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.
Manufacturing Consent - Chomsky
B.
Neilands et al.
, Harvest of
liv INTRODUCTION
Death: Chemical Waifare in Vl? tnam and Cambodia (New York: Free Press, 1972).
66. First use of chemicals is contrary to the Geneva Protocol of 1925, and food crop destruction violates numerous international rules ofwar. The latter was even illegal according to the rules lsid out in the U. S. Army's own field manual in use during the Vietnam war. See Edward Herman, Atrocities in Vietnam (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1910), pp. 81-83.
67. Harvard University physician Jean Mayer, "Crop Destruction in Viet- nam," Science (April 15, 1966).
68. Alistair Hay, The Chemical Scythe: Lessons O! 2,4,5-T and Dioxin (New York: Plenum Publishing, 1982), pp. 187-94.
69. General Assembly Resolution 2603A (XXIV), December 16, 1969, "viewed with horror" and strongly condemned the U. S. chemical war.
70. Peter Waldman, "Body Count: In Vietnam, the Agony of Birth Defects Calls an Old War to Mind," Wall Street Journal, December 12, 1997.
71. Barbara Crossette, "Study of Dioxin's Effect in Vietnam Is Hampered by Diplomatic Freeze," New 10rk Times, August 19, 1992.
72. Matthew Meselson, Julian Robinson and Jeanne Guillemin, "Yellow Rain: The Story Collapses," Foreign Policy (Fall 1987), pp. 100-117; Edward S. Herman, "The \XTall Street Journal as a Propaganda Agency," in Herman, Myth of the Liberal Media, pp. 103-10.
73. Peter Kann, "Clinton Ignores History's Lessons in Vietnam," Wall Street Journal, September 9, 1992.
74. 'When Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran and his indigenous Kurds in the 1980s, the Reagan and Bush administrations made no protests and continued to treat him as a valued ally. It was only after he invaded Kuwait in 1990 that he became a menace and his possession of "weapons of mass destruction" was deemed intolerable. See citations in note 29 above.
75. In 1999, Uoyd Gardner found that the Barnes & Noble Web site con- tained 1,920 titles on some aspect of the Vietnam war and over 8,000 out-of- print and used books on that topic. "Going Back to Vietnam for a Usable Past," Newsday, November 14, 1999 (a review of Michael Lind's Necessary
War).
76. For this viewpoint, see Michael Crozier, Samuel Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy (New York: New York University Press, 1975).
77. Robert McNamara, In Rerrospect:The Tragedy and Lessons of Viemam (New York:Vintage Books, 1996).
78. For details and analysis of this onslaught on the people of South Vietnam, see Eric Bergerud, The DynamiCs of Defeat (Boulder, Colo: W'estview, 1991); Chomsky and Herman, washmgron Connection, chap. 5; Bernard Fall, "2000 Years of War in Vietnam," HorIZon (Spring 1967), reprinted in Fall, Last Reflections on a war (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967);Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long An (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971); Jonathan Schell, The Military Hall An Account of DestructIOn m Quang Nga! and Quang Tin (New York:Vintage, 1968).
79. H. Bruce Franklin, "Antiwar and Proud oflt," The Natum, December II, 2000.
80. Both Time and Newsweek, in their twenty-fifth-anniversary retrospectives on the war, featured the exit at war's end and the "desperate South Viet- namese" seeking escape from "the invading North Vietnamese. " Douglas Brinkley, "Of Ladders and Letters," Time, April 24, 2000; also, Evan Thomas, "The Last Days of Saigon," Newsweek, May I, 2000. A 1995 Wash- ington Post editorial speaks of the Vietnam war as a "defeat to the Vietnamese. They bled, died and finally fled in great numbers from a Communist regime. . . . " (April 30, 1995), characteristically not allowing the vast majority ofpeo- pie in South Vietnam to be "South Vietnamese. "
81. McNamara, In Retrospect, p. 319.
82. Full analyses of this history, and the lack of evidence, are provided in H. Bruce Franklin, M. f. A. , or, Mythmaking in America (Brooklyn, N. Y: Law- rence Hill Books, 1992), and Viernam and Other American Fantasws (Am- herst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000).
83. Franklin, Vietnam and OtherAmerican Fantasies, p. 183.
84. For a discussion, which stresses the underreported dissident movement within the armed forces, see ibid. , pp. 61-62.
85. M. ichael Lind, The Necessary war (New York: Free Press, 1999).
86. Gardner, "Going Back toVietnam for a Usable Past. "
87. Barry Wain, "The Deadly Legacy of War in Laos," ASian Wall StreetJour- nal, January 24, I997; Ronald Podlaski, Veng Saysana, and James Forsyth,
Accidental Massacre:American Air-Dropped Somblers Have Continued to Maim and Slaughter Thousands of Innocent Victims, Mainly Children, for the Last 2] %ars in Indochina (Humanitarian Liaison Services, Warren, Vr. 1997). These three authors, who have worked in Laos, believe the official figure of 20,000 annual casualties is too low.
88. 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.
liv INTRODUCTION
Death: Chemical Waifare in Vl? tnam and Cambodia (New York: Free Press, 1972).
66. First use of chemicals is contrary to the Geneva Protocol of 1925, and food crop destruction violates numerous international rules ofwar. The latter was even illegal according to the rules lsid out in the U. S. Army's own field manual in use during the Vietnam war. See Edward Herman, Atrocities in Vietnam (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1910), pp. 81-83.
67. Harvard University physician Jean Mayer, "Crop Destruction in Viet- nam," Science (April 15, 1966).
68. Alistair Hay, The Chemical Scythe: Lessons O! 2,4,5-T and Dioxin (New York: Plenum Publishing, 1982), pp. 187-94.
69. General Assembly Resolution 2603A (XXIV), December 16, 1969, "viewed with horror" and strongly condemned the U. S. chemical war.
70. Peter Waldman, "Body Count: In Vietnam, the Agony of Birth Defects Calls an Old War to Mind," Wall Street Journal, December 12, 1997.
71. Barbara Crossette, "Study of Dioxin's Effect in Vietnam Is Hampered by Diplomatic Freeze," New 10rk Times, August 19, 1992.
72. Matthew Meselson, Julian Robinson and Jeanne Guillemin, "Yellow Rain: The Story Collapses," Foreign Policy (Fall 1987), pp. 100-117; Edward S. Herman, "The \XTall Street Journal as a Propaganda Agency," in Herman, Myth of the Liberal Media, pp. 103-10.
73. Peter Kann, "Clinton Ignores History's Lessons in Vietnam," Wall Street Journal, September 9, 1992.
74. 'When Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran and his indigenous Kurds in the 1980s, the Reagan and Bush administrations made no protests and continued to treat him as a valued ally. It was only after he invaded Kuwait in 1990 that he became a menace and his possession of "weapons of mass destruction" was deemed intolerable. See citations in note 29 above.
75. In 1999, Uoyd Gardner found that the Barnes & Noble Web site con- tained 1,920 titles on some aspect of the Vietnam war and over 8,000 out-of- print and used books on that topic. "Going Back to Vietnam for a Usable Past," Newsday, November 14, 1999 (a review of Michael Lind's Necessary
War).
76. For this viewpoint, see Michael Crozier, Samuel Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy (New York: New York University Press, 1975).
77. Robert McNamara, In Rerrospect:The Tragedy and Lessons of Viemam (New York:Vintage Books, 1996).
78. For details and analysis of this onslaught on the people of South Vietnam, see Eric Bergerud, The DynamiCs of Defeat (Boulder, Colo: W'estview, 1991); Chomsky and Herman, washmgron Connection, chap. 5; Bernard Fall, "2000 Years of War in Vietnam," HorIZon (Spring 1967), reprinted in Fall, Last Reflections on a war (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967);Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long An (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971); Jonathan Schell, The Military Hall An Account of DestructIOn m Quang Nga! and Quang Tin (New York:Vintage, 1968).
79. H. Bruce Franklin, "Antiwar and Proud oflt," The Natum, December II, 2000.
80. Both Time and Newsweek, in their twenty-fifth-anniversary retrospectives on the war, featured the exit at war's end and the "desperate South Viet- namese" seeking escape from "the invading North Vietnamese. " Douglas Brinkley, "Of Ladders and Letters," Time, April 24, 2000; also, Evan Thomas, "The Last Days of Saigon," Newsweek, May I, 2000. A 1995 Wash- ington Post editorial speaks of the Vietnam war as a "defeat to the Vietnamese. They bled, died and finally fled in great numbers from a Communist regime. . . . " (April 30, 1995), characteristically not allowing the vast majority ofpeo- pie in South Vietnam to be "South Vietnamese. "
81. McNamara, In Retrospect, p. 319.
82. Full analyses of this history, and the lack of evidence, are provided in H. Bruce Franklin, M. f. A. , or, Mythmaking in America (Brooklyn, N. Y: Law- rence Hill Books, 1992), and Viernam and Other American Fantasws (Am- herst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000).
83. Franklin, Vietnam and OtherAmerican Fantasies, p. 183.
84. For a discussion, which stresses the underreported dissident movement within the armed forces, see ibid. , pp. 61-62.
85. M. ichael Lind, The Necessary war (New York: Free Press, 1999).
86. Gardner, "Going Back toVietnam for a Usable Past. "
87. Barry Wain, "The Deadly Legacy of War in Laos," ASian Wall StreetJour- nal, January 24, I997; Ronald Podlaski, Veng Saysana, and James Forsyth,
Accidental Massacre:American Air-Dropped Somblers Have Continued to Maim and Slaughter Thousands of Innocent Victims, Mainly Children, for the Last 2] %ars in Indochina (Humanitarian Liaison Services, Warren, Vr. 1997). These three authors, who have worked in Laos, believe the official figure of 20,000 annual casualties is too low.
88. 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.
