Inventing Reality

by Michael Parenti

  22. ABC “Nightline,” January 8, 1985; and comments in Lee and Solomon, Unreliable Sources, pp. 43—44.

  23. Todd Gitlin, “Spotlights and Shadow: Television and the Culture of Politics,” College English 38 (April 1977): 792.

  24. Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1984.

  25. Washington Post, October 25, 1984.

  26. CBS evening news, January 29, 1985; for Dunsmore’s comments: ABC evening news, July 16, 1986; for another example of labeling, see New York Times, June 12,1986.

  27. Nation, December 23, 1991, p. 802.

  28. San Francisco Chronicle, September 7, 1991.

  29. New York Times, August 8, 1984, and the discussion in chapter 10.

  30. New York Times, February 28, 1980.

  31. New York Times, August 12, 1984.

  32. New York Times, August 26, 1984.

  33. These Post examples are provided by John Dinges in “El Salvador’s New Year,” City Paper (Washington D.C.), February 3, 1984.

  34. Washington Post, April 23, 1983.

  35. Washington Post, January 16, 1983.

  36. Washington Post, November 25, 1982.

  37. New York Times, August 28, 1989.

  38. New York Times, February 24, 1985.

  39. New York Times, July 18, 1988.

  40. Washington Post, August 23, 1987.

  41. San Francisco Chronicle, June 1, 1991.

  42. New York Times, June 11, 1991.

  43. Washington Post, July 22, 1987.

  44. Rangel’s letter is quoted in “Media Blindspot: Contra &C Drugs, Extra! October/November 1987. When asked why Rangel’s correction was not published, a spokesperson for the Post remarked, “I don’t feel any obligation to explain why we didn t run the letter.”

  45. Washington Post, July 31, 1987.

  46. For a discussion of how the media treat protestors see Chapter 7.

  47. New York Times Magazine, October 16, 1983.

  48. NBC evening news, June 1, 1988.

  49. Washington Post, March 2, 1991.

  50. New York Times, March 22, 1991.

  51. New York Times, August 18, 1988.

  52. New York Times, January 4, 1988.

  Chapter 13, Culture, Control, and Resistance

  1. Documentation and further discussion of these points may be found in my Democracy for the Few, 5th ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1988).

  2. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Quinton Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, eds. (New York: International Publishers, 1971), p. 226.

  3. New York Times, December 3, 1967.

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

  5. David Paletz and Robert Entman, Media Power Politics (New York: Free Press, 1981), p. 69.

  6. For an account of the media’s treatment of Khrushchev’s visit, see James Aronson, Packaging the News (New York: International Publishers, 1971).

  7. Paletz and Entman, Media Power Politics, p. 69.

  8. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1947), p. 41.

  9. CBS/Washington Post opinion polls in 1982; Dan Hallen, “For Media, It’s Not Another Vietnam,” In These Times, April 14, 1982.

  10. Hallen, “For Media,” quoting from an interview with Reagan in TV Guide.

  11. For Reston’s—and the New York Times's—role in censoring the Bay of Pigs story, see Gay Talese, The Kingdom and the Power (New York: World Publishing, 1969).

  12. Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post (Bethesda, Md.: National Press, 1987), pp. 176-177.

  13. Les Brown, Television, The Business behind the Box (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p. 214. Brown is referring to broadcasting but the same can be said of print media.

  14. “The Birth of the Insane Rumour about the 2,000 Deaths at Chernobyl,” Democratic Journalist, June 1988, p. 20; Serge Schmemann, “The Russian Syndrome, A Reticent Response to a Nuclear Calamity,” New York Times, May 4, 1986.

  15. Peter Dreier, “Business and the Media,” unpublished monograph, 1983.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3 (Moscow Progress Publications, 1966), p. 384.

  18. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 171.

  About the Author

  Michael Parenti is a major voice among political progressives. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1962 and has taught at a number of college

  universities; most recently he held guest professorships Howard University, the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and California State University Northridge. He is the author of Democracy for the Few; Power and the Powerless; The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution, and the Arms Race; and Make-Believe Media: The Politics of entertainment.

  published by St. Martin’s Press. Parenti lectures frequently on college campuses across the country. He lives in Berkeley, California