In the first chapter we spell out a propaganda model, which
describes
the forces that cause the mass media to playa
.
.
Manufacturing Consent - Chomsky
Daniel Pruzin, "US.
Clears Laos of the Unexploded," Christian Science Monitor, September 9, 1996.
89. Keith Graves, "US. Secrecy Puts Bomb Disposal Team in Danger," Sun- day Telegraph, January 4, 1998.
90. Quoted in Strobe Talbott, "Defanging the Beast," Time, February 6, 1989?
91. See Ben Kiernan, "The Inclusion ofthe Khmer Rouge in the Cambodian Peace Process: Causes and Consequences," in Kiernan, ed. , Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia (New Haven: Yale Council on Southeast Asia Stud- ies, 1993), pp. 199-272.
92. A study sponsored by the Finnish government was titled Kampuchea: Decade of the Genocide (London: Zed, 1984). It included the years 1970-74, when the United Stares was heavily bombing the Cambodian countryside, as part of the decade of genocide. This study was ignored in the US. main- stream media.
93. "Cambodia's Dictator," editorial, washington Post, February 10, 1998.
94. See Edward Herman, Myth of the Liberal Media, chapter 16, "Suharto: The Fall of a Good Genocidist"; Edward Herman and David Peterson, "How the New 'York Times Protects Indonesian Terror in East Timor," Z Mag- azine Ouly-August 1999). On the massive scale of the Suharto killings, see note 30 above.
95. For these and other citations, see Herman, Myth of the Liberal Media, chapter 16.
INTRODUCTIO:-l lv
Ivi I~TRODUCTlO~
96. Seth Mydans, "Indonesia's Rising Prosperity Feeds a Parry for Democ- racy," New York Times, June 21,1996.
97. Herman and Peterson, "How the New lOrk Times Protects Indonesian Terror. "
98. Ibid.
99. James Reston, "A Gleam of Light," New }&rk Times, June 19, 1966.
100? David Sanger, "Indonesia Faceoff: Drawing Blood Without Bombs," New 10rk Times, March 8,1998.
101. Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 28-29.
102. For a major study, see Steven KuH, "Americans on Defense Spending: A Study ofUS. Public Attitl,ldes, " Report ofFindings, Center for Study ofPub- lic Attitudes, January 19, 1996. On public opposition [0 excessive defense spending even during the Reagan era, see Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn (New York: Hill & Wang, 1986), pp. 19"""24.
103. The two major parties offer voters "a clear-cut choice," so there is "no driving logic for a third-party candidacy this year," according to the editors of the New i0rk Times: "Mr. Nader's Misguided Crusade," June 10, 2000.
104. Especially after World War II, the military budget, and therefore the tax- payer, financed a very large fraction of the basic science that underpinned advances in the aircraft, computer, and electronics industries, the Internet economy, most of the biotech industry, and many others.
105. On the public opposition to the NAFTA agreement, see Herman, Myth of the Liberal Media, pp. 185-86. A Business week/Harris poll in early zooo revealed that only 10 percent of those polled called themselves "free traders"; 5I percent called themselves "fair traders" and 37 percent "protectionists. " "Harris Poll: Globalization: W'hat Americans Art Worried About," Business ~ek, Apri124, 2000.
106. For more extended accounts, see Herman, Myth of Ehe Liberal Media, chapter 14; Thea Lee, "False Prophets: The Selling of NAITA," Briefing Paper, Economic Policy Institute, 1995; John McArthur, The Selling of"Free Trade" (New York: Hill & Wang, 2000).
107. Thomas Lueck, "The Free Trade Accord: The New York Region," New York Times, November 18, 1993.
108. Editorial, "NAFTA's True Importance," New 'York Times, November x4, 1993?
109. On the refusal of the administration to allow any labor inputs in arriving at the NAFTA agreement, contrary to law, and the media's disinterest in this as well as any other undemocratic features of the creation of this and other trade agreements, see Noam Chomsky, WVrld Orders Old and New (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 164-78.
110. See Herman, Myth afthe Liberal Afedia, pp. 183-85.
I I I . Citations from Seth Ackerman, "Prattle in Seattle: W lO coverage Mis- represented Issues, Protests," EXTRA. ' Ganuary-February 2000), pp. 13-17. 112. Rachel Coen, "For Fress, Magenta Hair and Nose Rings Defined Protests," EXTRA. ' (July-August 2000). An exception at the time of the Washington meetings and protests was Eric Pooley's "IMF: Dr. Death? " Time, April Z4, 2000.
II3. See Walden Bello, "Why Reform of the WTO Is the Wrong Agenda" (Global Exchange; 2000).
114. Edward P. Morgan, "From Virtual Community 10 Vinual History: Mass Media and the American Antiwar Movement in the 1960s," Radical History Review (Fa112000); Todd Gitlin, The Whole WOrld Is watching (Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press, 1980).
115. Rachel Coen, "Whitewash in Washington: Media Provide Cover as Police ! viilitarizes nc. ," EXTRA. ' Guly-August 2000); Ackerman, "Prattle in Seattle"; Neil deMause, "Pepper Spray Gets in Their Eyes: Media Missed Militarization of Police Work in Seattle," EXTRA! (March-April 2000).
116. Coen, Ackerman, and deMause items cited in note 115.
117. Nichole Christian, "Police Brace for Protests in Windsor and Detroit," Nc-w York Times, June 3, 2000.
118. CBS Evening News Repon, April 6, 2000.
II9. Zachary Wolfe, National Lawyers Guild legal observer coordinator, con- cluded that "police sought to create an atmosphere of palpable fear," and that anyone even trying to hear dissident views ran a risk of police violence "just for being in the area where speech was taking place. " Quoted in Coen, "'Whitewash in Washington. "
120. See Rachel Coen, "Free Speech Since Seattle: Law Enforcement's Attacks on Activists-and Journalists~Increasing. "EXTRA. ' November- December 2000.
121. See Frank Donner, Protectors ofPrivilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in UrbanAmerica (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberal- ism, 1945--60 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); William Puette, Through Jaundiced Eyes: How the Media View Organized Labor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).
122. Kim Moody, Wbrkers in a Lean llVrld (London: Verso, 1997), p. 24.
123. Aaron Bernstein, "The Workplace: Why America Needs Unions, But Not the Kind It Has Now," Business mek, May 23, 1994.
I24. See Jonathan Tasini, Lost in the Margins: Labor and the Media (New York: FAIR, I990), pp. 7-9?
125. Jared Bernstein, Lawrence Mishel, and Chauna Brocht, "Any Way You Cut It: Income Inequality on the Rise Regardless of How It's Measured," Briefing Paper, Economic Policy Institute, 2000.
126. Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and John Schmitt, The State of WOrk- ingAmerica, 2 0 0 0 - 2 0 0 1 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 20CI), p. 120.
127. Marc Miringoff and Marque-Luisa Miringoff, The Social Health of the Narwn: How America Is Really Doing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). This study shows that an index of social health indicators moves with GDP until the mid-1970S, after which GDP continues to grow but a "social recession" ensues, with only a slight interruption in the early 1990s.
128. See, among others, Gerald Baker, "Is This Great, Or What? " Financial Times, March 31, 1998; Richard Stevenson, "The Wisdom to Let the Good Times Roll," New 'York Times, December 25, :woo. There were, however, occasional cautionary notes, as in Anne Adams Lang, "Behind the Prosper- ity, Working People in Trouble," New 'York Times, November 20, 2000.
INTRODUCTION Ivii
lviii INTRODUCTION
129. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Greenwich, Conn. : Fawcett, 1962), p. 183. 130. See Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle, Toxic Deception: Haw the Chemical Induolry Manipulates Science, Bends the La'/. I), and Endangers Your Health (Secaucus, N. J. : Birch Lane Press, 1996), chapters 4, 5.
131. Joe Thornton, Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmen- tal Strategy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), p. 100.
132. Fagin and Lavelle, Toxic Deceptum, chapters 4, 5; Edward Herman, "Cor- porate Junk Science in the Media," chapter 17 in Herman, Myth olthe Liberal Media, pp. 240--44.
133. The publicity director of Monsanto, Phil Angell, stated that "our interest is in selling as much of it [a bie-engineered product] as possible. Assuring its safety is the ED. A. 's job. " Quoted in Michael Pollan, "Playing God in the Garden," New York Times Magazine, October 25, 1998.
134. At the January 2000 meeting on the biosafety protocol, the U. S. govern- ment's insistence on \VTO "good science," while the European Union was urging application of the precautionary principle, almost broke up the meet-
ing. Andrew Pollack, "130 Nations Agree on Safety Rules for Biotech Food,"
New York Times, January 30, 2000; Pollack, "Talks on Biotech Food Turn on a Safety Principle," New }Ork Times, January 28, 2000. ~ 135. For a good discussion of the case for application of the precautionary principle, see Thornton, Pandora's Poison, chapters 9-1 I.
136. Fagin-Lavelle, Toxic Deception, chapters 3-5; Herman, "Corporate Junk 1. Science," pp. 232-34, 237~43.
137? Fagin-Lavelle, Toxic DeceprWn, chapter 3; Herman, "Corporate Junk Sci- ence,'" pp. 232-34.
138. Herman, "Corporate Junk Science," p. 235.
139. Ibid. , pp. 245-48.
140. Ibid. , pp, 234-44.
14I. Ibid. , p. 240; see also Thornton, Pandora's Poison, chapter 9.
142. John Canham-Clyne, "Health Care Reform: Not Journali$tically Viable," EXTRA. ' Guly-August 1993); Canham-Clyne, "When 'Both Sides' Aren't Enough: The Restricted Debate over Health Care Reform," EXTRA! Ganuary-February 1994); Vicente Navarro, The Politics of Health Policy: The US. Reforms, I98O-I994 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).
143. See Bagdikian, Media Monopoly, pp. xxvii-xxix.
144. See Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot, Social Security: The Phony Crisis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
145. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 114- 2I.
146. Noam Chomsky, "The Media and the War: \Vhat War? " in Hamid Mowlana et aI. , Triumph of the Image: The Media's War in the Persian Gulf-
A Global Perspective (Boulder, Colo. : Westview, 1992); Douglas Kellner, The Persian GulfTV war (Boulder, Colo. : Westview, 1992); Chomsky, The New Military Humanism (Monroe, l\. 1. aine: Common Courage Press, 1999); Edward Herman, "The Media's Role in U. S. Foreign Policy: The Persian Gulf War," in Herman, Myth of the Liberal Media, chapter 12; Philip Ham- mond and Edward Herman, eds. , Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis (London: Pluto, 2000).
Preface
lr.
Perhaps this is an obvious point, but the democratic postulate is that the media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the tTUth, and that they do not merely reflect the world as powerful groups wish it to be perceived. Leaders of the media claim that their news choices rest on unbiased professional and objective criteria, and they have support for this contention in the intellectual cornrnunity. 2 If, however, the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, to decide what the general populace is allowed to see, hear, and think about, and to "manage" public opinion by regular propaganda cam- paigns, the standard view of how the system works is at serious odds with reality. )
The spedal . imponance of propaganda in what Walter Lippmann referred to as the "manufacture of consent" has long been recognized by writers on public opinion, propaganda, and the political require- ments of social order. 4 Lippmann himself, writing in the early 1920S, claimed that propaganda had already become "a regular organ ofpopu- lar government," and was steadily increasing in sophistication and im- portance. 5 We do not contend that this is all the mass media do, but we believe the propaganda function to be a very important aspect of their overall service.
In the first chapter we spell out a propaganda model, which describes the forces that cause the mass media to playa
. ? THIS BOOK, WE SKETCH OUT A "PROP AGANDA MODEL" AND apply it to the performance of the mass media of the United States. This effort reflects our belief, based on many years of study of the workings of the media, that they serve to mobilize support for the special interests that dominate the state and private activity,l and that their choices, emphases, and omissions can often be understood best, and sometimes with striking clarity and insight, by analyzing them in such terms.
Ix PREFACE
propaganda role, the processes whereby they mobilize bias, and the patterns of news choices that ensue. In the succeeding chapters we try to demonstrate the applicability of the propaganda model to the actual performance of the media.
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. Most biased choices in the media arise from the preselection of right-thinking people, internalized preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the constraints of ownership, organization, market, and political power. Censorship is largely self-censorship, by reporters and commentators who adjust to the realities of source and media organizational requirements, and by people at higher levels within media organizations who are chosen to implement, and have usually internalized, the constraints imposed by proprietary and other market and governmental centers of power.
There are important actors who do take positive initiatives to define and shape the news and {Q keep the media in line. It is a "guided market system" that we describe here, with the guidance provided by the government, the leaders of the corporate community, the top media owners and executives, and the assorted individuals and groups who are assigned or allowed to take constructive initiatives. I; These initiators are sufficiently small in number to be able to act jointly on occasion, as do sellers in markets with few rivals. In most cases, however, media 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 behavior.
The mass media are not a solid monolith on all issues. Where the powerful are in disagreement~there will be a certain diversity of tactical judgments on how to attain generally shared aims, 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 wilJ be excluded from the mass media even when elite contro~ versy over tactics rages fiercely.
We will study a number of such cases as we proceed, but the pattern is, in fact, pervasive. To select an example that happens to be dominat~ ing the news as we write, consider the portrayal of Nicaragua, under attack by the United States. In this instance, the division of elite opin~ ion is sufficiently great to allow it to be questioned whether sponsorship
I
of a terrorist army is effective in making Nicaragua "more democratic" and "less of a threat to its neighbors. " The mass media, however, rarely if ever entertain opinion, or allow their news columns to present materi- als suggesting that Nicaragua is more democratic than E1 Salvador and Guatemala in every non-Orwellian sense of the word;? that its govern- ment does not murder ordinary citizens on a routine basis, as the governments of E1 Salvador and Guatemala dO;8 that it has carried out socioeconomic reforms important to the majority that the other two governments somehow cannot attempt;9 that Nicaragua poses no mili- tary threat to its neighbors but has, in fact, been subjected to continu- ous attacks by the United States and its clients and surrogates; and that the U. S. fear of Nicaragua is based more on its virtues than on its alleged defects. 1o The mass media also steer clear of discussing the: background and results of the closely analogous attempt of the United States to bring "democracy" to Guatemala in 1954 by means of a CIA-sponsored invasion, which terminated Guatemalan democracy fot an indefinite period. Although the United States supported elite rule and helped to organize state terror in Guatemala (among many other countries) for decades, actually subverted or approved the subversion of democracy in Brazil, Chile, and the Philippines (again, among oth- ers), is "constructively engaged" with terror regimes on a global basis, and had no concern about democracy in Nicaragua as long as the brutal Somoza regime was firmly in power, nevertheless the media take gov- ernment claims of a concern for "democracy" in Nicaragua at face
value. l I
Elite disagreement over tactics in dealing with Nicaragua is reflected
in public debate, but the mass media, in conformity with elite priorities, have coalesced in processing news in a way that fails to place U. S. policy into meaningful context, systematically suppresses evidence of U. S. violence and aggression, and puts the Sandinistas in an extremely bad light. 12 In contrast, El Salvador and Guatemala, with far worse records, are presented as struggling toward democracy under "moder- ate" leaders, thus meriting sympathetic approval. These practices have not only distorted public perceptions of Central American realities, they have also seriously misrepresented U. S. policy objectives, an es-
sential feature of propaganda, as Jacques Ellul stresses:
The propagandist naturally cannot reveal the true intentions of the principal for whom he acts. . . . That would be to submit the projects to public discussion, to the scrutiny of public opinion, and thus to prevent their success. . . . Propaganda must serve instead as a veil for such projects, masking true intention. 13
PREFACE lxi
Ixii PREFACE
I
The power of the government to fix frames of reference and agendas, and to exclude inconvenient facts from public inspection, is also im- pressively displayed in the coverage of elections in Central America, discussed in chapter 3, and throughout the analysis of particular cases in the chapters that follow.
When there is little or no elite dissent from a government policy, there may still be some slippage in the mass media, and facts that tend to undermine the government line, if they are properly undersrood, can be found, usually on the back pages of the newspapers. This is one of the strengths of the U. S. system. 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 (post- ulating benevolent U. S. aims, the United States responding to aggres- sion and terror, etc. ), as we discuss in chapter 5. During and after the Vietnam War, 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. These allegations are ludicrous, as we show in detail in chapter 5 and appendix 3, but they did have the dual advantage of disguising the actual role of the mass media and, at the same time, pressing the media to keep even more tenaciously to the propaganda assumptions of state policy. We have long argued that the "naturalness" of these processes, with inconvenient facts allowed sparingly and within the proper framework of assumptions, and fundamental dissent virtu- ally excluded from the mass media (but permitted in a marginalized press), makes for a propaganda system that is far more credible and effective in putting over a patriotic agenda than one with official censor- ship.
In criticizing media priorities and biases we often draw on the media themselves for at least some of the facts. 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. That the media provide some facts about an issue, however, proves absolutely nothing about the adequacy or accuracy of that coverage. The mass media do, in fact, literally suppress a great deal, as we will describe in the chapters that follow. But even more important in this context is the question of the attention
given to a fact-its placement, tone, and repetitions, the framework of analysis within which it is presented, and the related facts that accom- pany it and give it meaning (or preclude understanding). That a careful reader looking for a fact can sometimes find it with diligence and a skeptical eye tells us nothing about whether that fact received the attention and context it deserved, whether it was intelligible to the reader or effectively distorted or suppressed. What level of attention it deserved may be debatable, but there is no merit to the pretense that becaus. e. ,-enain- facts. m~ he. . fJUUld. in. thJ'. . me. d. ia. . h. ~ ~ etiJiv. rJ1r. JUld. .
skeptical researcher, the absence of radical bias and de facto suppres- sion is thereby demonstrated. 14
One of our central themes in this book is that the observable pattern ofindignant campaigns and suppressions) ofshading and emphasis, and of selection of context, premises, and general agenda, is highly func- tional for established power and responsive to the needs of the govern- ment and major power groups. A constant focus on victims of communism helps convince the public of enemy evil and sets the stage for intervention, subversion, support for terrorist states, an endless arms race, and military conflict-all in a noble cause. At the same time) the devotion of our leaders and media to this narrow set of victims raises public self-esteem and patriotism) as it demonstrates the essential humanity of country and people.
The public does not notice the silence on victims in client states) which is as important in supporting state policy as the concentrated focus on enemy victims. It would have been very difficult for the Guatemalan government to murder tens of thousands over the past decade if the U. S. press had provided the kind of coverage they gave to the difficulties of Andrei Sakharov or the murder of Jerzy Popie- luszko in Poland (see chapter 2). It would have been impossible to wage a brutal war against South Vietnam and the rest of Indochina,
leaving a legacy of misery and destruction that may never be over- come, if the media had not rallied to the cause, portraying murderous aggression as a defense of freedom) and only opening the doors to
lal,;lll:al"ufsagreemeni wnen Ine COSIS IO Ine liueresrs triey represent became too high.
The same is true in other cases that we discuss, and too many that we do not.
We would like to express our thanks to the following people for their assistance in the preparation of this book: James Aronson) Phillip Ber- ryman, Larry Biros, Frank Brodhead, Holly Burkhalter) Donna Cooper,
PREFACE lxiii
-
lxiv PREFACE
Carol Fouke, Eva Gold, Carol Goslant, Roy Head, Mary Herman, Rob Kirsch, Robert Krinsky, Alfred McClung Lee, Kent MacDougall, Nejat Ozyegin, Nancy Peters, Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Karin Wil- kins, Warren Wine, and Jamie Young. The authors alone remain re- sponsible for its contents.
'I
I I
MANUF ACTURING CONSENT
,
A Propaganda Model
THE MASS MEDIA SERVE AS A SYSTEM FOR COMMUNICA TING messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires systematic propaganda. 1
In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state
. . om:
"rluVCCi. liC . . . . . rt:o. f1d; uf\\:f1. -" appn! '" meoted by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite. It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. This is especially true where the media actively compete, peri- odically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest. What is not evident (and remains
u't:1reao:\:flIcy;" ute -lIronopon~n"C
. . .
I I
2 MANUFACTURING CO:\lSEKT
undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature ofsuch critiques, as well as the huge inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance.
A propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and domi- nant private interests to get their messages across to the public. The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters," fall under the following headings: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation ofthe 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" as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw mate- rial of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They 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.
The elite domination of the media and marginalization of dissi- dents that results from the operation of these filters occurs so natu- rally that media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news "objectively" and on the basis of pro- fessional news values. Within the limits of the filter constraints they often are objective; the constraints are so powerful, and are built into the system in such a fundamental way, that alternative bases of news
choices are hardly imaginable. In assessing the newsworthiness of the U. S. government's urgent claims of a shipment of MIGs to Nicaragua on November 5, 1984, the media do not stop to ponder the bias that is inherent in the priority assigned to government-supplied raw mate- rial, or the possibility that the government might be manipulating the news,2 imposing its own agenda, and deliberately diverting attention from other materiaJ. 3 It requires a macro, alongside a micro- (story- by-story), view of media operations, to see the pattern of manipula- tion and systematic bias.
Let us turn now to a more detailed examination of the main constitu- ents of the propaganda model, which will be applied and tested in the chapters that follow.
I
I
1. 1. SIZE, OWNERSHIP, AND PROFIT ORIENTATION OF THE MASS MEDIA:
THE FIRST FILTER
In their analysis of the evolution of the media in Great Britain, James Curran and Jean Seaton describe how, in the first half of the nineteenth century, a radical press emerged that reached a national working-class audience. This alternative press was effective in reinforcing class con- sciousness: it unified the workers because it fostered an alternative value system and framework for looking at the world, and because it "promoted a greater collective confidence by repeatedly emphasizing the potential power of working people to effect social change through the force of 'combination' and organized action. "4 This was deemed a major threat by the ruling elites. One MP asserted that the working- class newspapers "inflame passions and awaken their selfishness, con- trasting their current condition with what they contend to be their future condition-a condition incompatible with human nature, and those immutable laws which Providence has established for the regula- tion of civil society. "5 The result was an attempt to squelch the work- ing-class media by libel laws and prosecutions, by requiring an expensive security bond as a condition for publication, and by imposing various taxes designed to drive out radical media by raising their costs. These coercive efforts were not effective, and by mid-century they had
been abandoned in favor of the liberal view that the market would enforce responsibility.
Curran and Seaton show that the market did successfully accomplish what state intervention failed to do. Following the repeal of the punitive taxes on newspapers between r853 and 1869, a new daily local press came into existence, but not one new local working-class daily was established through the rest of the nineteenth century. Curran and Seaton note that
Indeed, the eclipse of the national radical press was so total that when the Labour Party developed out of the working-class move- ment in the first decade of the twentieth century, it did not obtain the exclusive backing of a single national daily or Sunday paper. 6
One important reason for this was the rise in scale of newspaper enter- prise and the associated increase in capital costs from the mid- nineteenth century onward, which was based on technological
A PROPAGA~DA MODEL 3
l
4 MANUFACTURING CONSUlT
improvements along with the owners' increased stress on reaching large audiences. The expansion of the free market was accompanied by an "industrialization of the press. " The total cost of establishing a national weekly on a profitable basis in 1837 was under a thousand pounds, with a break-even circulation of 6,200 copies. By 1867) the estimated start-up cost of a new London daily was 50,000 pounds. The Sunday Express, launched in 1918, spent over two million pounds before it broke even with a circulation of ovcr 2. SQ,flQ. Q. ? '?
Similar processes were at work in the United States, where the start-up cost of a new paper in New York City in 1851 was 569,000; the public sale of the St. Louis Democrat in 1872 yielded $456,000; and city newspapers were selling at from $6 to $18 million in the 1920s. 8 The cost of machinery alone, of even very small newspapers, has for many decades run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars; in 1945 it could be said that "Even small-newspaper publishing is big business . . . [and] is no longer a trade one takes up lightly even if he has substantial cash-or takes up at all if he doesn't. "9
Thus the first filter-the limitation on ownership of media. with any substantial outreach by the requisite large size of investment-was applicable a century or more ago, and it has become increasingly effec- tive over time. lO In 1986 there were some 1,500 daily newspapers, II,OOO magazines, 9,000 radio and I,sao TV stations, 2>400 book publishers, and seven movie studios in the United States-over 25,000 media entities in all. But a large proportion of those among this set who were news dispensers were very small and local, dependent on the large national companies and wire services for all but local news. Many more were subject to common ownership, sometimes extending through vir- tually the entire set of media variants. a
Ben Bagdikian stresses the fact that despite the large media numbers, the twenty-nine largest media systems account for over half of the output of newspapers, and most of the sales and audiences in maga- zines, broadcasting, books, and movies. He contends that these "consti- tute a new Private Ministry of Information and Culture" that can set the national agenda. 12
Actually, while suggesting a media autonomy from corporate and government power that we believe to be incompatible with structural facts (as we describe below), Bagdikian also may be understating the degree of effective concentration in news manufacture. It has long been noted that the media are tiered, with the tOp tier-as measured by prestige, resources, and outreach-comprising somewhere between ten and twenty-four systems. u It is this top tier, along with the government and wire services, that defines the news agenda and supplies much of
the national and international news to the lower tiers of the media, and rhus for the general publk'4 Centralization within the top tier was substantially increased by the post-World War II rise of television and the national networking of this important medium. Pre-television news markets were local, even if heavily dependent on the higher tiers and a narrow set of sources for national and international news; the net- works provide national and international news from three national sources, and television is now the principal source of news for the public. '5 The maturing of cable, however, has resulted in a fragmenta- tion of television audiences and a slow erosion of the market share and power of the networks.
Table 1-1 provides some basic financial data for the twenty-four media giants (or their controlling parent companies) that make up the top tier of media companies in the United States. l6 This compilation includes: (I) the three television networks: ABC (through its parent, Capital Cities), CBS, and NBC (through its ultimate parent, General Electric [GEl); (2) the leading newspaper empires: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times (Times-Mirror), Wall Street Journal (Dow Jones), Knight-Ridder, Gannett, Hearst, Scripps-Howard, New- house (Advance Publications), and the Tribune Company; (3) the major news and general-interest magazines: Time, Newsweek (subsumed under Washington Post), Reader's Digest, TV Guide (Tdangle), and U. S. News & World Report; (4) a major book publisher (McGraw-Hill); and (5) other cable-TV systems of large and growing importance: those of Murdoch, Turner, Cox, General Corp. , Taft, Storer,l7 and Group W
I 01/estinghouse). Many of these systems are prominent in more than one field and are only arbitrarily placed in a particular category (Time, Inc. , is very important in cable as well as magazines; McGraw-Hill is a major publisher of magazines; the Tribune Company has become a large force in television as well as newspapers; Hearst is important in magazines
I as well as newspapers; and Murdoch has significant newspaper interests as well as television and movie holdings).
These twenty-four companies are large, profit-seeking corporations, owned and controlled by quite wealthy people. It can be seen in table I-I that all but one of the top companies for whom data are available have assets in excess of $1 billion, and the median size (middle item by size) is $2. 6 billion. It can also be seen in the table that approximately three-quaners of these media giants had after-tax profits in excess of $100 million, with the median at $183 million.
Many of the large media companies are fully integrated into the market, and for the others, too, the pressures of stockholders, directors, and bankers to focus on the bottom line are powerful. These pressures
A PROPACA~DA MODEL 5
6
MANUfACTURING CONSENT
COMP ANY
Advance Publications (Newhouse)l
Capital Cities/ABC
CBS
Cox Communi-
cations2 Dow Jones &
Co. Gannett
General Eleetric (NBC)
Hearst3
Knight-Ridder McGraw-Hill News Corp.
(Murdoch)? New York
Times Reader's
Digest~
Time, Inc. Times-Mirror TriangleS Tribune Co. Turner
Broadcasting U. S. News &
World Report9
PROFITS PROFITS
TOT AL BEFORE AFTER TOT AL
ASSETS TAXES TAXES REVENUE ($ MILLIONS) ($ MILLIONS) ($ MILLIONS) ($ MILLIONS)
TABLE 1-1
Financial Data for Twenty-four Large Media Corporations (or Their Parent Firms), December 1986
2,200
4,124
4,754 743
1,135
2,BOI
36,725
2,100 (1983) 1,911 1,517 3,822
1,565
1,400 (1985) 1,062 (-17) 537 Toft 1,257 (-II) (-53) 500
2,500
5,191
3,370 1,111
1,236
3,365 34,591
4,040
1,947 1,463 8,460
1,405
NA
4,23<> 2,929 NA 2,589 1,904
200+
. . .
448
NA NA
. 7. 370 17. 87
331 183
540 27' 3,689 2,492
NA 215 (1983) 2. 7 140 296 154 377 170
256 132
75-110 NA (1985)
Scripps-Howard6 Storer7
NA 1,242
NA NA . .
. . . . . .
NA NA 140
62l> 37. 3,762
2,948 NA NA 73<J 523 293 2,030 (-185) (-187) 570
=
A PROPAGA~DA MODEL 7
PROFITS PROFITS
TOT AL BEFORE AFTER TOT AL
ASSETS TAXES TAXES REVENUE ($ MILLIONS) ($ MILLIONS) ($ MILLIONS) ($ MILLIONS)
1,145 205 100 1,215 8,482 801 670 10,731
COMPANY
W ashington POst
W estinghouse
NA = not available
to The :l$Ct tOtal is taken from Forbes magazine's wealth total for the New- house family for 1985; the total revenue is for media sales only, as reported in Advem:sing Age, June 29, 1987.
89. Keith Graves, "US. Secrecy Puts Bomb Disposal Team in Danger," Sun- day Telegraph, January 4, 1998.
90. Quoted in Strobe Talbott, "Defanging the Beast," Time, February 6, 1989?
91. See Ben Kiernan, "The Inclusion ofthe Khmer Rouge in the Cambodian Peace Process: Causes and Consequences," in Kiernan, ed. , Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia (New Haven: Yale Council on Southeast Asia Stud- ies, 1993), pp. 199-272.
92. A study sponsored by the Finnish government was titled Kampuchea: Decade of the Genocide (London: Zed, 1984). It included the years 1970-74, when the United Stares was heavily bombing the Cambodian countryside, as part of the decade of genocide. This study was ignored in the US. main- stream media.
93. "Cambodia's Dictator," editorial, washington Post, February 10, 1998.
94. See Edward Herman, Myth of the Liberal Media, chapter 16, "Suharto: The Fall of a Good Genocidist"; Edward Herman and David Peterson, "How the New 'York Times Protects Indonesian Terror in East Timor," Z Mag- azine Ouly-August 1999). On the massive scale of the Suharto killings, see note 30 above.
95. For these and other citations, see Herman, Myth of the Liberal Media, chapter 16.
INTRODUCTIO:-l lv
Ivi I~TRODUCTlO~
96. Seth Mydans, "Indonesia's Rising Prosperity Feeds a Parry for Democ- racy," New York Times, June 21,1996.
97. Herman and Peterson, "How the New lOrk Times Protects Indonesian Terror. "
98. Ibid.
99. James Reston, "A Gleam of Light," New }&rk Times, June 19, 1966.
100? David Sanger, "Indonesia Faceoff: Drawing Blood Without Bombs," New 10rk Times, March 8,1998.
101. Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 28-29.
102. For a major study, see Steven KuH, "Americans on Defense Spending: A Study ofUS. Public Attitl,ldes, " Report ofFindings, Center for Study ofPub- lic Attitudes, January 19, 1996. On public opposition [0 excessive defense spending even during the Reagan era, see Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn (New York: Hill & Wang, 1986), pp. 19"""24.
103. The two major parties offer voters "a clear-cut choice," so there is "no driving logic for a third-party candidacy this year," according to the editors of the New i0rk Times: "Mr. Nader's Misguided Crusade," June 10, 2000.
104. Especially after World War II, the military budget, and therefore the tax- payer, financed a very large fraction of the basic science that underpinned advances in the aircraft, computer, and electronics industries, the Internet economy, most of the biotech industry, and many others.
105. On the public opposition to the NAFTA agreement, see Herman, Myth of the Liberal Media, pp. 185-86. A Business week/Harris poll in early zooo revealed that only 10 percent of those polled called themselves "free traders"; 5I percent called themselves "fair traders" and 37 percent "protectionists. " "Harris Poll: Globalization: W'hat Americans Art Worried About," Business ~ek, Apri124, 2000.
106. For more extended accounts, see Herman, Myth of Ehe Liberal Media, chapter 14; Thea Lee, "False Prophets: The Selling of NAITA," Briefing Paper, Economic Policy Institute, 1995; John McArthur, The Selling of"Free Trade" (New York: Hill & Wang, 2000).
107. Thomas Lueck, "The Free Trade Accord: The New York Region," New York Times, November 18, 1993.
108. Editorial, "NAFTA's True Importance," New 'York Times, November x4, 1993?
109. On the refusal of the administration to allow any labor inputs in arriving at the NAFTA agreement, contrary to law, and the media's disinterest in this as well as any other undemocratic features of the creation of this and other trade agreements, see Noam Chomsky, WVrld Orders Old and New (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 164-78.
110. See Herman, Myth afthe Liberal Afedia, pp. 183-85.
I I I . Citations from Seth Ackerman, "Prattle in Seattle: W lO coverage Mis- represented Issues, Protests," EXTRA. ' Ganuary-February 2000), pp. 13-17. 112. Rachel Coen, "For Fress, Magenta Hair and Nose Rings Defined Protests," EXTRA. ' (July-August 2000). An exception at the time of the Washington meetings and protests was Eric Pooley's "IMF: Dr. Death? " Time, April Z4, 2000.
II3. See Walden Bello, "Why Reform of the WTO Is the Wrong Agenda" (Global Exchange; 2000).
114. Edward P. Morgan, "From Virtual Community 10 Vinual History: Mass Media and the American Antiwar Movement in the 1960s," Radical History Review (Fa112000); Todd Gitlin, The Whole WOrld Is watching (Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press, 1980).
115. Rachel Coen, "Whitewash in Washington: Media Provide Cover as Police ! viilitarizes nc. ," EXTRA. ' Guly-August 2000); Ackerman, "Prattle in Seattle"; Neil deMause, "Pepper Spray Gets in Their Eyes: Media Missed Militarization of Police Work in Seattle," EXTRA! (March-April 2000).
116. Coen, Ackerman, and deMause items cited in note 115.
117. Nichole Christian, "Police Brace for Protests in Windsor and Detroit," Nc-w York Times, June 3, 2000.
118. CBS Evening News Repon, April 6, 2000.
II9. Zachary Wolfe, National Lawyers Guild legal observer coordinator, con- cluded that "police sought to create an atmosphere of palpable fear," and that anyone even trying to hear dissident views ran a risk of police violence "just for being in the area where speech was taking place. " Quoted in Coen, "'Whitewash in Washington. "
120. See Rachel Coen, "Free Speech Since Seattle: Law Enforcement's Attacks on Activists-and Journalists~Increasing. "EXTRA. ' November- December 2000.
121. See Frank Donner, Protectors ofPrivilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in UrbanAmerica (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberal- ism, 1945--60 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); William Puette, Through Jaundiced Eyes: How the Media View Organized Labor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).
122. Kim Moody, Wbrkers in a Lean llVrld (London: Verso, 1997), p. 24.
123. Aaron Bernstein, "The Workplace: Why America Needs Unions, But Not the Kind It Has Now," Business mek, May 23, 1994.
I24. See Jonathan Tasini, Lost in the Margins: Labor and the Media (New York: FAIR, I990), pp. 7-9?
125. Jared Bernstein, Lawrence Mishel, and Chauna Brocht, "Any Way You Cut It: Income Inequality on the Rise Regardless of How It's Measured," Briefing Paper, Economic Policy Institute, 2000.
126. Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and John Schmitt, The State of WOrk- ingAmerica, 2 0 0 0 - 2 0 0 1 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 20CI), p. 120.
127. Marc Miringoff and Marque-Luisa Miringoff, The Social Health of the Narwn: How America Is Really Doing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). This study shows that an index of social health indicators moves with GDP until the mid-1970S, after which GDP continues to grow but a "social recession" ensues, with only a slight interruption in the early 1990s.
128. See, among others, Gerald Baker, "Is This Great, Or What? " Financial Times, March 31, 1998; Richard Stevenson, "The Wisdom to Let the Good Times Roll," New 'York Times, December 25, :woo. There were, however, occasional cautionary notes, as in Anne Adams Lang, "Behind the Prosper- ity, Working People in Trouble," New 'York Times, November 20, 2000.
INTRODUCTION Ivii
lviii INTRODUCTION
129. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Greenwich, Conn. : Fawcett, 1962), p. 183. 130. See Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle, Toxic Deception: Haw the Chemical Induolry Manipulates Science, Bends the La'/. I), and Endangers Your Health (Secaucus, N. J. : Birch Lane Press, 1996), chapters 4, 5.
131. Joe Thornton, Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmen- tal Strategy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), p. 100.
132. Fagin and Lavelle, Toxic Deceptum, chapters 4, 5; Edward Herman, "Cor- porate Junk Science in the Media," chapter 17 in Herman, Myth olthe Liberal Media, pp. 240--44.
133. The publicity director of Monsanto, Phil Angell, stated that "our interest is in selling as much of it [a bie-engineered product] as possible. Assuring its safety is the ED. A. 's job. " Quoted in Michael Pollan, "Playing God in the Garden," New York Times Magazine, October 25, 1998.
134. At the January 2000 meeting on the biosafety protocol, the U. S. govern- ment's insistence on \VTO "good science," while the European Union was urging application of the precautionary principle, almost broke up the meet-
ing. Andrew Pollack, "130 Nations Agree on Safety Rules for Biotech Food,"
New York Times, January 30, 2000; Pollack, "Talks on Biotech Food Turn on a Safety Principle," New }Ork Times, January 28, 2000. ~ 135. For a good discussion of the case for application of the precautionary principle, see Thornton, Pandora's Poison, chapters 9-1 I.
136. Fagin-Lavelle, Toxic Deception, chapters 3-5; Herman, "Corporate Junk 1. Science," pp. 232-34, 237~43.
137? Fagin-Lavelle, Toxic DeceprWn, chapter 3; Herman, "Corporate Junk Sci- ence,'" pp. 232-34.
138. Herman, "Corporate Junk Science," p. 235.
139. Ibid. , pp. 245-48.
140. Ibid. , pp, 234-44.
14I. Ibid. , p. 240; see also Thornton, Pandora's Poison, chapter 9.
142. John Canham-Clyne, "Health Care Reform: Not Journali$tically Viable," EXTRA. ' Guly-August 1993); Canham-Clyne, "When 'Both Sides' Aren't Enough: The Restricted Debate over Health Care Reform," EXTRA! Ganuary-February 1994); Vicente Navarro, The Politics of Health Policy: The US. Reforms, I98O-I994 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).
143. See Bagdikian, Media Monopoly, pp. xxvii-xxix.
144. See Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot, Social Security: The Phony Crisis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
145. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 114- 2I.
146. Noam Chomsky, "The Media and the War: \Vhat War? " in Hamid Mowlana et aI. , Triumph of the Image: The Media's War in the Persian Gulf-
A Global Perspective (Boulder, Colo. : Westview, 1992); Douglas Kellner, The Persian GulfTV war (Boulder, Colo. : Westview, 1992); Chomsky, The New Military Humanism (Monroe, l\. 1. aine: Common Courage Press, 1999); Edward Herman, "The Media's Role in U. S. Foreign Policy: The Persian Gulf War," in Herman, Myth of the Liberal Media, chapter 12; Philip Ham- mond and Edward Herman, eds. , Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis (London: Pluto, 2000).
Preface
lr.
Perhaps this is an obvious point, but the democratic postulate is that the media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the tTUth, and that they do not merely reflect the world as powerful groups wish it to be perceived. Leaders of the media claim that their news choices rest on unbiased professional and objective criteria, and they have support for this contention in the intellectual cornrnunity. 2 If, however, the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, to decide what the general populace is allowed to see, hear, and think about, and to "manage" public opinion by regular propaganda cam- paigns, the standard view of how the system works is at serious odds with reality. )
The spedal . imponance of propaganda in what Walter Lippmann referred to as the "manufacture of consent" has long been recognized by writers on public opinion, propaganda, and the political require- ments of social order. 4 Lippmann himself, writing in the early 1920S, claimed that propaganda had already become "a regular organ ofpopu- lar government," and was steadily increasing in sophistication and im- portance. 5 We do not contend that this is all the mass media do, but we believe the propaganda function to be a very important aspect of their overall service.
In the first chapter we spell out a propaganda model, which describes the forces that cause the mass media to playa
. ? THIS BOOK, WE SKETCH OUT A "PROP AGANDA MODEL" AND apply it to the performance of the mass media of the United States. This effort reflects our belief, based on many years of study of the workings of the media, that they serve to mobilize support for the special interests that dominate the state and private activity,l and that their choices, emphases, and omissions can often be understood best, and sometimes with striking clarity and insight, by analyzing them in such terms.
Ix PREFACE
propaganda role, the processes whereby they mobilize bias, and the patterns of news choices that ensue. In the succeeding chapters we try to demonstrate the applicability of the propaganda model to the actual performance of the media.
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. Most biased choices in the media arise from the preselection of right-thinking people, internalized preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the constraints of ownership, organization, market, and political power. Censorship is largely self-censorship, by reporters and commentators who adjust to the realities of source and media organizational requirements, and by people at higher levels within media organizations who are chosen to implement, and have usually internalized, the constraints imposed by proprietary and other market and governmental centers of power.
There are important actors who do take positive initiatives to define and shape the news and {Q keep the media in line. It is a "guided market system" that we describe here, with the guidance provided by the government, the leaders of the corporate community, the top media owners and executives, and the assorted individuals and groups who are assigned or allowed to take constructive initiatives. I; These initiators are sufficiently small in number to be able to act jointly on occasion, as do sellers in markets with few rivals. In most cases, however, media 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 behavior.
The mass media are not a solid monolith on all issues. Where the powerful are in disagreement~there will be a certain diversity of tactical judgments on how to attain generally shared aims, 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 wilJ be excluded from the mass media even when elite contro~ versy over tactics rages fiercely.
We will study a number of such cases as we proceed, but the pattern is, in fact, pervasive. To select an example that happens to be dominat~ ing the news as we write, consider the portrayal of Nicaragua, under attack by the United States. In this instance, the division of elite opin~ ion is sufficiently great to allow it to be questioned whether sponsorship
I
of a terrorist army is effective in making Nicaragua "more democratic" and "less of a threat to its neighbors. " The mass media, however, rarely if ever entertain opinion, or allow their news columns to present materi- als suggesting that Nicaragua is more democratic than E1 Salvador and Guatemala in every non-Orwellian sense of the word;? that its govern- ment does not murder ordinary citizens on a routine basis, as the governments of E1 Salvador and Guatemala dO;8 that it has carried out socioeconomic reforms important to the majority that the other two governments somehow cannot attempt;9 that Nicaragua poses no mili- tary threat to its neighbors but has, in fact, been subjected to continu- ous attacks by the United States and its clients and surrogates; and that the U. S. fear of Nicaragua is based more on its virtues than on its alleged defects. 1o The mass media also steer clear of discussing the: background and results of the closely analogous attempt of the United States to bring "democracy" to Guatemala in 1954 by means of a CIA-sponsored invasion, which terminated Guatemalan democracy fot an indefinite period. Although the United States supported elite rule and helped to organize state terror in Guatemala (among many other countries) for decades, actually subverted or approved the subversion of democracy in Brazil, Chile, and the Philippines (again, among oth- ers), is "constructively engaged" with terror regimes on a global basis, and had no concern about democracy in Nicaragua as long as the brutal Somoza regime was firmly in power, nevertheless the media take gov- ernment claims of a concern for "democracy" in Nicaragua at face
value. l I
Elite disagreement over tactics in dealing with Nicaragua is reflected
in public debate, but the mass media, in conformity with elite priorities, have coalesced in processing news in a way that fails to place U. S. policy into meaningful context, systematically suppresses evidence of U. S. violence and aggression, and puts the Sandinistas in an extremely bad light. 12 In contrast, El Salvador and Guatemala, with far worse records, are presented as struggling toward democracy under "moder- ate" leaders, thus meriting sympathetic approval. These practices have not only distorted public perceptions of Central American realities, they have also seriously misrepresented U. S. policy objectives, an es-
sential feature of propaganda, as Jacques Ellul stresses:
The propagandist naturally cannot reveal the true intentions of the principal for whom he acts. . . . That would be to submit the projects to public discussion, to the scrutiny of public opinion, and thus to prevent their success. . . . Propaganda must serve instead as a veil for such projects, masking true intention. 13
PREFACE lxi
Ixii PREFACE
I
The power of the government to fix frames of reference and agendas, and to exclude inconvenient facts from public inspection, is also im- pressively displayed in the coverage of elections in Central America, discussed in chapter 3, and throughout the analysis of particular cases in the chapters that follow.
When there is little or no elite dissent from a government policy, there may still be some slippage in the mass media, and facts that tend to undermine the government line, if they are properly undersrood, can be found, usually on the back pages of the newspapers. This is one of the strengths of the U. S. system. 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 (post- ulating benevolent U. S. aims, the United States responding to aggres- sion and terror, etc. ), as we discuss in chapter 5. During and after the Vietnam War, 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. These allegations are ludicrous, as we show in detail in chapter 5 and appendix 3, but they did have the dual advantage of disguising the actual role of the mass media and, at the same time, pressing the media to keep even more tenaciously to the propaganda assumptions of state policy. We have long argued that the "naturalness" of these processes, with inconvenient facts allowed sparingly and within the proper framework of assumptions, and fundamental dissent virtu- ally excluded from the mass media (but permitted in a marginalized press), makes for a propaganda system that is far more credible and effective in putting over a patriotic agenda than one with official censor- ship.
In criticizing media priorities and biases we often draw on the media themselves for at least some of the facts. 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. That the media provide some facts about an issue, however, proves absolutely nothing about the adequacy or accuracy of that coverage. The mass media do, in fact, literally suppress a great deal, as we will describe in the chapters that follow. But even more important in this context is the question of the attention
given to a fact-its placement, tone, and repetitions, the framework of analysis within which it is presented, and the related facts that accom- pany it and give it meaning (or preclude understanding). That a careful reader looking for a fact can sometimes find it with diligence and a skeptical eye tells us nothing about whether that fact received the attention and context it deserved, whether it was intelligible to the reader or effectively distorted or suppressed. What level of attention it deserved may be debatable, but there is no merit to the pretense that becaus. e. ,-enain- facts. m~ he. . fJUUld. in. thJ'. . me. d. ia. . h. ~ ~ etiJiv. rJ1r. JUld. .
skeptical researcher, the absence of radical bias and de facto suppres- sion is thereby demonstrated. 14
One of our central themes in this book is that the observable pattern ofindignant campaigns and suppressions) ofshading and emphasis, and of selection of context, premises, and general agenda, is highly func- tional for established power and responsive to the needs of the govern- ment and major power groups. A constant focus on victims of communism helps convince the public of enemy evil and sets the stage for intervention, subversion, support for terrorist states, an endless arms race, and military conflict-all in a noble cause. At the same time) the devotion of our leaders and media to this narrow set of victims raises public self-esteem and patriotism) as it demonstrates the essential humanity of country and people.
The public does not notice the silence on victims in client states) which is as important in supporting state policy as the concentrated focus on enemy victims. It would have been very difficult for the Guatemalan government to murder tens of thousands over the past decade if the U. S. press had provided the kind of coverage they gave to the difficulties of Andrei Sakharov or the murder of Jerzy Popie- luszko in Poland (see chapter 2). It would have been impossible to wage a brutal war against South Vietnam and the rest of Indochina,
leaving a legacy of misery and destruction that may never be over- come, if the media had not rallied to the cause, portraying murderous aggression as a defense of freedom) and only opening the doors to
lal,;lll:al"ufsagreemeni wnen Ine COSIS IO Ine liueresrs triey represent became too high.
The same is true in other cases that we discuss, and too many that we do not.
We would like to express our thanks to the following people for their assistance in the preparation of this book: James Aronson) Phillip Ber- ryman, Larry Biros, Frank Brodhead, Holly Burkhalter) Donna Cooper,
PREFACE lxiii
-
lxiv PREFACE
Carol Fouke, Eva Gold, Carol Goslant, Roy Head, Mary Herman, Rob Kirsch, Robert Krinsky, Alfred McClung Lee, Kent MacDougall, Nejat Ozyegin, Nancy Peters, Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Karin Wil- kins, Warren Wine, and Jamie Young. The authors alone remain re- sponsible for its contents.
'I
I I
MANUF ACTURING CONSENT
,
A Propaganda Model
THE MASS MEDIA SERVE AS A SYSTEM FOR COMMUNICA TING messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires systematic propaganda. 1
In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state
. . om:
"rluVCCi. liC . . . . . rt:o. f1d; uf\\:f1. -" appn! '" meoted by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite. It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. This is especially true where the media actively compete, peri- odically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest. What is not evident (and remains
u't:1reao:\:flIcy;" ute -lIronopon~n"C
. . .
I I
2 MANUFACTURING CO:\lSEKT
undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature ofsuch critiques, as well as the huge inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance.
A propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and domi- nant private interests to get their messages across to the public. The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters," fall under the following headings: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation ofthe 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" as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw mate- rial of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They 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.
The elite domination of the media and marginalization of dissi- dents that results from the operation of these filters occurs so natu- rally that media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news "objectively" and on the basis of pro- fessional news values. Within the limits of the filter constraints they often are objective; the constraints are so powerful, and are built into the system in such a fundamental way, that alternative bases of news
choices are hardly imaginable. In assessing the newsworthiness of the U. S. government's urgent claims of a shipment of MIGs to Nicaragua on November 5, 1984, the media do not stop to ponder the bias that is inherent in the priority assigned to government-supplied raw mate- rial, or the possibility that the government might be manipulating the news,2 imposing its own agenda, and deliberately diverting attention from other materiaJ. 3 It requires a macro, alongside a micro- (story- by-story), view of media operations, to see the pattern of manipula- tion and systematic bias.
Let us turn now to a more detailed examination of the main constitu- ents of the propaganda model, which will be applied and tested in the chapters that follow.
I
I
1. 1. SIZE, OWNERSHIP, AND PROFIT ORIENTATION OF THE MASS MEDIA:
THE FIRST FILTER
In their analysis of the evolution of the media in Great Britain, James Curran and Jean Seaton describe how, in the first half of the nineteenth century, a radical press emerged that reached a national working-class audience. This alternative press was effective in reinforcing class con- sciousness: it unified the workers because it fostered an alternative value system and framework for looking at the world, and because it "promoted a greater collective confidence by repeatedly emphasizing the potential power of working people to effect social change through the force of 'combination' and organized action. "4 This was deemed a major threat by the ruling elites. One MP asserted that the working- class newspapers "inflame passions and awaken their selfishness, con- trasting their current condition with what they contend to be their future condition-a condition incompatible with human nature, and those immutable laws which Providence has established for the regula- tion of civil society. "5 The result was an attempt to squelch the work- ing-class media by libel laws and prosecutions, by requiring an expensive security bond as a condition for publication, and by imposing various taxes designed to drive out radical media by raising their costs. These coercive efforts were not effective, and by mid-century they had
been abandoned in favor of the liberal view that the market would enforce responsibility.
Curran and Seaton show that the market did successfully accomplish what state intervention failed to do. Following the repeal of the punitive taxes on newspapers between r853 and 1869, a new daily local press came into existence, but not one new local working-class daily was established through the rest of the nineteenth century. Curran and Seaton note that
Indeed, the eclipse of the national radical press was so total that when the Labour Party developed out of the working-class move- ment in the first decade of the twentieth century, it did not obtain the exclusive backing of a single national daily or Sunday paper. 6
One important reason for this was the rise in scale of newspaper enter- prise and the associated increase in capital costs from the mid- nineteenth century onward, which was based on technological
A PROPAGA~DA MODEL 3
l
4 MANUFACTURING CONSUlT
improvements along with the owners' increased stress on reaching large audiences. The expansion of the free market was accompanied by an "industrialization of the press. " The total cost of establishing a national weekly on a profitable basis in 1837 was under a thousand pounds, with a break-even circulation of 6,200 copies. By 1867) the estimated start-up cost of a new London daily was 50,000 pounds. The Sunday Express, launched in 1918, spent over two million pounds before it broke even with a circulation of ovcr 2. SQ,flQ. Q. ? '?
Similar processes were at work in the United States, where the start-up cost of a new paper in New York City in 1851 was 569,000; the public sale of the St. Louis Democrat in 1872 yielded $456,000; and city newspapers were selling at from $6 to $18 million in the 1920s. 8 The cost of machinery alone, of even very small newspapers, has for many decades run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars; in 1945 it could be said that "Even small-newspaper publishing is big business . . . [and] is no longer a trade one takes up lightly even if he has substantial cash-or takes up at all if he doesn't. "9
Thus the first filter-the limitation on ownership of media. with any substantial outreach by the requisite large size of investment-was applicable a century or more ago, and it has become increasingly effec- tive over time. lO In 1986 there were some 1,500 daily newspapers, II,OOO magazines, 9,000 radio and I,sao TV stations, 2>400 book publishers, and seven movie studios in the United States-over 25,000 media entities in all. But a large proportion of those among this set who were news dispensers were very small and local, dependent on the large national companies and wire services for all but local news. Many more were subject to common ownership, sometimes extending through vir- tually the entire set of media variants. a
Ben Bagdikian stresses the fact that despite the large media numbers, the twenty-nine largest media systems account for over half of the output of newspapers, and most of the sales and audiences in maga- zines, broadcasting, books, and movies. He contends that these "consti- tute a new Private Ministry of Information and Culture" that can set the national agenda. 12
Actually, while suggesting a media autonomy from corporate and government power that we believe to be incompatible with structural facts (as we describe below), Bagdikian also may be understating the degree of effective concentration in news manufacture. It has long been noted that the media are tiered, with the tOp tier-as measured by prestige, resources, and outreach-comprising somewhere between ten and twenty-four systems. u It is this top tier, along with the government and wire services, that defines the news agenda and supplies much of
the national and international news to the lower tiers of the media, and rhus for the general publk'4 Centralization within the top tier was substantially increased by the post-World War II rise of television and the national networking of this important medium. Pre-television news markets were local, even if heavily dependent on the higher tiers and a narrow set of sources for national and international news; the net- works provide national and international news from three national sources, and television is now the principal source of news for the public. '5 The maturing of cable, however, has resulted in a fragmenta- tion of television audiences and a slow erosion of the market share and power of the networks.
Table 1-1 provides some basic financial data for the twenty-four media giants (or their controlling parent companies) that make up the top tier of media companies in the United States. l6 This compilation includes: (I) the three television networks: ABC (through its parent, Capital Cities), CBS, and NBC (through its ultimate parent, General Electric [GEl); (2) the leading newspaper empires: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times (Times-Mirror), Wall Street Journal (Dow Jones), Knight-Ridder, Gannett, Hearst, Scripps-Howard, New- house (Advance Publications), and the Tribune Company; (3) the major news and general-interest magazines: Time, Newsweek (subsumed under Washington Post), Reader's Digest, TV Guide (Tdangle), and U. S. News & World Report; (4) a major book publisher (McGraw-Hill); and (5) other cable-TV systems of large and growing importance: those of Murdoch, Turner, Cox, General Corp. , Taft, Storer,l7 and Group W
I 01/estinghouse). Many of these systems are prominent in more than one field and are only arbitrarily placed in a particular category (Time, Inc. , is very important in cable as well as magazines; McGraw-Hill is a major publisher of magazines; the Tribune Company has become a large force in television as well as newspapers; Hearst is important in magazines
I as well as newspapers; and Murdoch has significant newspaper interests as well as television and movie holdings).
These twenty-four companies are large, profit-seeking corporations, owned and controlled by quite wealthy people. It can be seen in table I-I that all but one of the top companies for whom data are available have assets in excess of $1 billion, and the median size (middle item by size) is $2. 6 billion. It can also be seen in the table that approximately three-quaners of these media giants had after-tax profits in excess of $100 million, with the median at $183 million.
Many of the large media companies are fully integrated into the market, and for the others, too, the pressures of stockholders, directors, and bankers to focus on the bottom line are powerful. These pressures
A PROPACA~DA MODEL 5
6
MANUfACTURING CONSENT
COMP ANY
Advance Publications (Newhouse)l
Capital Cities/ABC
CBS
Cox Communi-
cations2 Dow Jones &
Co. Gannett
General Eleetric (NBC)
Hearst3
Knight-Ridder McGraw-Hill News Corp.
(Murdoch)? New York
Times Reader's
Digest~
Time, Inc. Times-Mirror TriangleS Tribune Co. Turner
Broadcasting U. S. News &
World Report9
PROFITS PROFITS
TOT AL BEFORE AFTER TOT AL
ASSETS TAXES TAXES REVENUE ($ MILLIONS) ($ MILLIONS) ($ MILLIONS) ($ MILLIONS)
TABLE 1-1
Financial Data for Twenty-four Large Media Corporations (or Their Parent Firms), December 1986
2,200
4,124
4,754 743
1,135
2,BOI
36,725
2,100 (1983) 1,911 1,517 3,822
1,565
1,400 (1985) 1,062 (-17) 537 Toft 1,257 (-II) (-53) 500
2,500
5,191
3,370 1,111
1,236
3,365 34,591
4,040
1,947 1,463 8,460
1,405
NA
4,23<> 2,929 NA 2,589 1,904
200+
. . .
448
NA NA
. 7. 370 17. 87
331 183
540 27' 3,689 2,492
NA 215 (1983) 2. 7 140 296 154 377 170
256 132
75-110 NA (1985)
Scripps-Howard6 Storer7
NA 1,242
NA NA . .
. . . . . .
NA NA 140
62l> 37. 3,762
2,948 NA NA 73<J 523 293 2,030 (-185) (-187) 570
=
A PROPAGA~DA MODEL 7
PROFITS PROFITS
TOT AL BEFORE AFTER TOT AL
ASSETS TAXES TAXES REVENUE ($ MILLIONS) ($ MILLIONS) ($ MILLIONS) ($ MILLIONS)
1,145 205 100 1,215 8,482 801 670 10,731
COMPANY
W ashington POst
W estinghouse
NA = not available
to The :l$Ct tOtal is taken from Forbes magazine's wealth total for the New- house family for 1985; the total revenue is for media sales only, as reported in Advem:sing Age, June 29, 1987.
