Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

by Edward S. Herman

It should also be noted that we are talking about media structure and performance, not the effects of the media on the public.

UPDATING THE PROPAGANDA MODEL

There are, by one count, 20,000 more public relations agents working to doctor the news today than there are journalists writing it.19

UPDATING THE CASE STUDIES

We would anticipate, for example, that an election held by a client-state government favored by U.S. officials would be treated differently by the media than an election held by a government that U.S. officials oppose.

Worthy and Unworthy Victims

This bias is politically advantageous to U.S. policy-makers, for focusing on victims of enemy states shows those states to be wicked and deserving of U.S. hostility; while ignoring U.S. and client-state victims allows ongoing U.S. policies to proceed more easily, unburdened by the interference of concern over the politically inconvenient victims.

Legitimating Versus Meaningless Third World Elections

The KGB-Bulgarian Plot to Assassinate the Pope

Mehmet Ali Agca

VIETNAM, LAOS, AND CAMBODIA Vietnam: Was the United States a Victim or an Aggressor?

U.S. Chemical Warfare in Indochina

Rewriting Vietnam War History

Indonesian leader Suharto,

East Timor

FURTHER APPLICATIONS

In his book Golden Rule, political scientist Thomas Ferguson argues that where the major investors in political parties and elections agree on an issue, the parties will not compete on that issue, no matter how strongly the public might want an alternative.

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.

Independent Media Centers

One of our central themes in this book is that the observable pattern of indignant campaigns and suppressions, of shading and emphasis, and of selection of context, premises, and general agenda, is highly functional for established power and responsive to the needs of the government and major power groups.

1 A Propaganda Model

The elite domination of the media and marginalization of dissidents that results from the operation of these filters occurs so naturally that media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news “objectively” and on the basis of professional news values.

1.1. SIZE, OWNERSHIP, AND PROFIT ORIENTATION OF THE MASS MEDIA: THE FIRST FILTER

In their analysis of the evolution of the media in Great Britain, James Curran and Jean Seaton describe how, in the first half of the nineteenth century, a radical press emerged that reached a national working-class audience.

Many of the large media companies are fully integrated into the market, and for the others, too, the pressures of stockholders, directors, and bankers to focus on the bottom line are powerful.

This trend toward greater integration of the media into the market system has been accelerated by the loosening of rules limiting media concentration, cross-ownership, and control by non-media companies.

While the stock of the great majority of large media firms is traded on the securities markets, approximately two-thirds of these companies are either closely held or still controlled by members of the originating family who retain large blocks of stock.

The large media companies have also diversified beyond the media field, and non-media companies have established a strong presence in the mass media.

The great media also depend on the government for more general policy support. All business firms are interested in business taxes, interest rates, labor policies, and enforcement and nonenforcement of the antitrust laws.

1.2. THE ADVERTISING LICENSE TO DO BUSINESS: THE SECOND FILTER

In arguing for the benefits of the free market as a means of controlling dissident opinion in the mid-nineteenth century, the Liberal chancellor of the British exchequer, Sir George Lewis, noted that the market would promote those papers “enjoying the preference of the advertising public.”41 Advertising did, in fact, serve as a powerful mechanism weakening the working-class press. Curran and Seaton give the growth of advertising a status comparable with the increase in capital costs as a factor allowing the market to accomplish what state taxes and harassment failed to do, noting that these “advertisers thus acquired a de facto licensing authority since, without their support, newspapers ceased to be economically viable.”42

1.3. SOURCING MASS-MEDIA NEWS: THE THIRD FILTER

Another reason for the heavy weight given to official sources is that the mass media claim to be “objective” dispensers of the news. Partly to maintain the image of objectivity, but also to protect themselves from criticisms of bias and the threat of libel suits, they need material that can be portrayed as presumptively accurate.64 This is also partly a matter of cost: taking information from sources that may be presumed credible reduces investigative expense, whereas material from sources that are not prima facie credible, or that will elicit criticism and threats, requires careful checking and costly research.

Besides the U.S. Chamber, there are thousands of state and local chambers of commerce and trade associations also engaged in public-relations and lobbying activities.

In effect, the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access by their contribution to reducing the media’s costs of acquiring the raw materials of, and producing, news.

Another class of experts whose prominence is largely a function of serviceability to power is former radicals who have come to “see the light.”

1.4. FLAK AND THE ENFORCERS: THE FOURTH FILTER

“Flak” refers to negative responses to a media statement or program. It may take the form of letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits, speeches and bills before Congress, and other modes of complaint, threat, and punitive action. It may be organized centrally or locally, or it may consist of the entirely independent actions of individuals.

1.5. ANTICOMMUNISM AS A CONTROL MECHANISM

1.6. DICHOTOMIZATION AND PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGNS

In sum, a propaganda approach to media coverage suggests a systematic and highly political dichotomization in news coverage based on serviceability to important domestic power interests.

2 Worthy and Unworthy Victims

A PROPAGANDA SYSTEM WILL CONSISTENTLY PORTRAY PEOPLE abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy.

2.1. JERZY POPIELUSZKO VERSUS A HUNDRED RELIGIOUS VICTIMS IN LATIN AMERICA

A useful comparison can be made between the mass media’s treatment of Jerzy Popieluszko, a Polish priest murdered by the Polish police in October 1984, and the media’s coverage of priests murdered within the U.S. sphere of influence.

2.1.1. Quantitative aspects of coverage.

By contrast, the public would not have seen mention of the names of Father Augusto Ramírez Monasterio, father superior of the Franciscan order in Guatemala, murdered in November 1983, or Father Miguel Ángel Montufar, a Guatemalan priest who disappeared in the same month that Popieluszko was killed in Poland, or literally dozens of other religious murder victims in the Latin American provinces, who were sometimes given substantial coverage in the local press of the countries in which the murders took place.

The coverage of Popieluszko was somewhat inflated by the fact that his murderers were quickly tried, and in a trial that American reporters could freely report.

2.1.2. Coverage of the Popieluszko case