notes on "Manufacturing Consent"

In their book, "Manufacturing Consent", Chomsky and Herman present a system of filters that function to mold and shape the stories that appear (or don't appear) in the mainstream media.
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:

1. ownership
2. advertising
3. sourcing
4. 'flak'
5. ideology

1) Ownership-Early efforts at subjecting the press to market forces marginalized the local press which served the interests of labor. How? By making the overall costs more expensive, and by creating the necessity for a reliance on advertising to help cover those costs. Today, witness the increased consolidation of ownership by a smaller and smaller group of companies, such that in 1983, 50 corporations dominated U.S. media; in 1987, 29; in 1997, 10. By 2003, 5 corporations controlled 85% of mainstream media in the U.S. Increased de-regulation in the market (starting with Reaganomics?) has made it that much easier for this concentration of ownership to occur.

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).
  

2) Advertising...

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.

3) Sourcing-Where do the media get their information from? What sources are credible? What sources aren't? By and large, the mainstream media rely on two sources for their information-the government and corporations. Furthermore, institutions created/funded by the government and corporations provide important vehicles for the legitimate transmission of that information.

• 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?
  

4) Flak - Retribution from the top

'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 American Legal Foundation (1980)
- 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).

Question: What about extending this idea of ideology to include the principles of capitalism itself (free-trade, open markets, limited role for government, de-regulation, etc.), which is also a kind of national (if not world) religion? How does this affect media content? (see article in Extra! "Victorious Dems Lectured by Media Establishment" (2/2007 p.6) in which Dems who oppose free-trade are viewed with alarm by the LA Times...) These principles provide the fuel that drives the economy, of which the mainstream media is a signficant part. Is it not logical to conclude that the content of such a media system would be favorable to that which sustains it?

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.

"Worthy" and "Unworthy" victims

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.
  

essay 1: reflections on "People's Movements, People's Press"

On the necessity of a social movement press

Why is a social movement press necessary? To try and answer this question, it may be helpful take a step back and look at the larger context in which a social movement (hereafter s.m.) press operates. By and large, the s.m. press, as discussed in Ostertag’s book, is largely reactionary in nature. That is, each s.m. press was a reaction to, and in many cases a reaction against, dominant forces operating in mainstream society. (The environmental movement seems to be the exception here, as it is both reactionary and pre-emptive in nature.) Examining the nature of those dominant forces reveals the nature of power itself, of how it works to enforce the status quo at the expense of those whose who are marginalized. If we consider this idea in relation to how the mainstream media operate, where it represents a kind of status quo, then we can readily conclude that there must be voices which are marginalized and do not have outlets in the dominant system. This, in essence, is why a s.m. press is necessary, to give voice to those denied one by the mainstream.

In looking at the social movement press as discussed in Ostertag’s book, several patterns reveal themselves. Specifically, this essay will look at four of those patterns: 1) the social movement press as a reactionary voice, 2) the relationship between a social movement’s goals and its longevity, 3) the role of the government in a social movement, and 4) the presence of a double-standard that emerged in some of the press of the abolitionist and civil rights movements.

The social movement press as a reactionary voice

As stated in the introduction, each s.m. press emerged as a reaction to/against dominant forces in mainstream society, forces that worked to prevent marginalized voices from being heard. As each s.m. press emerged, what kinds of voices were expressed in those movements? A short summary follows:

• The abolitionist press, which functioned to give a voice to those without one regarding such issues as the injustices of the slavery system, human rights violations resulting from the slavery system, voicing opposition to sending black slaves to Liberia, advocating pacifism, advocating armed rebellion, advocating the importance of education and literacy, engaging pro-slavery newspapers in debate, in short, spreading a wide spectrum of abolitionist ideals.
• The woman suffrage press, which was an historical outgrowth of the abolitionist press, gave voice to the woman suffrage movement, the goal of which was finally achieved in 1920. But in a larger sense, the woman suffrage press also functioned to set in motion the creation of a space in social consciousness that had yet not existed, a space which struggled to define itself because there was no adequate language to do so. Today, we know these ideas collectively as ‘feminism’, and the woman suffrage press planted the seeds for its fruition.
• The underground GI press, which gave a voice to those in the military who were against the Vietnam War. This movement, almost entirely ignored by the mainstream press, included a wide range of voices such as encouraging active resistance from within the military, interviews with and stories from soldiers in the field who talked about the atrocities, realities and insanities of the war, picking a free speech fight with the Pentagon, documenting dissent within the military and serving as an organizing tool for opposition.
• The gay and lesbian press, which was probably the most suppressed voice of all, gave voice to those whose identity itself was repressed by society for many many years. That is, the identity of a slave, or someone who opposed slavery, a woman who fought for suffrage, or a soldier who voiced opposition to the war, was not called into question per se by societal norms. But the identity of someone who was ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’ or ‘homosexual’ was called into question, to the degree that, at the onset of the movement, it was a criminal act to publicly identity oneself as such. It is in that sense that the voices of the gay and lesbian press were harshly repressed, and that repression provided the impetus for the growth of the movement for many years to come.

The relationship between goals and longevity

Ostertag points out that, contrary to what one might think, the birth of a journal usually precedes the formation of a social movement, not vice versa. But what about the opposite case? That is, when does a s.m. press typically come to an end? Interestingly enough, ‘the end’ usually occurs when the s.m. achieves its goals. (It should be pointed out that ‘the end’ can have at least two meanings here—the literal sense, in which the journal stops publication altogether, or the goal-oriented sense, meaning that the journal significantly changes its character/focus after entering the mainstream.) In some ways, this is to be expected. If we consider again that a major function of the s.m. press is to give voice to those without one, it is also necessary to consider what happens when those voices are finally able to enter into the currents of mainstream society. From this point of view, the s.m. press functions as a kind of vehicle, one which brings those voices that are on the fringes of society into the mainstream, and once a s.m. press does this, it has achieved what it initially set out to do. Looking at the cases in Ostertag’s book, it becomes clear that the more goal-oriented and focused a s.m. press is, the more likely that s.m. press will collapse once its goal is achieved. Examples include:

• The abolitionist press, the major papers being William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator and Fredrick Douglass’s The North Star, ended with the Civil War, when slavery was abolished.
• The woman suffrage press, which gained its momentum after the abolitionist movement came to an end, essentially disappeared after women’s suffrage was achieved in 1920.
• The gay/lesbian press ended in the 1990’s in the sense that the movement entered the mainstream, its readership was transformed into a market, and the g/l press became more lifestyle/glossy types than substantive journals dealing with core issues of identity and self-definition.

We can also look at this relationship in the inverse way, namely that the less specific the goals of a s.m. press are, the greater its longevity tends to be. Example:

• While the environmental movement press periodically focuses on issues of preservation and protection (e.g. preventing the damming of the Grand Canyon, protecting the Giant Sequoias, etc.), the overall goals of the movement are much larger in scope than other social movements. Is there a tangible point when the goals of the environmental movement will be achieved? It seems likely not. The environmental movement has evolved into a kind of institution in and of itself (consider the Sierra Club), a necessary step some would say to stay in the game for the long haul, to continue to try and raise awareness of an issue that our society as a whole is in deep denial about, i.e. the relationship between the lifestyles that we lead and the negative consequences of that lifestyle on the planet.

On the role of government: friend or foe?

What is the relationship between a social movement and the government? Do they work together to achieve shared goals, or are the two entities at odds? Unfortunately, social movements, if not at odds with the government from the outset, typically wind up being so at some point. This pattern holds true for at least two cases, the environmental and the civil rights movement.

• Until WWII, there was a shared perspective between the environmental movement and the government about the importance of the preservation and maintenance of America’s natural resources. (The government worked closely with the early environmental movement to establish many of our national parks, for example.) But this camaraderie broke down after WWII, when the government, which began pursuing more aggressive development and management practices, found itself at increasing odds with the environmental movement, which sought to protect and preserve that which the government wanted to develop.
• In the case of the civil rights movement, there was a fundamental shift that took place in the movement in the mid-1960s. Up until the early 60's, both the government and the mainstream press were viewed as part of the solution in bringing about change. But this changed in the mid-60's, when the government and the press became seen as more a part of the problem than the solution. It was at this point that a more radical black nationalist/liberation movement began to form, which found itself at increasing odds with the government, which began to infiltrate and heavily disrupt the movement (consider covert COINTELPRO operations…). In this case, the government had become a big foe of the movement, actively working against it instead of for it.

Double-standard or cognitive dissonance?

In the abolitionist and civil rights movement, there are several instances where a double-standard seems to have existed, either through the segregation of a readership, reliance on outside sources to convey a movement’s message, or the marginalization of voices within the movement itself. Examples include:

• During the abolitionist era, the readership of William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator was largely black; conversely, the readership of Fredrick Douglass’s The North Star was largely white. Why did this occur?
• During the civil rights movement, SNCC relied heavily on white liberal financial and institutional support (including the corporate/mainstream media) to get its message across. Thus, the movement had to jump through a kind of ‘white hurdle’ to get its message back to its own people. Going through that hurdle definitely affected the message, and some would say, even compromised it. Was this a kind of necessary evil?
• During the Vietnam War, Ostertag documents cases in which the Black Panther largely ignored/left unacknowledged the voices of black GI’s who had written to the paper seeking support, expressing solidarity, etc. Why did the Black Panther do this?

Was it institutional forces that caused these events to happen? Internal divisions? Or perhaps these incidents show how deeply entrenched racism is into the fabric of our society? The effect of this entrenchment may have created a kind of double standard that subjected parts of the abolitionist and civil rights movements to the same forces they were trying to fight against, and if one looks at the patterns in retrospect, a certain cognitive dissonance results. What does it tell us about human nature when we see that some of the very things being fought against wind up being part of the fight?

Insights and lessons

In reflecting on the history of the s.m. press in this country, it seems clear that the more goal-oriented a s.m. press is, the greater its potential impact is likely to be. As stated in the introduction, the goals of a s.m. represent marginalized voices that do not have a place in the mainstream, and the importance of a s.m. press is that it becomes a vehicle for their expression. The more clear-cut those goals are, the sharper they can cut and carve out a place for themselves in a society that is said to be based on the fundamental principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, though one must always be wary that the status quo may, at times more often that not, trump those principles. This is the nature of the fight for those who choose to fight it, and the history of the s.m. press shows us that success is within our reach, but not without much sacrifice.

Media Literacy Ex 1: Gender in the Media

Media Literacy Exercise 1: Gender in the Media

Story: A Sunni woman claims she was raped by several Iraqi police

Source: The San Francisco Chronicle; (story originally aired on Al-Jazeera)

Days of coverage: 4 (February 21st-24th)

Story titles:

Day 1: “Televised account of rape stokes sectarian rancor” (from NYT)

Day 2: “2^nd Chlorine attack kills 3 in Baghdad” (from the Washington Post; story imbedded)

Day 3: “New set of rape allegations leveled against Iraqi forces” (from SF Chronicle staff)

Day 4: “U.S. detains son of close Shiite ally” (from L.A. Times; story imbedded)

Why is this story important? This is the first ever case of official sexual assault accusations against Iraqi security forces that has reached the mainstream media.

Issues:

· Women live heavily veiled lives in Muslim societies, and the public discussion of sexuality, let alone rape, is taboo. Has Al-Jazeera, which engages in Western-style journalism in a Middle Eastern context (and with Middle Eastern money), forcibly broken that taboo? Is this an example of Western values making (weaving, forcing?) their way into a culture, a culture of which large segments are in fact fighting that Westernization? What kind of standards/justifications did Al-Jazeera use to produce this story? Does it reflect an internalization of Western values/standards?

Larger implications (mentioned and not mentioned):

mentioned:

· The accusations further erode the average Iraqi citizen’s faith in the police (seen as militias whose sectarian (Shia/Sunni) loyalties preclude loyalty to the Iraqi ‘nation’)

· The accusations incite further sectarian hatred/distrust/violence.

· That Iraq is not yet ready for the U.S. military to withdraw, for if it did, the current situation would deteriorate, leading to further atrocities. (provides justification to keep U.S. military in Iraq)

· That Iraq doesn’t yet have the ability to be a sovereign nation.

not mentioned:

· What is the significance of rape appearing in the mainstream media there? Will this open a kind of floodgate? Will stories like this become more commonplace in the near future? (On Day 3, a second story of rape was reported…) What will be the effect of this on Iraqi and Muslim society? Will it have an effect on women’s roles there?

· To what extent should the media be involved in breaking a taboo? Is this ‘democracy’ in action?

The issue is portrayed as an internal issue, one in which the U.S. military is taking a ‘hands-off’ approach and leaving it to Iraqi politicians to handle. (The prime minister denies the rape allegations and cleared the assailants in the first case; called the woman who made the claims a liar). By portraying this as an internal issue, the focus is taken off of the fact that the U.S. is responsible for creating the conditions in which these human rights violations can now occur. (This tactic is also being used by the mainstream media in their portrayal of what is now happening in Palestine…)