Manufacturing Consent

The preliminaries

• The mass media is a system that communicates messages and symbols to the general populace.
  • It is difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent.
    • In a democracy, we think that the media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the truth, and that they don’t just reflect the world as powerful groups wish it to be perceived.
  • Especially when the media actively expose corporate and governmental ill deeds and aggressively portray themselves as spokespeople for free speech.
    • But these critiques are limited in nature; this, combined with the huge inequality in command of resources, results in a massive influence on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance.
    • If the powerful are able to fix the baseline of discourse, to decide what the general populace is allowed to see, hear, and think via propaganda campaigns, the view of how the system works is at odds with reality.

The Propaganda Model

• In contrast to the standard conception of the media as relentless in their search for truth and their independence from authority, the propaganda model reverses that. It is a way of reorienting how we think about the media.
  • The media serves a “societal purpose,” but not a purpose that enables the public to assert meaningful control over the political process by providing them with the necessary information needed for the intelligent discourse.
  • On the contrary, the societal purpose of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups.
  • The media serve this purpose in many ways: through selection of topics, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping debate within the bounds of acceptable premises.
  • The US media do not function like media in a totalitarian state.
    • Rather, they permit, and indeed encourage, debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain within the system of an elite consensus, a system so powerful that it is internalized largely without awareness.
    • In essence, the private media are major corporations selling a product (readers and audiences) to other businesses (advertisers).
      • The media would be failing to meet their elite audience’s needs if they didn’t present a tolerably realistic portrayal of the world.
        • But their societal purpose also requires that the interpretation of the world reflect the interests and concerns of the sellers, the buyers, and the governmental and private institutions dominated by these groups.
  • There is also the overwhelming wish to think well of ourselves, our institutions, and our leaders. We see ourselves as basically decent in personal life, so it must be that our institutions function similarly, even if thinking so is illogical.
  • The technical structure of the media, for the most part, allows only conventional thoughts; nothing else can be expressed between two commercials, or 700 words.
• The propaganda model’s essential filters are:
  • First, the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominate mass-media firms;
  • Second, advertising as mass media’s primary income source;
  • Third, the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and experts funded by these agents of power;
  • Fourth, “flak” as a means of disciplining the media; and 
  • Fifth, “anticommunism” as national religion and control mechanism.
• The first filter – wealth and ownership
• In 1986 there were around 1,500 daily newspapers, 11,000 magazines, 9,000 radio and 1,500 TV stations, 2,400 book publishers, and seven movie studios in the US–over 25,000 media entities in all.
  • But the 29 largest media systems accounted for over half of the output of newspapers, and most of the sales and audiences in magazines, broadcasting, books, and movies.
    • These companies were large, profit-seeking corporations–focus on the bottom line was and is powerful.
    • Additionally, large media companies are also diversified. For example, GE owned NBC and Westinghouse owned major TV-broadcasting stations, a cable network, and a radio station network.
    • GE and Westinghouse are both huge companies heavily involved in the controversial areas of weapons production and nuclear power.
      • GE and Westinghouse depend on the government to subsidize their nuclear power and military research and development.
  • Government support
    • The radio-TV companies and networks all require government licenses and are thus potentially subject to government control or harassment.
    • All businesses are interested in business taxes, interest rates, labor policies, and enforcement and nonenforcement of the antitrust laws.
• The second filter – advertising
• Advertising served as a powerful mechanism to weaken the working-class press.
  • Advertisers acquired a de facto licensing authority since, without their support, newspapers were not economically viable.
  • With advertising, the free market does not result in a neutral system where buyer choice decides. The advertisers’ choices influence media prosperity and survival.
  • In short, the mass media are interested in attracting audiences with buying power, not audiences per se; affluent audiences spark advertiser interest.
  • So, seeking large audiences does not make the mass media more “democratic”–it is weighted by income.
• The third filter – sources
• The media need a steady, reliable flow of raw material. They can’t afford to have reporters at all places where important stories may break.
  • Economics dictates that they concentrate their resources where significant news often occurs and where regular press conferences are held.
    • The White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department are central nodes.
    • Locally, it’s places like city hall and the police department.
    • And, business corporations and trade groups.
• Reporters are predisposed to treat bureaucratic accounts as factual.
  • Partly to maintain the image of objectivity, but also to protect from criticism of bias and libel suits, they need material that is presumptively accurate. 
  • This is also a matter of cost: taking information from sources that may be presumed credible reduces investigative expense.
    • Material from sources that are not presumptively credible requires careful checking and costly research.
• 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.
  • The large entities that provide the subsidy become “routine” news sources and have privileged access to the gates.
  • Non-routine sources must struggle for access.
  • The media may feel obligated to carry dubious stories in order not to offend their sources.
  • Note: governmental entities, such as the White House and the Pentagon, are supported by taxpayers, so in effect, the citizenry pays to be propagandized in the interest of powerful groups.
• The fourth filter – flak
• “Flak” refers to negative responses to a media statement or program.
• If flak is produced on a large scale, or by the uber-wealthy, it can be uncomfortable and costly to the media.
  • The government is a major producer of flak, regularly assailing, threatening, and correcting the media, trying to contain any deviations from the established line.
• The fifth filter – anticommunism as a control mechanism
• This ideology helps mobilize the populace against an enemy–the concept is so fuzzy that it can be used against anybody advocating policies that threaten property interests. 
• It therefore fragments the left and labor movements and serves as a political-control mechanism.
  • If communism is the worst imaginable result, then supporting facism abroad is justified as a lesser evil, even if truly horrible things happen as a result.
• Flinging the label “communism” creates a fog in which the government and wealthy operatives may commit mass atrocities with little blowback.

The Propaganda Campaigns

Worthy and unworthy victims

• A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated as such by client states are unworthy.
  • The evidence of worth may be determined by the extent and character of the media’s tension and indignation.
• For example, a comparison between the mass media’s treatment of Jerzy Popieluszko, a Polish priest murdered by the Polish police in 1984, and the media’s coverage of priests murdered within the US sphere of influence.
  • The quality of treatment of the worthy and unworthy victims differed sharply.
  • While the coverage of the worthy victim was filled with gory details and quoted expressions of outrage and demands for justice, the coverage of the unworthy victims was low-key, keeping a lid on emotions, with generalities about the inherent tragedy of human life.

Legitimate versus meaningless third world elections

• Some elections are held in client states to legitimize their rulers and regimes, whereas others are held in disfavored countries to legitimize their “bad” political systems.
  • The sponsor government tries to associate the election with the happy word “democracy.”
  • Then, the refusal of the rebel opposition to participate in the election is portrayed as a rejection of democracy, even if the very plan of the election involves the rebels’ exclusion from the ballot.
  • Official observers are dispatched to provide the appearance of fairness by focusing on the government’s agenda and by channeling press attention to a reliable source.
  • But actually, fairness depends on fundamental conditions established in advance, which are virtually impossible to ascertain under the guided-tour conditions of official observers.
  • Things that make an election meaningiful:
    • Freedom of speech and assembly;
    • Freedom of the press;
    • Freedom to organize and maintain intermediate economic, social, and political groups;
    • Freedom to form political parties, organize members, put forward candidates, and campaign without fear of extreme violence;
    • The absence of state terror and a climate of fear among the public.
• For the elections held in disfavored states, the US generally finds that elections are no longer equated with democracy.
  • They do not commend the army for supporting the election–instead, the leverage the dominant party obtains via the army’s support is portrayed as compromising the election’s integrity.
• While a government may employ a blatant double standard, the media should apply a single standard.
• But, for instance, the US media followed the government’s agenda to put the Salvadoran and Guatemalan elections in a favorable light and to denigrate the Nicaraguan one.
  • Electoral conditions in Nicaragua in 1984 were far more favorable than in El Salvador and Guatemala, and news organizations from other countries found the Nicaraguan election was a model of fairness (by Latin American standards).
  • In El Salvador and Guatemala, state-sponsored terror, including the public exposure of mutiliated bodies, had ravaged the civilian population.
  • Nevertheless, in accord with the US propaganda line , the US mass media found the large turnouts in these countries to be triumphs of democratic choice. 
• The authors’ overall finding was that neither El Salvador nor Guatemala met any of the five basic conditions of a free election, whereas Nicragaua met some of them well, others to a lesser extent.
• Otherwise put, the media was thrilled by the “elections” in El Salvador and Guatemala (because they were client-state elections), even though the elections were frauds and death squads continued to flourish, while the media acted negatively toward states that the US disfavored.
  • This was not based on the elections themselves, but a propaganda agenda.

The Indochina Wars

• Rarely did US reporters make any effort to see the war from the point of view of “the enemy”–the peasants of South Vietnam, Laos, or later Cambodia.
  • Such evidence as was available was ignored or dismissed.
  • Instead, the American invaders were regarded as the victims of Vietnamese “aggression,” and the war was reported from their point of view.
• As the US invasion mounted in scale, Indochina was flooded with war correspondents, many of whom reported what they saw and heard with honesty and courage.
  • WIth rare exceptions, however, they gave an account of the war as perceived by the US military.
  • Reporters often did not conceal atrocities committed by the US military, although they did not express the horror and outrage that they likely would have if others were the perpetrators, and the US the victims.
    • For example, The Japanese press reported that attacks against undefended villages in the Mekong Delta involved “firing away at random at farmhouses,” “using the farmers for targets as if in a hunting mood”; “they are hunting Asians…this whimsical firing would explain the reason why the surgical wards in every hospital in the towns of the Mekong delta were full of wounded.”
    • In contrast, observing an air strike on a village of “unabashed” Viet Cong supporters, NBC’s Jack Perkins commented: “There was no discriminating one house from another. There couldn’t be, and there did not need to be. The whole village had turned on the Americas, so the whole village was being destroyed.”

What to do about it

• There have been noble attempts made for broader access, especially public-access channels and locally produced programs–local nonprofit radio and TV stations provide an opportunity for direct media access.
• Democratic political order requires wide control of and access to the media; as such, we should vigorously oppose the steady commercialization of publicly owned air waves.

• The KGB-Bulgarian plot to kill the Pope, and how free-market disinformation became “news”–where the mass media not only allowed disinformation sources to prevail, they protected them against disclosures that would reveal their dubious credentials
• How the national media failed to provide even minimally adequate coverage of the Gulf of Tonkin incident
• The media’s treatment of the Tet Offensive, and how journalists from other countries concluded that thousands of civilian victims were murdered in a hysterical use of American firepower, and then designated as the victims of a communist massacre
• How, when it came to Laos and Cambodia, the media failed to publish the information about the attack against a defenseless civilian society or seek to investigate further, and instead proceeded to provide exculpatory accounts that they knew to be inaccurate
• Example after example of each stage of the propaganda model, and example after example for each filter