For an accounr of critiques, and the present writers' replies, see Noam Chomsky,
Necessary
Illusions (Boston: South End Press, 1989), appendix I; Edward S.
Manufacturing Consent - Chomsky
contribution to the first phase of a "Decade of Genocide.
"92
The washington Post blacked out the inconvenient fifteen-year period of support of Pol Pot with this summary: "After the nightmare of Khmer Rouge rule and genocide, the United States and its allies pumped mil- lions of donars into Cambodia to help rebuild and to hold elections. "9~
It is enlightening to compare the media's treatment of Pol Pot and Indonesian leader Suharto, who was also in the news in 1998, as Indone- sia suffered a financial crisis that-along with popular resistance to the dictatorship---eventually led to his ouster. Pol Pot was described in the editorials and news columns of April 1998 as "crazed," a "killer," "war criminal," "mass murderer," "blood-soaked," and as having engineered a "reign of terror" and "genocide. " But in 1998 and 1999, and in earlier years as well, while Suharto was occasionally referred to as a "dictator" and running an "authoritarian" regime, he was never a "killer" or "mass murderer" or one responsible for "genocide. " The terminological double standard is maintained reliably throughout the mainstream media. 94
Less obvious but equally interesting is the difference in willingness
to identify the responsible parties for the killings of Pol Pot and Suharto. In the case of Pol Pot, there is no uncertainty or complexity: editorials and news articles uniformly make him and the Khmer Rouge leadership clearly and unambiguously responsible for all deaths in Cambodia dur- ing the period 1975-78. He was the "man who slaughtered two million" (USA 1Oday), "the executioner" (Boston Glebe) who "presided over the deaths" of his victims (washington Post), "the man who drove Cambodia to ruin" (New Thrk Times).
But in Suhano's case, we move to an ambiguous responsibility, which means none at all: in the New Thrk Times, for example, "a 1965 coup led to the massacres of hundreds of thousands of supposed communists" (edi- torial, Aug. 23, 1996), where we have no agent doing the killing; or "a wave ofviolence that took up to 500,000 lives and led Suharto to seize power from Sukarno in a military coup" (Seth Mydans, Aug. 7, 1996), where the massacre not only has no agent, but is falseLy situated before the takeover of power by Suharto. In a latcr piece, Mydans states that "more than 500,000 Indonesians are estimated to have died in a purge of leftists in 1965, the year Mr. Suharto came to power" (April 8, 1997). Note the passive voice, never used in connection with Pol Pot, the word "purge" instead of "slaughter" or "massacre," and the continued faillU'e to identify the agent.
In the case of East Timor, also, the Times is uncertain about the source of the killing: "This is one of the world's sadder places, where 100,000 to 200,000 people died from 1974 in a brutal civil war and the consequent invasion through combat, execution, disease and starvation. . . . " (Steven Erlanger, Oct. 2I, 1990). In addition to the lack ofa clear agent, this sen- tence seriously misrepresents the facts-the civil war was shorr and left small numbers dead; and the invasion was not "consequent" to a brutal civil war, except in Indonesian propaganda.
Another important difference in the treatment of the "worthy" victims of Pol Pot and the "unworthy" victims of Suharto is in the willingness to explain away the killings. With Pol Pot, as we describe in chapter 7, the background of the first phase of the genocide was completely blacked out in the mainstream account-there is no qualification to Pol Pot's respon- sibility as a killer because his forces had undergone terrible damage and sought vengeance for the crimes they had suffered; nor are any deaths in Pol Pot's years of rule to be explained by the starvation and disease already pervasive in April 1975. No, the only mentionable background is his Paris training and Communist fanaticism.
But with Suharto we encounter a whole new world of contextualized apologetics. For many years the main protective formula was that the 1965--66 killings were "a result of a failed coup," which "touched off
INTRODUCTION xxxix
xl INTRODUCTION
a wave of violence," or followed an "onslaught from the left. "95 This formula, invoked repeatedly, suggests that the mass killings were pro- voked and thus maybe justified by a prior "onslaught. " The v. rriters never explain why a failed coup could possibly justify a large-scale slaughter, but the hint is left hanging. In more recent years, usually in connection with the explanation and rationalization of the continuation of a dicta- torship, the media regularly juxtaposed political repression with "stabil- ity" and "growth": "the signs of his success are everywhere," although Suharto has brought these gains "by maintaining a tight grip on power and suppressing public criticism and political opposition. "96 These state- ments, from the New 1Vrk Times, offer a kind of context that the paper never gives to Castro, let alone a Pol Pot, and it shows an apologetic that runs deep.
This apologetic extends to the Suharto invasion and occupation of East Timor. For years, New Thrk Times reporters have claimed that In- donesia invaded in the midst of a civil war,97 when in fact that civil war was over well before the invasion. The paper's news coverage of East Timor actually fell to zero as the Indonesian attacks and killings in East Timor reached a deadly peak in 1977-78, a slaughter that elsewhere would be called "genocidal. " And although Indonesia occupied East Timor in violation of standing UN. rulings till its induced exit in 1999, the paper's reporters repeatedly referred to East Timor as a "disputed province" and East Timorese resistance as "separatist," thereby internal- izing and explicitly legitimizing the aggression and occupation. 98
The bias and gentle treatment of Suharto and the Indonesian govern- ment in the media is once again correlated with US. policy support that dates back to the military coup and slaughters of 1965. These were greeted with enthusiasm by US. officials-then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara referred to the events as one of the "dividends" of U. S. support for the Indonesian military-and the "boiling bloodbath" (Time) and "staggering mass slaughter" (New Thrk Times) were also seen in the media as a "gleam of light" Games Reston in the New Thrk Times). 99 U. S. military and economic aid and diplomatic protection continued throughout the years of the Suharto dictatorship, and the media's finding him a good genocidist followed accordingly.
New YOrk Times reporter David Sanger differentiated Suharto and post- 1990 Saddam Hussein-before 1990 he was a U. S. ally-saying "Mr. Suharto is not hoarding anthrax or threatening to invade Australia. "loo That is, Suharto's invasion, mass killing, and long illegal occupation of East Timor is given zero weight, and his slaughter of somewhere between 500,000 and 2 million people within Indonesia some years back is also
not mentioned. This tells us all we need to know about how good and bad genocidists fare in the Western propaganda system.
FURTHER APPLICATIONS
In his book Golden Rule, political scientist Thomas Ferguson argues that where the major investors in political parties and elections agree on an issue, the parties will not compete on that issue, no matter how strongly the public might want an alternative. He contends that for ordinary vot- ers to influence electoral choices they would have to have "strong chan- nels that directly facilitate mass deliberation and expression. "IOI These would include unions and other intermediate organizations that might, through their collective power, cause the interests of ordinary voters to be given greater weight in the political system.
The propaganda model, and the institutional arrangements that it re- flects, suggests that the same forces that preclude competition among the parties on issues on which the major investors agree, will also dominate media choices and rule OUt "mass deliberation and expression" on those issues. For example, polls regularly indicate that, except in periods of war and intense war propaganda, the public wants a smaller defense budget and favors a spending shift from defense to education and other civil functions. 102 But because the major investors agree that a large defense budget is desirable, the two dominant parties compete only on whether the one or the other is st. inting on military expenditures, with both prom- ising to enlarge it (as both George W. Bush and AI Gore did in the presi- dential election campaign of 2000). And the mainstream media do the same, limiting debate to the terms defined by the two parties and exclud- ing deliberation and expression of the position that large cuts are desir- able. The alternative presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, called for such cuts, but the media denied him a voice on the issues, some of them explicitly defending his exclusion from the presidential debates on the grounds that the options afforded by the two parties sufficed. 103
The U. S. corporate community has favored an immense defense budget. . -----eurrently more than five times the size of that of a steadily weak- ening Russia, the second biggest spender-because of the great benefits its members derive from military spending. These include weapons and other contracting business, direct and indirect subsidies in research,104 and the role played by military power in supporting the global economic expansion in which many U. S. transnational corporations are active
INTRODUCYlON xli
xlii INTRODUCTION
participants and beneficiaries. Business also benefits from the market- opening actions of trade agreements and from the supportive operations of the \VTO, the World Bank, and the IMF. But these trade agreements and the activities ofthe international fmancial institutions have generated controversy and political struggle, because while their benefits to busi- ness are dear, their costs are borne heavily by workers forced to compete in a global job market. Furthermore, globalization and trade agreements strengthen the political as well as the economic power of the corporate community, in part because they shift decision-making authority from democratic polities to bankers and technocrats who more reliably serve the transnational corporate interest. Here also, as in the case of defense- versus civilian-oriented budgets, polls show a sharp dichotomy between corporate and public preferences, with the latter generally hostile to the agreements and institutional arrangements favored by business. lOS
The propaganda model fits well the media's treatment of this range of issues. Consider, for example, their coverage of the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the subsequent Mexican financial crisis and meltdown of 1994--95. Polls taken before its enactment consistently showed substantial majorities opposed to N A FrA -and later to r. ""Ie bailout of investors in Mexican securities-but the elite in favor. Media editorials, news coverage, and selection of "experts" in opinion columns were heavily skewed toward the elite pref- erence; their judgment was that the benefits of NAFTA were obvious, were agreed to by all qualified authorities, and that only demagogues and "special interests" were opposed. 106 The "special interests" who might be the "losers" included women, minorities, and a majority of the work- force. 107 The media dealt with the awkward fact that poUs showed steady majority opposition to the agreement mainly by ignoring it, but occasion- ally they suggested that the public was uninformed and didn't recognize its own true interests. 108 The effort of labor to influence the outcome of the NAFTA debates was sharply attacked in both the lV. 'ew YOrk Times and the washington Post, with no comparable criticism of corporate or govern- mental (U. S. and Mexican) lobbying and propaganda. And while labor was attacked for its alleged position on these issues, the press refused to allow the actual position to be expressed. 10Q
In December 1994, only eleven months after NAFrA went into effect, Mexico suffered a major financial crisis, induding a massive flight of cap- ital, a devaluation ofthe currency, and a subsequent bailout by the IMF that required Mexico to carry out painful deflationary measures. Despite the fact that the meltdown occurred within a year of the introduction of NAFTA, which the media had portrayed as ushering in a prospective
golden age of economic advance, they were unanimous that NAFTA was not to blame. And in virtual lock-step they supported the Mexican (investor) bailout, despite poll reports of general public opposition in the United States. Experts and media pundits and editorialists repeatedly explained that one great merit ofNAFT A was that it had "locked Mexico in" so that it couldn't alter its overall policy direction or resort to controls to protect itself from severe deflation and unemployment. They were oblivious to the profoundly undemocratic nature of this lock-in, made more questionable by the fact that it had been negotiated by a Mexican government that ruled as a result of electoral fraud. 11o
More recently, when the growing global opposition to the policies of the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank led to mass protests at the WTO conference in Seattle in November and December 1999, and then at the annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, D. C. , in April 2000, media coverage ofthese events was derisive and hostile to the protesters and almost uniformly failed to deal with the substantive issues that drove the protests. The media portrayed the Seanle protesters as "all- purpose agitators" (U:S. Neu's & WOrld Report), "terminally aggrieved" (Philadelphia Inquirer), simply "against world trade" (ABC News), and making "much ado about nothing" (CNN), but the bases of the protest- ers' grievances were almost entirely unexplored. lll Similarly, in the case of the Washington, D. C. , protests, the media repeatedly reported on activists' attire, looks, body odors, fadism, and claimed a lack of "any- thing that can coherently be called a cause" (Michael Kelly, journalist,
W&shington Post), and they continued their refusal to address issues. 112 There were many informed protesters with coherent agendas at Seanle and Washington-including reputable economists, social theorists, and veteran organizers from around the worldl13_but the media did not seek them out, preferring to stereotype antiglobalization activists as ignorant troublemakers. On op-ed pages, there was a major imbalance hostile to the protesters. TV bias was at least as great, and often misleading on the facts. In his November 29, t999, backgrounder on the WTO, Dan Rather explained that the organization had ruled on many environmental issues, implying that those rulings were protective of the environment when in fact they generally privileged trade rights over environmental needs.
Another notable feature of media reporting on both the Seattle and Washington, D. c. , protests, and a throwback to their biased treatment of the protests of the Vietnam War era (1965-75),114 was their exaggera- tion of protester violence, their downplaying of police provocations and violence, and their complaisance at illegal police tactics designed to limit all protestor actions, peaceable or otherwise. IIS Although the Seattle
INTRODUCTION xliii
xliv INTRODUCTION
police resorted to force and used chemical agents against many nonvio- lent protesters well before a handful of individuals began brealting win- dows, both then and later the media reversed this chronology, stating that the police violence was a response to protester violence. In fact, the van- dals were largely ignored by the police, while peaceful protesters were targeted for beatings, tear g:1S, torture with pepper spray, and arrest. 1I6 One New 10Tk Times anic1e went so far as to claim that the Seattle pro- testers had thrown excrement, rocks, and Molotov cocktails at delegates and police officers; the Times later issued a correction acknowledging that these claims were false. ll7 Dan Rather, who had falsely alleged that the protesters had "brought on today's crackdown" at Seattle, later suggested that the \);Tashington protesters were possibly "hoping for a replay of last year's violence in Seattle," setting this off against "those charged with keeping the peace" who "have other ideas. "118
In their eighty-seven-page report, Out of Control: Seattle's Flawed Re-
sponse to Protests Against the WOrld Trade Organization, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated that "demonstrators [in Seattle] were overwhelmingly peaceful. Not so the police. " The response of the Seattle
police to the protests was characterized by "draconian" violations of civil liberties, including widespread use of <" chemical weapons, rubber bullets
and clubs against peaceful protesters and bystanders alike. " But NBC, 1 ABC, CBS, CNN, and the New 10rk Times and washington Post all ig- I nored the release ofthe ACLU's fmding<3, which ran counter to their own uniformly pro-police and ami-protester line.
The media's reversal of chronology and inflation of the threat of ac- tivist violence, and their low-keyed treatment of numerous illegal police actions designed to instill fear in those wanting to protest peaceably,ll9 provided the enabling ground for both police violence and serious restrictions on free speech. These increased in scope and sophistication between Seattle and Washington, and were then applied TO squelch pro- test at the Republican and Democratic conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles in July and August 2 0 0 0 . 120 The corporate media's hostility to the goals of the protests, closely aligned with that of the rest of the cor- porate establishment, caused their devotion to the First Amendment to flag in a way it never has when their own rights and privileges have been at stake.
As is suggested by the media's treatment of NAFT A and of labor's right to participate in its debates, as well as the media coverage ofWater- gate, COINTELPRO, and major events in the earlier history of labor- management conflict (the Haymarket affair, the Homestead strike, the post-World War I "red scare"),l2l the propaganda model applies to do-
mestic as well as foreign policy issues. Labor has been under renewed siege in the United States for the past several decades, its condition adversely affected by the deflationary policies of the early 1980s, corpo- rate downsizing, globalization, a vigorous business campaign to defeat unions, and government support of, or indifference to, the damage being inflicted on unions and workers. There was a major drop in union mem- bership from the beginning of the Reagan era, with union density falling from 25 percent in 1980 to J4-5 percent in J996 (and only JO_2 percent in the private sector). This reflected weakened labor bargaining power and was accompanied by significant concessions in wages and benefits, more onerous working conditions, and greater worker insecurity.
President Reagan's firing of ! I,OOO striking air? controllers in 1981 "put the government seal of approval on strike-breaking and a new era of industrial relations opened. "I22 But you would hardly know this from reading or listening to the mainstream media. An exceptional t994 Busi- ness week article noted that "over the past dozen years . . . U. S. industry has conducted one of the most successful union wars ever," helped by "illegally firing thousands of workers for exercising their right to organ- ize," with unlawful firings occurring in "one-third of all representation elections in the late '80S. "123 But this successful war was carried out quietly, with media cooperation. The decertification of unions, use of replacement workers, and long, debilitating strikes like that involving Caterpillar were treated in a very low key manner. In a notable illustra- tion of the applicability of the propaganda model, the nine-month-long Pittston miners' strike that began in April 1989 was accorded much less attention, and less friendly treatment, than the Soviet miners' strikes of the summer of that same year,124
From 1977 through 1999, while the incomes of the top 1 percent of households grew by 84. 8 percent and the top 10 percent by 44. 6 percent, the bottom 60 percent lost ground and the income of the lowest 20 percent fell by 12. 5 percent. 125 Real hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees (i. e. , the 80 percent of the workforce that holds working-class jobs) fell by 4. 8 percent between 1973 and 1999. 226 This, along with the adverse trend of social indicators in the same period,127 suggests that the welfare of the majority declined in this era of high employment, a "new economy," and a spectacular upswing in the stock market. In its euphoria phase, which ended abruptly with the col- lapse of the dot. com market in 1999 and 2000, the mainstream media hardly noticed that only a minority had been the beneficiaries;128 they briefly discovered this issue only under the impetus of Pat Buchanan's right-wing populist outcries during the 1996 presidential election cam-
INTRODUCTION xlv
xlvi IN,RODucnON
paign. In the 2000 electoral campaign, once again the twO major party candidates said nothing about the failure of the majority to be lifted in the supposed "rising tide" that would benefit everybody; only Ralph Nader and other marginalized candidates did, and as noted, the domi- nant media found that the agenda of the major parties was all that they could ask for.
Another strilcing application of the propaganda model can be seen in the media's treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. Be- cause of the industry's power, as well as the media's receptivity to the demands of the business community, the media have normalized a system described by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring as "deliberately poi- soning us, then policing the results. "lZ9 Industry is permitted to produce and sell chemicals (and during the 1990s, bioengineered foods) without independent and prior proof of safety, and the "policing" by the Environ- mental Protection Agency (EPA) has been badly compromised by under- funding and political limits on both law enforcement and testing. no A major National Research Council study of 1984 found that there was no health hazard data available for 78 percent ofthe chemicals in commerce, and an Environmental Defense Fund update found little change had occurred a dozen years laler. The federal government's National Toxicol- ogy Program tests about ten to twenty chemicals a year for carcinogenic- ity (but not for the numerous other possible adverse effects ofchemicals); but meanwhile five hundred to a thousand new chemicals enter com- merce annually, so our knowledge base steadily declines. 131
This system works well for industry, however, as it wants to sell with- out interference, and leaving virtually aU of the research and testing for safety in its hands, with its members to decide when the results are worthy of transmission to the EP A, is a classic "fox guarding the chick- ens" arrangement. The system has worked poorly for the public, and its inadequacy has been reinforced by the industry's power to influence, sometimes even capture, the EPA. 132 Nevertheless, the industry often contends that the safety of chemicals is assured by EP A (or FDA) regula- tion, 133 which industry does its best to keep weak and which, as noted, has failed to deal in any way with the great majority of chemicals in the marker.
With the media's help, the chemical industry has also gained wide acceptance of its view that chemicals should be evaluated individually on the basis of an analysis of their risks to individuals and individual tolerances. But it is very hard to measure such risks and tolerances for humans----controlled experiments are not possible, damage may show up only after many years, the forms of damage are hard to know in advance, chemicals may interact with others in the environment, they may be bio-
accumulative, and the breakdown products of chemicals may have their own dangers. Furthermore, if thousands of chemicals enter the environ- ment, many long-lasting, bioaccumulative, and interacting with other chemicals, a public policy that ignores their additive and interactive ef- fects on people and the environment is deeply flawed and irresponsible.
Policy based on the "precautionary principle," bitterly opposed by the chemical industry, with the support of the U. S. government,134 would nor allow chemicals to enter the environment without full tesring, would prohibit the use of chemicals that accumulate in human tissues and whose breakdown products are threatening or unknown, and would compel the use of nonthreatening alternatives for untested and known- to-be-risky chemicals where such alternatives can be found or developed at reasonable cOSt. l35
In successfully avoiding application of the precautionary principle, industry spokespersons have argued that the existing system is based on "sound science. " But science does not tell us that industry has any right to put chemicals into the environment that have any risk at all, let alone telling us what risks are acceptable-these are political decisions. Fur- thermore, if the chemicals in the environment have not been tested for all the variables that are relevant to social choices, such as their long-term effects on immune systems and reproduction as well as any cancer threat, and the effects of their breakdown products on the environment-and none of them have been so tested-the political, not scientific, basis of "sound science" is evident.
The chemical industry has produced, and long denied any harm from, innumerable products-from tetraethyl lead in gasoline and PCBs in batteries to asbestos, DDT, and Agent Orange-that are now well estab- lished as seriously harmful, only withdrawing them (often only from domestic use) under overwhelming legal and regulatory pressure. For the products they have wanted to sell, they have always found scientists who would testify to their harmlessness (or that claims of harm were not scientifically proven). There has been a consistent sharp difference bet\Veen the results of industry-sponsored science and those of inde- pendent researchers working the same terrain. l3o And there have been numerous cases of fraud in industry testing, industry use of testing labs that arranged the data to find industry products acceptable, and political manipulation to weaken regulatory standards. 137
Despite these industry abuses of science, the media have largely ac- cepted the industry's claim that it supports "sound science," in contrast with its critics' use of "junk. science. " From 1996 through September 1998, 258 articles in mainstream newspapers used the phrase "junk sci- ence"; but only 21, or 8 percent, used it to refer to corporate abuses of
INTRODUCTION xlvii
xlviii INTRODUCTION
science, whereas 160, or 62 percent, applied it to science used by envi- ronmentalists, other corporate critics, or tort lawyers suing corporations (77, or 30 percent, didn't fit either of these categories). 138 In short, the media have internalized industry's self-legitimizing usage, just as they have normalized a status quo of caveat emptor (buyer beware) rather than of safety first.
The media have also regularly gotten on board in dismissing concerns about chemical threats as unwarranted "scares," such as the alleged scares over dioxin and the danger of Alar on apples. But these and other scares often turn out to be based on genuine health hazards. J3Q Meanwhile, the media rarely report and examine in any depth the frequent evidence of the inadequacy of regulation and testing and of the real costS of chemical- ization of the environmenr. J4O For example, the International Joint Com- mission (lIC), a joint Canadian-U. S. venture dating back to 1978, was given the formidable task oftrying to halt the flow oftoxic chemicals into the Great Lakes. It reports each year that it is failing, and since t992 has called for the ending of the manufacture of chlorine as essential to fulfill- ing its task. The national media virtually ignore this appeal, and the IJC's US. cochairman Gordon Durnil has remarked that "we have a societal problem about how to deal with this, but 90 percent of the population doesn't even know there is anything to worry about. "J41 We believe that the propaganda model helps understand this lack ofknowledge.
In the health insurance controversy of 1992-93, the media's refusal to take the single-payer option seriously, despite apparent widespread public support and the effectiveness of the system in Canada, served well the interests of the insurance and medical service complex. 142 The un- critical media reponing and commentary on the alleged urgency of fiscal restraint and a balanced budget in the years 1992-96 fit well the business community's desire to reduce the social budget and weaken reguls- tion. 143 The media's gullibiliry in accepting the claim of a Social Security system "crisis," which would require policy action some thirty-seven years ahead if certain conservative guesses were true and a number of easy corrections were ruled out, served the interests ofconservative ideo- logues anxious to weaken a highly successful government program and a security industry eager to benefit from the partial or full privatization of Social Security. 144 The applicability of the propaganda model in these and other cases, including the media's handling of the "drug wars," seems clear. \45
i
CONCLUDING NOTE
The propaganda model remains a useful framework for analyzing and understanding the workings of the mainstream media-perhaps even more so than in 1988. As we noted above, the changes in structural con- ditions that underlie the model, and that we believe strongly and often decisively influence media behavior and performance, have tended to increase the model's salience. We noted in the Preface to the first edition and in chapters 2 and 3, in reference to the media's coverage of the wars and elections in Central America in the I980s, that the media's perform- ance often surpassed expectations of media subservience to government propaganda demands. This was at least equally true of their performance in covering the 1991 war against Iraq and NATO's war against Yugo- slavia in 1999, as we have described earlier and briefly in regard to Yugoslavia and in detail elsewhere. 146
In our conclusion to the first edition, we emphasized that, as the nega- tive performance effects of the media result primarily from their struc- ture and objectives, real change in performance calls for substantial changes in underlying media organization and goals. In the years since 1988, structural changes have not been favorable to improved perform- ance, but it remains a central truth that democratic politics requires a democratization of information sources and a more democratic media. Along with trying to contain and reverse the growing centralization of the mainstream media, grassroots movements and intermediate groups that represent large numbers of ordinary citizens should put much more energy and money into creating and supporting their own media-as they did with the Independent Media Centers brought into existence during the Seattle and Washington, D. C. , protests of 1999 and 2000. These, and other nonprofit community-based broadcasting stations and networks, and a better use of public-access channels, the Internet, and independent print media, will be essential for the achievement of major democratic social and political successes.
Notes to Introduction
1. On a number of issues, such as trade agreements, health care, and the appropriate size of the military budget, there is a sharp division between media personnel and the elite on the one hand and the general population on the other hand, as we discuss below under "Further Applications. "
INTRa Due T ION xlix
INTRODUCTION
2. This was even true in the Soviet Union, where the media's disclosure of inconvenient facts on the Afghan war caused the Soviet defense minister to denounce the press as unpatriotic; see Bill Keller, "Soviet Official Says Press Harms Army," lv. Tew YOrk Times, January 21, 1988.
3.
For an accounr of critiques, and the present writers' replies, see Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions (Boston: South End Press, 1989), appendix I; Edward S. Herman, "The Propaganda Model Revisited," in The Myth of the Liberal Media (New York: Peter Lang, 1999).
4- Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, 6th ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), p. xxi.
5. Ibid.
6. Edward S. Herman and Robert McChesney, The Global Media (London: Cassell, 1997).
7. Robert McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), p. 108.
8. Ibid. , p. 109.
9. James Ledbetter, "Public Broadcasting Sells; (Out? )," The Nation, Decem- ber I, 1997.
10. Ibid.
II. Stephanie Strom, "Japanese Sites for Women Aim for Empowerment," New "York Times, December 25, 2000.
12. J\1ark Fineman, "Military Can't Outflank Rebels in War of Words," Los
Angeles Times, February 21, 1995; Leonard Doyle, "Rebels Try to Advance via Internet," The Indepemknt, March 7, 1995.
13. Jim Shultz, "Bolivia's Water War Victory," Earth Island Journal, Septem- ber 22, 2000; "Bolivia-The Last Word," April 13, 2000, JShultz@democra- cyar. org; "How the Internet Helped Activists," Straits Times (Singapore), May 25, 1998; Marshall Clark, "Cleansing the Earth," Inside Indonesia (Octo- ber-December 1998).
14. Madelaine Drohan, "How the Net Killed the . MAl," Globe and Mail, April 29,1998.
IS. Kayte Van Scoy, "How Green Was My Silicon Valley," PC/Computing, March I, 2000; Keith Perine, "Power to the (\Veb-Enabled) People," Industry Standard, April 1 0 , 2000. See also "Further Applications" below.
16. James Ledbetter, "Some Pitfalls in Portals," Columbia Journalism Review . ~ (November-December 1999)? 1 17. Quoted in ibid.
18. Alex Carey, Taking the Risk out of DemoCTa<:y (Urbana: University ofIlli~ . . nois Press, 1997); John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good 1
for "You. ' (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995); Stuart Ewen, PR'
A Social History ofSpin (New York: Basic Books, 1996).
19. Mark Dowie, "Introduction," Stauber and Rampton, Toxic Sludge. ? 20. See Stephen Cohen, Failed Crusade:America and the Tragedy of Posr-Com- 1 munist Russia (New York: Norton, 2000). See also Thomas Frank, One Mar-
ker Under God (New York: Doubleday, 2000).
21. Kevin Robins and Frank Webster, Times of the Technocu1ture (London: Routledge, I999), p. 127.
22. Patricia Aufderheide, "Journalism and Public Life Seen Through the
'Net,'" in Aufderheide, The Daily Planet (Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press, 2000); Joseph Turow, Breaking Up Amen'ca (Chicago: Univer- siryofChicago Press, 1997).
23. Herman and McChesney, Global Media, chapter 5.
24. On the ideological messages borne in commercials, see Erik Barnouw, The Sponsor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), part 2, chapter t.
25. See Robert McChesney, 'Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy (New York: Oxford, 1993).
26. See Herman, Myth ofthe Liberal Media, pp. 32-33.
27. For some dramatic evidence on the mainstream media's neglect of these credible sources, see below, pp. 76-79.
28. Peter Galbraith, "How the Turks Helped Their Enemies," New lOrk Times, February 20, 1999.
29. During the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein was a u. s. ally and recipient of U. S. aid, his use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in Iraq, which killed thousands in 1988, did not interfere with support by the Bush administration, which continued up to the moment of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on August 30, 1990. See Mark Phythian, Arming Iraq; How the u. s. and Britain Secretly
Built Saddam's war Machme (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997); Miron Rezun, Saddam Hussein's Gulf W&rs; Ambivalent Stakes in the Middle East (Westport Conn. : Praeger, 1992).
30. The CIA itself designated the 1965-66 slaughters in Indonesia as "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century" (quoted in Robert Cribb, ed. , The Indonesian Killings of1965-1966 [Monash Papers on Southeast Asia, no. 21,1991]). The figure of 500,000 victims in this slaughter, given by the head oflndonesian state security, must be taken as an absolute minimal figure. For other estimates that run up to 2 million, see Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, The W&shington Connection and Third World FasCISm (Boston: South End Press, 1979), pp. 208-9; Benedict Anderson, "Fetrus Dadi Ratu," Ne1JJ Left Review (May-June, 2000).
31. Former U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Patrick Moynihan brags in his autobiography of how back in I975 he protected Indonesia from any effective international action that might have interfered with its aggression: "The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly inef- fective in whatever measures it took [regarding the Indonesian invasion of East Timor]. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no in- considerable succeSs. " He added, without the slightest expression of regret, that within a few weeks 60,000 people had been killed in this aggression that he was protecting. A Dangerous Place (New York: little, Brown, 1978), p. 19. 32. For accounts of this shift, seeJohn Pilger, Hidden Agendas (London: Vin- tage, 1998), pp. 33-34; Chomsky, Necessary ntuslOns, pp. 109-10. For the ear- lier media treatment of Indonesia in East Timor, see Washington Connection, pp. 129-204.
33. John and Karl Mueller, "Sanctions of Mass Destruction," Foreign Affairs (May-June 1999), p. 43?
34. UNICEF, "Iraq Surveys Show 'Humanitarian Emergency,'" Press Release, August 12, 1999.
35. Leslie Stahl interviewing Madeleine Albright, "60 Minutes," CBS News Transcript, May 12, 1996.
36. Many KLA. and Serb fighters died in Kosovo, and civilians were killed by
lNTRODUCTIOK li
I i i I~TRODUCTION
NA TO bombs and military actions not aiming to kill civilians. See Jonathan Steele, "Figures Put on Serb Killings Too High," Guardian (August 18, 2000). For a fuller discussion, Noam Chomsky, A New Generation Draws the Line (London:Verso, 2000), chapter 3.
37. John Taylor, East Timor: The Price of FreerkJm (London: Zed, 1999). See also Arnold Kohen, "Beyond the Vote: The World Must Remain Vigilant Over East Timor," washington Post, September 5, 1999.
38. The source is Western investigators on the scene, including U. S. military personnel: Lnds! IY Murdoch, "Horror Lives on for Town of Lquica," The Age (Australia), April 8, 1999; Barry Wain, "Will Justice Be Served in East Timor? " Wall Street Journal (Asia edition), April n, 2000.
39. On the importance of Racak as a basis for mobilizing U. S. allies and the
public for war, see Barton Gellman, "The Path to Crisis: How the United I States and Its Allies Went to War," Washington Post, April 18, 1999; Madeleine
Albright referred to Racak as a "galvanizing incident" (quoted in Bo Adam,
Roland Heine, and Claudius Technau, "I Felt that Something Was Wrong,"
Berliner Zeitung, April 5, 2000).
40. See Edward Herman and David Peterson, "CNN: Selling Nato's War
Globally," in Philip Hammond and Edward Herman, eds. , Degraded Capabil-
ity:The Media and the Kosovo Crisis (London: Pluto, 2000), Pl'. 117-19. More
recently, three Finnish forensic experts, who were members of a panel that
examined the forry bodies found at Racak, disclosed that their team found
no support for the alleged mutilations by the Serbs, and the data presented
in the article casts further doubt on the claim that all the victims were exe-
cuted. 0. Raina et a1. , "Independent Forensic Autopsies in Armed Conflict Investigation ofVictims from Racak, Kosovo," Forensic SCience InternatIOnal,
vol. 16 (2001), pp. 171-85. ) It is a notable fact that the OSeE has not yet seen I fit to release the original forensic report from which this article's data is
drawn.
41. Herman and Peterson, "CNN: Selling Nato's War Globally. "
42. Editorial, "Election Risks in Cambodia," New York Times, November 28,
1997?
43. "Gathering Storm in Serbia? " editori! Il, washington Post, September II,
2000; "Repudiating Mr. Milosevic," editorial, New \0rk Time~,September 26,
2000.
44. Editorial, "Kenya's Flawed Election," New 10rk Times, December 31,
1997?
45. Editorial, "Mexico's Radical Insider," New \ilrk Times, July 3, 1988.
46. Editorial, "The Missing Reform in Mexico," New 10rk Times, August 24,
1991.
47. Editorial, "Turkey Approaches Democracy," New 10rk Times, November
II, 1983.
48. Editorial, "Victories for Voters in Latin America: Uruguay's Slow Boat to Democracy," New 10rk Times, December I, 1984.
49. Editorial, "A Victory for Russian Democracy," New 10Tk Times, July 4,
1996.
50. "And the Winner Is? " MOSCOUl Times, September 9, 2000. See also Matt
Taibbi, "OSCE-The Organization for Sanctioning Corrupt Elections;' The
Exile, Issue no. 18/99, September 14-28, 2000.
INrRoDucrlON ! iii
I
5I. Of the major mainstream media, only the Los Angeles Times addressed its findings, with the article "Russia Election Chief Rejects Fraud Claims in PresidentialVote" (September 13, 2000); a title that features the rejoinder of Russian officials, not the charges themselves. For a discussion of trus artide see Taibbi, "OSCE".
52. On the overall atrocious mainstream media reporting on the Russian eco- nomic and social collapse, as well as on the elections, see Stephen Cohen, Failed Crusade, chapter I.
53. The Soviet Union did undoubtedly mistreat its own and dient-state peoples, although the treatment of Russians by the Western-ba<:ked "refonn- ers" since 1991 has hardly been an improvement. However the charge of sponsorship ofinternational terrorism was inflated and hypocritical given the West's support of its own very impressive terror networks. See Edward Her- man, The Real Terror Network (Boston: South End Press, X982); Noam Chomsky; Pirates and Emperors: International Terrorism in the Real WOrld (New York: Claremont Research, 1986).
54. See Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, The Rise and Fall ofthe Bul- garian Connection (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1986), chapter 5.
55. The only mainstream report on Weinstein's return with "no startling reve- lations" (i. e. , nothing), was R. C. Longworth, "Probe into '81 Pope Attack Shon of Funds," Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1994.
56. See "The Gates Hearings: Excerpts from Senate Hearing of Nomination ofC. I. A. Chief," . -"lewYork Times, October 2, I 99I.
57. See Edward S. Herman and Howard Friel, '''Stacking the Deck' on the Bulgarian Connection," Lies of Our Times (November 1991); Michael Ross, "Gates Corrupted CIA Intelligence, Ex-Officials Say," Los Angeles Times, October 2, 1991; Benjamin Weiser, "Papal-Shooting Analysis: Case Study in Slanting? " Washington Post, October I, 1991.
58. Editorial, "The Fingerprints on Agca's Gun," New YOrk Times, October 30, 1984?
59. Barbara Crossette, "Hanoi Said to Vow to Give M. I. A. Data," New York Times, October 24, 1992.
60. For many years U.
The washington Post blacked out the inconvenient fifteen-year period of support of Pol Pot with this summary: "After the nightmare of Khmer Rouge rule and genocide, the United States and its allies pumped mil- lions of donars into Cambodia to help rebuild and to hold elections. "9~
It is enlightening to compare the media's treatment of Pol Pot and Indonesian leader Suharto, who was also in the news in 1998, as Indone- sia suffered a financial crisis that-along with popular resistance to the dictatorship---eventually led to his ouster. Pol Pot was described in the editorials and news columns of April 1998 as "crazed," a "killer," "war criminal," "mass murderer," "blood-soaked," and as having engineered a "reign of terror" and "genocide. " But in 1998 and 1999, and in earlier years as well, while Suharto was occasionally referred to as a "dictator" and running an "authoritarian" regime, he was never a "killer" or "mass murderer" or one responsible for "genocide. " The terminological double standard is maintained reliably throughout the mainstream media. 94
Less obvious but equally interesting is the difference in willingness
to identify the responsible parties for the killings of Pol Pot and Suharto. In the case of Pol Pot, there is no uncertainty or complexity: editorials and news articles uniformly make him and the Khmer Rouge leadership clearly and unambiguously responsible for all deaths in Cambodia dur- ing the period 1975-78. He was the "man who slaughtered two million" (USA 1Oday), "the executioner" (Boston Glebe) who "presided over the deaths" of his victims (washington Post), "the man who drove Cambodia to ruin" (New Thrk Times).
But in Suhano's case, we move to an ambiguous responsibility, which means none at all: in the New Thrk Times, for example, "a 1965 coup led to the massacres of hundreds of thousands of supposed communists" (edi- torial, Aug. 23, 1996), where we have no agent doing the killing; or "a wave ofviolence that took up to 500,000 lives and led Suharto to seize power from Sukarno in a military coup" (Seth Mydans, Aug. 7, 1996), where the massacre not only has no agent, but is falseLy situated before the takeover of power by Suharto. In a latcr piece, Mydans states that "more than 500,000 Indonesians are estimated to have died in a purge of leftists in 1965, the year Mr. Suharto came to power" (April 8, 1997). Note the passive voice, never used in connection with Pol Pot, the word "purge" instead of "slaughter" or "massacre," and the continued faillU'e to identify the agent.
In the case of East Timor, also, the Times is uncertain about the source of the killing: "This is one of the world's sadder places, where 100,000 to 200,000 people died from 1974 in a brutal civil war and the consequent invasion through combat, execution, disease and starvation. . . . " (Steven Erlanger, Oct. 2I, 1990). In addition to the lack ofa clear agent, this sen- tence seriously misrepresents the facts-the civil war was shorr and left small numbers dead; and the invasion was not "consequent" to a brutal civil war, except in Indonesian propaganda.
Another important difference in the treatment of the "worthy" victims of Pol Pot and the "unworthy" victims of Suharto is in the willingness to explain away the killings. With Pol Pot, as we describe in chapter 7, the background of the first phase of the genocide was completely blacked out in the mainstream account-there is no qualification to Pol Pot's respon- sibility as a killer because his forces had undergone terrible damage and sought vengeance for the crimes they had suffered; nor are any deaths in Pol Pot's years of rule to be explained by the starvation and disease already pervasive in April 1975. No, the only mentionable background is his Paris training and Communist fanaticism.
But with Suharto we encounter a whole new world of contextualized apologetics. For many years the main protective formula was that the 1965--66 killings were "a result of a failed coup," which "touched off
INTRODUCTION xxxix
xl INTRODUCTION
a wave of violence," or followed an "onslaught from the left. "95 This formula, invoked repeatedly, suggests that the mass killings were pro- voked and thus maybe justified by a prior "onslaught. " The v. rriters never explain why a failed coup could possibly justify a large-scale slaughter, but the hint is left hanging. In more recent years, usually in connection with the explanation and rationalization of the continuation of a dicta- torship, the media regularly juxtaposed political repression with "stabil- ity" and "growth": "the signs of his success are everywhere," although Suharto has brought these gains "by maintaining a tight grip on power and suppressing public criticism and political opposition. "96 These state- ments, from the New 1Vrk Times, offer a kind of context that the paper never gives to Castro, let alone a Pol Pot, and it shows an apologetic that runs deep.
This apologetic extends to the Suharto invasion and occupation of East Timor. For years, New Thrk Times reporters have claimed that In- donesia invaded in the midst of a civil war,97 when in fact that civil war was over well before the invasion. The paper's news coverage of East Timor actually fell to zero as the Indonesian attacks and killings in East Timor reached a deadly peak in 1977-78, a slaughter that elsewhere would be called "genocidal. " And although Indonesia occupied East Timor in violation of standing UN. rulings till its induced exit in 1999, the paper's reporters repeatedly referred to East Timor as a "disputed province" and East Timorese resistance as "separatist," thereby internal- izing and explicitly legitimizing the aggression and occupation. 98
The bias and gentle treatment of Suharto and the Indonesian govern- ment in the media is once again correlated with US. policy support that dates back to the military coup and slaughters of 1965. These were greeted with enthusiasm by US. officials-then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara referred to the events as one of the "dividends" of U. S. support for the Indonesian military-and the "boiling bloodbath" (Time) and "staggering mass slaughter" (New Thrk Times) were also seen in the media as a "gleam of light" Games Reston in the New Thrk Times). 99 U. S. military and economic aid and diplomatic protection continued throughout the years of the Suharto dictatorship, and the media's finding him a good genocidist followed accordingly.
New YOrk Times reporter David Sanger differentiated Suharto and post- 1990 Saddam Hussein-before 1990 he was a U. S. ally-saying "Mr. Suharto is not hoarding anthrax or threatening to invade Australia. "loo That is, Suharto's invasion, mass killing, and long illegal occupation of East Timor is given zero weight, and his slaughter of somewhere between 500,000 and 2 million people within Indonesia some years back is also
not mentioned. This tells us all we need to know about how good and bad genocidists fare in the Western propaganda system.
FURTHER APPLICATIONS
In his book Golden Rule, political scientist Thomas Ferguson argues that where the major investors in political parties and elections agree on an issue, the parties will not compete on that issue, no matter how strongly the public might want an alternative. He contends that for ordinary vot- ers to influence electoral choices they would have to have "strong chan- nels that directly facilitate mass deliberation and expression. "IOI These would include unions and other intermediate organizations that might, through their collective power, cause the interests of ordinary voters to be given greater weight in the political system.
The propaganda model, and the institutional arrangements that it re- flects, suggests that the same forces that preclude competition among the parties on issues on which the major investors agree, will also dominate media choices and rule OUt "mass deliberation and expression" on those issues. For example, polls regularly indicate that, except in periods of war and intense war propaganda, the public wants a smaller defense budget and favors a spending shift from defense to education and other civil functions. 102 But because the major investors agree that a large defense budget is desirable, the two dominant parties compete only on whether the one or the other is st. inting on military expenditures, with both prom- ising to enlarge it (as both George W. Bush and AI Gore did in the presi- dential election campaign of 2000). And the mainstream media do the same, limiting debate to the terms defined by the two parties and exclud- ing deliberation and expression of the position that large cuts are desir- able. The alternative presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, called for such cuts, but the media denied him a voice on the issues, some of them explicitly defending his exclusion from the presidential debates on the grounds that the options afforded by the two parties sufficed. 103
The U. S. corporate community has favored an immense defense budget. . -----eurrently more than five times the size of that of a steadily weak- ening Russia, the second biggest spender-because of the great benefits its members derive from military spending. These include weapons and other contracting business, direct and indirect subsidies in research,104 and the role played by military power in supporting the global economic expansion in which many U. S. transnational corporations are active
INTRODUCYlON xli
xlii INTRODUCTION
participants and beneficiaries. Business also benefits from the market- opening actions of trade agreements and from the supportive operations of the \VTO, the World Bank, and the IMF. But these trade agreements and the activities ofthe international fmancial institutions have generated controversy and political struggle, because while their benefits to busi- ness are dear, their costs are borne heavily by workers forced to compete in a global job market. Furthermore, globalization and trade agreements strengthen the political as well as the economic power of the corporate community, in part because they shift decision-making authority from democratic polities to bankers and technocrats who more reliably serve the transnational corporate interest. Here also, as in the case of defense- versus civilian-oriented budgets, polls show a sharp dichotomy between corporate and public preferences, with the latter generally hostile to the agreements and institutional arrangements favored by business. lOS
The propaganda model fits well the media's treatment of this range of issues. Consider, for example, their coverage of the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the subsequent Mexican financial crisis and meltdown of 1994--95. Polls taken before its enactment consistently showed substantial majorities opposed to N A FrA -and later to r. ""Ie bailout of investors in Mexican securities-but the elite in favor. Media editorials, news coverage, and selection of "experts" in opinion columns were heavily skewed toward the elite pref- erence; their judgment was that the benefits of NAFTA were obvious, were agreed to by all qualified authorities, and that only demagogues and "special interests" were opposed. 106 The "special interests" who might be the "losers" included women, minorities, and a majority of the work- force. 107 The media dealt with the awkward fact that poUs showed steady majority opposition to the agreement mainly by ignoring it, but occasion- ally they suggested that the public was uninformed and didn't recognize its own true interests. 108 The effort of labor to influence the outcome of the NAFTA debates was sharply attacked in both the lV. 'ew YOrk Times and the washington Post, with no comparable criticism of corporate or govern- mental (U. S. and Mexican) lobbying and propaganda. And while labor was attacked for its alleged position on these issues, the press refused to allow the actual position to be expressed. 10Q
In December 1994, only eleven months after NAFrA went into effect, Mexico suffered a major financial crisis, induding a massive flight of cap- ital, a devaluation ofthe currency, and a subsequent bailout by the IMF that required Mexico to carry out painful deflationary measures. Despite the fact that the meltdown occurred within a year of the introduction of NAFTA, which the media had portrayed as ushering in a prospective
golden age of economic advance, they were unanimous that NAFTA was not to blame. And in virtual lock-step they supported the Mexican (investor) bailout, despite poll reports of general public opposition in the United States. Experts and media pundits and editorialists repeatedly explained that one great merit ofNAFT A was that it had "locked Mexico in" so that it couldn't alter its overall policy direction or resort to controls to protect itself from severe deflation and unemployment. They were oblivious to the profoundly undemocratic nature of this lock-in, made more questionable by the fact that it had been negotiated by a Mexican government that ruled as a result of electoral fraud. 11o
More recently, when the growing global opposition to the policies of the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank led to mass protests at the WTO conference in Seattle in November and December 1999, and then at the annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, D. C. , in April 2000, media coverage ofthese events was derisive and hostile to the protesters and almost uniformly failed to deal with the substantive issues that drove the protests. The media portrayed the Seanle protesters as "all- purpose agitators" (U:S. Neu's & WOrld Report), "terminally aggrieved" (Philadelphia Inquirer), simply "against world trade" (ABC News), and making "much ado about nothing" (CNN), but the bases of the protest- ers' grievances were almost entirely unexplored. lll Similarly, in the case of the Washington, D. C. , protests, the media repeatedly reported on activists' attire, looks, body odors, fadism, and claimed a lack of "any- thing that can coherently be called a cause" (Michael Kelly, journalist,
W&shington Post), and they continued their refusal to address issues. 112 There were many informed protesters with coherent agendas at Seanle and Washington-including reputable economists, social theorists, and veteran organizers from around the worldl13_but the media did not seek them out, preferring to stereotype antiglobalization activists as ignorant troublemakers. On op-ed pages, there was a major imbalance hostile to the protesters. TV bias was at least as great, and often misleading on the facts. In his November 29, t999, backgrounder on the WTO, Dan Rather explained that the organization had ruled on many environmental issues, implying that those rulings were protective of the environment when in fact they generally privileged trade rights over environmental needs.
Another notable feature of media reporting on both the Seattle and Washington, D. c. , protests, and a throwback to their biased treatment of the protests of the Vietnam War era (1965-75),114 was their exaggera- tion of protester violence, their downplaying of police provocations and violence, and their complaisance at illegal police tactics designed to limit all protestor actions, peaceable or otherwise. IIS Although the Seattle
INTRODUCTION xliii
xliv INTRODUCTION
police resorted to force and used chemical agents against many nonvio- lent protesters well before a handful of individuals began brealting win- dows, both then and later the media reversed this chronology, stating that the police violence was a response to protester violence. In fact, the van- dals were largely ignored by the police, while peaceful protesters were targeted for beatings, tear g:1S, torture with pepper spray, and arrest. 1I6 One New 10Tk Times anic1e went so far as to claim that the Seattle pro- testers had thrown excrement, rocks, and Molotov cocktails at delegates and police officers; the Times later issued a correction acknowledging that these claims were false. ll7 Dan Rather, who had falsely alleged that the protesters had "brought on today's crackdown" at Seattle, later suggested that the \);Tashington protesters were possibly "hoping for a replay of last year's violence in Seattle," setting this off against "those charged with keeping the peace" who "have other ideas. "118
In their eighty-seven-page report, Out of Control: Seattle's Flawed Re-
sponse to Protests Against the WOrld Trade Organization, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated that "demonstrators [in Seattle] were overwhelmingly peaceful. Not so the police. " The response of the Seattle
police to the protests was characterized by "draconian" violations of civil liberties, including widespread use of <" chemical weapons, rubber bullets
and clubs against peaceful protesters and bystanders alike. " But NBC, 1 ABC, CBS, CNN, and the New 10rk Times and washington Post all ig- I nored the release ofthe ACLU's fmding<3, which ran counter to their own uniformly pro-police and ami-protester line.
The media's reversal of chronology and inflation of the threat of ac- tivist violence, and their low-keyed treatment of numerous illegal police actions designed to instill fear in those wanting to protest peaceably,ll9 provided the enabling ground for both police violence and serious restrictions on free speech. These increased in scope and sophistication between Seattle and Washington, and were then applied TO squelch pro- test at the Republican and Democratic conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles in July and August 2 0 0 0 . 120 The corporate media's hostility to the goals of the protests, closely aligned with that of the rest of the cor- porate establishment, caused their devotion to the First Amendment to flag in a way it never has when their own rights and privileges have been at stake.
As is suggested by the media's treatment of NAFT A and of labor's right to participate in its debates, as well as the media coverage ofWater- gate, COINTELPRO, and major events in the earlier history of labor- management conflict (the Haymarket affair, the Homestead strike, the post-World War I "red scare"),l2l the propaganda model applies to do-
mestic as well as foreign policy issues. Labor has been under renewed siege in the United States for the past several decades, its condition adversely affected by the deflationary policies of the early 1980s, corpo- rate downsizing, globalization, a vigorous business campaign to defeat unions, and government support of, or indifference to, the damage being inflicted on unions and workers. There was a major drop in union mem- bership from the beginning of the Reagan era, with union density falling from 25 percent in 1980 to J4-5 percent in J996 (and only JO_2 percent in the private sector). This reflected weakened labor bargaining power and was accompanied by significant concessions in wages and benefits, more onerous working conditions, and greater worker insecurity.
President Reagan's firing of ! I,OOO striking air? controllers in 1981 "put the government seal of approval on strike-breaking and a new era of industrial relations opened. "I22 But you would hardly know this from reading or listening to the mainstream media. An exceptional t994 Busi- ness week article noted that "over the past dozen years . . . U. S. industry has conducted one of the most successful union wars ever," helped by "illegally firing thousands of workers for exercising their right to organ- ize," with unlawful firings occurring in "one-third of all representation elections in the late '80S. "123 But this successful war was carried out quietly, with media cooperation. The decertification of unions, use of replacement workers, and long, debilitating strikes like that involving Caterpillar were treated in a very low key manner. In a notable illustra- tion of the applicability of the propaganda model, the nine-month-long Pittston miners' strike that began in April 1989 was accorded much less attention, and less friendly treatment, than the Soviet miners' strikes of the summer of that same year,124
From 1977 through 1999, while the incomes of the top 1 percent of households grew by 84. 8 percent and the top 10 percent by 44. 6 percent, the bottom 60 percent lost ground and the income of the lowest 20 percent fell by 12. 5 percent. 125 Real hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees (i. e. , the 80 percent of the workforce that holds working-class jobs) fell by 4. 8 percent between 1973 and 1999. 226 This, along with the adverse trend of social indicators in the same period,127 suggests that the welfare of the majority declined in this era of high employment, a "new economy," and a spectacular upswing in the stock market. In its euphoria phase, which ended abruptly with the col- lapse of the dot. com market in 1999 and 2000, the mainstream media hardly noticed that only a minority had been the beneficiaries;128 they briefly discovered this issue only under the impetus of Pat Buchanan's right-wing populist outcries during the 1996 presidential election cam-
INTRODUCTION xlv
xlvi IN,RODucnON
paign. In the 2000 electoral campaign, once again the twO major party candidates said nothing about the failure of the majority to be lifted in the supposed "rising tide" that would benefit everybody; only Ralph Nader and other marginalized candidates did, and as noted, the domi- nant media found that the agenda of the major parties was all that they could ask for.
Another strilcing application of the propaganda model can be seen in the media's treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. Be- cause of the industry's power, as well as the media's receptivity to the demands of the business community, the media have normalized a system described by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring as "deliberately poi- soning us, then policing the results. "lZ9 Industry is permitted to produce and sell chemicals (and during the 1990s, bioengineered foods) without independent and prior proof of safety, and the "policing" by the Environ- mental Protection Agency (EPA) has been badly compromised by under- funding and political limits on both law enforcement and testing. no A major National Research Council study of 1984 found that there was no health hazard data available for 78 percent ofthe chemicals in commerce, and an Environmental Defense Fund update found little change had occurred a dozen years laler. The federal government's National Toxicol- ogy Program tests about ten to twenty chemicals a year for carcinogenic- ity (but not for the numerous other possible adverse effects ofchemicals); but meanwhile five hundred to a thousand new chemicals enter com- merce annually, so our knowledge base steadily declines. 131
This system works well for industry, however, as it wants to sell with- out interference, and leaving virtually aU of the research and testing for safety in its hands, with its members to decide when the results are worthy of transmission to the EP A, is a classic "fox guarding the chick- ens" arrangement. The system has worked poorly for the public, and its inadequacy has been reinforced by the industry's power to influence, sometimes even capture, the EPA. 132 Nevertheless, the industry often contends that the safety of chemicals is assured by EP A (or FDA) regula- tion, 133 which industry does its best to keep weak and which, as noted, has failed to deal in any way with the great majority of chemicals in the marker.
With the media's help, the chemical industry has also gained wide acceptance of its view that chemicals should be evaluated individually on the basis of an analysis of their risks to individuals and individual tolerances. But it is very hard to measure such risks and tolerances for humans----controlled experiments are not possible, damage may show up only after many years, the forms of damage are hard to know in advance, chemicals may interact with others in the environment, they may be bio-
accumulative, and the breakdown products of chemicals may have their own dangers. Furthermore, if thousands of chemicals enter the environ- ment, many long-lasting, bioaccumulative, and interacting with other chemicals, a public policy that ignores their additive and interactive ef- fects on people and the environment is deeply flawed and irresponsible.
Policy based on the "precautionary principle," bitterly opposed by the chemical industry, with the support of the U. S. government,134 would nor allow chemicals to enter the environment without full tesring, would prohibit the use of chemicals that accumulate in human tissues and whose breakdown products are threatening or unknown, and would compel the use of nonthreatening alternatives for untested and known- to-be-risky chemicals where such alternatives can be found or developed at reasonable cOSt. l35
In successfully avoiding application of the precautionary principle, industry spokespersons have argued that the existing system is based on "sound science. " But science does not tell us that industry has any right to put chemicals into the environment that have any risk at all, let alone telling us what risks are acceptable-these are political decisions. Fur- thermore, if the chemicals in the environment have not been tested for all the variables that are relevant to social choices, such as their long-term effects on immune systems and reproduction as well as any cancer threat, and the effects of their breakdown products on the environment-and none of them have been so tested-the political, not scientific, basis of "sound science" is evident.
The chemical industry has produced, and long denied any harm from, innumerable products-from tetraethyl lead in gasoline and PCBs in batteries to asbestos, DDT, and Agent Orange-that are now well estab- lished as seriously harmful, only withdrawing them (often only from domestic use) under overwhelming legal and regulatory pressure. For the products they have wanted to sell, they have always found scientists who would testify to their harmlessness (or that claims of harm were not scientifically proven). There has been a consistent sharp difference bet\Veen the results of industry-sponsored science and those of inde- pendent researchers working the same terrain. l3o And there have been numerous cases of fraud in industry testing, industry use of testing labs that arranged the data to find industry products acceptable, and political manipulation to weaken regulatory standards. 137
Despite these industry abuses of science, the media have largely ac- cepted the industry's claim that it supports "sound science," in contrast with its critics' use of "junk. science. " From 1996 through September 1998, 258 articles in mainstream newspapers used the phrase "junk sci- ence"; but only 21, or 8 percent, used it to refer to corporate abuses of
INTRODUCTION xlvii
xlviii INTRODUCTION
science, whereas 160, or 62 percent, applied it to science used by envi- ronmentalists, other corporate critics, or tort lawyers suing corporations (77, or 30 percent, didn't fit either of these categories). 138 In short, the media have internalized industry's self-legitimizing usage, just as they have normalized a status quo of caveat emptor (buyer beware) rather than of safety first.
The media have also regularly gotten on board in dismissing concerns about chemical threats as unwarranted "scares," such as the alleged scares over dioxin and the danger of Alar on apples. But these and other scares often turn out to be based on genuine health hazards. J3Q Meanwhile, the media rarely report and examine in any depth the frequent evidence of the inadequacy of regulation and testing and of the real costS of chemical- ization of the environmenr. J4O For example, the International Joint Com- mission (lIC), a joint Canadian-U. S. venture dating back to 1978, was given the formidable task oftrying to halt the flow oftoxic chemicals into the Great Lakes. It reports each year that it is failing, and since t992 has called for the ending of the manufacture of chlorine as essential to fulfill- ing its task. The national media virtually ignore this appeal, and the IJC's US. cochairman Gordon Durnil has remarked that "we have a societal problem about how to deal with this, but 90 percent of the population doesn't even know there is anything to worry about. "J41 We believe that the propaganda model helps understand this lack ofknowledge.
In the health insurance controversy of 1992-93, the media's refusal to take the single-payer option seriously, despite apparent widespread public support and the effectiveness of the system in Canada, served well the interests of the insurance and medical service complex. 142 The un- critical media reponing and commentary on the alleged urgency of fiscal restraint and a balanced budget in the years 1992-96 fit well the business community's desire to reduce the social budget and weaken reguls- tion. 143 The media's gullibiliry in accepting the claim of a Social Security system "crisis," which would require policy action some thirty-seven years ahead if certain conservative guesses were true and a number of easy corrections were ruled out, served the interests ofconservative ideo- logues anxious to weaken a highly successful government program and a security industry eager to benefit from the partial or full privatization of Social Security. 144 The applicability of the propaganda model in these and other cases, including the media's handling of the "drug wars," seems clear. \45
i
CONCLUDING NOTE
The propaganda model remains a useful framework for analyzing and understanding the workings of the mainstream media-perhaps even more so than in 1988. As we noted above, the changes in structural con- ditions that underlie the model, and that we believe strongly and often decisively influence media behavior and performance, have tended to increase the model's salience. We noted in the Preface to the first edition and in chapters 2 and 3, in reference to the media's coverage of the wars and elections in Central America in the I980s, that the media's perform- ance often surpassed expectations of media subservience to government propaganda demands. This was at least equally true of their performance in covering the 1991 war against Iraq and NATO's war against Yugo- slavia in 1999, as we have described earlier and briefly in regard to Yugoslavia and in detail elsewhere. 146
In our conclusion to the first edition, we emphasized that, as the nega- tive performance effects of the media result primarily from their struc- ture and objectives, real change in performance calls for substantial changes in underlying media organization and goals. In the years since 1988, structural changes have not been favorable to improved perform- ance, but it remains a central truth that democratic politics requires a democratization of information sources and a more democratic media. Along with trying to contain and reverse the growing centralization of the mainstream media, grassroots movements and intermediate groups that represent large numbers of ordinary citizens should put much more energy and money into creating and supporting their own media-as they did with the Independent Media Centers brought into existence during the Seattle and Washington, D. C. , protests of 1999 and 2000. These, and other nonprofit community-based broadcasting stations and networks, and a better use of public-access channels, the Internet, and independent print media, will be essential for the achievement of major democratic social and political successes.
Notes to Introduction
1. On a number of issues, such as trade agreements, health care, and the appropriate size of the military budget, there is a sharp division between media personnel and the elite on the one hand and the general population on the other hand, as we discuss below under "Further Applications. "
INTRa Due T ION xlix
INTRODUCTION
2. This was even true in the Soviet Union, where the media's disclosure of inconvenient facts on the Afghan war caused the Soviet defense minister to denounce the press as unpatriotic; see Bill Keller, "Soviet Official Says Press Harms Army," lv. Tew YOrk Times, January 21, 1988.
3.
For an accounr of critiques, and the present writers' replies, see Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions (Boston: South End Press, 1989), appendix I; Edward S. Herman, "The Propaganda Model Revisited," in The Myth of the Liberal Media (New York: Peter Lang, 1999).
4- Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, 6th ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), p. xxi.
5. Ibid.
6. Edward S. Herman and Robert McChesney, The Global Media (London: Cassell, 1997).
7. Robert McChesney, Rich Media, Poor Democracy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), p. 108.
8. Ibid. , p. 109.
9. James Ledbetter, "Public Broadcasting Sells; (Out? )," The Nation, Decem- ber I, 1997.
10. Ibid.
II. Stephanie Strom, "Japanese Sites for Women Aim for Empowerment," New "York Times, December 25, 2000.
12. J\1ark Fineman, "Military Can't Outflank Rebels in War of Words," Los
Angeles Times, February 21, 1995; Leonard Doyle, "Rebels Try to Advance via Internet," The Indepemknt, March 7, 1995.
13. Jim Shultz, "Bolivia's Water War Victory," Earth Island Journal, Septem- ber 22, 2000; "Bolivia-The Last Word," April 13, 2000, JShultz@democra- cyar. org; "How the Internet Helped Activists," Straits Times (Singapore), May 25, 1998; Marshall Clark, "Cleansing the Earth," Inside Indonesia (Octo- ber-December 1998).
14. Madelaine Drohan, "How the Net Killed the . MAl," Globe and Mail, April 29,1998.
IS. Kayte Van Scoy, "How Green Was My Silicon Valley," PC/Computing, March I, 2000; Keith Perine, "Power to the (\Veb-Enabled) People," Industry Standard, April 1 0 , 2000. See also "Further Applications" below.
16. James Ledbetter, "Some Pitfalls in Portals," Columbia Journalism Review . ~ (November-December 1999)? 1 17. Quoted in ibid.
18. Alex Carey, Taking the Risk out of DemoCTa<:y (Urbana: University ofIlli~ . . nois Press, 1997); John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good 1
for "You. ' (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995); Stuart Ewen, PR'
A Social History ofSpin (New York: Basic Books, 1996).
19. Mark Dowie, "Introduction," Stauber and Rampton, Toxic Sludge. ? 20. See Stephen Cohen, Failed Crusade:America and the Tragedy of Posr-Com- 1 munist Russia (New York: Norton, 2000). See also Thomas Frank, One Mar-
ker Under God (New York: Doubleday, 2000).
21. Kevin Robins and Frank Webster, Times of the Technocu1ture (London: Routledge, I999), p. 127.
22. Patricia Aufderheide, "Journalism and Public Life Seen Through the
'Net,'" in Aufderheide, The Daily Planet (Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press, 2000); Joseph Turow, Breaking Up Amen'ca (Chicago: Univer- siryofChicago Press, 1997).
23. Herman and McChesney, Global Media, chapter 5.
24. On the ideological messages borne in commercials, see Erik Barnouw, The Sponsor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), part 2, chapter t.
25. See Robert McChesney, 'Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy (New York: Oxford, 1993).
26. See Herman, Myth ofthe Liberal Media, pp. 32-33.
27. For some dramatic evidence on the mainstream media's neglect of these credible sources, see below, pp. 76-79.
28. Peter Galbraith, "How the Turks Helped Their Enemies," New lOrk Times, February 20, 1999.
29. During the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein was a u. s. ally and recipient of U. S. aid, his use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in Iraq, which killed thousands in 1988, did not interfere with support by the Bush administration, which continued up to the moment of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on August 30, 1990. See Mark Phythian, Arming Iraq; How the u. s. and Britain Secretly
Built Saddam's war Machme (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997); Miron Rezun, Saddam Hussein's Gulf W&rs; Ambivalent Stakes in the Middle East (Westport Conn. : Praeger, 1992).
30. The CIA itself designated the 1965-66 slaughters in Indonesia as "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century" (quoted in Robert Cribb, ed. , The Indonesian Killings of1965-1966 [Monash Papers on Southeast Asia, no. 21,1991]). The figure of 500,000 victims in this slaughter, given by the head oflndonesian state security, must be taken as an absolute minimal figure. For other estimates that run up to 2 million, see Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, The W&shington Connection and Third World FasCISm (Boston: South End Press, 1979), pp. 208-9; Benedict Anderson, "Fetrus Dadi Ratu," Ne1JJ Left Review (May-June, 2000).
31. Former U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Patrick Moynihan brags in his autobiography of how back in I975 he protected Indonesia from any effective international action that might have interfered with its aggression: "The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly inef- fective in whatever measures it took [regarding the Indonesian invasion of East Timor]. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no in- considerable succeSs. " He added, without the slightest expression of regret, that within a few weeks 60,000 people had been killed in this aggression that he was protecting. A Dangerous Place (New York: little, Brown, 1978), p. 19. 32. For accounts of this shift, seeJohn Pilger, Hidden Agendas (London: Vin- tage, 1998), pp. 33-34; Chomsky, Necessary ntuslOns, pp. 109-10. For the ear- lier media treatment of Indonesia in East Timor, see Washington Connection, pp. 129-204.
33. John and Karl Mueller, "Sanctions of Mass Destruction," Foreign Affairs (May-June 1999), p. 43?
34. UNICEF, "Iraq Surveys Show 'Humanitarian Emergency,'" Press Release, August 12, 1999.
35. Leslie Stahl interviewing Madeleine Albright, "60 Minutes," CBS News Transcript, May 12, 1996.
36. Many KLA. and Serb fighters died in Kosovo, and civilians were killed by
lNTRODUCTIOK li
I i i I~TRODUCTION
NA TO bombs and military actions not aiming to kill civilians. See Jonathan Steele, "Figures Put on Serb Killings Too High," Guardian (August 18, 2000). For a fuller discussion, Noam Chomsky, A New Generation Draws the Line (London:Verso, 2000), chapter 3.
37. John Taylor, East Timor: The Price of FreerkJm (London: Zed, 1999). See also Arnold Kohen, "Beyond the Vote: The World Must Remain Vigilant Over East Timor," washington Post, September 5, 1999.
38. The source is Western investigators on the scene, including U. S. military personnel: Lnds! IY Murdoch, "Horror Lives on for Town of Lquica," The Age (Australia), April 8, 1999; Barry Wain, "Will Justice Be Served in East Timor? " Wall Street Journal (Asia edition), April n, 2000.
39. On the importance of Racak as a basis for mobilizing U. S. allies and the
public for war, see Barton Gellman, "The Path to Crisis: How the United I States and Its Allies Went to War," Washington Post, April 18, 1999; Madeleine
Albright referred to Racak as a "galvanizing incident" (quoted in Bo Adam,
Roland Heine, and Claudius Technau, "I Felt that Something Was Wrong,"
Berliner Zeitung, April 5, 2000).
40. See Edward Herman and David Peterson, "CNN: Selling Nato's War
Globally," in Philip Hammond and Edward Herman, eds. , Degraded Capabil-
ity:The Media and the Kosovo Crisis (London: Pluto, 2000), Pl'. 117-19. More
recently, three Finnish forensic experts, who were members of a panel that
examined the forry bodies found at Racak, disclosed that their team found
no support for the alleged mutilations by the Serbs, and the data presented
in the article casts further doubt on the claim that all the victims were exe-
cuted. 0. Raina et a1. , "Independent Forensic Autopsies in Armed Conflict Investigation ofVictims from Racak, Kosovo," Forensic SCience InternatIOnal,
vol. 16 (2001), pp. 171-85. ) It is a notable fact that the OSeE has not yet seen I fit to release the original forensic report from which this article's data is
drawn.
41. Herman and Peterson, "CNN: Selling Nato's War Globally. "
42. Editorial, "Election Risks in Cambodia," New York Times, November 28,
1997?
43. "Gathering Storm in Serbia? " editori! Il, washington Post, September II,
2000; "Repudiating Mr. Milosevic," editorial, New \0rk Time~,September 26,
2000.
44. Editorial, "Kenya's Flawed Election," New 10rk Times, December 31,
1997?
45. Editorial, "Mexico's Radical Insider," New \ilrk Times, July 3, 1988.
46. Editorial, "The Missing Reform in Mexico," New 10rk Times, August 24,
1991.
47. Editorial, "Turkey Approaches Democracy," New 10rk Times, November
II, 1983.
48. Editorial, "Victories for Voters in Latin America: Uruguay's Slow Boat to Democracy," New 10rk Times, December I, 1984.
49. Editorial, "A Victory for Russian Democracy," New 10Tk Times, July 4,
1996.
50. "And the Winner Is? " MOSCOUl Times, September 9, 2000. See also Matt
Taibbi, "OSCE-The Organization for Sanctioning Corrupt Elections;' The
Exile, Issue no. 18/99, September 14-28, 2000.
INrRoDucrlON ! iii
I
5I. Of the major mainstream media, only the Los Angeles Times addressed its findings, with the article "Russia Election Chief Rejects Fraud Claims in PresidentialVote" (September 13, 2000); a title that features the rejoinder of Russian officials, not the charges themselves. For a discussion of trus artide see Taibbi, "OSCE".
52. On the overall atrocious mainstream media reporting on the Russian eco- nomic and social collapse, as well as on the elections, see Stephen Cohen, Failed Crusade, chapter I.
53. The Soviet Union did undoubtedly mistreat its own and dient-state peoples, although the treatment of Russians by the Western-ba<:ked "refonn- ers" since 1991 has hardly been an improvement. However the charge of sponsorship ofinternational terrorism was inflated and hypocritical given the West's support of its own very impressive terror networks. See Edward Her- man, The Real Terror Network (Boston: South End Press, X982); Noam Chomsky; Pirates and Emperors: International Terrorism in the Real WOrld (New York: Claremont Research, 1986).
54. See Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, The Rise and Fall ofthe Bul- garian Connection (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1986), chapter 5.
55. The only mainstream report on Weinstein's return with "no startling reve- lations" (i. e. , nothing), was R. C. Longworth, "Probe into '81 Pope Attack Shon of Funds," Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1994.
56. See "The Gates Hearings: Excerpts from Senate Hearing of Nomination ofC. I. A. Chief," . -"lewYork Times, October 2, I 99I.
57. See Edward S. Herman and Howard Friel, '''Stacking the Deck' on the Bulgarian Connection," Lies of Our Times (November 1991); Michael Ross, "Gates Corrupted CIA Intelligence, Ex-Officials Say," Los Angeles Times, October 2, 1991; Benjamin Weiser, "Papal-Shooting Analysis: Case Study in Slanting? " Washington Post, October I, 1991.
58. Editorial, "The Fingerprints on Agca's Gun," New YOrk Times, October 30, 1984?
59. Barbara Crossette, "Hanoi Said to Vow to Give M. I. A. Data," New York Times, October 24, 1992.
60. For many years U.
