Arts/Media Repression and media’s selective outrage By EDWARD S. HERMAN and NOAM CHOMSKY It is a primary function of the mass media in the United States to mobilize public sup- port for the special interests that dominate the government and the private sector. This is our conclusion after years of stud- ying the media. Leaders of the media claim that their news judgments rest on unbiased, objective criteria. We contend on the other hand, that the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, decide what the gen- eral populace will be allowed to see, hear and think about, and “manage” public opinion by mounting regular propaganda campaigns. We do not claim this is all the mass media do, but we believe the propaganda function to bea very important aspect of their overall service. The censorship practiced within the media is largely self-censorship, by repor- ters and commentators who adjust to the “realities” as they perceive them. But there are important actors who do take positive ini- tiatives to define and shape the news and to keep the media in line. This kind of gui- dance is provided by the government, the leaders of the corporate community, the top media owners and executives, and assorted individuals and groups who are allowed to take the initiatives. Consider the coverage from ,and about Nicaragua. The mass media rarely present materials suggesting that Nicaragua is more democratic than El Salvador and Guatem- ala; that its government does not murder ordinary citizens, as the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala do on a routine basis; and that it has carried out socio- economic reforms important to the major- ity that the other two governments somehow cannot attempt. Nor do the mass media usually present materials suggesting that Nicaragua poses no military threat to its neighbours but has, in fact, been subjected to continuous attacks by the United States and its clients and surrogates, and that the U.S. fear of the Nicaraguan government is based more on its Virtues than on its alleged defects. \ ~~ 9 : iI NICARAGUA’S PRESIDENT DANIEL ORTEGA ADDRESSES DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION SYMPOSIUM IN MANAGUA, JULY 17, 1989 ... unlike U.S. client states El Salvador and Guatemala, Nicaragua does not murder its own citizens. Although the United States-supported elite has ruled and organized terror in Guatemala for decades; actually subverted or approved the subversion of democracy in Brazil, Chile and the Philippines; is now “constructively engaged,” with terror regimes around the world, and had no con- cern about the democracy in Nicaragua so long as the brutal Somoza regime was firmly in power, the media take USS. government claims of a concern for ““demo- cracy” in Nicaragua at face value. In contrast, El Salvador and Guatemala, with far worse records, are presented as struggling toward democracy under “mod- erate” leaders, thus meriting sympathetic approval. A constant focus of the victims of com- munism helps persuade the public that the enemy is evil, while setting the stage for intervention, subversion support for terror- ist regimes, an endless arms race and instant military conflict — all in a noble cause. At the same time, the devotion of our leaders — and our media — to this nar- row set of victims raises public patriotism and self-esteem, demonstrating the essential humanity of our nation and our people. Soviet films at festival The Vancouver International Film Festival features, as it does every year about this time, several entries from the Soviet Union and other East European countries. USSR entries still to be shown include Coma and Sedov: Counsel for the Defence (Oct. 13, 7 p.m. and Oct. 14, 10 a.m. at The Cinematheque); The Needle (Oct. 11 at noon, Vancouver East Cinema); The Power of Solovki (Oct. 11, 9:30 p.m., Hollywood Theatre). : Meanwhile, from Hungary there’s Stand Off (Oct. 11, 10 p.m., The Cinema- theque), and a Canadian-Hungarian co-production, Bye Bye Red Riding Hood (Oct. 14, 2 p.m., Vancouver East Cinema). * Ow * An exhibition of resistance poster art from South Africa is on display at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre Gallery until Oct. 29. Entitled, “Too many people suffering,” it features mainly silk screen posters reproduced by the Silk Screen Training Project launched in 1983 with aid from CUSO. The display is part of Arts in Action’s international exhibition collectively called “Fear of Others/Arts Against Racism.” The gallery is open from 12 noon to 6 p.m. daily, and to patrons attending evening events at the centre. . * * * British musical innovator and veteran of the folk scene since the early Sixties, Bert Jansch, appears at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre on Sunday, Oct. 22, 8 p.m. Tickets for the event, sponsored by the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, are $12, phone 254-9578. ae TV Talk: Knowledge Network presents Queen Charlottes: Islands in the Web of Life on Sunday, Oct. 22, 7 p.m.; Reckoning: In Bed with an Elephant, on Canada-U:S. relations, Monday, Oct. 23, 8 p.m.; Reid About the USSR: Shaking off the Past, about British columnist’s Jimmy Reid’s visit to the Soviet Union after 35 years, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 8 p.m.; The Movie Life of George, concerning ex-Beatle George Harrison’s company, HandMade Films, Friday, Oct. 27, 8 p.m. KCTS public television in Seattle presents The Show Boat Story, about the popular American musical credited with breaking through racial and sexual taboos (Paul Robeson sang and acted in the 1930s film version), on Sunday, Oct. 22, 9 p.m. for one hour. ; 10 e Pacific Tribune, October 9, 1989 ‘- % The public does not notice media silence about victims of American’s client states, which is as important as media’s concentra- tion on victims of America’s enemies. It would have been difficult for the Guatema- lan government to murder tens of thou- sands over the past decade if the U.S. had provided the kind of coverage it gave to the difficulties of Andre Sakharov in the Soviet Union or the murder of Jerzy Popieluszko in Poland. It would have been impossible to wage a brutal war against South Vietnam and the rest of Indochina, leaving a legacy of misery and destruction that many never be over- come, if the media had not rallied to the cause, portraying murderous aggression as . a defence of freedom. Propaganda campaigns may be insti- tuted either by the government or by one or more of the top media firms. The cam- paigns to discredit the government of Nica- ragua, to support the Salvadoran elections as an exercise in legitimizing democracy, and to sue the Soviet shooting down of the Korean airlines KAL 007 as a means of mobilizing support for the arms buildup were instituted and propelled by the government. The mass media in the United States are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information of eco- nomic necessity and reciprocity of interest. The media need a steady, reliable flow of the . Taw material of news. They have daily news demands and imperative news schedules. The White House, the Pentagon and the State Department are central nodes of new activity at the national level. On a local basis, city hall and the police department are regular news beats for reporters. Corpo- rations and trade groups are also regular and credible purveyors of stories deemed newsworthy. The Pentagon, for example, has a public information service that involves many thousands of employees spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year and dwarf- ing not only the public-information resour- ces of an dissenting individual or group, but also the aggregate of all dissenters. During a brief interlude of relative open- ness in 1970 and 1980, the U.S. Air Force revealed that its public information out- reach included 140 newspapers with a weekly total circulation of 690,000; Airman ~ magazine with a monthly circulation of 125,000; 34 radio and 17 television stations, primarily overseas; 45,000 headquarters and unit news releases’: 615,500 hometown news releases; 6,600 news media interviews; 3,200 news conferences; 500 news media orientation flights; 50 meetings with editor- ial boards; and 11,000 speeches. Note that this is just the Air Force. In 1982, Air Force Journal International indicated that the Pentagon was publishing 1,203 periodicals. Only the corporate sector has the resour- ces to produce public information and pro- paganda on the scale of the Pentagon and other government bodies. In effect, the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and thereby gain special access. They become routine news sources, while non-routine sources must struggle for access and may be ignored. The media may feel obligated to carry extremely dubious stories, or to mute criti- cism to avoid offending sources and disturb- ing a close relationship. Powerful sources may also use their prestige and importance as a lever to deny critics access to the media. The Defence Department, for example, refused to participate in discussion of mil- itary issues on national public radio if experts from the Centre for Defence Infor- mation were invited to appear on the same program. Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams would not appear on a Harvard University program dealing with human rights in Central America unless former Ambassador Robert White were excluded. Claire Sterling, a principal propagandist for the “Bulgarian connection” to the plot to assassinate the Pope, refused to take part in television programs on which her critics would appear. The chronic focus on the plight of Soviet dissidents, on enemy killings in Cambodia and the Bulgarian Connection helped weaken the Vietnam Syndrome, and justify a huge arms buildup and a more aggressive foreign policy. The recent propaganda attacks on Nicaragua have averted eyes from the savagery of the war in El Salvador and helped justify the escalating U.S. investment in counterrevolution in Central America. Conversely, propaganda campaigns are not mobilized where coverage of victimiza- tion, though it may be massive, sustained and dramatic, fails to serve the interests of the elite. Attention to the Indonesian massacres of 1965-66, or the victims of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor since 1975, would also be distinctly unhelpful as bases of media campaigning, because Indonesia is a USS. ally and client that maintains an open door to western investment. The same is true of the victims of state terror in Chile and Guatemala — U.S. clients whose basic institutional structures, including the state terror system, were put in place by, or with crucial assistance from the United States. No propaganda campaigns are mounted in the mass media on behalf of such victims. To publicize their plight would, after all, conflict with the interests of the wealthy and powerful. Edward S. Herman is professor of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. Noam Chomsky is a professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This article is excerpted from their book, Manufacturing Consent: The Pol- - itical Economy of the Mass Media. Reprinted from the Democratic Journalist.