Understanding Power: the indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

  Well, from just these three initial observations—elite advocacy, prior plausibility, and the public’s perspective—you would at least draw one conclusion: that the “Propaganda Model” ought to be a part of the ongoing debate about how the media function. You would think that would be enough grounds to make it a part of the discussion you often hear presented about the media’s role, right? Well, it never is a part of that discussion: the “debate” is always over whether the media are too extreme in their undermining of authority and their criticism of power, or whether they are simply serving their “traditional Jeffersonian role” as a check on power. This other position—which says that there is no “traditional Jeffersonian role,” and that the media, like the intellectual community in general, are basically subservient to power—is never part of the discussion at all. And there’s a very good reason why that’s the case, actually—because discussing the “Propaganda Model” would itself be dysfunctional to the institutions, so therefore it simply is excluded. The “Propaganda Model” in fact predicts that it won’t be discussible in the media.

  So, okay, those are the first three observations. The fourth has to do with the empirical validity of the “Propaganda Model”—and that’s of course the meat of the matter. Is the “Propaganda Model” descriptively accurate? Is it true that the media serve the “traditional Jeffersonian role,” or do they rather follow the “Propaganda Model”?

  Well, to answer that question satisfactorily for yourself, you have to do a lot of investigation and examine an extensive amount of material on the question. But just to give you kind of an outline of how one can go about it, methodologically speaking—the first way we tested the model in Manufacturing Consent was to submit it to what is really its harshest possible test: we let the opponents select their own ground. See, if you don’t do this, a critic can always attack you by saying, “Well, you’re just picking examples that work.” Fine, so you let the opponents select their own ground: you take the cases that people on the other side of the spectrum point to to show that the media go too far in their undermining of authority, you take the examples they select to prove their position—like the Vietnam War, or Watergate, or other cases like that—and you look at those examples to see whether they follow the “Propaganda Model.” So that was the first thing we did: we let the opponents pick the ground, so there would be no question of taking the wrong sample or anything like that. And the result was, even when you let the opponents pick the ground, you still get very strong confirmation of the “Propaganda Model.”

  Another thing we’ve done is to document the range of permitted opinion in the media, just to discover what the bounds of expressible thought actually are in the mainstream. We’ve looked at crucial historical examples in detail. We’ve studied media treatment of closely paired examples—I mean, history doesn’t construct controlled experiments for you, but there are lots of historical events that are more or less paired, and it’s possible to compare how the media deal with them. So we’ve examined media coverage of atrocities committed by enemy states and compared it to coverage of atrocities which were roughly on the same scale, but for which the United States was responsible. We’ve compared coverage of elections in enemy states and in client states. We’ve looked at the treatment of problems of freedom of the press in official enemies and in client states. And there are a lot of other topics we’ve investigated as well. 43

  So we’ve studied a great number of cases, from every methodological point of view that we’ve been able to think of—and they all support the “Propaganda Model.” And by now there are thousands of pages of similar material confirming the thesis in books and articles by other people too—in fact, I would hazard a guess that the “Propaganda Model” is one of the best-confirmed theses in the social sciences. There has been no serious counter-discussion of it at all, actually, that I’m aware of. 44 But that’s all irrelevant within the mainstream culture—and the point is, it will all stay irrelevant, even if the level of proof were to reach way beyond what could ever be achieved in the social sciences. In fact, even if you could prove it at the level of physics, it would always remain irrelevant within the mainstream institutions. And the reason for that is that the “Propaganda Model” is in fact valid, and it predicts that it will be irrelevant—and in fact, not even be understandable within the elite culture—no matter how well it’s proven. And that’s because what it reveals undermines very effective and useful ideological institutions, so it’s dysfunctional to them, and will be excluded.

  The Media and Elite Opinion

  MAN: But Mr. Chomsky, don’t you think you might be making a bit of an intellectually lazy assumption as you draw up this analysis—namely, that there’s this monolith “the media”? Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to expect the media to he any different from the rest of the American population in the views it advocates?

  Well, the media are different from the general population—they’re very much like American elites.

  MAN: I’m not necessarily sure that’s true, I’m not sure how you could prove it one way or the other.

  I think you can prove it, actually: on major issues there is a very noticeable split between elite and popular opinion, and the media consistently reflect elite opinion. So for example, on things like, say, dismantling welfare state programs, or on a nuclear weapons freeze, or on U.S. policies in Central America in the 1980s, or on the nature of the Vietnam War, the views expressed in the media have always been very different from public opinion, and in line with elite opinion. 45

  MAN: My point is that it’s not necessarily a transformation of the media, hut a transformation of society that you’re looking towards. It can be a lazy diversion just to talk about the media as “them.”

  Well, I think you would need a transformation of society to change the media—but I still think it’s right to call the media “them.”

  MAN: Take a look at the word “media,” it is “us talking to us.”

  OTHERS: No, no.

  WOMAN: You’re wrong.

  There I really disagree. I mean, I think it’s a good question to examine, but I don’t agree. After all, what are the media? Who are they? Are they “us”? Take C.B.S., or the New York Times—who are they? They’re among the major corporations in the country, they’re not “us.” They are no more “us” than General Motors is “us.”

  The question is: are the media like a sample of public opinion? Is it that the public has a certain range of beliefs and the media are just a sample of it? If that were the case, the media would be very democratic in fact.

  MAN: The only poll that I’ve seen about journalists is that they are basically narcissistic and left of center.

  Look, what people call “left of center” doesn’t mean anything—it means they’re conventional liberals, and conventional liberals are very state-oriented, and usually dedicated to private power.

  MAN: But if there is only a small percentage of the American population that is actively dissident, I think it’s unfair to expect any greater percentage than that in the media.

  Again, you have to look closely: I think there’s plenty of evidence that public opinion and media presentation have differed quite sharply. The general public regarded the media as much too easy on the Reagan administration, they thought there should have been more exposure. In fact, they thought that the media were too hard on Carter, but too easy on Reagan—it’s exactly the opposite of what everybody says.

  WOMAN: Where do you get all this information?

  From polls. Actually, that point is made in a pretty interesting book by Mark Hertsgaard, called On Bended Knee, which is about media coverage of the Reagan administration. 46

  MAN: You gave the example of the public being more in favor of welfare state programs than the media—but in Massachusetts right now, there’s strong support in the general population for dismantling a lot of social services, and for no new taxes. Don’t you agree the support’s pretty strong for that these days?

  No.
If you ask people, “Do you want new taxes?” they’ll say no; but if you ask them, “Do you want better medical services?” they’ll say yes.

  MAN: But there has been no strong popular response against a very austere state budget here which eliminates a lot of social services.

  But is there anybody pushing for developing meaningful social services? See, suppose there was somebody with a platform saying, “We want everybody in Massachusetts to have access to adequate medical care”—I’ll bet you if somebody was pushing that, they’d get overwhelming support. But if you just come to people and say, “Do you want to have new taxes?” of course they’ll say no. If you have something on the ballot saying, “Should we put a limit on property taxes?” the answer will be, “Sure, why should I pay more?” But you’re not asking the right question. If you ask people, “Do you want your roads clean? Do you want good schools? Do you want medical services?” then they’ll say yes. So part of the reason there isn’t much response is that there’s no one offering real alternatives.

  Now, it’s also true that there are a lot of people who just look at the world and say, “Don’t confuse me with the facts, it’s too painful,” or “I don’t want to know about reality, it’s too ugly.” But they’re not even reading the news anymore—they only read the “Style” section, and the “Sports” and so on. However, if you take the people who still pay attention to the world, it’s pretty striking: the population tends to regard the media as too conformist, too subservient to power. It’s exactly the opposite of what everybody says. 47

  So just take a look at something like the nuclear freeze movement. The nuclear freeze had virtually no support in the media, no support among politicians, and certainly no support by business—but nevertheless, 75 percent of the American population supported it. 48 Well, that’s certainly not reflected in editorial opinion or in opinion pieces in the media. Or take what’s certainly the most discussed media issue of the 1980s, Nicaragua. I’ve done a lot of analysis of opinion pieces in the national media, like the Washington Post and the New York Times, and it’s uniform—well over 99 percent of them are anti-Sandinista, and think the Sandinista Party government has to be eliminated; the only issue is how you do it: do you do it by attacking them with contra forces, or by some other means? Well, that does not reflect public opinion. I mean, most of the public thought we should just get out of Nicaragua and leave them alone—they didn’t even know which side we were on, but thought we had no business there, so let’s get away. That certainly wasn’t reflected. Then among the minority of the population who in fact knew which side we were on, there was strong opposition to any method of overthrowing the government. 49 But that position is inexpressible in the media.

  Let me just give you an illustration. Six months in early 1986 and six months in early 1987 happened to have been the periods of greatest debate over Nicaragua, right before the big contra aid bills came to Congress. The New York Times and the Washington Post in those two periods published only two columns that even raised the possibility that the Sandinistas should be permitted to survive. One was by the Nicaraguan Ambassador. 50 The other was by a guy named Kevin Cahill, a doctor at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, who’s a specialist in tropical diseases and who’s worked extensively through the area. He had a column in which he said, there’s only one country in Latin America where the government cares about the population, it’s Nicaragua: here’s what they’re doing, we should let them do it. 51 That was the one exception of an opinion column even considering this position in practically a year of intensive coverage of the issue in the two most important newspapers in the country. Now, that certainly does not reflect popular opinion—in fact, it doesn’t even reflect opinion in the academic profession in this case: the media do not accept contributions from Latin America scholars on this issue, just because they disagree. 52

  WOMAN: There were people who lost their jobs in the media for reporting other points of view.

  Oh, that happens all the time. Ray Bonner is the famous case—he was a freelancer the New York Times picked up who made the mistake of actually reporting what was going on for about a year in El Salvador. He was bounced off to work in the “Metro” section or something, and then he just dropped out. 53 And there are lots of other reporters who have just ended up leaving: Sy Hersh, for example, left the New York Times because they wouldn’t let him do the kinds of stories he wanted to do.

  Look, I have a good friend who’s one of the seven or eight main editors of a major American newspaper, and he happens to be very much opposed to U.S. policies towards Central America, and towards the arms race, as well as several other things. He tries to craft editorials which will just barely sneak through under the ideological barrier, but will sort of hint at some of the things he would like people to see—he has to make a very careful calculation as to what will make it in.

  WOMAN: But isn’t that what this man over here is saying?

  No—that ideological barrier reflects elite opinion, it’s not that the public is going to object. The public’s not going to mind if the editor comes out with these things; in fact, this guy happens to be in a liberal city, the public will applaud—it’s in Boston.

  WOMAN: So why is there that barrier?

  Well, I once asked another editor I know at the Boston Globe why their coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is so awful—and it is. He just laughed and said, “How many Arab advertisers do you think we have?” That was the end of that conversation.

  MAN: That’s not true, unless he was joking.

  It is true, and he wasn’t joking. That wasn’t joking.

  MAN: The editor doesn’t pay attention to the advertising—he doesn’t care about the advertising.

  Are you kidding? If he doesn’t care about the advertising, he will not be editor any longer.

  MAN: You’re saying that the Globe’s editorial decisions are based on trying to keep advertising revenue from—what?

  From dropping. It means retailers aren’t going to advertise there and the Globe’s going to go under.

  MAN: But the Globe has a monopoly market.

  They do not.

  MAN: What are they going to do, advertise in the Herald [second Boston newspaper]?

  Absolutely.

  MAN: I think that really is simplistic, I really do.

  This actually happened, it’s happened a few times. Most of the time it never happens, because the newspapers never deviate. But in 1976 or ’77, New York Times advertising and stock values began to drop very slightly. There were immediately articles about this in the Wall Street Journal and Business Week, pointing out what was going on—Business Week in fact said, if the New York Times doesn’t realize that it’s a business, it’s not going to be in business any longer. 54

  Well, what was happening was that the Times had taken a mildly supportive editorial position on a New York tax bill that business was opposed to, and advertising started slipping off a little, stocks started dropping very slightly. And the Times then shifted its entire editorial staff: John Oakes went out, all the liberal editors went out, and a whole bunch of new people came in. All it took was a slight change on the stock market. Now, in that case it was a matter of such a slight deviation that you’d need a microscope to see it—suppose they took a major deviation, what would happen to their stock?

  In countries that have a wider range of democratic politics than we do, where there really is a danger that some political party might impose different policies, this sort of thing happens all the time.

  MAN: I guess I don’t know what it’s like on a big paper. I have a great deal of autonomy as a reporter working for a small local paper.

  A small local paper’s a different story. But suppose you start doing things that are harmful to local business interests—I think you’ll find that it’s not easy to keep doing it. You can probably do good reporting on international affairs if you want, just because they don’t care so much in a small-town paper.

  MAN: I don’t know�
��I don’t take those interests into account at all. I’m the business writer for my county, and I can do what I want.

  You think you do what you want; see, Tom Wicker at the New York Times thinks he does what he wants, too—and he’s right. But what he wants is what power wants.

  MAN: I’ve just followed my instincts, and I’ve never had any problems.

  Have you ever done things that caused an uproar in the business community?

  MAN: Possibly.

  But that’s the question: I think if you had, you would have heard about it. I mean, if you expose corruption, that’s fine …

  Filters on Reporting

  WOMAN: Is this a conscious effort on the part of the press, or would you say it just plays out economically because they want to sell newspapers and the public is buying it?

  It has nothing to do with the public.

  WOMAN: Advertisers?

  Well, yes, advertisers. See, the press does not make money on people buying newspapers, they lose money on people buying newspapers. 55 But the press is business interests—I mean, the major press is huge corporate interests, the small press is more local business interests, but either way it’s kept alive by other businesses, through advertising.

  MAN: One of the biggest businesses around here is development, and I continually present both points of view, as far as environmental issues versus development issues.

  And business takes both points of view, business is on both sides—like, in this region, maintaining tourism is a huge thing for business, and that means maintaining the environment. And you know, the rich folk who move out here from New York also want to maintain the environment. So you’ve got very powerful, privileged interests on “the other side” of this issue. See, you happened to have picked an issue where the business community is split, and therefore the press will present “both sides,” But try to start doing something that undermines all business interests as such—you will quickly find that you’re not a journalist anymore. I mean, they may be willing to keep you on as a maverick just for the fun of it, but if you ever get to the point where you’re influencing people’s attitudes about public policy or power, you’re not going to stay on. And that’s exactly why people who say those things don’t stay on.