Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [216]
The public is exposed to powerful persuasive messages from above and is unable to communicate meaningfully through the media in response to these messages . . . Leaders have usurped enormous amounts of political power and reduced popular control over the political system by using the media to generate support, compliance, and just plain confusion among the public.9
More significantly for our particular concerns here, the media typically provide their own independent contribution even without being “used,” in the manner and for the reasons that we have discussed. Another media analyst, Ben Bagdikian, observes that the institutional bias of the private mass media “does not merely protect the corporate system. It robs the public of a chance to understand the real world.”10 That conclusion is well supported by the evidence we have reviewed.
A propaganda model has a certain initial plausibility on guided free-market assumptions that are not particularly controversial. In essence, the private media are major corporations selling a product (readers and audiences) to other businesses (advertisers). The national media typically target and serve elite opinion, groups that, on the one hand, provide an optimal “profile” for advertising purposes, and, on the other, play a role in decision-making in the private and public spheres. The national media would be failing to meet their elite audience’s needs if they did not present a tolerably realistic portrayal of the world. But their “societal purpose” also requires that the media’s interpretation of the world reflect the interests and concerns of the sellers, the buyers, and the governmental and private institutions dominated by these groups.
A propaganda model also helps us to understand how media personnel adapt, and are adapted, to systemic demands. Given the imperatives of corporate organization and the workings of the various filters, conformity to the needs and interests of privileged sectors is essential to success. In the media, as in other major institutions, those who do not display the requisite values and perspectives will be regarded as “irresponsible,” “ideological,” or otherwise aberrant, and will tend to fall by the wayside. While there may be a small number of exceptions, the pattern is pervasive, and expected. Those who adapt, perhaps quite honestly, will then be free to express themselves with little managerial control, and they will be able to assert, accurately, that they perceive no pressures to conform. The media are indeed free—for those who adopt the principles required for their “societal purpose.” There may be some who are simply corrupt, and who serve as “errand boys” for state and other authority, but this is not the norm.11 We know from personal experience that many journalists are quite aware of the way the system operates, and utilize the occasional openings it affords to provide information and analysis that departs in some measure from the elite consensus, carefully shaping it so as to accommodate to required norms in a general way. But this degree of insight is surely not common. Rather, the norm is a belief that freedom prevails, which is true for those who have internalized the required values and perspectives.
These matters are of some importance. We can readily understand why Guatemalan reporters do not report the atrocities of the 1980s; some fifty corpses dramatically illustrate the costs of deviance from authority on the part of independent journalists. To explain why American reporters avoid such topics, and even go so far as to describe Guatemala as a model for Nicaragua (see p. 107), requires further explanation, and the same is true in innumerable other similar cases, some of which we have analyzed in detail. A propaganda model provides a basis for understanding this pervasive phenomenon.
No simple model will suffice, however, to account for every detail of such a complex matter as the working of the national mass media. A propaganda model, we believe, captures essential features of the process, but it