EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE MEDIA

"An important operational characteristic of the system, which facilitates general adherence to the party line without overt coercion, is the assurance and speed with which the line is established as a consensus truth, so that deviations and dissent quickly take on the appearance of foolishness or pathology, as well as suspiciously unpatriotic behavior. "
~ Edward Herman.

I found an old interview with Edward Herman, who co-authored Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media with Noam Chomsky. What follows is a description of the five media filters that, working all together, creates the extreme bias in the media. These filters serve to bring you the information that The System's elites want you to have, in the way they want you to hear it. It is through these filters that you are taught which victims are "worthy" and which are "unworthy".

The whole purpose of the media is to manufacture public support for the special interests that dominate government.

Here's your media lesson for the day:

The propaganda model argues that the way the media works is based on the underlying structural conditions under which the media operates.

It consists of five elements that can be looked at as filters of the news. Whether a news item is going to be used by the media or not is going to depend on whether it passes through these filters.

The first filter is ownership. Very wealthy people and corporations, like General Electric, own and control the dominant media. This is obviously going to give an elite bias to the media. You must assume that the people who control the media are going to dominate it. They're going to select people that they want, and they are not going to let subordinates get out of bounds.

[ . . . ]

The second filter is advertising. The media depend on advertising as their funding source. Newspapers probably get 70 percent of their revenue, on average, from advertising. Television gets over 95 percent from advertisers. The TV stations and networks all have people who go around and try to sell advertisers on their programs. They have to convince them of the merit of the programs in which they want to advertise.

What do the advertisers want? They not only want a large audience, they want an elite audience-the more money the audience has the better. They don't want to upset the audience. They want what is called "a favorable selling environment" for their products. So the advertisers have to be competed for, and they're the underlying funding source. There's no question that they influence what the media will do. They don't interfere all the time. They don't call the media up and discipline them; that's not the main way they work. The main influence they have is that they have to be competed for by the media, and the media has to convince them that their programming meets advertisers needs.

Some advertisers actually have explicit conditions on programming. For example, Proctor and Gamble, one of the biggest advertisers, has an advertising rule that's written down. It will not support programs that insult the military, or that suggests that the business community is not a good and spiritual community.

[ . . . ]

The third filter in our propaganda model is what we call sourcing. The media needs sources of news. The big media want sources that will supply them with news on a daily basis that's credible, reliable and doesn't cost too much. Where do you get that kind of news? You get it at the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, or you get it at the local city mayor's office, the police department, or the General Motors Corporation. These are the prime decision makers who make news.

There's a strong tendency for the media, especially the big media, to get close to sources that are powerful, who can give them news that's believable and news that doesn't cost a lot to get. So a lot of the news outlets have people stationed permanently at the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, and so on. When they do this, they develop a certain relationship with these institutions. They become friendly with the people who provide them with the news, who are nice to them, and in doing that, they may occasionally get inside information, and so a symbiotic relationship develops between these big sources and the media.

[ . . . ]

The fourth filter is what we call flack, which means negative feedback. We can all produce flack. We can all call the paper or write a letter to the paper and complain, but the complaints that really affect the media are the ones that can really threaten them seriously, like the government, big advertisers, the Pentagon and other organized groups. So flack has its effect mainly from powerful groups, and some of these groups are already the ones that provide the news. This tends to further consolidate the power of these dominant sources.

The fifth filter is what we call ideology. In the American ideology, the one element in which Noam Chomsky and I think is important in the propaganda model is anti-communism. The anti-communist ideology was very important until the Soviet Union fell, but even now it still has some residual importance. The other ideological filter is the idea that the market can do everything, that it is the proper way of solving all our problems. These ideologies are really imbedded in the System, and they affect journalists, media editors, and how the media views the world.

Nowadays the primary ideology is the Global War on Terror, Inc., especially since all the lies about the primacy of the "free market" are pushing the American economy right over the edge--and dragging all the rest of the world with it.

What to do to learn the truth:

Actually, if you read the mainstream media, and if you have some advance knowledge of what to look for, there's a lot in there that you can find, but you have to know what to look for. In other words, you have to have frames of reference and an analysis that allows you to look at the media critically. This is where a guy like Noam Chomsky is so incredibly valuable-he's very smart-but he's also a very good producer of frames of reference. When you read his books you realize you're looking at a different world. You're learning to look at these things in a totally different light. So even when you're looking at the mainstream media, it becomes a little more illuminating because you can see what they've put at the bottom of the article that should be at the top.

[ . . . ]

Another important thing people can do if they have access to the web is to just surf around. If you go to Znet and fiddle around with sites on the different media groups, very soon you'll be in networks that'll give you a lot of alternative information. Getting into email and getting friendly with websites is enlightening. It's a wonderful alternative to reading the mainstream media.

I also mentioned the foreign press. On something like the Afghanistan war, even Britain-which is a close ally of the United States-even in Britain, you can read the Guardian, The Independent, The Mirror, or even the Daily Herald, which are all better than the New York Times. The U.S. media system has become so closed to alternative materials on issues where the government has strong positions and where lobbies are important, like in the Middle East, that even mainstream media in our allied countries provide a real option.

See the whole article, read an excerpt and then buy the book.

To see the application of the propaganda model to the Kurdish situation, see ZNet.

MORE ON DEMOCRACY, MEDIA, AND KURDS

"Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew's Passion' on a ukulele."
~ Ben Bagdikian.

For your Sunday evening reading, I'm going to point out a few items I've noticed from the past week and have not had the chance to write about due to the death of my hard drive. The good news about that is that it finally prodded me into changing operating systems. I'm now using the Linux Kubuntu OS and it is sweet.

I figured that since the nice people at Ubuntu went all the way to Turkish-occupied Kurdistan to do a demo of the Kurdish-language version of their distro for Abdullah Demirbas, then it had to be the only distro for me. There's even a Kurdish-language Ubuntu page. Cool. For information on the very friendly, and now very feisty, Kubuntu, see this page.

Please note that there's a new blog out about human rights in Turkey, Hasankeyf, Kurdish rights, and American involvement in the whole mess, at Insulting Turkishness, a name that seems to target the stupidity of the infamous Article 301 of the Turkish penal code.

There's also a not-to-be-missed discussion of the Ilisu Dam fiasco by Goran at Zanetî.

Early last week, The Guardian published an article by Naomi Wolf in which she described how America was turning into a fascist state. The PATRIOT Act and the Military Commissions Act are two of the more well-known pieces of legislation that serve as signposts to the place America is headed. There was another piece of legislation that kinda slipped under the radar, called the Defense Authorization Act. There's something on that at The American Conservative. The bottom line on the DFA is that the president can declare martial law at any time he takes a fancy to do so.

While Naomi Wolf does a pretty good job of outlining the ten steps of the slippery slope into fascism on which we're all sliding, Lenin, over at Lenin's Tomb notes something that I've been trying to point out for some time: The Democrats are no different than the Republicans. As Lenin says:

Naomi Wolf, a Clintonite feminist, on Bush's ten steps toward fascism. I don't doubt the existence of fascist potencies in the United States, but to speak of it as a clear and present danger is misleading, to put it blandly. If you ask me, it's part of this 'Anyone But Bush' politics that is destroying the American left and drawing the antiwar movement into the frigid Democratic Party graveyard. The politics of MoveOn.org, Howard Dean's fan club, and such alignments, are to divert mass disaffection with Bush's wars into the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Wolf rightly criticises Bush's openly repressive measures, including the Patriot Act. However, there is no mention Democratic complicity.

Well said, comrade. In a related item, you can read how illegal immigration to the US is being used to reinforce the Department of Homeland Security police state:

The programs described above, combined with two recent changes in US law, make the reality of a full police-state in the US increasingly more feasible. The Military Commissions Act, signed in October of 2006, suspends habeas corpus rights for any person deemed by the president to be an enemy combatant. Persons so designated could be imprisoned indefinitely without rights to legal counsel or a trial. And the Defense Authorization Act of 2007 allows the president to station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities. By revising the two-century-old Insurrection Act, the law, in effect, repeals the Posse Comitatus Act and gives the US government the legal authority to order the military onto the streets anywhere in America.

Threats of terrorism and illegal immigrants are being used to justify the implementation of police-state programs. But once started, enforcement can be rapidly deployed to any group of people in the US, and we all become endangered. Mass arrests, big brother in the sky and the loss of civil rights for everyone does not bode well for those who believe in democracy, free speech and the right to critically challenge our government without fear of reprisals.

Does anyone remember the Harrisonburg Kurds? Well, I finally figured out what they're called; they're called "terror trophies," and it looks like another US Attorney has been collecting his own "terror trophies" in New York state, but he's starting to come under attack for his poaching:

A small but increasingly vocal group of protesters is charging that a United States attorney in northern New York has pursued a series of terror-related "political prosecutions" to enhance his reputation as "a loyal Bushie" and thus avoid the fate of eight of his colleagues recently fired by Alberto Gonzales's Department of Justice.

[ . . . ]

Citizen pushback against overzealous prosecutors appears to be on the rise. It comes at a time when the controversy over the firings of US attorneys has become a contentious political issue that threatens to trigger the early departure of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The DOJ's credibility has been further damaged by accounts of increasing departures of DOJ lawyers.

Maybe people are starting to wake up to the fact that they are sliding fast down that slippery slope . . . but I won't hold my breathe.

By coincidence, another Naomi left a free comment, also at The Guardian, but this Naomi is the Klein variety and her beef is with the World Bank and Wolfowitz:

The more serious lie at the centre of the [Wolfowitz-Riza] controversy is the implication that the World Bank was an institution that had impeccable ethical credentials - until, according to 42 former World Bank executives, its credibility was "fatally compromised" by Wolfowitz. (Many American liberals have seized on this fairytale, addicted to the fleeting rush that comes from forcing neocons to resign.)

The truth is that the bank's credibility was fatally compromised when it forced school fees on students in Ghana in exchange for a loan; when it demanded that Tanzania privatise its water system; when it made telecom privatisation a condition of aid for Hurricane Mitch; when it demanded labour "flexibility" in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami; when it pushed for eliminating food subsidies in post-invasion Iraq. Ecuadoreans care little about Wolfowitz's girlfriend; more pressing is that in 2005 the World Bank withheld a promised $100m after the country dared to spend a portion of its oil revenues on health and education. Some anti-poverty organisation.

[ . . . ]

Perhaps we should all laugh at the World Bank. What we should absolutely not do, however, is participate in the effort to cleanse the bank's ruinous history by repeating the absurd narrative that the reputation of an otherwise laudable anti-poverty organisation has been sullied by one man. The bank understandably wants to throw Wolfowitz overboard. I say: let the ship go down with the captain.

You go, girl.

Last Thursday, I posted something about the media and democracy, from an interview with American journalist Bill Moyers. It seems like the topic is suddenly sprouting up all over the Internet since then. The LA Times has an op/ed on the subject by another American journalist, this one working in the UK:

Again and again, I see this pattern repeated. Until there is some official investigation or allegation made by a politician, there is no story.

Or sometimes the media like to cover the controversy, not the substance, preferring an ambiguous and unsatisfying "he said, she said" report. Safe reporting, but not investigative.

I know some of the reasons why investigative reporting is on the decline. To begin with, investigations take time and money. A producer from "60 Minutes," watching my team's work on another voter purge list, said: "My God! You'd have to make hundreds of calls to make this case." In America's cash-short, instant-deadline world, there's not much room for that.

[ . . . ]

One of the biggest disincentives to doing investigative journalism is that it jeopardizes future access to politicians and corporate elite. During the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial, the testimony of Judith Miller and other U.S. journalists about the confidences they were willing to keep in order to maintain access seemed to me sadly illuminating.

Expose the critters and the door is slammed. That's not a price many American journalists are willing to pay.

Exactly what I found out while pushing the Ralston conflict of interest facts, and something that people like Sibel Edmonds have found out, too.

Another item from the Journalism Department comes from Yahoo News describes how international journalists are becoming more anti-American--and this at a State Department conference on journalism:

The audience then asked questions of the panel. Many were hostile in tone. One journalist from Dubai asked, "Is it not a scandal for one country to invade another country?" Woodward answered that it was a legal war approved by Congress.

A young reporter from a former Soviet state asked, "How can the United States support authoritarian regimes who forbid any form of free press or democracy in their country." The panelists agreed that American foreign policy since 9/11 has become very hypocritical.

[ . . . ]

At lunch, I sat with several Moslem journalists from Pakistan, Sudan, Sri Lanka and India. They were all critical of the US and told me that they had great respect for Voice of America and the BBC but can't stand America's foreign policy and they no longer respect the American press. They favor Obama for President because he studied in a Moslem school and understands their culture. They all dislike President George Bush.

[ . . . ]

The audience was very angry with the American government policy toward the Middle East and toward foreign journalists. The audience criticized US reporters living abroad, not getting the real story and digging enough. Seib made an impassioned defense of American foreign correspondents and the risks they take to get a story and mentioned his close friend, Daniel Pearl.

[ . . . ]

It was an interesting day and there has clearly been a shift in attitude toward the United States and the American journalists by the foreign press. It's not just the Bush White House that overseas reporters are critical of but the whole American press corps for not being tougher and more critical of the Administration. We must remember these 187 young journalists were nominated for the Edward R. Murrow Fellowships by the local US Ambassador. I would assume that they are more pro-American than some other local reporters who were not nominated.

Last Wednesday, Blogian had a very interesting post about how a mass grave of some 200 Armenians had been tampered with by Turkish authorities. Apparently, the grave had been discovered by local Kurds in a village near Nisêbin in 2006. I won't spoil the rest of the story; go ahead and read the whole thing at Blogian.

Last, but certainly not least, is the fact that the latest round of harassment against DTP mayors has to do with their call for independent medical examinations of Abdullah Ocalan, in the wake of the hair sample analyses that were conducted in Europe:

A Turkish prosecutor is investigating whether 54 Kurdish mayors broke the law by claiming last month that rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan was being poisoned in his prison cell, the government-run Anatolia news agency reported Saturday.

Last month, mayors belonging to the Kurdish Democratic Society Party asked for an independent group of doctors to examine Ocalan to establish whether he was being poisoned. Turkish authorities said tests on Ocalan showed no signs that he was being poisoned and called the allegations "complete lies."

Of course, the "tests" referred to were conducted by the Turkish government and not by an independent medical team, so we can take the state-sponsored "tests" to be more state-sponsored bullshit. That, along with the continued harassment of DTP politicians, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

And remember--these same 54 DTP mayors are still on trial for sending a letter to Danish PM Rasmussen on behalf of RojTV.

THE MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY

"What encourages me is the Internet. Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself."
~ Bill Moyers.

There's a fabulous, must-read interview with the American journalist, Bill Moyers, with The Christian Century, carried on Truthout, on the media and democracy.

Here's a teaser, on Moyers' assessment of the state of the media in the US today:

Unfortunately, a few huge corporations now dominate the media landscape. And the news business is at war with journalism. Virtually everything the average person sees or hears outside of her own personal communications is determined by the interests of private, unaccountable executives and investors whose primary goal is increasing profits and raising the company's share price. One of the best newspaper groups, Knight Ridder - whose reporters were on to the truth about Iraq early on - was recently sold and broken up because a tiny handful of investors wanted more per share than they were getting.

Almost all the networks carried by most cable systems are owned by one of the major media conglomerates. Two-thirds of today's newspaper markets are monopolies, and they're dumbing down. As ownership gets more and more concentrated, fewer and fewer independent sources of information have survived in the marketplace. And those few significant alternatives that do survive, such as PBS and NPR, are under growing financial and political pressure to reduce critical news content.

Just the other day the major morning broadcast devoted long segments to analyzing why Britney Spears shaved her head, and the death of Anna Nicole Smith got more attention than the Americans or Iraqis killed in Baghdad that week. The next time you're at a newsstand, look at the celebrities staring back at you. In-depth coverage on anything, let alone the bleak facts of power and powerlessness that shape the lives of ordinary people, is as scarce as sex, violence and voyeurism are pervasive.

At the same time we have seen the rise of an ideological partisan press that is contemptuous of reality, serves up right-wing propaganda as fact, and attempts to demonize anyone who says otherwise. Its embodiment is Rush Limbaugh. Millions heard him take journalists to task for their reporting on the torture at Abu Ghraib, which he attempted to dismiss as a little necessary sport for soldiers under stress. He said: "This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation. . . . You ever heard of people [who] need to blow some steam off?"

So we can't make the case today that the dominant institutions of the press are guardians of democracy. They actually work to keep reality from us, whether it's the truth of money in politics, the social costs of "free trade," growing inequality, the resegregation of our public schools, or the devastating onward march of environmental deregulation. It's as if we are living on a huge plantation in a story told by the boss man.

What encourages me is the Internet. Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself. The greatest challenge to the conglomeration of the media giants and the malevolent mentality of the partisan press is the innovation and expression made possible by the digital revolution. I'm also buoyed by the beginnings of a movement across the country of people who are fighting to keep mammoth corporations from controlling access to the Internet as they managed to control radio, then television, then cable. To find out more about this, go to Freepress.net or Savetheinternet.com.

Exactly. Brilliant. Sayonara, goat-smelling, egg-sucking mainstream media; you're history.

Read the rest.

For those of you who are concerned about the situation of Kurdish women in Kurdistan, check out the article from the hevals at KurdishInfo on the recent stoning of a teenaged Êzidî girl in Mûsil. Video of this atrocity is available at Jebar.info, while another video is on Youtube.

That's just one more reason to hope for the spread of the women's activist work that PKK is engaged in.