The only mainstream report on Weinstein's return with "no
startling
reve- lations" (i.
Manufacturing Consent - Chomsky
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. S. officiaJs used the claim that VieOlam had noI ac- counted for all U. S. prisoners of war and M. I. A. s to justify hostile actions toward that country. This is discussed later in this Introduction, under "Re- writingViernam W'ar History," and in the main text, pp. 240-41.
61. Leslie Gelb, "When to Forgive and Forget: Engaging Hanoi and Other Outlaws," New YOrk Times, April IS, 1993.
62. Quoted in William Buckingham, Jr. , Operation Ranch Hand: TheAir Force and Herbicides in Southeast Asia, 196I~I97I (Washington: U. S. Air Force, 1982), p. 82.
63. See Arthur Westing, ed. , Herbuides in war: The Long-Term EcologUal and HumcJ. n Consequences (Stockholm: SIPRI, 1984), pp. 5ff. ; Hatfield Consul- rants Ltd. , Development of Impact Mitigation Strategies Related to the Use of Agent Orange HerbUide in the Aluoi Hl:lley, Viet Nam, vol. I (West Vancouver, B. c. ,April 2000).
64. Buckingham, Operation Ranch Hand, p. 127.
65? Cited in Seymour Hersh, Chemical and BiologUal Waifare (Indianapo- lis: Babbs-Merrill, 1968), p. 153. See also J. 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?
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. S. officiaJs used the claim that VieOlam had noI ac- counted for all U. S. prisoners of war and M. I. A. s to justify hostile actions toward that country. This is discussed later in this Introduction, under "Re- writingViernam W'ar History," and in the main text, pp. 240-41.
61. Leslie Gelb, "When to Forgive and Forget: Engaging Hanoi and Other Outlaws," New YOrk Times, April IS, 1993.
62. Quoted in William Buckingham, Jr. , Operation Ranch Hand: TheAir Force and Herbicides in Southeast Asia, 196I~I97I (Washington: U. S. Air Force, 1982), p. 82.
63. See Arthur Westing, ed. , Herbuides in war: The Long-Term EcologUal and HumcJ. n Consequences (Stockholm: SIPRI, 1984), pp. 5ff. ; Hatfield Consul- rants Ltd. , Development of Impact Mitigation Strategies Related to the Use of Agent Orange HerbUide in the Aluoi Hl:lley, Viet Nam, vol. I (West Vancouver, B. c. ,April 2000).
64. Buckingham, Operation Ranch Hand, p. 127.
65? Cited in Seymour Hersh, Chemical and BiologUal Waifare (Indianapo- lis: Babbs-Merrill, 1968), p. 153. See also J. 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?
