This Week: An Investment Theory of Propaganda

"Quote" of the Week

An Investment Theory of Ideology in the Media

Media and Propaganda, How it Happens, Part 4: A Non-Conspiracy Theory

Greetings,

Well, I'm done predicting when the "final" installment of the "Media and Propaganda, How it Happens" series will occur. I thought it was going to be last week, then this week. Now I think it will be next week. Actually, since the next (final?) part is so closely related to this part, I may send it out sooner than next week. I hope that doesn't overwhelm people.

One reader wrote to me after the last issue and asked if I had thought about writing a book on this subject. Of course I've thought of it (partly because people keep telling me to do it!) but, alas, I haven't been able to find the time to do it.

So, in the meantime, readers of Nygaard Notes will be treated to these "mini-books," which come out in the form of a series of related articles. Email readers may not realize that the length of an issue of Nygaard Notes is limited by the format of the paper version, which only has room for about 2,000 words. So that's why each issue is only so long, and not longer, even when the subject calls for more length.

I know these series-things tend to stretch the attention span, but that's exactly the point of publishing my own newsletter. In order to present dissenting ideas (and this series is one long dissent from the standard view on media and propaganda) one has to separate from the "business as usual," sound-bite world of the corporate media. In fact, I talk about how "sound bites" perpetuate Propaganda in this week's installment. As if I could even get a job in the corporate media if I wanted to...

So, all of that is to say: This is ALMOST the final installment in this series.

Non-conspiratorially yours,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

Reporting on the recent United Nations General Assembly session in New York, the September 24th Washington Post remarked that "this year's gathering of world leaders demonstrated an unusually strident disrespect for the United States." The word "strident," according to the American Heritage Dictionary, means "Loud, harsh, grating, or shrill; discordant."

The Post remarked that "resentment of American power" has been made stronger by a number of factors. They seemed surprised that this includes "even the administration's campaign for greater democracy throughout the Middle East."

It's difficult to pick out a single "Quote" of the Week from such a bizarre article, but I think I'll settle for the headline on the piece:

"Anger at U.S. Policies More Strident at U.N.; Speeches Show Resentment of Idea of Forced Democracy."

Note those final two words; an oxymoron if I ever saw one. The acceptance of such a self-contradicting phrase illustrates wonderfully the power of Deep Propaganda as it pokes its way through the colonial mindset that animates this piece of "journalism." Remember, this was not an "opinion" piece.

An Investment Theory of Ideology in the Media

Back in January of the year 2000, in these very pages, I wrote an article called "So... How About That Campaign?" In that article I described what I call the Investment Theory of Money in Politics. It's not an original idea; it's based on the ideas of Thomas Ferguson. (I recommend his 1995 book "Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems.") I'll summarize the theory briefly here.

Just a couple of weeks ago the Miami Herald fired three journalists when they found out that they were secretly being paid by the U.S. government to produce anti-Castro propaganda. Journalism ethics people call this "a fundamental conflict of interest" and the publisher of the Herald called such behavior a "violation of a sacred trust between journalists and the public." Many people would call this simple corruption, and would say that this is a great example of how it works: Journalists get "bought off" by accepting money to write certain things. While I agree that money has seriously corrupted our corporate media, I don't think this is how it usually works. I think it usually works more like the stock market works.

Years ago I was listening to Minnesota Public Radio, and they had on the leader of a Political Action Committee who was responding to an accusation that money from groups like his has... well... corrupted our political system. Here's what he said in his defense: "We don't ever try to buy politicians in Minnesota because, frankly, I don't think they are ‘buyable.' What we do is, we study their records and their statements. If we like what they are doing, we say to them, ‘Hey, we know campaigns are expensive, and we want to help you get your ideas out to the public.' That's how we make our decisions on whose campaign to contribute to."

He was explaining—in unusually frank terms—how people with money "invest" in politicians who they believe are likely to do what they want. I do the same thing, actually. But the difference is that I donate, maybe, $25, while the monied classes donate thousands, or millions.

In a money-driven system like ours, the politicians who get those thousands and millions are then the politicians who will succeed. Anyone who follows politics has seen candidates drop out of a campaign before any vote is cast because a lack of money has made their campaign "non-viable." But it's not that the remaining candidates have been "bought off." It's simply that the monied classes "like what they are doing." So they invest in them.

That's how politicians are "selected" in the political arena. And you can see the problem that comes from relying on financial "investment" to elevate or dismiss certain politicians (or ideas): In an unequal society like ours, where some people have massive amounts of wealth to "invest" and others have little or none, the "have-mores" not only have more money, but have more power than the "have-nothings," which is not how democracy is supposed to work. This, by the way, is the root of the problem in the larger scheme of things in what we call a "market-oriented" economy: Power in the "market" is related to money, and not everyone has money. So not everyone has power.

As With Politicians, So With Ideas

Now consider that, in our market-driven media system, it is a similar kind of "investment" that elevates certain sets of ideas, or ways of thinking, to prominence and relegates other ones to the margins. Remember that a "set of ideas" or a "way of thinking" is what is known as "ideology."

Have you ever noticed that a lot of newspapers have "Motoring" sections, and "Style" sections, and "Travel" sections? And they all have "Business" sections! Have you noticed, also, that it's a rare daily newspaper indeed that has an "Environment" section, or a "Labor" section, or a "Community Organizing" section? That's no accident. A few years back I was at a meeting with the editor of our local daily newspaper, and I heard him say, "We wouldn't have a ‘Motoring' section if we didn't have lots of advertisers who want to advertise in it." What he didn't say was that "We don't have an ‘Environment" section, or a "Labor" section, or a "Community Organizing" section, because advertisers don't want to advertise in it." But he could have said that, because it's true.

The lack of in-depth reporting on the environment, or labor, or grassroots activism is not the result of a conspiracy. It's just a bunch of corporations, all seeking an audience for their advertisements, and calculating what types of newspapers are likely to behave in such a way as to attract the "right" kind of readers to those advertisements. Over time, they will tend to place their ads in "Business" sections, or in "Motoring" sections, which tend to attract people with money, or people who are "in the market" to buy something. If there were an "Environment" section—especially a "political" one, one that allowed a diverse collection of voices to call into question our national patterns of waste and overconsumption—who do you imagine would advertise in it? By the same token, which corporations do you imagine would advertise in a "Labor" section, where the power of corporations themselves would be likely to be challenged on a daily basis? And ad for an SUV next to a hard-hitting article about global warming? I don't think so.

This pattern of elevating certain sets of ideas, or ideologies, to prominence, even as benign neglect relegates other sets of ideas to the margins, cannot be explained by looking at the conscious intentions of any single individual, or even any group, who might "conspire" to do so. It's really just how "the system" works. And "the system" is based on money, which is allocated, over time, according to the needs of those individuals and corporations that have it.

And that, in very brief summary, is the Investment Theory of Ideology in the Media.

Media and Propaganda, How it Happens, Part 4: A Non-Conspiracy Theory

So far in this series I have talked about the nature of the media system, the job of the journalist, and the nature of Propaganda (especially "Deep Propaganda"). Last week, in what probably should have been Part 4 but I guess was Part Three-and-a-Half, I gave a couple of examples from current news reports to illustrate how Deep Propaganda "hides" in otherwise objective-sounding news reports. In this issue and the next, I will conclude the series by explaining how all these things come together to produce CERTAIN TYPES of propaganda that are predictable and understandable. I hope to show how this happens without journalists ever intending to do anything of the sort.

The Values of the Market

Remember that news in this country is delivered to us through a "market." And, like any market, the "news market" is made up of buyers and sellers. Remember that the "sellers" in the news market are news corporations, and that the buyers are other corporations, known as advertisers. And remember that the "product" for sale is potential consumers that the advertisers want. That is, you and me.

Now, wouldn't it be a miracle if a "market" didn't reflect the values of the buyers and the sellers? Since the buyers and sellers are large corporations (REALLY LARGE corporations), one would expect the ideas and values that normally get expressed in the "news" (which is used to attract viewers) would be in rough agreement with the ideas and values held by the buyers and the sellers. I think, generally speaking, that is what we see.

Here's an example: The language used by the media generally reflects the views of the corporate classes. For example, most of us have been trained (not only by media, to be sure) to refer to the parts of business that deal with workers as the "Human Resources" department. That's a business term, and it is routinely reinforced in the media. The same department, in a worker-oriented world, might be called the "Labor" or the "Workers'" department. It's subtle, but these sorts of choices of language reveal a point of view taken by some people, and not others. And it's always the SAME "some people." Media don't conspire to make this happen, they simply report "the way it is," and by doing so normalize certain values.

Another example: It is extremely common—in fact, it's almost always the case—that an increase in wages for U.S. workers is reported in the corporate media as presenting a threat of inflation. The assumption, or Deep Propaganda, here is that inflation is a more important problem than low wages. Certainly the people paying the wages would agree with this. And, of course, the people paying the wages are, for the most part, the people who have enough money to make more money by loaning out that money. And for the "loaning class," inflation is THE worst problem, because the higher the inflation rate, the less the money that they loaned out will be worth when it is paid back.

But how about the people earning the wages? For us, a higher wage is probably more important than a certain amount of inflation, unless it's really high. That's especially true because, in addition to earning the wages, we are usually the ones borrowing the money. For borrowers, inflation is a GOOD thing, for the same reason that it is a BAD thing for those loaning it to us. It is no accident that the general perspective reflected in reporting on such issues is the perspective of the employing, wage-paying, money-loaning classes who own the media institutions.

The "Sound Bite" as News Selector

Now remember the concept of Deep Propaganda. That concept says that there are some general ideas, usually unconscious, that form the basis for the news stories we see and hear. I argue that these ideas tend to reflect a set of Attitudes, Beliefs, and Conceptions about the world in which we live, which I call the ABCs of Propaganda. I call them that because Overt Propaganda—that is, the specific facts and ideas that we are told to believe—is much more difficult to carry out without a widely-shared set of deeply-held, unconscious ideas that make the Overt Propaganda believable.

In a cultural context where most people share similar ABCs (such as an acceptance of the idea of workers as "Human Resources," for instance), anyone stating "facts" that are supported by those ABCs will find it easy to speak in sound bites and easily-understood shorthand. That's because the dominant ABCs will make those facts seem "sensible." The result is that reporters come to see "sound-bite friendly" sources as "good" sources, as they tend not to stretch out an interview too much, or otherwise say things that don't "fit" easily into a news story.

On the other hand, anyone who has a different point of view will, typically, be asked to justify that point of view, not only for the mass audience that the news outlet is obliged to attract, but also for the interviewer or reporter for whom the dissident ideas will not seem "sensible." While most activists, and some elected officials, would be glad to offer such justification for their dissenting views—and unknown numbers of viewers and readers would be interested in hearing them—it is becoming increasingly difficult to give them the opportunity to do so. Why? I'll explain in the next Nygaard Notes. (Coming your way soon!)