Inventing Reality

by Michael Parenti

  12. Brown, Television, The Business behind the Box, p. 214.

  13. Todd Gitlin, “When the Right Talks, TV Listens,” Nation, October 15, 1983, p.

  335.

  14. Quoted in Eric Barnouw, The Sponsor (New York: Oxford University' Press, 1978), p. 57.

  15. Norman Bauman, “Newspapers: More or Less Put Together by the Advertisers?” unpublished monograph, 1977, p. 24.

  16. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, p. 60.

  17. Martin Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990), p. 5.

  18. Lauren Kessler, “Women’s Magazines Coverage of Smoking Related to Health Hazards,” Journalism Quarterly, 66, Summer 1989, pp. 316—322. The publications were Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, McCall’s, Woman’s Day, and the older version of Ms. Kessler also looked at Good Housekeeping, which did not carry cigarette ads but which ran nothing on the link between smoking and cancer.

  19. Brown, Television, The Business behind the Box, p. 196.

  20. “Boycotted News,” Extra! May/June 1991, January/February 1991.

  21. Art Shields, My Shaping Years (New York: International Publishers, 1982), p.

  22. Author’s interview with Laurie Wimmer, November 9, 1982.

  23. John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981).

  24. Calvin Trillin, “U.S. Journal: Kentucky,” New Yorker, December 27, 1969, p. 33.

  25. Gans, Deciding What’s News, p. 254.

  26. Author’s interview, February 4, 1986, with George De Stefano, the former New Haven Advocate staff writer who wrote the article in question.

  27. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, pp. 161—162.

  28. Lee and Solomon, Unreliable Sources, p. 23.

  29. Ibid., p. 89.

  30. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, p. 57.

  31. Gans, Deciding What’s News, p. 94.

  32. Ibid.

  33. Ibid.

  34. It was the publisher of News-Herald Newspapers Inc.; see Workers World, April 9, 1982.

  35. For instances of editors resigning or being fired see Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, p. 84; and Lee and Solomon, Unreliable Sources, pp. 196—197.

  36. James Kilpatrick’s column, Washington Post, February 14, 1987; also his column of February 18, 1983.

  37. Turner Catledge, My Life and Times, quoted in Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 39.

  38. Gans, Deciding What’s News, p. 251.

  39. Ibid., p. 196.

  40. Quoted in Lee and Solomon, Unreliable Sources, p. 98.

  41. Greenfield quoted in Roger Wilkins, A Man’s Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), p. 329.

  42. The author’s conversation with a former AP correspondent, March 1, 1985, Washington, D.C.

  43. Quoted in Howard Rosenberg’s column, Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1986.

  44. Washington Post, January 3, 1982; Parade, March 20, 1983; and Gans, Deciding What’s News, p. 209.

  45. Cans, Deciding What’s News, p. 107.

  46. Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post (Bethesda, MD: National Press, 1987), pp. 141-143.

  47. Susan Douglas, “Blond Ambition,” In These Times, October 28—November 3, 1987, p. 12.

  48. Gans, Deciding What’s News, p. 208.

  49. Lee and Solomon, Unreliable Sources, pp. 142-143. Citing Robert Entman, Lee and Solomon note that researchers like Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman, who have “a strong conservative agenda,” have exaggerated the leftist bent of reporters. Lichter and Rothman relied on a nonrandom sample that greatly overrepresented the most liberal segment of journalism—employees of public TV stations in Boston, New York, and Washington—while giving less attention to the political attitudes of more mainstream journalists.

  50. Peter Dreier, “Business and the Media,” unpublished monograph, 1983; also Dreier’s “Anti-Business Bias in Media,” Quill, November 1984.

  51. Dreier, “Business and the Media”; also “Contests Help to Improve Business/ Finance Writing,” Editor & Publisher, December 29, 1979.

  52. See Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 1985, p. 13.

  53. Dreier, “Business and the Media.”

  54. Ibid.

  55. Quoted in New York Times Book Review, July 6, 1986, p. 25.

  56. James Aronson, The Press and the Cold War (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), pp. 3-4.

  57. Ibid., pp. 3 and 6.

  58. Conversation with author, August 17, 1981.

  59. Dorothy Sterling, letter to New York Times, March 11, 1984. Not only Time but the entire U.S. mainstream press followed the U.S. State Department line by giving favorable portrayals to Chiang’s autocracy in China and never saying a positive word about Soviet Russia. On China, see Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty (London: Quartet Books, 1975), p. 261.

  60. Aronson, The Press and the Cold War, p. 56.

  61. Malcolm Browne writing in Variety, November 2, 1966.

  62. Washington Post, March 9, 1985. The report was eventually published in the Village Voice.

  63. Reported in the Village Voice, December 26, 1977.

  64. Lee and Solomon, Unreliable Sources, p. 25.

  65. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, pp. 62-65.

  66. Lee and Solomon, Unreliable Sources, p. 24.

  67. Ibid., p. 97.

  68. Pete Hamill, “Fear and Favor at the ‘New York Times,’ ” Village Voice, October 1, 1985, pp. 17-18, 20-24.

  69. John L. Hess, “Bankrupt New York City Journalism,” Lies of Our Times, May 1991, pp. 21-22.

  70. Letter from Bill Collins to author, August 25, 1987.

  71. Charles MacMartin, “Of Strikes and Scabs and Workers,” Lies of Our Times, June 1991, p. 7.

  72. Tiffany Devitt and Steve Rhodes, “Media and Rape,” Christian Science Monitor, April 26, 1991.

  73. Ackland quoted in Dreier and Weinberg, “Interlocking Directorates,” p. 68.

  74. Quoted in ibid.

  75. Quoted in Columbia journalism Review, May/June 1983, p. 56.

  76. Lee and Solomon, Unreliable Sources, p. 142.

  77. Gans, Deciding What’s News, p. 85.

  Chapter 4, Objectivity and Government Manipulation

  1. For a fuller discussion of this, see my Power and the Powerless (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978).

  2. Mark Fishman, Manufacturing the News (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), p. 140.

  3. Conversation with the author, October 4, 1979.

  4. Leon Sigal, Reporters and Officials (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1973).

  5. Robert Entman and David Paletz, “The War in Southeast Asia: Tunnel Vision on Television,” in William C. Adams, ed. Television Coverage of International Affairs (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1982); and the other studies in that same volume; also Anita Mallinckrodt, “The Real Evening News,” unpublished monograph, Washington, D.C., 1983.

  6. For a treatment of some of these questions see my The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989).

  7. Jack Newfield, “Honest Men, Good Writers,” Village Voice, May 18, 1972. For a study of the corporate influence in the American political system, see my Democracy for the Pew, 4th ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983).

  8. See the Washington Post’s report on David Brinkley’s birthday party, November 16, 1981.

  9. Peter Dreier and Steve Weinberg, “Interlocking Directorates,” Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 1979, p. 51.

  10. Quoted in Timothy Crouse, The Boys on the Bus: Riding with the Campaign Press Corps (New York: Random House, 1973).

  11. David Halberstam, quoted by Kevin Donovan in Ithaca New Times, February 29, 1976, p. 6.

  12. Adam Hochschild, “A Tale of Two Exposes,” Mother Jones, September/October 1981, p. 10.

  13. Moe Stavnezer, “The Killing Drug They Don’t Like to Discuss,” Guardian, December 22, 1982, p. 7. When Ora
flex was finally banned in August 1982, the event received only passing notice in the press.

  14. Quoted in Tristram Coffin’s The Washington Spectator, September 1, 1980.

  15. Herbert Matthews, A World in Revolution (New York: Scribners, 1971), p. 338; also Matthews’s The Cuban Story (New York: George Braziller, 1961), pp. 281ff.

  16. Joel Millman, “How the Press Distorts the News from Central America,” Progressive, October 1984, p. 20.

  17. Norman Bauman, “Newspapers: More or Less Put Together by the Advertisers?” unpublished monograph, 1977, p. 24.

  18. Ben Bagdikian, The Effete Conspiracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 77.

  19. Roger Wilkins, A Man's Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), p. 350. For an example of how the late publisher of the Post, Philip Graham, made much of his close association with the White House while being used by the president, see Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post (Bethesda, MD: National Press, 1987), pp. 156—157.

  20. Washington Post, November 14, 1984.

  21. Martin Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990), p. 103.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Ibid., pp. 107, 110—112; and Peggy Noonan’s comments in New York Times Magazine, October 15, 1989.

  24. Lee and Solomon, Unreliable Sources, pp. 113—114.

  25. Mike Zagarell, “White House Control of the Media—and the Fightback,” Daily World, November 15, 1984.

  26. Michael Deaver, speech at Pacific University, Oregon, March 29, 1990. I participated in this event as a panelist.

  27. Quoted in David Paletz and Robert Entman, Media Power Politics (New York: Free Press, 1981), p. 57.

  28. Mark Hertsgaard, “How Reagan Seduced Us,” Village Voice, September 18, 1984.

  29. New York Times, November 14, 1983; and Simon Gerson, “What Freedom of the Press?” Daily World, December 8, 1983.

  30. Les Brown, Television, the Business behind the Box (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p. 214.

  31. Paletz and Entman, Media Power Politics, p. 62.

  32. Jim Sibbison, “ AP: The Price of Purity,” Columbia Journalism Review, November/ December 1987, p. 56.

  33. David Wise, The Politics of Lying (New York: Vintage, 1973), pp. 319-322.

  34. Wilkins, A Man’s Life, p. 340.

  35. See Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 272.

  36. United States v. Caldwell (1972); see also New York Times, September 4, 1976, and November 19, 1978.

  37. New York Times, January 17, 1976.

  38. Geoffrey Rips, The Campaign against the Underground Press (San Francisco: City Lights, 1981).

  39. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 261.

  40. Fidel Castro, Fidel and Religion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 291.

  41. Rips, The Campaign against the Underground Press, pp. 68-71.

  42. Lee and Solomon, Unreliable Sources, pp. 122-123.

  43. Mark Yudof, When Government Speaks (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); J. William Fulbnght, The Pentagon Propaganda Machine (New York: Vintage, 1971).

  44. Kai Bird and Max Holland, “The Philippines: Official News,” Nation, June 30, 1984.

  45. Ralph McGehee, Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA (New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1983).

  46. Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media,” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977; Stuart Loory, “The CIA’s Use of the Press: A Mighty Wurlitzer,” Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 1974, pp. 9-18; Davis, Katharine the Great, pp. 176-189.

  47. New York Times, December 25, 26, 27, 1977.

  48. Ibid.

  49. John Stockwell, In Search of Enemies (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 195.

  50. New York Times, December 25, 26, 27, 1977.

  51. Vitaly Petrusenko, A Dangerous Game, CIA and the Mass Media (Prague. Interpress, n.d.), p. 92.

  52. Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media”; Loory, “The CIA’s Use of the Press”; Davis, Katharine the Great, pp. 176—189.

  53. New York Times, December 25, 26, 27, 1977.

  54. David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government (New York: Bantam, 1965), pp. 134-135, 267; Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 1976, pp. 37-38.

  55. Louis Wolf, “Accuracy in Media Rewrites the News and History,” CovertAction Information Bulletin, Spring 1984, p. 33; New York Times, May 12, 1984.

  56. See the author’s The Sword and the Dollar.

  Chapter 5, The Big Sell

  1. Charles Clark quoted in City Paper (Washington, D.C.), June 24, 1983.

  2. Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), p. 123.

  3. Martin Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990), p. 63.

  4. Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976).

  5. Ibid.

  6. J. S. Henry, “From Soap to Soapbox: The Corporate Merchandising of Ideas,” Working Papers, May/June 1980, p. 55.

  7. Washington Post, October 25, 1981.

  8. Christian Science Monitor, August 29, 1988.

  9. See the McDonnell Douglas ad in Washington Post, May 6, 1991. Similar ads by McDonnell and other defense contractors have appeared in the New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, Business Week, and other such publications.

  10. For one example among many, see the Textron Inc. ad in the Washington Post, April 17, 1991.

  11. Robert Friedman, “How America Gets up in Arms,” Nuclear Times, March 1983, p. 19.

  12. New York Times, May 4, 1982.

  13. Robert Cirino, Don’t Blame the People (New York: Vintage, 1972), pp. 90, 302; also Michael Parenti, Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), pp. 187-188.

  14. On the Advertising Council, see David Paletz, Roberta Pearson, and Donald Willis, Politics in Public Service Advertising on Television (New York: Praeger, 1977); Bruce Howard, “The Advertising Council: Selling Lies,” Ramparts, December 1974/ January 1975, pp. 26-32; also, “The State and Corporations: Public Service Ads,” Guardian, May 26, 1976.

  15. Paletz et al., Politics in Public Service Advertising, p. 1.

  16. Keenen Peck, “Ad Nauseam,” Progressive, May 1983, p. 44.

  17. Representative Benjamin Rosenthal (D-NY) quoted in Howard, “The Advertising Council,” p. 32.

  18. See my Make-Believe Media. (1992), pp. 53-57.

  19. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 28, 1991.

  20. Los Angeles Times, February 24, 1991; Washington Post, March 2, 1991.

  21. See Global Warming: The Greenpeace Report (New York: Oxford University Press).

  Chapter 6, Giving Labor the Business

  1. See, for instance, Marshall Ingwerson, “Bush Successes Baffle Opposition,” Christian Science Monitor, October 6, 1989.

  2. For a fuller exposition see my Democracy for the Few (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), Chapters 5 and 6.

  3. Martin Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1990), p. 188.

  4. Ibid., pp. 192-193.

  5. “Network News and Documentary Report,” International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers, July 30, 1980.

  6. Janet Coffman in TV Monitor, August 1, 1980.

  7. Roberta Lynch, “The Media Distort the Value of Labor Unions,” In These Times, July 15-28, 1981, p. 17.

  8. The study by William Hoynes and David Croteau was prepared for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), February 1989; summarized in Lee and Solomon, Unreliable Sources, pp. 26—27.

  9. The quoted terms are respectively from Wall Street Journal, March 16, 1978, and Time, March 20, 1978. Most of the information on this strike is from Curtis Seltzer, “How the Press Covered the Coal Strike,” unpublished study, August 1979, and Seltzer’s “The Pits: Press Coverage of the Coal Strike,” Columbia Journal
ism Review, July/August 1981.

  10. New York Times, December 4, 1977, and March 5, 1978.

  11. Newsweek, March 20, 1978.

  12. Time, March 6, 1978.

  13. New York Times, November 28, 1982.

  14. David Bensman, “The Press Joins the Steel War on Labor,” In These Times, January 12—18, 1983.

  15. This account is entirely from Irfan Erdogan, “Television News Coverage of the 1985 New York Hotel Strike,” unpublished manuscript, 1986.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Jonathan Tasini, “Labor and the Media,” Extra! Summer 1990, p. 2.

  18. Ibid., p. 6.

  19. See Gabrielle Gemma, “Greyhound and the Media,” Lies of our Times, April 1990, p. 7; Charles MacMartin, “Of Strikes and Scabs and Workers,” Lies of our Times, June 1991, p. 7.

  20. Quoted in Doug Henwood, “The Washington Post: The Establishment’s Paper,” Extra! January/February 1990, p. 10. See also, Norman Solomon and Martin Lee, “Media Owners as Union Busters,” Extra! Summer 1990, p. 12.

  21. See Tasini, “Labor and the Media,” p. 3, for a summary of the major findings of the study.

  Chapter 7, “Liberal” Media, Conservative Bias

  1. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).

  2. Washington Post, July 20, 1975; New York Times, December 4, 1977.

  3. William Watts, “Americans’ Hopes and Fears,” Psychology Today, September 1981; Gallup poll, Washington Post, December 22, 1981; Peter Hart poll, Ithaca (NY) Journal, September 5, 1975; polls cited in New York Times, January 22, 1978, January 13, 1982, February 3, 1981; Washington Post, September 23, 1981.

  4. David Paletz and Robert Entman, Media Power Politics (New York: Free Press, 1981), p. 196.

  5. New York Tunes, November 13, 1982.

  6. Organizing Notes (Washington, D.C.), January/February 1983.

  7. New York Times, July 18, 1983.

  8. New York Times, July 26, 1983.

  9. William Preston, Jr., and Ellen Ray, “Disinformation and Mass Deception,” Convert Action Information Bulletin, Spring-Summer 1983, p. 8. For an end product of this process see Arnaud de Borchgrave, “The KGB’s Bead on the Media,” Washington Post, April 14, 1981.