The filters represent, in large part, institutional and structural forces that in some way constrain the content that is produced by the mainstream media. The filters are as follows:
- ownership
- advertising
- sourcing
- 'flak'
- ideology
How does ownership function as a filter?
- The sheer magnitude of cost limits ownership to a very small class of people, the very rich and/or to long-established families of wealth. (Other groups, including bankers, lawyers, consultants, and corporations (e.g. G.E. and Westinghouse) are also well represented as owners of media stock.) If one believes that the values/beliefs of those owners have an affect on the content of the media enterprises they own, then those values/beliefs function as a kind of filter.
- Corporations are profit-seeking entities; media content which has an adverse effect on profit will tend to be filtered out. The increased threat of takeovers in the current market environment also increases the focus on profitability.
- Large media firms have intricate ties with government; legally, through personnel exchange (see the revolving-door relationship), policy support (taxes, interest rates, labor policies, antitrust laws, etc.), and diplomatic support (necessary for helping to create favorable markets for overseas investment/business).
How does advertising function as a filter?
- In a market-driven system, those papers that receive adversting dollars are conveyed an economic/monetary advantage over papers that do not. The reason is that the overall cost of production for papers which receive advertising dollars is lower than that for papers which do not. Thus, in effect, advertising is a kind of subsidy that gives papers more money to further develop themselves and compete more aggresively in the market. Papers that depend on revenue from sales alone will tend to be much more restricted in their development.
- The converse side of this idea is that advertiser's choices influence media prosperity and survival, such that those media with less advertising dollars behind them will tend to be marginalized over time. (This might explain why advertisers tend not to be attracted to the market that working-class and labor media represent-they're not money makers...)
- This system has developed to the point where mainstream media depend on advertising for their financial well-being, and as such, tend to cater themselves to the advertisers. It is in this way that advertisers function as a filter, for media content that has an adverse effect on advertisers' interests will tend to be filtered out (i.e. funding will be withheld, thus hitting media where it hurts hardest...the wallet.)
- (Consider the content of the New York Times: 60% adds, 40% content.)
- Some examples of corporate advertiser's avoid topics include environmental degradation, the workings of the military-industrial complex, and corporate support of and benefits from Third World tyrannies. Media content about such topics would draw unnecessary attention to the various negative roles/effects of corporations and are thus largely avoided by mainstream media.
- Media content (particularly television) that is too serious may detract from a "buying mood" in the viewers/readers, and is thus generally avoided in favor of more light-hearted/sensational content and/or content that is in some sense pro-business.
- Over time, advertisers' ethics, philosophies, points of view, will find their way into the content of mainstream media, such that those mores become reflected in the content that is produced.
- Bureaucratic affinity-the notion that other bureaucracies (e.g. the government, corporations) are well-suited to providing news content for large news organizations, since they are themselves bureaucracies too...in a sense, these bureaucracies meet demands created by the other; a bureaucractic/institutional affinity results...
- Economic constraints of sourcing-The notion that it is much easier to be both objective and to save money when information is taken from 'credible' sources. Information received from less-than credible sources runs the risk of being non-objective and requiring fact-checking, which takes both time and money to perform, an economic constraint, if you will. (Time devoted to actual journalism is increasingly shrinking as pressure mounts to produce stories with fewer and fewer resources...)
- Institutional resources (government)-In both the government and in corporations, vast amounts of institutional resources are devoted to producing information meant for media consumption (consider the Pentagon's public-information service, the media of the military (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines). The money available for such efforts simply dwarfs budgets available to alternative media organizations.
- Institutional resources (corporations)-Corporations have the purchasing power for regular advertising that smaller media cannot have. Corporations have the financial resources to make their voices, views, perspectives heard/seen in the mainstream media, again on a scale which smaller media cannot match. On the whole, whose point of view is going to be out there, readily and regularly available for consumption?
- These institutions make it easy for the media to have accessto the information they produce by holding regular press conferences, photo-op's (often at times well-suited to reporters' schedules and deadlines), providing advance copies and writing press releases in ways that are convenient for the media to use and process.
- Another kind of subsidy-Like advertising, the information produced by these institutions provides a kind of subsidy for the media by helping to reduce the costs required to produce news material. But when that subsidy comes to be relied on, it will have a compromising effect on the media that rely on it.
- A great irony-the information produced by the Pentagon for media consumption is subsidized by the citizens themselves in the form of taxpayer dollars. Thus, the citizens are, in effect, paying for the propaganda produced by a large military institution whose purpose is to promote war in all its guises for as long as it possibly can. (Consider the Pentagon's budget in relation to the national budget...)
- Over time, a system of mutual dependency develops between sources and media, such that media may become wary of content that adversely affects their sources. Sources can also deny access to media they see as too critical. A form of censorship results...
- Nature of the information released to media...how is it framed? How does it portray those involved? Does it reinforce state ideologies? Rely on 'normative' portrayals?
- Experts, a.k.a. the 'secular priesthood'-Experts enter into institutional folds when they work for think-tanks, receive funding for research, etc. from institutions/corporations. In these ways, the bias of those 'experts' (let's not pretend they are 'objective') is structured to favor institutional views. This creation of a 'secular preisthood' has been an active process that again serves to create the aura of legitimacy and credibility necessary for believability. Experts are seen as objective; rarely do we question the nature of the process that informs what they do, which is far from objective.
- Pre-empting media 'space'-In traditional media outlets (print, radio, tv) only a finite space is available for the presentation of content. How is that space divided? What voices are presented in that space? How much room is there for non-concision? As it turns out, experts with institutional/corporate ties take up a vast majority of that available space (see FAIR studies on this...)
- The "revolving door" relationship-That personnel often move with much liquidity between government/military/corporations and think-tanks.
- What is the purpose of think-tanks? To legitimize the perspective/philosophy/point of view, etc, of its funders? Who provides that legitimacy? The secular preisthood.
- The role of ex-radicals and former dissidents-those who have come around to the 'proper views' can often find space for themselves in mainstream media, whereas before they were most likely marginalized, not fit for concision.
- Why is it that those who have the most money for the production of information are seen as the most credible sources of that information? Is this not somehow paradoxical? Problematic?
'Flak' is essentially the response of those on whom mainstream media depends for its economic well-being to criticism or media portrayal that casts funding sources in a questionable or negative light. (Flak can also arise from individuals, but again, consider the source.)
'Flak' can be both direct and indirect in nature. Direct flak includes phone calls, letters, etc. Indirect flak, or rather institutional flak, is of particular interest here.
Features of institutional flak:
- Since the 1970s, institutions have emerged, usually with corporate backing, whose purpose is essentially to produce flak, to keep the media in check, to make sure that it doesn't get too out of hand in its endeavors. Specific themes of these institutions include exposing the media's left-wing, anti-business bias. . Examples of these institutions include:
- the Capital Legal Foundation
- the Media Institute (1972)
- the Center for Media and Public Affairs (mid-80's)
- Accuracy in Media (AIM) (1969) (Reed Irvine)
- Freedom House
Ample space is given by the mainstream media to express views that are favorable to those who fund (exercise fundamental power over) that space, again another expression of the flow of power from the owners (corporations, advertisers, gvmt.) to the owned (mainstream media giants).
Question: What of the supposed "liberal bias" in the media? Is it largely a myth created by powerful (corporate) interests and given legitimacy and definition by institutions created and funded by those very same powerful interests themselves? We might try role-reversal here, but on a practical level, where would the funding come from? The economic disparity between the two sides is nothing less than gargantuan I'm sure. Does it smack too much of a conspiracy theory to think that this idea and others like them has been actively created and perpetuated by powerful interests seeking to strengthen and solidify their position by defining the failings of 'the other', thus creating legitimacy for themselves in the process? Because if one looks at the facts, what has been done, how it has been done, one can see that is has in fact been an active process. Those in powerful positions in society have the economic resources at their disposal to create the masks of legitimacy that protect their interests. The powerful have always had significant advantages in maintaing the status quo over other groups, true, but it is the scale of the overall effort in recent decades that is unprecedented; it has become institutionalized, bureaucratized, entrenched in very deep ways into the core of how our society operates and functions, and that has very significant consequences for so many aspects of our lives...
As such, changing such a system represents a huge challenge, for it would seem that in order to counter such efforts, one would need the kind of financial backing that government and corporate interests have. And a kind of paradox emerges here as well, for how could one have such resources unless one were a player in that system, playing the game by its own rules? How can viable alternatives that don't wish to endorse what is fundamentally a capitalistic ethos survive in such a system? To what degree is this even possible?
5) Ideology functions as a filter in the following ways:
- Ideology helps mobilize the population against a perceived common enemy (e.g. Communists, terrorists) by dichotomizing the world into "us" and "them" ; it also serves to fragment the left through the "if you're not with us, you're against us" principle. In this way, critical examination of what is happening (the purported purpose of the media) is readily dismissed as being "unpatriotic", thereby providing a means of irrational justification for the debunking of a rational process.
- Effects on the left: to spilt it into two groups, one which reacts in a more radical manner, and one which is silenced by fear of being branded as one of those who is "against us".
- Example: the growth of U.S.-backed puppet regimes in Latin America coincided with the emergence of anti-Communism as a national religion during the Cold War. (Belief justified the actions?...)
- Flimsy evidence supporting ideological claims is permitted; detailed, documented evidence is needed to support contrary views. This becomes somewhat paradoxical in that little space is available for such contrary views in mainstream media outlets (c.f. Chomsky's comments on concision).
Why is it that, as Chomsky has noted, the business press (e.g. the Financial Times, the Economist) provides a more accurate and detailed picture of the world than most regular mainstream media do? Because the majority of those who read the business press (presumably the higher echelon in society that exercises decision-making power) need an accurate picture of what is happening in order to make correct and informed business decisions. What a deviation this is from the original intent of the press in this country, which was to maintain a citizenry capable of making informed decisions about their lives. That that "informed citizenry" has shifted its base to the business elite is very revealing, for it shows us not only the role that the media play in maintaining the capitalistic system that we live in, but also how business interests have come to dominate the institutions of our society as a whole.
In addition, the concept of "worthy" and "unworthy" victims is introduced. The criterion for determining which label to use depends on the relationship of the U.S. with the country involved:
- If the U.S. has friendly relations, or the country is a client state, then those that suffer at the hands of that government, the victims, will be seen as unworthy of media attention, as doing so would draw unwanted attention to the role the U.S. might have in creating/sustaining conditions in which local people become victims. Sources for media coverage, if there is any at all, tend to come from the government level. Voices of the victims themselves are ignored.
- In the case of "worthy" victims, the U.S. typically does not have good relations with the government of the country involved. Drawing attention to the plight of victims (assuming that they're suffering at the hands of an enemy state) helps legitimize U.S. ideology by showing how atrocious enemy states are, and at the same time how benevolent we are. Sources for media coverage, which will tend to have a far greater reach than that of unworthy victims, can now include the victims themselves, such as refugees, dissidents, etc., those whose voices will be filtered out of mainstream press coverage if they were unfortunate enough to be unworthy victims.
