| Number 450 | March 13, 2010 |
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This Week: Cargill, Palm Oil, and Propaganda
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Greetings, It's a really long issue this week, roughly twice as long as a typical Nygaard Notes. There are a couple of case studies, which tend to take up quite a bit of space, and some resources for education and action. In one piece this week I focus again on the National Public Radio story about the Army Experience Center opening that I talked about in the last issue of the Notes. If I seem obsessed with this story, my apologies, but it seemed like such a perfect example of one of the more subtle ways that Propaganda operates that I wanted to dwell on it for a while. See what you think. The other case study is about the Cargill Corporation, a secretive corporate behemoth that resideth in my very own backyard. (Suburban Minneapolis, that is.) It's an ongoing source of outrage to me that our local media doesn't spend more resources to explain and expose what such giants are up to. This week, using as a take-off point one particular story about Cargill in the local newspaper, I suggest some reasons why they don't expose more, and then I go ahead and expose a few things that I was able to discover. Next week I hope to get back to some shorter, less research-intensive pieces, just for a change of pace. I might even do a book review! That would be a first for Nygaard Notes. We'll see. In solidarity, Nygaard |
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Last week, in my piece about the Army Experience Center (AEC) in Philadelphia I talked about how it was covered by National Public Radio, and suggested that the NPR story ended up functioning as Propaganda. This week I'll elaborate on why that is so and draw a lesson or two that applies more broadly. As I pointed out, the NPR story was prepared by having the reporter travel to the AEC and speak directly to the person in charge. A reporter can't get any closer than that (!), so if one believes that the best way to understand something is to get as close as possible, then this might seem like a good approach. A lot of people apparently believe that being closer to a story is the best way to understand it. I don't think that's so, and here are a few reasons why. History: Seeing the Battlefield in Our Minds Since September 11th 2001 the leaders of the United States would have us believe that we are a nation at war, and that this war will continue for an indefinite time, similar to the so-called Cold War that officially lasted for forty years. Remember, too, that since 1973 the U.S. military has been an all-volunteer force. The combination of the need for volunteers to fight these endless wars and the need for taxpayers willing to support the diversion of their taxes to pay for these wars means that pro-war and pro-military Propaganda has become an ever-larger part of our militarized culture. As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said just this past week, "the battlefield isn't necessarily a field anymore. It's in the minds of the people." This is the nation's top-ranking military officer speaking and, although he was talking about the people of Afghanistan, a look at the history of the military's media activities shows that another aspect of this Propaganda has long been an ongoing effort to create a positive perception of military service "in the minds of the people" of the United States. In order to interpret current efforts at perception-shaping on the part of the military we need to step back in order to focus on history. Sticking with a closeup view of the individual manifestations of these Propaganda efforts—such as the AEC—does not allow for us to step back and see the forest that a historical view offers; we can only see today's trees. Context: "The Education of Foreign and American Audiences." A reporter who is allowed sufficient time and resources to do their job well might, when confronted with something like the Army Experience Center, take a moment to look into the context in which such a center exists. In the case of Nygaard Notes, I went into the story with a little knowledge of the history mentioned above, so I could immediately see that the AEC fit into the Propaganda picture better than it fit into the arcade picture. And when I learned that the Army's partner in designing the Center was an advertising agency, then I began to suspect that it was more than simply a "recruiting center," as well. Had I been the reporter for NPR—or any other large media organization—I might have done what I routinely do in the pages of Nygaard Notes, which is to give a hint of the context that is needed in order to help readers decide what it is that we're looking at. So, in the case of the U.S. military, I might provide some context by pointing out that: * Over the past five years, the money the military spends to win what it calls "the human terrain" of world public opinion has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion last year. "The military argues [that this money] is well-spent on recruitment and the education of foreign and American audiences," the Associated Press reported on Feb 5 2009. For comparison, consider that the newsroom budget for the nation's most influential newspaper, the New York Times, is roughly $200 million, or about 1/24th the size of the Pentagon's budget for "education." * Last year the Pentagon employed "27,000 people just for recruitment, advertising and public relations—almost as many as the total 30,000-person work force in the State Department." (AP, Feb 5 2009) Some of these people have attended something called the "Defense Information School"—Motto: "Strength through truth." Some of them end up working at a place called the "Pentagon Channel" which "is distributed 24/7 and is available to all stateside cable and satellite providers." In the context of such an enormous public relations infrastructure, I come up with a different set of questions about the real nature of the AEC—what the Pentagon calls an "educational facility"—than did NPR. Questions like: What is the larger story of which the AEC is just one part? What is the story of the types of "education" provided to the world at large by the U.S. military? Focus: What They Do, Not What They Say Perhaps the most important reason for distance in the reporting on an institution has to do with an understanding of the nature of institutions themselves. When taking a closeup look at the individual members of institutions like the military, journalists rely on what those individuals say about their motivations, hopes, and thinking about their work. While such comments are important to hear, one should expect a generally-positive tone to emerge from these comments. Besides the human tendency to construct a positive story to explain our behavior, recall that these people are embedded in powerful institutions. And institutions tend to attract and retain people who believe in the virtue and value of the institution, after all. Put another way, people within institutions who do not support the values and goals of the institution will tend to leave, either by choice or by expulsion. That's understandable and I don't really have any problem with it. But, as a journalist, it should lead me to talk to people outside of an institution if I want to understand it. Again, this is the opposite of going for a closer view. Even if the subjects of the "inside" interviews are brutally honest, a focus on the individuals within institutions will usually tell us little about the institutions themselves. The nature of an institution is that it is larger and more powerful than any individual within it. Anyone who has talked to a good-hearted customer service representative at a large corporation knows this. For this reason, institutions can only be understood by observing their actions and the effects of those actions. Those effects are among the things that disappear the closer we get to the institution, and that tend to disappear entirely when we are inside of them. The people who give the orders rarely do the dirty work. The larger and more powerful the institution, the more true this is. History. Context. Focus. These are three reasons why getting closer to a story is not always the best way to understand the story. But there's an even more dangerous problem with "close-up journalism." I talk about that in the following article. |
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There is a rather subtle and difficult-to-spot danger in the "close-up" style of reporting that I have chosen to highlight by focusing in-depth on the recent National Public Radio story about the Army Experience Center in Philadelphia. The idea that the best way to understand something is by getting ever closer to it seems almost like "common sense" to many, including many in the world of journalism. The dangerous aspect of such reporting is that it relies on a certain way of thinking that, given the power of the media in U.S. society, has the effect of reinforcing certain ideas and excluding others. That is, it has the effect of Propaganda. Let's look at how this works. In order to understand the world, it is useful to be comfortable thinking in both a "top-down" manner and in a "bottom-up" manner. In "bottom-up," or inductive, thinking we observe things as they are and then try to work our way "up" to a generalization or a theory that explains what we are observing. We do it all the time, and the more experienced we are in the world the more theories we know about that can be used to explain the things we see. Experience is very useful, because the likelihood of finding the right theory to explain things increases the more theories we know about. Plus, we might know more and different things that we can combine with what we're currently seeing, making it easier for us to come up with new theories on our own. Thinking from the top down is useful in a different way. This is called "deductive" thinking, and it is where we take the theories that we already know about and use them to explain, or categorize, the things we are observing. So, inductive thinking goes from the particular to the general. Deductive thinking goes from the general to the particular. In Nygaard Notes I always try to flip back and forth between the two (did you notice?), but that's not the case in most media, which is unfortunate. To see why it's unfortunate, let's return to NPR's story on the AEC. NPR's choices to A) report the story from inside the AEC, and B) to speak only with the director of the Center (not counting a couple of kids playing the arcade games), leads me to believe that they started out thinking about this story using an inductive approach. That is, they observed something called the AEC and then attempted to categorize it in some way. They came up with two options: It is either an "arcade" or a "recruitment center." As the NPR reporter put it at the top of the story, "some have criticized [the AEC] for bait-and-switch tactics, masquerading as an arcade when it's really an Army recruiting station." There are other possibilities, as I'm in the process of pointing out, but the reporter only offered these two. This narrow, close-up focus may explain why NPR never used the word "propaganda," nor the word "advertising," in their story, despite the fact that the Center was designed by an advertising agency working with the Army. And here is where NPR, likely unconsciously, plays a Propaganda role. By reporting on the specifics—what types of games are at the Center, what some of the teenagers said when they played them, what the manager of the AEC said—NPR encouraged its listeners to employ a "bottom-up" way of thinking in order to make sense of the story. That is, listeners became aware of A, B, and C (about this particular Center), and if they wanted to know what type of thing it is that looks and sounds like that, they would have to find a category in which to place it. NPR supplied listeners with the two categories above. Listeners aren't forced to accept either of those two choices, of course. As you know if you read the last issue of Nygaard Notes, I came up with a third category: Propaganda Center. And I don't "criticize" it for being that, since the designers more or less say that's what it is. But I do think it's important to see it for what it is, which is why I criticize NPR for leading its listeners astray. The two choices they offer are inadequate for understanding the AEC. If it were simply an "arcade," which is about entertainment, then the logical question would be: Why is the Army running an entertainment center? The answer is: They're not. How about the other choice we are offered: Is the AEC "really an Army recruiting station" that is "masquerading as an arcade"? Well, first of all, if the issue is a possible "masquerade," then it makes almost no sense to have the chief masquerader as the sole source for the story. The director of the Center, when asked by NPR, "Do you consider this a recruiting center?" responded, "It's really much more than that." Yet NPR never bothered to explain what that "more" might be. That's why the Nygaard Notes discussion of the AEC last week included comments from the executive of the advertising agency that helped design the AEC: "There is no recruiting mission here," he told Army Times. "Here it is more about changing perceptions." Which led me to quote an independent, non-military source who told Advertising Age that "the Army's new programs ... are still, at the core, branding exercises." NPR never got far enough away from the Center itself to talk to this executive, let alone anyone else who is completely independent of the Center's design or operations. So they never asked what "perceptions" it is that the Army wishes to change. They never inquired as to the effect on society of a military whose "brand identity" is shaped by public-relations professionals working for that military. These questions only come up if we categorize the AEC as something other than simply an "arcade" or even a recruitment center in disguise. Marketing? Or Public Relations? Keep in mind the crucial difference between advertising, or marketing, on the one hand, and public relations, on the other. Marketing is aimed at getting people to choose one product over another. Public relations is aimed at getting people to feel a certain way. A recruitment center is where people are encouraged to sign up for military duty instead of some other occupation. That's marketing. A Propaganda Center works on people's minds so that they want to sign up for military duty. That's public relations. Beyond simply getting people to want to sign up, a really effective Propaganda Center will go further and work at a deeper level, attempting to normalize our society's reliance on the military for conflict resolution. And, furthermore, such a Center will aim to get people to perceive the military as something they feel good about—as a force for "defense"—rather than as something that most people do not feel good about, such as a hugely-expensive force for the violent maintenance of Empire. Since the fraudulent invasion and occupation of Iraq was revealed, and as the futility of the occupation of Afghanistan becomes ever-more apparent to more people, and with the endless threats by the United States aimed at numerous other nations that seem to pose no credible threat to this country, the perception is growing in the U.S. that our military is less concerned with "defense" than with something else. And that's why, as the designer of the Army Experience Center put it, "Here it is more about changing perceptions." Changing them, that is, away from the accurate perception of an Empire at work and toward a perception of a heroic defender of our homeland. Here, then, is a summary of how propaganda is produced when news organizations choose to get "up close" to a story and report it "from the inside": 1. The media organization highlights some particular facts about the world in which we live. "Look at this thing called the AEC." 2. Listeners take in those facts and automatically try to arrange them in some way that makes sense. "What is this thing called the AEC?" 3. The reporter, knowing that readers have limited time to formulate theories to explain what they're being told, attempts to help readers to generalize about the facts of the story. "The AEC is an example of XYZ, or maybe ABC." The problem is, they really help us to generalize about it, and they do it by steering readers toward the most familiar, least "controversial" generalizations, thereby rendering invisible other, often more-plausible, interpretations. This process is all, or mostly, unconscious, reflecting as it does widely-held "common sense" assumptions. 4. A few listeners choose "None of the above," and categorize the facts in a different way, as we are all free to do. "Wait a minute, that looks like 123 to me, not ABC!" But the majority choose from the list offered by the news organization. 5. The true nature of the world is thus obscured, and perceptions are formed based on the point of view of the people closest to the action, who are either consciously functioning as propagandists or else are too close to the story to see beyond the narrowest and least-illuminating focus. Or both. The same analysis that is useful in understanding the institution of the military can, and should, be used in understanding the media. That is, to the extent that the media perform a Propaganda function, it is not the result of evil intent or conscious effort on the part of "bad" reporters. It's a function of the types of institutions that make up our media system. |
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"Cargill Peeling off a Chunk of its Palm Oil Business." That was the headline on the front page of the Business Section in my local newspaper, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, on February 27th. I want to use this story as a case study of how the corporate media typically covers—and fails to cover—the activities of such giants in our backyards. In this case, my backyard here in Minnesota. In summary, the Star Tribune story told of how "Cargill announced this week that it was selling its operations in Papua New Guinea (PNG)" in "a move to streamline its operations." A Cargill statement was quoted as saying "We believe there is more value for our shareholders and customers in focusing on Indonesia." (He didn't mention any "value" for the farmers who grow the palms, you'll notice. We'll come back to that.) Palm oil is now the most widely-used vegetable oil in the world. You likely eat it every day, whether you're aware of it or not. And Cargill is the largest privately-owned company in the world, with headquarters in Minneapolis. So it makes sense that the Star Tribune, the regional newspaper of record, would cover this news that might at first glance seem to be rather remote for the average Minnesota reader. The last time the Star Tribune—or, as locals like to call it, the Strib—devoted significant ink to Cargill was in November of 2008, when rising global food prices pushed 100 million people into hunger (bringing the global total of hungry people to roughly one billion) and sparked food riots around the world. In a series at the time called "Our Hungry Planet" the Strib noted that Cargill executives "celebrated their most profitable quarter in history. The reason: High food prices." A few months earlier, in April of 2008, the Strib had reported that Cargill "turned in yet another set of dazzling results" with the "surge of profitmaking [coming] as global food shortages and an expanding biofuels industry has put a premium on agricultural commodities and technology—the mainstays of Cargill's business." This latter article, on the world's largest private corporation, headquartered in Minnesota and directly profiting from hunger, was judged by the Strib to belong in the Business section of the paper. There is, after all, no "human rights" section in the newspaper. "Details Remain Largely Hidden From the Public" As large as it is, Cargill's operations remain rather mysterious. As the Strib reported in its 2008 series, "as a private company, details about its finances, organization and operations remain largely hidden from the public." Cargill won't even identify which family members sit on its board of directors, "citing their privacy. None of the more than 30 family members contacted for this story agreed to be interviewed," reported the Strib. We do know that three members of the Macmillan family, related to the founders of Cargill, are listed in Forbes Magazine's list of the 400 Richest Americans, and rank Number 6, Number 7, and Number 8 among the richest Minnesotans. The fruits of a number of years of "dazzling results," presumably. One might think that it is the job of the Minnesota media to investigate the operations of a huge private company that wants to keep its operations secret from the public, and one that is headquartered right here in the state, to boot. Ought not the local media report to the people of Minnesota on what type of global citizens we have here in our backyard? And how about the sources of the wealth of the state's wealthiest? In this era of budget shortfalls and pledges of "no new taxes," might it not be useful to inform the public of the sources of the wealth of some of these people whose taxes we are constantly told are too high? Despite the lack of official reporting on this private corporation, it's not really all that difficult to find out about Cargill's operations. Elsewhere in this issue of the Notes I give a few sources for such information. Right now let's look a little closer at a few serious issues concerning Cargill and palm oil that have been neglected by the hometown media. Indigenous Rights According to the Star Tribune, one reason for Cargill leaving Papua New Guinea, or PNG, is that "The nation uses a complicated system of land ownership tied to family and tribal connections that makes it difficult for large corporations to buy up large tracts [of land]." Here's that same point as told from the perspective of the people of PNG rather than from the corporate perspective: "PNG's constitution upholds the right of all Papuans to their customary land" which, "According to Tim Anderson, a researcher at the University of Sydney, ...has given PNG one of the world's most equitable distributions of land and natural resources, with 97 percent of land being owned by extended family networks." Those words are from a very recent report by the Rainforest Action Network, the best source of information on Cargill that I have been able to find. RAN also noted that Cargill's Higaturu Oil Palm plantation in PNG "is a holdover from a colonial era, actively converting Papuan farmers into indebted laborers." The report says that "hundreds of small shareholders from Oro claim that they are the victims of …structural injustices by transnational corporations such as Cargill" which are "…entrapping them in vicious cycles of debts to the milling companies." A "particularly troubling" development is that "some of these loans have been passed down from the older generation to the next, locking young Papuans into working for the palm oil companies as indebted laborers." In 2008 the Multinational Monitor reported on "a provision in the U.S. Farm Bill that would have made it more difficult to conceal labor abuses in far-flung supply chains. The provision called for establishing a voluntary certification program that would have given companies in the agricultural sector a mechanism to prove that the worst types of child and forced labor were not used in their products." Cargill opposed this measure, a stance that was never reported in the Star Tribune. In fact, over the past five years the phrase "child labor" never appears in the Star Tribune near the word Cargill. But then, there is no Labor section in the newspaper. The Environment I noted earlier Cargill's claim that "there is more value for our shareholders and customers in focusing on Indonesia." Again we turn to the Rainforest Action Network, this time an October 2009 report called "Cargill's Legacy of Destruction: A Case Study of a Cargill-Owned Plantation in Indonesia." Here we learn about Cargill's Harapan Sawit Lestari oil palm plantation, the history of which "is representative of thousands of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, where rainforests of extraordinary biodiversity have been destroyed to make way for oil palm, while local people have been forced to give up their community forests and agricultural lands." Not Just a Corporate View, A Particular Corporate View The full headline for the article in the Star Tribune was "Cargill Peeling off a Chunk of its Palm Oil Business; The agricultural giant sold its plantations and mills in Papua New Guinea for $175 million." As evidence that the Strib chose to tell the story not only from a corporate perspective, but from a specifically Cargill perspective, I point out the fact that the article never even bothered to mention the identity of the purchaser of the "chunk of business." From the point of view of Cargill, the purchaser is unimportant. The important things are the sale itself, the shedding of some of its operations, and the amount of money changing hands. All of which were reported by the Star Tribune in their Business section. To whom is the identity of the buyer important? Certainly to the people of Papua New Guinea, to the farmers who produce the palm oil that Minnesotans consume daily. And it's also of importance to people who breathe, to people who use medicines, to people who eat, and to people who depend on a stable climate for human survival. All of these issues are impacted by the behavior of the corporations that buy and sell palm oil, since rainforests are often destroyed in the development of palm plantations in the tropical regions where palm trees grow. But I guess it goes without saying that there is no Environment section in the newspaper. There you have it. The buying and selling of parts of their operations by Cargill and other multinationals have broad implications in the realms of human rights, labor rights, and the environment. But our newspapers have no special sections for those things, so developments in these areas usually remain invisible to people in the wealthy world. When we do get news about the activities of the corporate entities that increasingly shape our world, we find it in the Business sections of the newspapers, where the important thing is "value for our shareholders and customers." And, it goes without saying, our owners. |
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Since there is so little reporting in the corporate media on the activities of the world's largest private corporation, I thought I would offer a few sources of information on Cargill activities, and about the palm oil that is the subject of this issue of the Notes. After the information resources I offer some action resources. Learn More In September 2009 the independent non-profit group Food and Water Watch put out a 3-page "Cargill Fact Sheet" that sums up the Cargill operation succinctly. Read it here. Elsewhere in this issue I cite an October 2009 report by the Rainforest
Action Network called Another RAN three-pager that I cite is "Commodity Colonialism.
A Case Study of Cargill's Palm Oil Operations In Papua New Guinea."
This three-pager is from September of 2009, before Cargill sold off
its operations. Find it here.
The Environmental Group Friends of the Earth released a 28-page report
in 2004 called "Greasy
Palms – Palm Oil, the Environment and Big Business." The
report spells out how "Development agencies, international financial
institutions and governments, at the behest of big business, have promoted
commodity trades like that in palm oil as a model for development."
The Center for Science in the Public Interest put out an even lengthier report in 2005 called "Cruel Oil: How Palm Oil Harms Health, Rainforest, and Wildlife." Nine of the report's 48 pages are devoted to footnotes, a look at which will give you a hint of what the media could be telling us about, were they so inclined. For an overview on the relationship between giant food companies, food markets, and hunger, see a short article from "Food First! The Institute for Food and Development Policy." Published during the height of the 2008 global food crisis, it was called "Food Crisis in the Age of Unregulated Global Markets," and can be found here. Finally, you might want to hear Cargill's side of the various stories discussed in this issue of the Notes. Just go to their website. Take Action This issue of the Notes draws heavily on research done by the Rainforest Action Network. But they do more than research. Their action campaigns, they say, work to "turn the public stigma of environmental destruction into a business nightmare for any American company that refuses to adopt responsible environmental policies." Coming up soon (April 4-11) is their "National Palm Oil Week of Action" which happens to be targeting another huge Minnesota-based food multinational, General Mills. (Palm oil is found in Cheerios, Trix, Lucky Charms, Wheaties and 100 other General Mills products.) To support the Week of Action, go to the website. I've often referenced the Institute for Food and Development Policy—Food First!—whose mission is "to eliminate the injustices that cause hunger." Their article above on the food crisis is only one example of their outstanding analysis and research. They are worthy of any support you can give them. For those concerned specifically about the environmental effects of the palm oil industry, a note of caution. Evidence is mounting that some of the largest and best-known environmental groups in the U.S. have been largely co-opted, if not corrupted, by corporate money. I won't name them, but see Johann Hari's article "The Wrong Kind of Green" in The Nation Magazine of March 4th for the details. Hari singles out some groups that "do not accept corporate donations" and thus seem to remain independent and worthy of support. He mentions Greenpeace and 350.org and Friends of the Earth. Join up. Send money. Tell your friends. Do something. |
