| Number 345 | September 18, 2006 |
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This Week: The ABCs of Propaganda
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Greetings, In the first two installments of the "Media and Propaganda, How It Happens" series, I have explained something about the nature of the media industry and something about the job of the journalist. This week I explain some basic ideas about how Propaganda works. (Part of this will be a refresher course for long-time readers, but will likely be news for more recently signed-up Nygaardians.) Next week, in what I think will be the final installment of the series, I will attempt to show how the structure of the media industry and the nature of the modern journalist come together to produce some very powerful Propaganda. I'll tell you right now, it's NOT a conspiracy. That's too easy! It's more complicated, and more interesting, than that. You'll see what I mean in the next Nygaard Notes. Lots of new readers this week. Welcome to you all! I love feedback, so if you feel moved, or irritated, or confused, or anything, by something you read in these pages, send me a note. You'll get a prompt response, I promise. And that goes for you "old-timers," as well. Happy autumn to everyone! Nygaard |
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From the "How Cynical Can We Get" archives, here is the lead paragraph from a front-page article in the New York Times of September 5th: "As they prepare for a critical pre-election legislative stretch, Congressional Republican leaders have all but abandoned a broad overhaul of immigration laws and instead will concentrate on national security issues they believe play to their political strength."
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Propaganda can be seen to operate on two distinct levels: There is Overt Propaganda, and there is Deep Propaganda. I wrote about this at some length in Nygaard Notes #172, but here's the basic idea: Overt Propaganda tends to be specific and conscious. Deep Propaganda, in contrast, is usually general and unconscious. To put it another way: Overt Propaganda is the thing you are supposed to believe, and Deep Propaganda is what makes it believable. Deep Propaganda (DP) is found in the assumptions, premises, and unwritten foundations upon which a story or a news report rests. Because it is unwritten and "taken for granted," DP is rarely discussed. In fact, it is rarely noticed, by either the purveyor or the consumer of the news. It's just "the way the world is." The Nature of Deep Propaganda All of us have certain basic ideas about how the world works. Many of these ideas are received unconsciously, at very early ages, from the various doctrinal institutions that surround us. These are institutions like our education systems, the mass media, and advertising. When we let these ideas reside in our minds, undisturbed by new information, for a long, long time, as many of us do, they can go beyond being simply "ideas," and can harden into attitudes, beliefs, and conceptions about the world. By this I mean that they can become stronger and deeper than mere "ideas," and can begin to seem like "common sense." They can become so familiar and useful that we stop thinking about them. At this point, I call them the "ABCs of Propaganda." That is, they are our basic Attitudes, Beliefs, and Conceptions about the world. Examples of ABCs include the idea that our country is always and everywhere trying to promote democracy, or the idea that every individual person is only looking out for him or herself, or the idea that a "Free Market" is the best way to organize an economy. ABCs encompass all sorts of biases and prejudices, like "They don't value life as much as we do," or "Islam is a religion of violence," or "All politicians are corrupt." They're not just ideas, in the sense that you can argue about them using facts. They are deeper than that, to the point of being articles of faith. They are general, and mostly unconscious. Everyone has such a set of ABCs, because without them we would not be able to make any sense out of the information we receive each day. When we share that same basic set of ideas with most other people, and when that basic set reflects the interests of the most powerful sectors in society, then they can be said to be the ABCs of Propaganda. That is, they are the ideas that make believable—or not believable—specific facts and news items that we see and hear every day, and they will tend to be in line with the interests of the powerful, who will use every opportunity to reinforce these ideas, and discourage opposing ideas. The more dominant the "prevailing wisdom" is, the less it will be challenged, and the less you will see it being defended. Different sets of ABC's can make the same "fact" seem obvious to one person and silly to another, as the article about Colombia in this week's Notes makes clear (I hope). When you see a news item that doesn't seem "right" to you, but there is no explanation or justification given for it—that is, it is assumed that readers or viewers will just accept it without needing any evidence—then you are most likely in the presence of Deep Propaganda. For example, the standard procedure of failing to record or report statistics on innocent Iraqi victims of U.S. violence may simply reflect a slavish reliance on the part of the U.S. media on official military sources (General Tommy Franks on Afghanistan: "We don't do body counts.") Or it may reveal the presence of DP, which might include a casual attitude toward the suffering of Iraqis, or a belief that the U.S. doesn't kill innocent people so there is nothing to report. The important thing to remember is that every time you are told something and asked to believe it, you will be expected to already "know" something that makes it believable. That's how Overt Propaganda and Deep Propaganda work together. A good propagandist not only puts out Overt Propaganda, but they also promote, reinforce, and rely on the Deep Propaganda that lies beneath the specifics. So, do members of the media consciously conspire to propagandize the people? I don't think so. They just do what they think is right. How the media system produces a certain kind of "right-thinking" journalists is something that I started to explain a couple of issues ago. I'll wrap it up in the next edition of Nygaard Notes. |
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Colombia: A Case Study in Deep Propaganda On August 19th a major 2,500-word article appeared on the front page of the New York Times that, on the surface, seemed like a piece of hard-hitting journalism. And, in a sense, it was, since it exposed a major U.S. government initiative as more or less a total failure. But if one looks a little closer, the story presents a little lesson in how Deep Propaganda works. Let's have a look. The headline read: "Colombia's Coca Survives U.S. Plan to Uproot It." Here's the lead paragraph: "The latest chapter in America's long war on drugs—a six-year, $4.7 billion effort to slash Colombia's coca crop—has left the price, quality and availability of cocaine on American streets virtually unchanged." The story here is a U.S. program, begun in 2000, called "Plan Colombia." The Plan had a specific goal of cutting the Colombian coca crop in half in five years. (Coca is where cocaine comes from.) Furthermore, the Times quoted a State Department report from "soon after Plan Colombia began" that said "The closer we can attack to the source, the greater the likelihood of halting the flow of drugs altogether. If we destroy crops or force them to remain unharvested, no drugs will enter the system." Stop laughing! They were serious! Nothing of the sort happened, of course, and the Times now reports, no doubt accurately, that "As much coca is cultivated today in Colombia as was grown at the start of the large-scale aerial fumigation effort in 2000, according to State Department figures. Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, the leading sources of coca and cocaine, produce more than enough cocaine to satisfy world demand, and possibly as much as in the mid-1990s, the United Nations says." (For more on this, see Nygaard Notes #51, "How Not to Fight Drug Addiction.") "Bush administration officials," the Times tells us, "say this latest phase, the largest foreign assistance [sic] program outside the Middle East, will take still more time, but they insist that Plan Colombia is making inroads." Nevertheless, "some politicians are questioning the drug war's results as well as its assumptions." And, despite this "questioning," the Times reports that "the war on drugs... has moved inexorably onward, propelled by decades of mostly unflagging political support on both sides of the Congressional aisle." Finding "Bipartisan" and "Liberal" Propaganda Let's look at the Propaganda here. First of all, there is Overt Propaganda on a couple of levels. One level is the Bush administration claim that Plan Colombia "is making inroads." This article is pretty good at countering that. Of course, it's fairly easy, as the facts have been clear for years. For example, here's a headline from the London Financial Times of January 2, 2002: "Concern as Plan Colombia Fails to Cut Supply of Illegal Drugs: Despite Crop-spraying with Herbicide and Crop-substitution Pacts, Coca Production Is Still Flourishing." There have been innumerable articles saying the same thing in the years since then. Good for the Times for putting in on the front page; better late than never! That's what the media should do. It's a little harder to find the Deep Propaganda (DP), but I'll point out two major examples. One may be called the "bipartisan" DP. The other I'll call the "liberal" DP. The "bipartisan" DP is that there is some sort of scourge caused by "drugs," and our nation is addressing it by pursuing (with "unflagging political support on both sides of the Congressional aisle") a War on Drugs. In fact, in the Times story the phrases "war on drugs" or "drug war" appear 17 times. Is there really a "War on Drugs?" If there is such a thing as a "War On Drugs," there is almost no evidence that it is doing anything to reduce drug use or drug addiction. And the "War On Drugs" in the Andes, including in Colombia, is a particular failure. Is it possible that the violence and crime associated with "drugs" actually has more to do with the "War on Drugs" itself than with the actual drugs? Is it possible that, as the Drug Policy Alliance says, "Many of the problems the drug war purports to resolve are in fact caused by the drug war itself"? It's extremely unlikely that the U.S. media will investigate such questions. The fact that there is no questioning of the highly-debatable idea that "fighting drugs" is a high priority of the U.S. government—in Colombia or anywhere else—is what marks it as Deep Propaganda. The general idea is unconsciously accepted, both by the reporter and by the majority of the readers. The Times' story did say that "the drug war" has a "political impact on the region," as it is "helping Colombia to sharply reduce violence by beefing up security in many towns, aiding the fight against leftist guerrillas." While there is no doubt a "political impact," the Times' claim of "sharply reduced violence" is contradicted by the Red Cross. The head of the Colombian delegation of the Red Cross said in May of this year, "The problems that have confronted Colombia in recent years generally remain unchanged." The Times points out that, while "the leftist insurgency is on its heels, today right-wing paramilitary commanders operate the drug trafficking routes instead." The idea that "the fight against leftist guerrillas" may have been, and may still be, be the intent of the program, and not simply an unintended consequence, is unthinkable. In order to imagine such a thing, one would have to question the idea that the War On Drugs is about drugs, or even that there is such a thing as a War on Drugs. By not questioning the existence or validity of these ideas the effect is to reinforce these ideas, which are questionable at best. Considering The Third Option Another layer of Deep Propaganda here is very common among liberals, or other opponents of the Bush administration. This is a tricky one, as it sounds on its face like a criticism of the administration. After all, the reporting tells us that these people continue to pursue a policy (Plan Colombia or, more broadly, the War On Drugs) that has been widely reported to be a dismal failure. But consider the effect of such "adversarial" journalism: It serves to reinforce the idea that there are two options to consider when evaluating "Plan Colombia" or the "War On Drugs." One option is that it is a long struggle that will take more time to show real success, which is the Bush administration position. The other option is to say that the policy is not working, and therefore the Bush administration's continued support for it shows incompetence, or stupidity, or insanity, or some other "failure." The idea that Deep Propaganda rules out is an idea that I reported in Nygaard Notes #297, back in May of 2005. I quoted the words of British journalist George Monbiot, writing in the London Guardian in 2001, who said that "Plan Colombia is not a war against drugs... Its ultimate purpose, as several international observers have pointed out, is to eliminate both leftwing guerrillas and grassroots democratic movements, in order to facilitate the seizure of the country's most valuable land. The US envisages a new inter-oceanic canal through the north of the country, to bypass the congested Panama canal, [and] its companies have identified billions of dollars' worth of oil and mineral deposits." So, if Monbiot is right, then suddenly there is a third option to consider when evaluating "Plan Colombia." That option is that the policy is actually succeeding. In order to consider that option, however, one has to imagine that the actual policy—not the one that administration officials tell the press about—has little or nothing to do with drug use and addiction, but is instead based on an entirely different set of goals. In order to imagine such a thing, one has to break away from the standard Deep Propaganda regarding U.S. government benevolence and humanitarian intent. That would be a big break for many people. Some ideas about how to make that break will be found in the next edition of Nygaard Notes. |
