| Number 343 | August 31, 2006 |
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This Week: What IS the Media?
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Greetings, Here at the end of August, as many people prepare to go back to school, I thought it would be a good time to attempt a brief summary of some of the most basic points that I use in my writing about the nature of the mass media in the 21st century. In many issues of Nygaard Notes I offer little "case studies," where I take apart this media story or that media story to reveal what lies beneath the surface. But I don't often spell out the basic theory of how and why the media works the way it does. I usually save that for my presentations, classes, and workshops. So I thought it was about time to put the basics into these pages. It's too long for one issue, of course, so it's time for another Series. This week's Part 1 will focus on the nature of the media industry. There will probably be about four installments after this one, on these themes: What a Journalist Does; What Propaganda Is; How It Is That the Industry and the Journalist Together Produce Propaganda (it's not a conspiracy!) and; A Little Bit about What We Can Do about All of This. I haven't actually written any of this yet, so all of this could change. As always, I invite you all to offer feedback as we go along. Happy September! Nygaard |
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"Quote" of the Week This is from the New York Times of August 30th: "‘Peaceful nuclear energy is the right of the Iranian nation,' said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, repeating what has become a mantra of his administration." A "mantra?" What if a "mantra" is true? Here are two facts: 1. Iran is a signatory of ("party to") the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. 2. Signatories of that treaty have the right to develop peaceful nuclear energy. Here's what the treaty says (Article Four): "Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes..."
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"Four years into an economic recovery, the country has yet to make progress in reducing poverty, raising the typical family's income, or stemming the rise in the ranks of the uninsured, compared to where we were in the last recession. It is unprecedented in recoveries of the last 40 years for poverty to be higher, and the typical working-age household's income lower, four years into a recovery than when the previous recession hit bottom." [ Ed note: It hit bottom in 2001.] That's Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), commenting on the release on Tuesday, August 29th of a U.S. Census Bureau report on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States. This remarkable news made the front page in a few cities—Baltimore, St. Louis, and Columbus Ohio—but for the most part was relegated to the inside pages. In my own local newspaper, the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!), a different Census Bureau report apparently released on the same day made the front page, with the lead sentence: "The number of long commutes in the Twin Cities area rose sharply during the first half of this decade, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday." The Census report on unprecedented poverty and declining income, on the other hand, was slotted in on page 6. So, for the record, here are some facts that probably won't be a part of too many conversations in this country in the coming week, unfortunately. These are all from an analysis of the Census Bureau report done by CBPP: "The poverty rate, at 12.6 percent, remained well above its 11.7 percent rate in 2001." "Median income for non-elderly households declined for the fifth consecutive year and was $2,000 (or 3.7 percent) lower in 2005 than in the recession year of 2001." "The median earnings of both male and female full-time workers declined in 2005." "Census data also show a trend of deepening poverty among those who are poor. The amount by which the average poor person fell below the poverty line in 2005—$3,236—was the highest on record. So was the share of the poor (43 percent) who fell below half of the poverty line." "Income inequality appeared to grow again in 2005, with high-income groups securing the largest gains." "The number of uninsured people climbed by 1.3 million in 2005 to 46.6 million, a record high. The percentage of people without insurance rose from 15.6 percent of the population to 15.9 percent. Both figures were substantially above the figures for the 2001 recession year, when 41.2 million people—14.6 percent of Americans—were uninsured." "Last year's hurricanes do not appear to have had much of an effect on the new poverty, median income, and health insurance figures." As a little bonus, here's a quotation from a related article in the New York Times from the previous day, August 28th: "Wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as ‘the golden era of profitability.'" George W. Bush, meanwhile, was heard to say on August 18th that "our economy is maintaining solid growth, and performing in line with expectations." Hmm... No comment yet from the White House on the Census report. Do you think I'm making this stuff up? Read the 7-page CBPP analysis for yourself at http://www.cbpp.org/ Or, if you like, check out the Census Report (86 pages!) at http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p60-231.pdf |
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Media and Propaganda, How It Happens Part 1: What IS the Media? |
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In order to understand how the media works, we first have to understand what the media is, which is not as obvious as you might think. The media is an industry, made up of businesses operating in a marketplace. (Not too controversial, so far, eh?). As with any market, the media industry is composed of a bunch of businesses buying a product produced by other businesses. Still with me? Most people, if they think about it, imagine that the product that is produced by the news industry is "news." And they imagine that the seller is the media company. And, finally, they imagine that the buyer is the person who "consumes" the news, that is, you and me. That all seems reasonable enough, but it's completely wrong. In fact, only one-third of that theory is correct. The seller is, indeed, the media company. NBC News, for example, sells something. But their "customer" is not you and me. Their "customer" is other corporations, the corporations who buy the ads that pay for the news. And the product? The product is you and me. That is, the more "news consumers" that a media company can prove are looking at their news program or paper, the more they can charge for advertising. And the more money they can charge, the more money they make. And that's what it is all about. "News" is produced, but it's produced as a tool used to attract the main product, which is an audience that advertisers will buy. So, in summary, here are two ideas about the nature of the media business: (This is not particularly controversial, by the way. Ask any economist, or business consultant, or anybody who studies this stuff. Even reporters and editors know it, and the honest ones will say so.) A Propaganda Model of The Media Industry The best theory that I've found to explain how and why U.S. media do what they do is the "propaganda model" developed by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their 1988 book "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media." A propaganda model focuses on inequalities in wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to FILTER out the news fit to print, MARGINALIZE dissent, and ALLOW the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public. The essential factors at work in Chomsky and Herman's propaganda model [revised somewhat by Nygaard] look something like this: Factor #1. The SIZE, CONCENTRATED OWNERSHIP, AND OWNER WEALTH OF THE DOMINANT MASS-MEDIA FIRMS. The sheer size of the big media firms makes it possible for a small number of people to impose their values and news judgement on a large number of people. Most media organizations in this country are now owned by five huge corporations, and this has resulted in a "high level of manipulation of news to pursue the owners' other financial and political goals," according to Professor Ben Bagdikian in his amazing book "The Media Monopoly." Factor #2: The PROFIT ORIENTATION of the dominant mass-media firms. There are only so many people around to "buy" news, so when the news market is "saturated," news organizations do what other companies do to keep profits up: they cut costs. In the news business, this means a continuing reduction in "the resources devoted to original newsgathering: reporters, producers, editors, correspondents, boots on the ground." That's according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism in its report on "The State of The News Media 2006." (I reported on this in Nygaard Notes #328.) That leads to our next factor... Factor #3: SOURCES. Fewer reporters producing more stories make reporters more reliant on news that is easy to get and unlikely to be challenged by anyone who can cause trouble (See Factor #5 below.) Acceptable sources will be: Official, Accessible, "Credible," Cheap, and Easy. These criteria are easily met by sources in government and business, and the "experts" that are funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power. The easiest-to-get news comes directly from public relations firms and, ultimately, from the people who can afford to hire them. Factor #4: ADVERTISING as the primary income source of the mass media. While it's true that advertising pays the bills, that doesn't mean that advertisers consciously conspire to shape the world (although some do). Among many points worth mentioning on this subject, here are the two main ones to keep in mind: 1. The more viewers a media outlet can deliver, the more money it can charge for advertising. That is why media must "give people what they want," as opposed to making some assessment of what information is important to the health of the society. This explains why, a couple of weeks ago, NBC devoted 15 times more airtime to news the JonBenet Ramsey story than to the story of the "President" saying he "strongly disagrees" with the judicial ruling that his administration's warrant-less surveillance program is unconstitutional and must be stopped. Nobody would argue that news of JonBenet is more important than news of the President defying the courts. But JonBenet news pulls in the viewers that can then be sold to advertisers. 2. Media outlets know that advertisers are concerned not simply with audience size, but also with audience composition. That is, advertisers don't want just any viewers; they want affluent viewers, viewers who can and will buy their products. So there is a built-in bias against media that serve primarily working class or lower-income audiences. Factor #5: "FLAK" as a means of disciplining the media. "Flak," Chomsky and Herman say, "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." They add that "The ability to produce flak, and especially flak that is costly and threatening [to a media corporation], is related to power." Factor #6: ANTI-TERRORISM as national religion and control mechanism. In the original Chomsky and Herman book, this factor was "anti-Communism," but with the end of the Cold War, a substitute had to be found and, in September of 2001, it was found. The effects can be seen in two primary ways. First of all is the manipulation of the idea of a particular type of "national security" as a criterion used to choose what is "news" and to frame those choices. This is easy to see. Two examples would be the media hysteria about immigration, and the willingness of the media to swallow administration propaganda about Iraq as a "threat" to the U.S. The second use of "anti-Terrorism" is to intimidate, delegitimize, and silence critics of administration policy. This negative power of anti-Terrorism can take the form of lawsuits against whistleblowers, blacklisting of university professors, harsh criticism of media outlets that report on administration misdeeds, and so forth. It's a particularly powerful form of Flak. Factor #7: The SOCIAL LOCATION of reporters and editors in the major media. By "social location," I mean things like who we are (gender, race, class, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc.) and what we do (occupation, political party membership, union membership, etc.) All of these things influence the premises that are used as starting points to organize the "news," and even influence decisions about what IS or IS NOT "news." Several historical factors have brought us to a point where almost none of these "news judgements" are now made by lower-income or working-class people. And the National Association of Black Journalists reported recently that "America's newsrooms are still overwhelmingly white and male." This lack of diversity in the nation's newsrooms has a profound effect on the questions that journalists ask, the editorial choices they make, their choices of language, their judgements about the credibility of sources, and much more. If you want to read the original summary of the Propaganda Theory, it can be found online at http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html ) |