Political cartoons and caricatures also are common embellishments, time-honored forms of editorial comment and readily recognized as such. Less easily detected are the news photographs that often send us a cue about what to think of a story before we get a chance to read it. Acts of violence during labor disputes or antiwar protests are more likely to appear as news photos than less damning shots showing large disciplined crowds making their point. Individual demonstrators who convey a kooky appearance will more likely catch the camera’s eye than those of conventional deportment, the purpose being not to highlight the unusual but to delegitimate the protestors.46
Throughout 1989 and 1990, whenever demonstrations against communist governments in Eastern Europe were photographed, it was always with long-range shots from an elevated position, giving sympathetic visual emphasis to the size of the crowd. Demonstrations against US government policy in the United States, however, are more likely to be tight cuts of relatively few of the protestors, thereby giving no indication of the immensity of the crowd.
Photographs of political leaders can be very political. The president of the United States enjoys almost daily favorable pictorial treatment in the major print and electronic media and is only rarely pictured unsympathetically. However, favorable photoplay is less likely to be accorded heads of state who have been defined as adversaries.
A New York Times Magazine article about communist Russia by David Shipler, entitled “Russia, A People Without Heroes,” was accompanied by no less than ten photographs, all of which were unusually muted, grainy, and grey, with thick ragged black borders and captions like “Russians have become so amorphous, so dispersed, because there are no roots, foundations . . (accompanying a picture of Russians going down an escalator). The photographs accompanying this article conveyed an impression of glumness, oppression, and joylessness, and were clearly meant to do so.47
A “60 Minutes” report on US intelligence work during World War II turned into a cold war message and a plug for government secrecy. As Harry Reasoner announced, “Today as we rush to disclose everything ... we must remember that some secrets are worth keeping secret. ...” The screen showed Nazi troops marching past Hitler, then a quick cut to Soviet troops marching in Red Square. Thus the camera invited us to equate the Soviet Union with Hitlerian world conquest. Whether one agreed with the equation or not, the point is, it was made quite evocatively through a visual effect that evaded rather than encouraged the viewer’s critical judgment.
Another blatant example of cold war photo manipulation was provided by NBC’s Tom Brokaw, who talked of how the Soviet people had suffered from the crimes of Stalin. As Brokaw spoke, old and familiar newsreel cuts from World War II were shown of a Soviet peasant woman weeping over her son’s body (he had been killed by the German invaders), and another shot of five Soviet partisans hanged by the Nazis.48 These were passed off as visuals of Stalin's crimes. It is said that cameras don’t he. But we must remember that liars use cameras.
As anyone who has sat through a Hollywood romance or adventure film might know, music is another evocative media embellishment that can play on our feelings. During the cold war, television news reports on the Soviet Union were often accompanied with tunes that were either mournful or menacing. In the spring of 1984, National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” did a report on the kinds of music it used as background to its news. An especially dirge-like theme was identified by Noah Adams as used for “sad stories, especially from Eastern Europe.” That Adams saw nothing politically manipulative about using music in this way testifies to the unexamined nature of the political orthodoxy so fostered. Such use of thematic background music is designed to “set the mood,” eliciting receptive feelings and deterring resistant thoughts.
Newscasters use themselves as auxiliary embellishments. They cultivate a smooth delivery, have trained voices and restrained demeanors, and try to convey an impression of objective detachment that places them above the rough and tumble of their subject matter. Newscasters and, in a different way, newspaper editorialists and columnists affect a knowing, authoritative style and tone designed to foster credibility and an aura of certitude. One recalls A. J. Liebling’s caustic observation, “The reluctance to admit ignorance ... is with most of the press as strong as the refusal to accept reality.” So what we sometimes end up with is authoritative ignorance as emphatically expressed in remarks like, “How will this situation end? No one can say for sure.” Or, “Only time will tell.” Or, “That remains to be seen.” (Better translated as, “I don’t know and if I don’t, then no one else does.”) Sometimes the aura of credibility is preserved by palming off trite truisms as penetrating truths. So newspeople learn to fashion sentences like “Unless the strike is settled soon, the two sides will be in for a long and bitter struggle.” And “The space launching will take place as scheduled if no unexpected problems arise.” And “Because of heightened voter interest, election day turnout is expected to be heavy.” And “Unless Congress acts soon, this bill is not likely to go anywhere.”
PLACEMENT
Probably the most common method of framing is placement. Is a report telecast as the lead story of the evening or given just a passing superficial reference? Is it unfurled across the top of the front page or buried as a minor item on an inside page? Troublesome stories that are not suppressed, ignored, or completely truth-twisted still can be buried in obscure places. Placement is often used for the greying of reality.
We already noted how, during the 1990-91 Gulf war, the press gave uncritical, top play to the sensationalistic tale about Iraqi troops wrenching over 300 Kuwaiti babies from incubators that were then sent back to Iraq. Only months later did the Washington Post passingly quote a Kuwaiti physician who said no incubators were stolen. Such as it was, the retraction was buried on page A25 in a very long story about postwar conditions in Kuwait.49 In this instance, the truth received only this muffled one-shot coverage, reaching few of the people who read or heard the original horror tale.
Also after the war, Kuwait detained, tortured, and summarily executed undisclosed numbers of Palestinians. The New York Times reported this news in a tiny item on page A8.50 Here was another sensational and horrific story that received muted treatment because the White House’s allies were committing the atrocities.
What if it turned out that one of the CIA’s most brutal client-state dictators were dealing in drugs, should that not get prominent play? Certainly, if it were someone like General Noriega who had fallen from White House favor, but not if it were General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan. The New York Times, in a minuscule paragraph on an inside page, reported that “the drug trade rose sharply after General Zia seized power” and “senior figures in the Zia government were said to have ties to drug traffickers.”51 Here was yet another sensational revelation that, because of its foreign policy ramifications, earned about as much attention as a weather report.
Likewise with the Amnesty International report that Turkish authorities routinely tortured political prisoners and that, of 250,000 political detainees in the 1980s, almost all were tortured. Since Turkey has long been treated by the State Department and the US media as one of the citadels of the Free World, the New York Times saw torture in Turkey as nothing to get excited about, giving it a two-inch mention on the bottom of page A6.52 One can only imagine the saturation coverage such a story would have received if 250,000 prisoners had been tortured by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
It is often said that lies spread like wildfire, while the truth supposedly plods along, never catching up because it is not as sensational, nor as timely, hence, not as newsworthy. This view has been elevated to some kind of unavoidable law of human communication. But actually there is no objective reason the refutation cannot be given equal exposure and treated with the same urgency and importance as the original falsehood. 1 he truth is often much more sensational and revealing than the propaganda lie—as the above examples might indicate. Truth wins a smaller audience not bec
ause it is less interesting, but because it is treated in a less interesting and less important way. If the truth never catches up with the lie, it is not because of some natural law of communication but because of the way truth and lies are communicated. Conscious decision and deliberate effort determine that the lie shall be prominently displayed because it serves the dominant interests, and the truth shall be ignored outright or, at best, poorly accommodated because it is too damaging to those same interests.
THE GREYING OF THE HOLOCAUST
The Holocaust, the systematic mass murder of nine million innocents—six million of whom were Jews—by Nazi Germany during World War II, remains the most horrific story of the twentieth century. Yet it won little public attention when it was happening. It is widely believed that the West knew nothing about it until Allied soldiers liberated the concentration camps. In fact, US newspapers published reports about the Holocaust before and during the war—but in such a tentative and underplayed way as to minimize the impact on US readers.
On page 13, in the twenty-sixth paragraph of a cover story, Time magazine (January 2, 1939) gave a one-line mention to the fact that Hitler put “political enemies and Jewish, Communist, and Socialist jobholders in concentration camps.” The New York Times (June 27, 1942) ran an eighteen-line story at the end of a series of other articles, reporting that Jews had been killed. The Seattle Times (June 26, 1942) buried news about “the systematic extermination of the Jewish population” on page 30 under a small headline. The Los Angeles Times (June 30, 1942) reported that “a survey” conducted by Jewish sources estimated that one million Jews had perished under the Nazis; this story got all of thirteen lines on page 3. The New York Journal American (June 29, 1942) gave only eight lines to a report telling that Jews listed their dead at a million.
These reports seemingly were not to be completely trusted since Jewish sources were used and Jews were interested parties. Throughout the war, news released by Nazi authorities was treated with greater credulity than that released by their victims.
Subsequent stories, including those authenticated by the Allies, were handled with remarkable restraint, usually buried inside the paper, sometimes found on weather, obituary, and comic pages, or adjacent to frivolous puff stories.
Short of being totally suppressed, a story can be “covered” in a way that is so sparse and sporadic as to hide its enormous importance—even a story as sensational and horrible as the Holocaust itself.
Adapted from Deborah Lipstadt, “Beyond Belief: The Press and the Holocaust, ” Extra! Summer 1989, pp. 30—31.
In sum, as highly skilled specialists, news manufacturers are more than merely conduits for official and moneyed interests. They help create, embellish, and give life to the news, with an array of stereotyped, often misleading, but well-executed images, tones, evasions, nuances, suppressions, and fabrications that lend confirmation to the ruling ideological viewpoint in a process that is not immediately recognized as being the propaganda it is. Their authoritative voices on radio and television, their decisive wrap-ups and reassuring appearances before the camera, and their endless columns of system-sustaining stones and commentaries help make us believe “that’s the way it is.” At the same time, this media message preempts the public agenda and muffles out genuine public discourse on what the world might really be like and how we might want to change it.
Culture, Control, and Resistance
Most media studies treat the press as a self-contained institution, divorced from the capitalist system in which it operates. But the media are something more—and less—than that. Like so many institutions in our society, news organizations are privately owned, profit-making corporations. But while their immediate function is to make money for their owners, they play a broader ideological role for the capitalist system itself. The news media never talk about this. But it is time we did.
CAPITALISM AND CULTURE
Most of the land, labor, natural resources, and technology of this and other nations are controlled by a few giant corporations and banks for the purpose of making profits for their owners. This process of capital accumulation, the essence of the capitalist system, exerts a strong influence over our political and social institutions. The capitalist class, that tiny portion of the population that lives securely and affluently principally off the labor of others, has a commanding say in how and for whom the wealth of the nation is produced. The imperatives of the private market determine the kinds of jobs that are (or are not) available; the wages we earn; the prices, rents, and mortgages we pay; the quality of the goods and services we get; and even the quality of the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink.1
Today corporate leaders and their well-paid deputies dominate the top posts of society’s educational, communicational, artistic, entertainment, legal, and scientific institutions. These institutions are ruled very much like business firms themselves, by boards of directors (or trustees or regents, as they might be called) drawn mostly from the business class or those in the pay of that class. Numbering between ten and twenty-five persons, these boards have final say over the institution’s system of rewards and punishments, its budget and personnel, its investments, and its purposes. They exercise power either by occupying the top executive positions or by hiring and firing those who do. Their power to change the institution’s management if it does not perform as they desire is what gives them control over policy.
The boards exercise power not by popular demand or consensus but by state charter. Incorporated by the state, they can call upon the courts and the police to enforce their decisions against the competing claims of staff, clients, or other constituents. These boards are nonelected, self-selected, self-perpetuating, ruling coteries of affluent persons who are answerable to no one but themselves. They are checked by no internal electoral system, no opposition parties, no obligation to report to the rank and file or win support from any of the people whose lives they affect with their decisions. Yet institutions so ruled— including the nation’s news organizations—are said to be the mainstay of “democratic pluralism.”
In a word, the cultural order is not independent of the business system. Nor are cultural institutions independent of each other, being owned outright or directly controlled by the more active members of the business class in what amounts to a system of interlocking and often interchanging directorates. We know of more than one business leader who not only presides over a bank or corporation but has served as a cabinet member in Washington, is a regent of a large university, a trustee of a civic art center, and a board member of a church or foundation or major newspaper or television network—or all of the above.
Those persons who believe the United States is a pluralistic society resist the notion of a business-dominated culture. They see cultural institutions as standing outside the political arena, distinctly separate from business and politics. They make much about keeping the media, arts, sciences, foundations, schools, colleges, professions, and churches free of the taint of political ideologies so that these institutions might not be deprived of their neutrality and autonomy. Since the pluralists believe that big business is just one of many interests in the political arena and one that does not dominate the state, they cannot imagine that it dominates civil society and cultural life.
But if history teaches us anything it is that the power of the propertied class never stands alone. It wraps itself in the flag and claims a devotion to God, country, and the public good. Behind the state is a whole supporting network of doctrines, values, myths, and institutions that are not normally thought of as political but which serve a political purpose. The state, as Gramsci noted, is “only the outer ditch behind which there [stands] a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks.”2 These supportive institutions help create the ideology that transforms a ruling class interest into a “general interest,” justifying existing class relations as the only natural and workable ones, the preferred and optimal, although not perfect, societal arrangements. So the ca
pitalist class is the ruling class, controlling society’s cultural institutions and ideational production as well as its labor, land, and natural resources.
Not entirely, however. The corporate-financial class of America is very powerful but not omnipotent. It makes mistakes, suffers internal divisions over tactics and policies, and must constantly deal with the resistance of workers, consumers, taxpayers, voters, students, and other protesters. The ruling class rules, but not always in the way it might want. It sometimes must make concessions to resistant publics or at least maintain an appearance of so doing. To best secure and legitimate its rule, it must minimize the appearance and use of its undemocratic, coercive power.
This hypocrisy is not merely “the tribute that vice pays to virtue.” In fact, vice pays tribute not to virtue, but to power—to the democratic power of the people, who with demonstrations, protests, boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, civil disobedience, and even civil disorders have struggled against regressive laws, oppressive work conditions, excessive taxes, and for an expansion of democratic rights and material benefits. The power of these democratic forces limits the ability of the moneyed interests to reduce all persons and things to grist for the profit mill.
THE LIMITS OF ORTHODOXY
If the mass media are owned by capitalists who can translate their financial dominance into control over media content, injecting that content with a bias against organized labor, antiwar protestors, socialists, communists, and sundry progressive causes, then why do businesspeople and conservatives repeatedly complain that the media suffer from a liberal bias? If economic and political elites control the press, why are they often distrustful of, and irritated by, what appears in it? And why do they find it necessary to exert suppressive measures against their own media? There are a number of contradictory tendencies that make the press less than absolutely compliant, introducing an element of indeterminacy and resistance that rouses conservative ire.
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