   that the dominant ideas within society are those of the dominant class.

   Noam Chomsky has helped develop a detailed and sophisticated analyse of
   how the wealthy and powerful use the media to propagandise in their own
   interests behind a mask of objective news reporting. Along with Edward
   Herman, he has developed the "Propaganda Model" of the media works.
   Herman and Chomsky expound this analysis in their book Manufacturing
   Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, whose main theses we
   will summarise in this section (unless otherwise indicated all quotes
   are from this work). We do not suggest that we can present anything
   other than a summary here and, as such, we urge readers to consult
   Manufacturing Consent itself for a full description and extensive
   supporting evidence. We would also recommend Chomsky's Necessary
   Illusions for a further discussion of this model of the media.

   Chomsky and Herman's "propaganda model" of the media postulates a set
   of five "filters" that act to screen the news and other material
   disseminated by the media. These "filters" result in a media that
   reflects elite viewpoints and interests and mobilises "support for the
   special interests that dominate the state and private activity."
   [Manufacturing Consent, p. xi] These "filters" are: (1) the size,
   concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the
   dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source
   of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information
   provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by
   these primary sources and agents of power; (4) "flak" (negative
   responses to a media report) as a means of disciplining the media; and
   (5) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism. It is
   these filters which ensure that genuine objectivity is usually lacking
   in the media (needless to say, some media, such as Fox news and the
   right-wing newspapers like the UK's Sun, Telegraph and Daily Mail, do
   not even try to present an objective perspective).

   "The raw material of news must pass through successive filters leaving
   only the cleansed residue fit to print," Chomsky and Herman maintain.
   The filters "fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the
   definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain
   the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns." [p.
   2] We will briefly consider the nature of these five filters below
   before refuting two common objections to the model. As with Chomsky and
   Herman, examples are mostly from the US media. For more extensive
   analysis, we would recommend two organisations which study and critique
   the performance of the media from a perspective informed by the
   "propaganda model." These are the American Fairness & Accuracy In
   Reporting (FAIR) and the UK based MediaLens (neither, it should be
   pointed out, are anarchist organisations).

   Before discussing the "propaganda model", we will present a few
   examples by FAIR to show how the media reflects the interests of the
   ruling class. War usually provides the most obvious evidence for the
   biases in the media. For example, Steve Rendall and Tara Broughel
   analysed the US news media during the first stage of the 2003 invasion
   of Iraq and found that official voices dominated it "while opponents of
   the war have been notably underrepresented," Nearly two-thirds of all
   sources were pro-war, rising to 71% of US guests. Anti-war voices were
   a mere 10% of all sources, but just 6% of non-Iraqi sources and 3% of
   US sources. "Thus viewers were more than six times as likely to see a
   pro-war source as one who was anti-war; with U.S. guests alone, the
   ratio increases to 25 to 1." Unsurprisingly, official voices,
   "including current and former government employees, whether civilian or
   military, dominated network newscasts" (63% of overall sources). Some
   analysts did criticise certain aspects of the military planning, but
   such "the rare criticisms were clearly motivated by a desire to see
   U.S. military efforts succeed." While dissent was quite visible in
   America, "the networks largely ignored anti-war opinion." FAIR found
   that just 3% of US sources represented or expressed opposition to the
   war in spite of the fact more than one in four Americans opposed it. In
   summary, "none of the networks offered anything resembling
   proportionate coverage of anti-war voices". ["Amplifying Officials,
   Squelching Dissent", Extra! May/June 2003]

   This perspective is common during war time, with the media's rule of
   thumb being, essentially, that to support the war is to be objective,
   while to be anti-war is to carry a bias. The media repeats the
   sanitised language of the state, relying on official sources to inform
   the public. Truth-seeking independence was far from the media agenda
   and so they made it easier for governments to do what they always do,
   that is lie. Rather than challenge the agenda of the state, the media
   simply foisted them onto the general population. Genuine criticism only
   starts to appear when the costs of a conflict become so high that
   elements of the ruling class start to question tactics and strategy.
   Until that happens, any criticism is minor (and within a generally
   pro-war perspective) and the media acts essentially as the fourth
   branch of the government rather than a Fourth Estate. The Iraq war, it
   should be noted, was an excellent example of this process at work.
   Initially, the media simply amplified elite needs, uncritically
   reporting the Bush Administration's pathetic "evidence" of Iraqi WMD
   (which quickly became exposed as the nonsense it was). Only when the
   war became too much of a burden did critical views start being heard
   and then only in a context of being supportive of the goals of the
   operation.

   This analysis applies as much to domestic issues. For example, Janine
   Jackson reported how most of the media fell in step with the Bush
   Administration's attempts in 2006 to trumpet a "booming" U.S. economy
   in the face of public disbelief. As she notes, there were "obvious
   reasons [for] the majority of Americans dissent . . . Most American
   households are not, in fact, seeing their economic fortunes improve.
   GDP is up, but virtually all the growth has gone into corporate profits
   and the incomes of the highest economic brackets. Wages and incomes for
   average workers, adjusted for inflation, are down in recent years; the
   median income for non-elderly households is down 4.8 percent since 2000
   . . .The poverty rate is rising, as is the number of people in debt."
   Yet "rather than confront these realities, and explore the implications
   of the White House's efforts to deny them, most mainstream media
   instead assisted the Bush team's PR by themselves feigning confusion
   over the gap between the official view and the public mood." They did
   so by presenting "the majority of Americans' understanding of their own
   economic situation . . . as somehow disconnected from reality, ascribed
   to 'pessimism,' ignorance or irrationality . . . But why these ordinary
   workers, representing the majority of households, should not be
   considered the arbiters of whether or not 'the economy' is good is
   never explained." Barring a few exceptions, the media did not "reflect
   the concerns of average salaried workers at least as much as those of
   the investor class." Needless to say, which capitalist economists were
   allowed space to discuss their ideas, progressive economists did not.
   ["Good News! The Rich Get Richer: Lack of applause for falling wages is
   media mystery," Extra!, March/April 2006] Given the nature and role of
   the media, this reporting comes as no surprise.

   We stress again, before continuing, that this is a summary of Herman's
   and Chomsky's thesis and we cannot hope to present the wealth of
   evidence and argument available in either Manufacturing Consent or
   Necessary Illusions. We recommend either of these books for more
   information on and evidence to support the "propaganda model" of the
   media. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes in this section of the
   FAQ are from Herman and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent.

D.3.1 How does the structure of the media affect its content?

   Even a century ago, the number of media with any substantial outreach
   was limited by the large size of the necessary investment, and this
   limitation has become increasingly effective over time. As in any well
   developed market, this means that there are very effective natural
   barriers to entry into the media industry. Due to this process of
   concentration, the ownership of the major media has become increasingly
   concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. As Ben Bagdikian's stresses in
   his 1987 book Media Monopoly, the 29 largest media systems account for
   over half of the output of all newspapers, and most of the sales and
   audiences in magazines, broadcasting, books, and movies. The "top tier"
   of these -- somewhere between 10 and 24 systems -- along with the
   government and wire services, "defines the news agenda and supplies
   much of the national and international news to the lower tiers of the
   media, and thus for the general public." [p. 5] Since then, media
   concentration has increased, both nationally and on a global level.
   Bagdikian's 2004 book, The New Media Monopoly, showed that since 1983
   the number of corporations controlling most newspapers, magazines, book
   publishers, movie studios, and electronic media have shrunk from 50 to
   five global-dimension firms, operating with many of the characteristics
   of a cartel -- Time-Warner, Disney, News Corporation, Viacom and
   Germany-based Bertelsmann.

   These "top-tier companies are large, profit-seeking corporations, owned
   and controlled by very wealthy people . . . Many of these companies are
   fully integrated into the financial market" which means that "the
   pressures of stockholders, directors and bankers to focus on the bottom
   line are powerful." [p. 5] These pressures have intensified in recent
   years as media stocks have become market favourites and as deregulation
   has increased profitability and so the threat of take-overs. These
   ensure that these "control groups obviously have a special take on the
   status quo by virtue of their wealth and their strategic position in
   one of the great institutions of society. And they exercise the power
   of this strategic position, if only by establishing the general aims of
   the company and choosing its top management." [p. 8]

   The media giants have also diversified into other fields. For example
   GE, and Westinghouse, both owners of major television networks, are
   huge, diversified multinational companies heavily involved in the
   controversial areas of weapons production and nuclear power. GE and
   Westinghouse depend on the government to subsidise their nuclear power
   and military research and development, and to create a favourable
   climate for their overseas sales and investments. Similar dependence on
   the government affect other media.

   Because they are large corporations with international investment
   interests, the major media tend to have a right-wing political bias. In
   addition, members of the business class own most of the mass media, the
   bulk of which depends for their existence on advertising revenue (which
   in turn comes from private business). Business also provides a
   substantial share of "experts" for news programmes and generates
   massive "flak." Claims that the media are "left-leaning" are sheer
   disinformation manufactured by the "flak" organisations described below
   (in [1]section D.3.4). Thus Herman and Chomsky:

     "the dominant media forms are quite large businesses; they are
     controlled by very wealthy people or by managers who are subject to
     sharp constraints by owners and other market-profit-oriented forces;
     and they are closely interlocked, and have important common
     interests, with other major corporations, banks, and government.
     This is the first powerful filter that effects news choices." [p.
     14]

   Needless to say, reporters and editors will be selected based upon how
   well their work reflects the interests and needs of their employers.
   Thus a radical reporter and a more mainstream one both of the same
   skills and abilities would have very different careers within the
   industry. Unless the radical reporter toned down their copy, they are
   unlikely to see it printed unedited or unchanged. Thus the structure
   within the media firm will tend to penalise radical viewpoints,
   encouraging an acceptance of the status quo in order to further a
   career. This selection process ensures that owners do not need to order
   editors or reporters what to do -- to be successful they will have to
   internalise the values of their employers.

D.3.2 What is the effect of advertising on the mass media?

   The main business of the media is to sell audiences to advertisers.
   Advertisers thus acquire a kind of de facto licensing authority, since
   without their support the media would cease to be economically viable.
   And it is affluent audiences that get advertisers interested. As
   Chomsky and Herman put it, the "idea that the drive for large audiences
   makes the mass media 'democratic' thus suffers from the initial
   weakness that its political analogue is a voting system weighted by
   income!" [p.16]

   As regards TV, in addition to "discrimination against unfriendly media
   institutions, advertisers also choose selectively among programs on the
   basis of their own principles. With rare exceptions these are
   culturally and politically conservative. Large corporate advertisers on
   television will rarely sponsor programs that engage in serious
   criticisms of corporate activities." Accordingly, large corporate
   advertisers almost never sponsor programs that contain serious
   criticisms of corporate activities, such as negative ecological
   impacts, the workings of the military-industrial complex, or corporate
   support of and benefits from Third World dictatorships. This means that
   TV companies "learn over time that such programs will not sell and
   would have to be carried at a financial sacrifice, and that, in
   addition, they may offend powerful advertisers." More generally,
   advertisers will want "to avoid programs with serious complexities and
   disturbing controversies that interfere with the 'buying mood.'" [p.
   17]

   Political discrimination is therefore structured into advertising
   allocations by wealthy companies with an emphasis on people with money
   to buy. In addition, "many companies will always refuse to do business
   with ideological enemies and those whom they perceive as damaging their
   interests." Thus overt discrimination adds to the force of the "voting
   system weighted by income." This has had the effect of placing working
   class and radical papers at a serious disadvantage. Without access to
   advertising revenue, even the most popular paper will fold or price
   itself out of the market. Chomsky and Herman cite the British
   pro-labour and pro-union Daily Herald as an example of this process. At
   its peak, the Daily Herald had almost double the readership of The
   Times, the Financial Times and The Guardian combined, yet even with
   8.1% of the national circulation it got 3.5% of net advertising revenue
   and so could not survive on the "free market." As Herman and Chomsky
   note, a "mass movement without any major media support, and subject to
   a great deal of active press hostility, suffers a serious disability,
   and struggles against grave odds." With the folding of the Daily
   Herald, the labour movement lost its voice in the mainstream media.
   [pp. 17-8 and pp. 15-16]

   Thus advertising is an effective filter for news choice (and, indeed,
   survival in the market).

D.3.3 Why do the media rely on government and business "experts" for
information?

   As Herman and Chomsky stress, basic economics explains why the mass
   media "are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of
   information" as well as "reciprocity of interest." The media need "a
   steady, reliable flow of raw material of news. They have daily news
   demands and imperative news schedules that they must meet." They cannot
   afford to have reporters and cameras at all locations and so economics
   "dictates that they concentrate their resources where significant news
   often occurs." [p. 18] This means that bottom-line considerations
   dictate that the media concentrate their resources where news, rumours
   and leaks are plentiful, and where regular press conferences are held.
   The White House, Pentagon, and the State Department, in Washington,
   D.C., are centres of such activity on a national scale, while city hall
   and police departments are their local equivalents. In addition, trade
   groups, businesses and corporations also provide regular stories that
   are deemed as newsworthy and from credible sources.

   In other words, government and corporate sources have the great merit
   of being recognisable and credible by their status and prestige;
   moreover, they have the most money available to produce a flow of news
   that the media can use. For example, the Pentagon has a
   public-information service employing many thousands of people, spending
   hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and far outspending not
   only the public-information resources of any dissenting individual or
   group but the aggregate of such groups. Only the corporate sector has
   the resources to produce public information and propaganda on the scale
   of the Pentagon and other government bodies. The Chamber of Commerce, a
   business collective, had a 1983 budget for research, communications,
   and political activities of $65 million. Besides the US Chamber of
   Commerce, there are thousands of state and local chambers of commerce
   and trade associations also engaged in public relations and lobbying
   activities. As we noted in [2]section D.2, the corporate funding of PR
   is massive. Thus "business corporations and trade groups are also
   regular purveyors of stories deemed newsworthy. These bureaucracies
   turn out a large volume of material that meets the demands of news
   organisations for reliable, scheduled flows." [p. 19]

   To maintain their pre-eminent position as sources, government and
   business-news agencies expend much effort to make things easy for news
   organisations. They provide the media organisations with facilities in
   which to gather, give journalists advance copies of speeches and
   upcoming reports; schedule press conferences at hours convenient for
   those needing to meet news deadlines; write press releases in language
   that can be used with little editing; and carefully organise press
   conferences and photo-opportunity sessions. This means that, in effect,
   "the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidise the mass media, and
   gain special access by their contribution to reducing the media's costs
   of acquiring the raw materials of, and producing, news." [p. 22]

   This economic dependency also allows corporations and the state to
   influence the media. The most obvious way is by using their "personal
   relationships, threats, and rewards to further influence and coerce the
   media. The media may feel obligated to carry extremely dubious stories
   and mute criticism in order not to offend sources and disturb a close
   relationship. It is very difficult to call authorities on whom one
   depends for daily news liars, even if they tell whoppers." Critical
   sources may be avoided not only due to the higher costs in finding them
   and establishing their credibility, but because the established
   "primary sources may be offended and may even threaten the media with
   using them." [p. 22] As well as refusing to co-operate on shows or
   reports which include critics, corporations and governments may
   threaten the media with loss of access if they ask too many critical
   questions or delve into inappropriate areas.

   In addition, "more important, powerful sources regularly take advantage
   of media routines and dependency to 'manage' the media, to manipulate
   them into following a special agenda and framework . . . Part of this
   management process consists of inundating the media with stories, which
   serve sometimes to foist a particular line and frame on the media . . .
   and at other times to chase unwanted stories off the front page or out
   of the media altogether." [p. 23]

   The dominance of official sources would, of course, be weakened by the
   existence of highly respectable unofficial sources that gave dissident
   views with great authority. To alleviate this problem, the power elite
   uses the strategy of "co-opting the experts" -- that is, putting them
   on the payroll as consultants, funding their research, and organising
   think tanks that will hire them directly and help disseminate the
   messages deemed essential to elite interests. "Experts" on TV panel
   discussions and news programs are often drawn from such organisations,
   whose funding comes primarily from the corporate sector and wealthy
   families -- a fact that is, of course, never mentioned on the programs
   where they appear. This allows business, for example, to sell its
   interests as objective and academic while, in fact, they provide a thin
   veneer to mask partisan work which draws the proper conclusions desired
   by their pay masters.

   This process of creating a mass of experts readily available to the
   media "has been carried out on a deliberate and a massive scale." These
   ensure that "the corporate viewpoint" is effectively spread as the
   experts work is "funded and their outputs . . . disseminated to the
   media by a sophisticated propaganda effort. The corporate funding and
   clear ideological purpose in the overall effort had no discernible
   effect on the credibility of the intellectuals so mobilised; on the
   contrary, the funding and pushing of their ideas catapulted them into
   the press." [p. 23 and p. 24]

D.3.4 How is "flak" used as a means of disciplining the media?

   "Flak" is a term used by Herman and Chomsky to refer "to negative
   responses to a media statement or program." Such responses may be
   expressed as phone calls, letters, telegrams, e-mail messages,
   petitions, lawsuits, speeches, bills before Congress, or "other modes
   of complaint, threat, or punishment." Flak may be generated centrally,
   by organisations, or it may come from the independent actions of
   individuals (sometimes encouraged to act by media hacks such as
   right-wing talk show hosts or newspapers). "If flak is produced on a
   large-scale, or by individuals or groups with substantial resources, it
   can be both uncomfortable and costly to the media." [p. 26]

   This is for many reasons. Positions need to be defended within and
   outwith an organisation, sometimes in front of legislatures and
   (perhaps) in the courts. Advertisers are very concerned to avoid
   offending constituencies who might produce flak, and their demands for
   inoffensive programming exerts pressure on the media to avoid certain
   kinds of facts, positions, or programs that are likely to call forth
   flak. This can have a strong deterrence factor, with media
   organisations avoiding certain subjects and sources simply to avoid
   having to deal with the inevitable flak they will receive from the
   usual sources. The ability to produce flak "is related to power," as it
   is expensive to generate on scale which is actually effective. [p. 26]
   Unsurprisingly, this means that the most effective flak comes from
   business and government who have the funds to produce it on a large
   scale.

   The government itself is "a major producer of flak, regularly
   assailing, threatening, and 'correcting' the media, trying to contain
   any deviations from the established line in foreign or domestic
   policy." However, the right-wing plays a major role in deliberately
   creating flak. For example, during the 1970s and 1980s, the corporate
   community sponsored the creation of such institutions as the American
   Legal Foundation, the Capital Legal Foundation, the Media Institute,
   the Center for Media and Public Affairs, and Accuracy in Media (AIM),
   which may be regarded as organisations designed for the specific
   purpose of producing flak. Freedom House is an older US organisation
   which had a broader design but whose flak-producing activities became a
   model for the more recent organisations. The Media Institute, for
   instance, was set up in 1972 and is funded by wealthy corporate
   patrons, sponsoring media monitoring projects, conferences, and studies
   of the media. The main focus of its studies and conferences has been
   the alleged failure of the media to portray business accurately and to
   give adequate weight to the business point of view, but it also
   sponsors works which "expose" alleged left-wing bias in the mass media.
   [p. 28 and pp. 27-8]

   And, it should be noted, while the flak machines "steadily attack the
   media, the media treats them well. They receive respectful attention,
   and their propagandistic role and links to a large corporate program
   are rarely mentioned or analysed." [p. 28] Indeed, such attacks "are
   often not unwelcome, first because response is simple or superfluous;
   and second, because debate over this issue helps entrench the belief
   that the media are . . . independent and objective, with high standards
   of professional integrity and openness to all reasonable views" which
   is "quite acceptable to established power and privilege -- even to the
   media elites themselves, who are not averse to the charge that they may
   have gone to far in pursuing their cantankerous and obstreperous ways
   in defiance of orthodoxy and power." Ultimately, such flak "can only be
   understood as a demand that the media should not even reflect the range
   of debate over tactical questions among the dominant elites, but should
   serve only those segments that happen to manage the state at a
   particular moment, and should do so with proper enthusiasm and optimism
   about the causes -- noble by definition -- in which state power is
   engaged." [Chomsky, Necessary Illusions, p. 13 and p. 11]

D.3.5 Why is "anticommunism" used as control mechanism?

   The final filter which Herman and Chomsky discuss is the ideology of
   anticommunism. "Communism" is of course regarded as the ultimate evil
   by the corporate rich, since the ideas of collective ownership of
   productive assets "threatens the very root of their class position and
   superior status." As the concept is "fuzzy," it can be widely applied
   and "can be used against anybody advocating policies that threaten
   property interests." [p. 29] Hence the attacks on third-world
   nationalists as "socialists" and the steady expansion of "communism" to
   apply to any form of socialism, social democracy, reformism, trade
   unionism or even "liberalism" (i.e. any movement which aims to give
   workers more bargaining power or allow ordinary citizens more voice in
   public policy decisions).

   Hence the ideology of anticommunism has been very useful, because it
   can be used to discredit anybody advocating policies regarded as
   harmful to corporate interests. It also helps to divide the Left and
   labour movements, justifies support for pro-US fascist regimes abroad
   as "lesser evils" than communism, and discourages liberals from
   opposing such regimes for fear of being branded as heretics from the
   national religion. This process has been aided immensely by the obvious
   fact that the "communist" regimes (i.e. Stalinist dictatorships) have
   been so terrible.

   Since the collapse of the USSR and related states in 1989, the utility
   of anticommunism has lost some of its power. Of course, there are still
   a few official communist enemy states, like North Korea, Cuba, and
   China, but these are not quite the threat the USSR was. North Korea and
   Cuba are too impoverished to threaten the world's only super-power
   (that so many Americans think that Cuba was ever a threat says a lot
   about the power of propaganda). China is problematic, as Western
   corporations now have access to, and can exploit, its resources,
   markets and cheap labour. As such, criticism of China will be mooted,
   unless it starts to hinder US corporations or become too much of an
   economic rival.

   So we can still expect, to some degree, abuses or human rights
   violations in these countries are systematically played up by the media
   while similar abuses in client states are downplayed or ignored.
   Chomsky and Herman refer to the victims of abuses in enemy states as
   worthy victims, while victims who suffer at the hands of US clients or
   friends are unworthy victims. Stories about worthy victims are often
   made the subject of sustained propaganda campaigns, to score political
   points against enemies. For example:

     "If the government of corporate community and the media feel that a
     story is useful as well as dramatic, they focus on it intensively
     and use it to enlighten the public. This was true, for example, of
     the shooting down by the Soviets of the Korean airliner KAL 007 in
     early September 1983, which permitted an extended campaign of
     denigration of an official enemy and greatly advanced Reagan
     administration arms plans."

     "In sharp contrast, the shooting down by Israel of a Libyan civilian
     airliner in February 1973 led to no outcry in the West, no
     denunciations for 'cold-blooded murder,' and no boycott. This
     difference in treatment was explained by the New York Times
     precisely on the grounds of utility: 'No useful purpose is served by
     an acrimonious debate over the assignment of blame for the downing
     of a Libyan airliner in the Sinai peninsula last week.' There was a
     very 'useful purpose' served by focusing on the Soviet act, and a
     massive propaganda campaign ensued."
     [p. 32]

   As noted, since the end of the Cold War, anti-communism has not been
   used as extensively as it once was to mobilise support for elite
   crusades. Other enemies have to be found and so the "Drug War" or
   "anti-terrorism" now often provide the public with "official enemies"
   to hate and fear. Thus the Drug War was the excuse for the Bush
   administration's invasion of Panama, and "fighting narco-terrorists"
   has more recently been the official reason for shipping military
   hardware and surveillance equipment to Mexico (where it's actually
   being used against the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas, whose uprising is
   threatening to destabilise the country and endanger US investments).
   After 9/11, terrorism became the key means of forcing support for
   policies. The mantra "you are either with us or with the terrorists"
   was used to bolster support and reduce criticism for both imperial
   adventures as well as a whole range of regressive domestic policies.

   Whether any of these new enemies will prove to be as useful as
   anticommunism remains to be seen. It is likely, particularly given how
   "communism" has become so vague as to include liberal and social
   democratic ideas, that it will remain the bogey man of choice --
   particularly as many within the population both at home and abroad
   continue to support left-wing ideas and organisations. Given the track
   record of neo-liberalism across the globe, being able to tar its
   opponents as "communists" will remain a useful tool.

D.3.6 Isn't the "propaganda model" a conspiracy theory?

   No, far from it. Chomsky and Herman explicitly address this charge in
   Manufacturing Consent and explain why it is a false one:

     "Institutional critiques such as we present in this book are
     commonly dismissed by establishment commentators as 'conspiracy
     theories,' but this is merely an evasion. We do not use any kind of
     'conspiracy' hypothesis to explain mass-media performance. In fact,
     our treatment is much closer to a 'free market' analysis, with the
     results largely an outcome of the workings of market forces." [p.
     xii]

   They go on to suggest what some of these "market forces" are. One of
   the most important is the weeding-out process that determines who gets
   the journalistic jobs in the major media: "Most biased choices in the
   media arise from the preselection of right-thinking people,
   internalised preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the
   constraints of ownership, organisation, market, and political power."
   This is the key, as the model "helps us to understand how media
   personnel adapt, and are adapted, to systemic demands. Given the
   imperatives of corporate organisation and the workings of the various
   filters, conformity to the needs and interests of privileged sectors is
   essential to success." This means that those who do not display the
   requisite values and perspectives will be regarded as irresponsible
   and/or ideological and, consequently, will not succeed (barring a few
   exceptions). In other words, those who "adapt, perhaps quite honestly,
   will then be able to assert, accurately, that they perceive no
   pressures to conform. The media are indeed free . . . for those who
   have internalised the required values and perspectives." [p. xii and p.
   304]

   In other words, important media employees learn to internalise the
   values of their bosses: "Censorship is largely self-censorship, by
   reporters and commentators who adjust to the realities of source and
   media organisational requirements, and by people at higher levels
   within media organisations who are chosen to implement, and have
   usually internalised, the constraints imposed by proprietary and other
   market and governmental centres of power." But, it may be asked, isn't
   it still a conspiracy theory to suggest that media leaders all have
   similar values? Not at all. Such leaders "do similar things because
   they see the world through the same lenses, are subject to similar
   constraints and incentives, and thus feature stories or maintain
   silence together in tacit collective action and leader-follower
   behaviour." [p. xii]

   The fact that media leaders share the same fundamental values does not
   mean, however, that the media are a solid monolith on all issues. The
   powerful often disagree on the tactics needed "to attain generally
   shared aims, [and this gets] reflected in media debate. But views that
   challenge fundamental premises or suggest that the observed modes of
   exercise of state power are based on systemic factors will be excluded
   from the mass media even when elite controversy over tactics rages
   fiercely." [p. xii] This means that viewpoints which question the
   legitimacy of elite aims or suggest that state power is being exercised
   in elite interests rather than the "national" interest will be excluded
   from the mass media. As such, we would expect the media to encourage
   debate within accepted bounds simply because the ruling class is not
   monolithic and while they agree on keeping the system going, they
   disagree on the best way to do so.

   Therefore the "propaganda model" has as little in common with a
   "conspiracy theory" as saying that the management of General Motors
   acts to maintain and increase its profits. As Chomsky notes, "[t]o
   confront power is costly and difficult; high standards of evidence and
   argument are imposed, and critical analysis is naturally not welcomed
   by those who are in a position to react vigorously and to determine the
   array of rewards and punishments. Conformity to a 'patriotic agenda,'
   in contrast, imposes no such costs." This means that "conformity is the
   easy way, and the path to privilege and prestige . . . It is a natural
   expectation, on uncontroversial assumptions, that the major media and
   other ideological institutions will generally reflect the perspectives
   and interests of established power." [Necessary Illusions, pp. 8-9 and
   p. 10]

D.3.7 Isn't the model contradicted by the media reporting government and
business failures?

   As noted above, the claim that the media are "adversarial" or (more
   implausibly) that they have a "left-wing bias" is due to right-wing PR
   organisations. This means that some "inconvenient facts" are
   occasionally allowed to pass through the filters in order to give the
   appearance of "objectivity" -- precisely so the media can deny charges
   of engaging in propaganda. As Chomsky and Herman put it: "the
   'naturalness' of these processes, with inconvenient facts allowed
   sparingly and within the proper framework of assumptions, and
   fundamental dissent virtually excluded from the mass media (but
   permitted in a marginalised press), makes for a propaganda system that
   is far more credible and effective in putting over a patriotic agenda
   than one with official censorship." [p. xiv]

   To support their case against the "adversarial" nature of the media,
   Herman and Chomsky look into the claims of such right-wing media PR
   machines as Freedom House. However, it is soon discovered that "the
   very examples offered in praise of the media for their independence, or
   criticism of their excessive zeal, illustrate exactly the opposite."
   Such flak, while being worthless as serious analysis, does help to
   reinforce the myth of an "adversarial media" and so is taken seriously
   by the media. By saying that both right and left attack them, the media
   presents themselves as neutral, balanced and objective -- a position
   which is valid only if both criticisms are valid and of equal worth.
   This is not the case, as Herman and Chomsky prove, both in terms of
   evidence and underlying aims and principles. Ultimately, the attacks by
   the right on the media are based on the concern "to protect state
   authority from an intrusive public" and so "condemn the media for lack
   of sufficient enthusiasm in supporting official crusades." In other
   words, that the "existing level of subordination to state authority is
   often deemed unsatisfactory." [p. xiv and p. 301] The right-wing notion
   that the media are "liberal" or "left-wing" says far more about the
   authoritarian vision and aims of the right than the reality of the
   media.

   Therefore the "adversarial" nature of the media is a myth, but this is
   not to imply that the media does not present critical analysis. Herman
   and Chomsky in fact argue that the "mass media are not a solid monolith
   on all issues." and do not deny that it does present facts (which they
   do sometimes themselves cite). This "affords the opportunity for a
   classic non sequitur, in which the citations of facts from the
   mainstream press by a critic of the press is offered as a triumphant
   'proof' that the criticism is self-refuting, and that media coverage of
   disputed issues is indeed adequate." But, as they argue, "[t]hat the
   media provide some facts about an issue . . . proves absolutely nothing
   about the adequacy or accuracy of that coverage. The mass media do, in
   fact, literally suppress a great deal . . . But even more important in
   this context is the question given to a fact - its placement, tone, and
   repetitions, the framework within which it is presented, and the
   related facts that accompany it and give it meaning (or provide
   understanding) . . . there is no merit to the pretence that because
   certain facts may be found by a diligent and sceptical researcher, the
   absence of radical bias and de facto suppression is thereby
   demonstrated." [p. xii and pp xiv-xv]

   As they stress, the media in a democratic system is different from one
   in a dictatorship and so they "do not function in the manner of the
   propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit --
   indeed, encourage -- spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long
   as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and
   principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as
   to be internalised largely without awareness." Within this context,
   "facts that tend to undermine the government line, if they are properly
   understood, can be found." Indeed, it is "possible that the volume of
   inconvenient facts can expand, as it did during the Vietnam War, in
   response to the growth of a critical constituency (which included elite
   elements from 1968). Even in this exceptional case, however, it was
   very rare for news and commentary to find their way into the mass media
   if they failed to conform to the framework of established dogma
   (postulating benevolent U.S aims, the United States responding to
   aggression and terror, etc.)" While during the war and after,
   "apologists for state policy commonly pointed to the inconvenient
   facts, the periodic 'pessimism' of media pundits, and the debates over
   tactics as showing that the media were 'adversarial' and even 'lost'
   the war," in fact these "allegations are ludicrous." [p. 302 and p.
   xiv] A similar process, it should be noted, occurred during the
   invasion and occupation of Iraq.

   To summarise, as Chomsky notes "what is essential is the power to set
   the agenda." This means that debate "cannot be stilled, and indeed, in
   a properly functioning system of propaganda, it should not be, because
   it has a system-reinforcing character if constrained within proper
   bounds. What is essential is to set the bounds firmly. Controversy may
   rage as long as it adheres to the presuppositions that define the
   consensus of elites, and it should furthermore be encourages within
   these bounds, this helping to establish these doctrines as the very
   condition of thinkable thought while reinforcing the belief that
   freedom reigns." [Necessary Illusions, p. 48]

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secD3.html#secd34
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secD2.html
