Every so often you read a book that bowls so many strikes down the lane of conventional wisdom that you wish you could commit the whole thing to memory, ready to quote in full sentences at whim like a Shakespearean actor. 'Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media', the masterful 1988 study into the American mainstream media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, is one such book.
The main bowling pin of conventional wisdom to be knocked down is that the west (predominantly America and the UK) live with a free press that takes as its moral responsibility the crusade for truth and justice, rigorously holding the powers-that-be to account.
Shorn of any overtly ideological superfluage colouring the examination, the book relies on a skilful, meticulous dissection of the facts and evidence, peeling away the flabby layers of bias and hypocrisy in an effort at substantiating their 'propaganda model', to which they attribute the widespread media consensus formulated by powerful dogmatic elites. As they view it, propaganda is to the democratic society what the bludgeon is to the totalitarian state.
The Propaganda Model:
The 'propaganda model' is comprised of five filtration methods:
1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner worth and profit orientation of the dominant mass media firms
2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media
3) the over-reliance of the media on information provided by government, business and 'approved experts'
4) 'flak agencies' (i.e. negative responding, withdrawing of funds, legal threats) as a means of disciplining media that steps outside the permitted spectrum of debate
5) 'anti-communism' as a national religion and control mechanism.
By fixing these rigid filtrations, the criteria of potentially 'newsworthy' stories and possible range of discussion is narrowed to a defined scope as determined by the interests of the elite and the business/advertising firms that fund them.
The death of the working class press
For a start, the book examines the punitive taxes and regulations that were placed upon alternative press firms in the 19th century that were seen as inflaming public opinion. Where these measures largely failed, the early 20th century 'industrialisation of the press' (a la 'Citizen Kane') triumphed and the major family-owned institutions that were able to finance such expansions of their news empires rapidly crushed any smaller-scale rivals out of the market.
They make the salient point that the post-WW2 social democratic press in the UK (Daily Herald, News Chronicle, Sunday Citizen) commanded a comparatively robust, loyal and healthy readership and yet during the 1960s these were strangled into extinction by a lack of advertising revenue that instead favoured the pro-establishment papers, The Times, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, etc. (It is interesting to make the connection between this decline in media representation of working class interests and the fortunes of the Labour Party throughout the same period.)
'Worthy' and 'unworthy' victims
The book moves on to discuss the dichotomy present between the media's handling of 'worthy' and 'unworthy' victims; or as they explain the policy - 'concentrating on the victims of enemy powers and forgetting about the victims of friends'.
By comparing the media coverage - both qualitative and quantitative - of, for example, the murder of a Polish priest in an enemy Communist state with the numerous political/religious assassinations in El Salvador and Guatemala (two client states of the US), it becomes clear that the former is deemed 'worthy' of emotive, empathetic and highly moral coverage, whilst the latter are 'unworthy' and hence are not.
The insouciant contradictions run through the media's coverage of 1980s Latin America like a stick of Blackpool rock. Regarding the nature of the coverage given to elections, if the US has a firm stake in maintaining the status quo in a region (as it did in El Salvador and Guatemala) then it will employ the propaganda model to present the elections as a noble 'struggle for democracy' and aim to legitimise as far as possible the end result. This will be true regardless of the authoritarian terror campaign inflicted by the US-sponsored power structures on their own civilians in the form of brutal assassinations, extreme censorship and coercion.
On the other hand, if the US fails to be able to exert such a domineering influence, as in the case of Nicaragua where they were desperately trying to oppose the left wing Sandinistas who enjoyed the majority of popular support, then the model does everything it can to portray the election as farcical, of minor concern, undemocratic and the electorate as being oppressed and coerced into voting.
The Propaganda Model and the Vietnam War
Where the book is most revelatory, for this reader at least, is in the demolition of much of the propaganda surrounding the Indochina wars, making it appear in retrospect as flimsy as a cardboard box in the rain.
The conventional wisdom surrounding Vietnam holds as sacrosanct that the aggressively liberal forces of the cavalier media turned against the military mission, in so doing succeeding in turning the tide of public opinion against the war and hence influencing America's ultimate defeat. Conservative elites have long contended that the negative repercussions revealed an out-of-control adversarial media that was hell-bent on undermining democratic institutions and betraying the efforts of the American military fighting for the freedoms of the South Vietnamese against the tyranny of the Viet Cong.
In fact, as Herman and Chomsky demonstrate through a forensic examination of the media at the time, the vast extent of the coverage conformed to the propaganda model, skewed in favour of the government's agenda, distorted or otherwise ignored inconvenient truths, and maintained a constant bias against reporting the realities facing the beleaguered South Vietnamese and the refugees.
The spectrum of reporting was narrowed to exclude any contextual analysis of the build-up of the war, stemming from the US failure to adhere to the 1954 Geneva Accords, Kennedy's deployment of the first wave of troops, to the horrendous 'carpet bombing' strategy inflicted upon Laos as well as the area of South Vietnam that America was supposed to be emancipating. In these and other atrocities such as the My Lai massacre, America was, by their own definition, responsible for war crimes as part of their 'pacification process' that received scant media attention.
It was only after the 1968 Tet Offensive, when business elites and officials in Washington began to turn against the war themselves, and when the overwhelming view was one of pessimism, that the media, in lockstep with public opinion, began to respond in kind. Herman and Chomsky expertly compare the coverage to that of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan to demonstrate the undeniable 'anti-communist' bias when reporting on 'immoral' interventions perpetrated by enemy states.
The Propaganda Model and the Cambodian genocide
Where the book has generated the most vilification from those who have misread it, either wilfully or ignorantly, is on the subject of Cambodia. Opponents have claimed that the book 'denies' the extent of the Cambodian genocide throughout the 1970s and makes apologies for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The book plangently does nothing of the sort.
It investigates how the media coverage underwent a marked transition as the conflict progressed; beginning with the veil of silence that was drawn over the US' secret bombing campaign beginning in 1969. This was a process of systematic destruction that devastated the lives of countless peasant communities that relied on the land for their survival. This then transmutated into widespread coverage of the carnage facing the country, depicting the millions of Cambodians as being repressed and brutalised by an evil Communist regime that only had as its aim the achievement of a socialist idyll at whatever the human cost.
Herman and Chomsky cite examples of greatly exaggerated numbers of the dead in news reports that were relied upon without reliable evidence and often after sources had retracted the figures. All the while, the media neglected to cover simultaneous atrocities occurring in East Timor with anywhere near the same rigour, primarily because - as with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Indonesia - the brutal oppressive regimes involved in slaughtering their own people were sponsored and sustained by America.
The Propaganda Model and the Watergate scandal
By the time it gets to the concluding chapter of the book you can sense the authors limbering up for a victory lap as they comprehensively dismantle that shining beacon of a crusading and vigorously independent media: the Watergate scandal of 1973.
As egregious as the Nixon administration was in its actions; the aggrieved party were the Democrats, an equally elitist establishment that represented and were supported by large tranches of the business community. It was essentially one branch of America's power system defending itself against another.
Whereas at the same time, as the serendipity of history would have it, reports were coming to light revealing the FBI's covert operations infiltrating and disrupting fringe groups, socialist organisations, trade unions, the Black Panther and Women's Liberation movements, amongst many others in what came to be known as COINTELPRO. The fact that such nefarious acts were inflicted on less powerful (or worthy) victims is shown by the way the media almost unilaterally turned a blind eye to it in favour of Watergate.
For a masterful example of Chomsky's calm, reasoned yet irreparable shattering of illusions and conventional 'groupthink', just watch his interview with Andrew Marr (from the 9:50 mark), where he makes Marr look like little more than a petulant sixth-former floundering way out of his depth.
Marr - "how can you know that I'm self-censoring?"
Chomsky - "I'm sure you're not self-censoring, I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. What I'm saying is that if you believed anything different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting..."
The Propaganda Model today
In terms of how relevant the propaganda model is in 2014, the principles and practices exposed would seem to have scarcely deviated since 1988.
The prevailing notion of promoting an 'anti-communist' line could be said to have been replaced by the 'War on Terror' and 'Islamophobia'; although increasingly, Putin's Russia is being portrayed as the de facto international villain once again. And indeed, it is easy to see the new 'flak agencies' being online trolls who try to denigrate, harass and silence anyone who, on certain issues, dares depart from the standard plain of thought.
The recent Leveson Inquiry exposed a press that had undeniably stepped over the line of moral decency, and yet the overarching tendency to view the failing as cause to impose further subordination to suit the perceived needs of the government was, and remains, a misguided response. As the writers state, 'we do not accept the view that freedom of expression must be defended in instrumental terms, by virtue of its contribution to some higher good; rather it is a value in itself.'
Besides this, what real relevance does the propaganda model hold for the internet age, where traditional news is in slow decline and 'citizen journalism' across a limitless horizon of outlets can thrive seemingly released from the exigencies of powerful media moguls? The days of Lord Copper in Evelyn Waugh's 'Scoop' could surely be said to be increasingly numbered?
The potential for an expansive spectrum of news to thrive and for the public to be enlightened and informed as a result is clearly tangible. And yet, the sheer scale of disparate and conflicting information could prove to be abrasive to the sensibilities of the individual who may choose to limit him/herself to a proven and credible source in which they believe they can place trust. In which case the song remains much the same, except for the cacophony of background noise vying for attention.
The desire for an arbiter of sound information will necessarily prevail. Chomsky himself has addressed the implications of the internet on the propaganda model, affirming his belief that access to information is not enough if the framework of understanding is lacking in scope or veracity.
Overall, 'Manufacturing Consent' is a superb exposé of the self-serving, hypocritical and fallible news media and one that will forever shape your approach and response to it. As John Milton says, quoted as the book's epigraph, 'those who have put out the people's eyes, reproach them of their blindness.'
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