Manufacturing Consent_ The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman [295]
12. For classic accounts, see Warren Breed, “Social Control in the Newsrooms: A Functional Analysis,” Social Forces (May 1955), pp. 326–35; Gaye Tuchman, “Objectivity as Strategic Ritual,” American Journal of Sociology (January 1972), pp. 660–70. For a useful application, see Jim Sibbison, “Environmental Reporters: Prisoners of Gullibility,” Washington Monthly (March 1984), pp. 27–35.
13. See Chomsky, in Z magazine (March 1988), for discussion of these tendencies.
14. For evidence on these matters, see the specific examples discussed above and, for a broader picture, Chomsky, Culture of Terrorism, and sources cited.
15. The Cable Franchise and Telecommunications Act of 1984 allows cities to require public-access channels, but it permits cable operators to direct these channels to other uses if they are not well utilized. Thus nonuse may provide the basis for an elimination of public access.
16. On the differences between commercial and public television during the Vietnam War years, see Eric Barnouw, The Sponsor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 62–65.
17. See the programs spelled out for Great Britain in James Curran, Jake Ecclestone, Giles Oakley, and Alan Richardson, eds., Bending Reality: The State of the Media (London: Pluto Press, 1986).
AFTERWORD TO THE 2008 EDITION
1. See Nick Davies, Flat Earth News (London: Chatto & Windus, 2008); Bob Franklin, Packaging Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Aeron Davis, Public Relations Democracy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002); David Miller and William Dinan, A Century of Spin: How Public Relations Became the Cutting Edge of Corporate Power (London: Pluto, 2008); David Edwards and David Cromwell, Guardians of Power (London: Pluto, 2006); Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit (London: Vintage, 2003).
2. According to Ben Bagdikian, the top five media corporations have 143 joint ventures that tie them together; see his The New Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), p. 9.
3. Ibid., chaps. 1–2; Robert W. McChesney, The Political Economy of Media (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008), chaps. 11 and 18.
4. McChesney, chap. 9.
5. Ibid., Bagdikian; see also John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney, Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (New York: The New Press, 2005); and W. Lance Bennett et al., When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
6. Edward N. Wolff, “Recent Trends in Household Wealth in the United States: Rising Debt and the Middle-Class Squeeze,” Working Paper No. 502, The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, June, 2007, Table 4, “Mean Wealth Holdings and Income by Wealth or Income Class, 1983–2004,” p. 15.
7. Across a whole range of serious issues in the United States, the public is at odds with the policies adopted by elected representatives in their name. See the surveys taken by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (http://www.pipa.org/) over a number of years, including: “The Federal Budget: The Public’s Priorities,” March 7, 2005; “Americans on International Courts and Their Jurisdiction over the US,” May 11, 2006; “A Majority of Americans Reject Threats in Favor of Diplomacy with Iran,” December 7, 2006; “Americans Strongly Support UN in Principle, Despite Reservations about Performance,” May 9, 2007; “Americans and Russians on Nuclear Weapons and the Future of Disarmament,” November 9, 2007; “Americans and Russians on Space Weapons,” January 24, 2008; and “American Public Says Government Leaders Should Pay Attention