The Media Propaganda Model
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://allafrica.com/stories/200911160475.html
Zimbabwe: The Media 'Propaganda Model'
by Reason Wafawarova
16 November 2009
opinion
Sydney � THE people who preach Press freedom are very articulate in
expressing a view of how the media ought to function, but this model
hardly shows how the media do function.
The model of how the media ought to function is what the American
journalistic schools refer to as "the Jeffersonian role" of the media
where the media is a counterweight to government.
This in reality is meant to be that "cantankerous, obstinate, and
ubiquitous Press, which must be suffered by those in authority in order
to preserve the right of the people to know, and to help the population
assert meaningful control over the political process", (Noam Chomsky,
2002; Understanding Power).
This is the standard conception of the media today the world over and
clearly most people in the media do take this conception for granted.
There is the alternative conception; that media will present a picture
of the world which defends and inculcates the economic, social and
political agendas of society's privileged groups -- groups that dominate
the domestic economy of nation states and which, therefore, also largely
control government.
This is the "Propaganda Model" that Chomsky described as leading to the
media serving their societal purpose through such things as the way they
select topics, distribute their concerns, frame issues, filter
information, focus their analysis, employ emphasis, tone or the timing
of reports and so on.
This is the wide range of techniques employed in the media "propaganda
model" where the end result is that common belief that says whatever is
in the news must be true.
This model does not suggest in any way that the media always will agree
with state policy at any given moment. In the Western democracies
control of the government shifts back and forth largely between bi-party
systems like is the case in the US, the UK and in Australia. This means
that various elite groupings will take turns in controlling government
and whichever group happens to be in control of government at a
particular time will only reflect part of the elite political spectrum.
There are often tactical disagreements within this spectrum like is the
case with Obama's approach to the Afghan war. The wider spectrum
suggests that the war is, in Obama's own words, "a war of necessity",
but there are media criticisms on how George W. Bush was executing the
war. These are nothing but tactical disagreements within the confines of
the accepted spectrum pushed by the media propaganda model.
Essentially nothing much goes beyond the range of elite perspectives
although there are citable examples of "media scrutiny" on state policy
-- in reality scrutiny within the accepted limits.
The challenge is how one proves the reality of the media propaganda
model. Noam Chomsky came up with four basic observations.
First is elite advocacy. This is the traditional thinking among elite
democratic thinkers in the West -- a tradition that claims that the
media and the intellectual community in general ought to carry out a
propaganda function where they control what is commonly called "the
public mind" or "public opinion".
This tradition dates back up to the 1920s when it was still quite
fashionable to boast publicly as a propagandist or an imperialist. Then
people were a bit more honest and frank.
The view that the media have a part in playing a propaganda function in
nation states is not a monopoly of totalitarian states as we are often
told. In fact, it is a dominant theme in the Anglo-American democratic
thought and this has been the case for over 300 years; if one traces the
thinking back to the first major popular-democratic revolution in the
West, the English Civil War of the 1940s. This was an armed conflict
between supporters of the King and the Parliament between 1642 and 1648.
The Royalists represented the more traditional elite groupings while the
landed gentry and the merchant class were aligned to Parliament. Both
groups became increasingly worried as the war progressed because they
realised that there were now popular movements springing up and
challenging everything -- the right of authority altogether, the
master-servant relationship; and there was a lot of radical publishing
taking place then because the printing press had just been invented.
The elites on both sides of the Civil War became very worried that the
general population suddenly was beginning to get out of control. The
capacity to coerce was being lost and they had to do something about it.
They first tried to re-introduce coercion by establishing an absolutist
state, afterwards restoring King Charles II in 1660 after several years
of military rule by Oliver Cromwell's regime. However, the new elitist
set up could not restore the old order of coercion anymore. The gains of
popular rebellion began to be seen as the British political democracy
began to take shape. There was the establishment of the constitutional
monarchy and the introduction of the Bill of Rights during that time.
The lesson that the Western elites learnt from this period was that each
time there is a popular movement that succeeds in dissolving state
power, there has always been this resort that says when you start losing
the power to control people by force, you have to start to control what
they think.
That recognition is quite central to the Western political culture and
it is the same thinking that drives Western foreign policy.
There is a mainstream rightwing clique of political scientists,
journalists, public relations experts and others, not only in the West,
but also in other places infected with Western thinking -- a clique that
believes the ruling elites need more effective propaganda to control the
public mind.
Walter Lippmann, a dean of American journalists, was one such member of
this clique. He referred to the population of the United States as the
"bewildered herd" and advised that there was need for the state to
protect itself from "the rage and trampling of the bewildered herd".
He suggested this could be done by what he called the "manufacture of
consent". Essentially if you cannot do it by force and the bludgeon, you
can equally achieve the goal by calculated "manufacture of consent".
This thinking says that the conscious and intelligent manipulation of
the organised habits and opinions of the masses is a central feature of
a democratic system, and the thinking is literally like that. It is in
this case, the job of the "intelligent minorities" to scheme and execute
this manipulation of the attitudes and opinions of the masses.
This in essence is the leading doctrine of modern day liberal-democratic
intellectual thought: that once you lose the power to control people by
force you need better indoctrination.
That was the first observation; where elite advocacy plays a role in
shaping the framework of what people should be allowed to think about.
The second observation raised by Chomsky is what he called "prior
plausibility". The institutional structure of the media as made up of
corporate ownership, an elite audience and a business market will
naturally mean that corporate media would serve a propaganda function in
a business-dominated society such as is the Western world today.
This writer covered this aspect of the propaganda model last week in the
article title "West Using Media as a Propaganda Tool".
The third point raised by Chomsky is the public perspective. Over time
the public has tended to generally agree with the basic features of the
propaganda model as explained above. People actually know too well that
the media are too conformist and subservient to private power. This is
the public's image of the media in general although the media's self
image is often exactly the opposite.
This writer has met a lot of people in the public domain of Australia,
who curiously beg for the "real story" of what is happening in Zimbabwe.
On asking what they mean by "real story" the answer is always that "you
know how they often tell us what they want us to hear".
So in reality there is this observation that the people are indeed aware
of the manipulations carried on them by the media for the benefit of the
elites.
While one would think that these matters of the media as propaganda
model would be debated publicly in the West, the reality is that the
people in the West are always told of faraway places where such
chicanery is the routine manner of uncivilised dictators and tyrants.
The public debate you hear in the West is always over whether the media
are too extreme in their undermining of authority, and in their
criticism of power. The expectation is that they should be serving their
"Jeffersonian role" as a check on power.
When you suggest there is no "Jeffersionian role" at all and that the
media, together with the intellectual community in general, are
basically subservient to power, then you are labelled an extremist or
any such label as to alienate you from any positive image.
The propaganda model therefore will never be discussed in the media in
the West because it is akin to a well-known harlot inviting people to
discuss harlotry.
The fourth observation is to do with the empirical validity of the
"propaganda model" as suggested by Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman. The two
learned authors firstly allowed their opponents to choose their own
topics for discussion so that the usual argument that "you only pick
convenient examples that work for you" would fall away. The opponents
were arguing that the Western media are so independent that they do not
follow any guided spectrum.
Their preferred topics were the Vietnam war, Watergate and similar
stories. When these stories were put to scientific testing, they clearly
confirmed the propaganda model. This was through such indicators as
sub-topics, concerns, frame issues, focus of analyses, emphasis, tone
and a whole range of other issues.
The two authors also looked at paired examples of historical events.
They covered atrocities committed by enemy states and compared such to
coverage of atrocities which were roughly on the same scale, but were
committed by the US.
They looked at coverage of elections in enemy states and in client
states, just like what recently happened with the Zimbabwe election of
March 2008 and the Afghan election of October 2009.
The Zimbabwe election was extensively covered as barbaric and grossly
illegitimate, while the Afghan election was covered not so extensively,
and also not in so much bad light. This was despite that the election in
Zimbabwe proceeded to a run-off after no candidate garnered enough
presidential votes to form a government, while the Afghan run-off was a
result of a nullification of the first round of elections where the
Western- backed Hamid Karzai embarked on massive rigging that was
confirmed by most of the independent election observers that covered the
poll.
As Chomsky jokingly concluded, it is safe to dare take a "hazard guess
that the 'Propaganda Model' is one of the best confirmed theses in the
social sciences".
In reality the media freedom we hear so much about is nothing more than
this propaganda model. Unlimited media criticism of power centres is
only acceptable to Western elites if it is targeted at enemy states like
Zimbabwe, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and others like that.
This is where we have the West financing advocates for free Press who
dutifully shout to death point that journalists must be left to do as
they wish.
If the client government wanted by the West one day becomes a reality in
Zimbabwe all that will be is this propaganda model, and all this noise
about limitless media freedoms will just not be tolerated and will not
even be discussed publicly anymore.
In fact, even now divergent opinion directed at the MDC-T is simply
unacceptable to Western elites and even to the advocates of free Press
themselves, which is why some journalists have been placed on sanctions.
This writer is no stranger to all forms of threats, including death
threats; for criticising the MDC-T or pointing out the shortcomings of
Prime Minister Tsvangirai.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer
--
Dan Clore
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Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"