Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media Paperback – January 15, 2002

Thoughtfully researched. Shame on me for not reading this tome twenty years ago when it was first published. So discouraged about the Fourth Estate.

The book excellently explains how Politics and self interests are the prime motivators for most of the big actions in the world

"They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them of their blindness."
(John Milton; from epigraph to Manufacturing Consent).

In 1917, Woodrow Wilson established an independent agency, known variously as the Committee on Public Information (CPI) and the Creel Committee, whose purpose was to control public opinion in the US with an eye towards generating support for the war effort in general and cultivating a deep seated and abiding hatred of everything German in particular. Further, this bias propagating "machine" did not scruple to arouse fear and hatred of German-Americans as well--that was then manifest by the public at large--so effective was it at compelling prejudice via a calculated use of various media, including print and film.

And, although the CPI had been dissolved within two years, the all-important lesson of methodological mind control of the masses was not lost upon those facilitators of media propaganda Wilson had employed, most famously Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays. Lippmann was to develop his ideas related to the establishing of opinion within the rank and file, which collective he deemed to be inherently deficient in participating in that American polity coming into focus in the aftermath of a world war--and amidst a burgeoning labor movement in early twentieth century America, i.e., the worker-collective response to the exploitative industrial age [Wiki].

As Noam Chomsky has remarked, the system of coercion of the masses striving for improved working conditions would now prescind from the overt brutality and blood letting witnessed at Ludlow, Colorado and Lawrence, Massachusetts--which brutality functioning with the connivance of a State attuned to the prerogatives of the investor class, but notably less sensitive to the realities of the "lower classes" struggling in many cases to meet basic needs--in favor of a subtle but nonetheless effective means of monitoring and influencing the "bewildered herd," as the populace was envisioned by elitist social theorists like Lippmann, Bernays, et al. And that now subtle "means" as propaganda-of-choice was defined alternately as--via Lippmann's metric--the "manufacturing of consent" or consent's "engineering" (via Bernays).

In the now-famous scholarly work, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky develop a model used to demonstrate the existence of bias in the media and, specifically, the manufacturing of consent as verity ensuring the socio-political and economic status quo. The model is tested via the five "filters" they have identified, which filters news must acknowledge before emerging in print or other media as "journalism." The filters which inform the "propaganda model" in Manufacturing Consent are explained as:

"(1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and
profit orientation of the dominant mass-media forms; (2)
advertising as the primary income source of the mass media;
(3) the reliance of the media on information provided by the
government, business, and `experts' funded and approved by
these primary sources and agents of power; (4) `flak' as a
means of disciplining the media, and; (5) `anti-communism'
as a national religion and control mechanism" [MC, 2].

They trace the development of print media in Great Britain and the US throughout the nineteenth century as beginning with newspapers disseminating practical information to a nascent working class, papers of relatively modest size and means by today's standards but, more importantly, unhindered in the type of coverage they may furnish to labor. Owing to the more manageable size of readership and, therefore, production outlays, and as the early news resources were not reliant upon advertising revenues to carry the day-to-day operating costs--and, therefore, less restricted in their coverage of non-market oriented information and views--a freer dissemination of the news to that social strata was sustainable.

As industry, commerce, print technology, and populations develop and expand through the nineteenth, and into the early twentieth centuries, however, the operating costs of early news resources becomes more prohibitive, with the eventual outcome being that only large-scale entities, i.e., corporations and conglomerates, can afford to maintain coverage of what is now an increasingly global field of news interest. Further, as news dissemination becomes a more corporatized affair, information resources for labor in America and Great Britain are now found to be virtually non-existent as the development of union organization is at cross purposes with the State-sanctioned corporate agenda and ideal.

I. Industry's quantum leap forward--and the media follow suit...

The first filter of the propaganda model that Chomsky and Herman define argues to the unremitting increase in size of media concerns, implying, therefore, patent corporate control, corporate agenda and, invariably, news bias at large among what amounts to twenty-four or so mass-media conglomerates functioning in the US today. This fact of corporate presence--and, of course, domination--marks the first significant inroads of the business sector and the investor class into a nation's news media.

In addition to the new media-as-industry profile of news outlets there emerges a linking up of government and media via the need for regulation and oversight of this newly-massive venture. As a result, the State establishes its influence upon news content via the need for media licensure and, consequently, the caution exercised to avoid alienating those in charge of both issuing said media charters as well as effecting media oversight.

"Another structural relationship of importance is the media companies' dependence on and ties with government. The radio-TV companies and networks all require government licenses and franchises and are thus potentially subject to government control or harassment. This technical legal dependency has been used as a club to discipline the media, and media policies that stray too often from an establishment orientation could activate this threat. The media protect themselves from this contingency by lobbying and other political expenditures, the cultivation of political relationships, and care in policy" [MC 13].

The "news" being disseminated to the readership rarely, if ever, contradicts the verities of a commerce-driven socio-political order, thus guaranteeing--via a State-endorsed vicious cycle--the maintenance of the status quo in favor of those in possession of capital and, therefore, in "possession" of the political influence needed to sustain their prerogatives as well. Of the influence upon media objectives by investors, major stockholders, and members of the finance community underwriting media affairs, Chomsky and Herman note:

"These holdings, individually and collectively, do not
convey control, but these large investors can make
themselves heard, and their actions can effect the welfare of
the companies and their managers. If the managers fail to
pursue actions that favor shareholder returns, institutional
investors will be inclined to sell the stock (depressing its
price), or to listen sympathetically to outsiders
contemplating takeovers. These investors are a force
helping press media companies toward strictly market
(profitability) objectives" [MC 11-12].

All of the outside influence from the finance and investment collective serves to limit the occasion of dissent from the received, "party" line, i.e., it serves the maintenance of the socio-economic status quo, which influence careful to uphold the prerogatives of privilege and Power, both in the private sector and the precincts of the State, one working in tandem with the other to achieve corporate goals and prevent capital flight.

"...the dominant media firms are quite large businesses; they
are controlled by very wealthy people or by managers who
are subject to sharp constraints by owners and other market-
profit-oriented forces; and they are closely interlocked, and
have important common interests, with other major
corporations, banks, and government" [MC 14].

II. Advertising revenues and the marketing of a readership...

The second filter of the propaganda model refers to the rise of a news media underwritten solely by advertising dollars--as opposed to, e.g., the prevalence of left-leaning news resources of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries functioning entirely on copy circulation sales as income, with the income derived from the per-issue price covering both production costs and profit. The point to be considered, though, is that advertising is not a benign presence merely underwriting the day-to-day operating costs of the news outlet without material effect upon the news content at large. That is, the media's reliance upon advertisers for their financial well-being translates into content stress, i.e., market priorities precede those of the news-buying public.

"With advertising, the free market does not yield a neutral system in which final buyer choice decides. The advertisers' choices influence media prosperity and survival" [MC 14].

There inheres now a disseminating of news designed to attract the massive advertising revenues needed to prevail in the highly-competitive media market. The idea stressed, though, is that news media now must "sell" a readership to advertisers marketing goods and services--i.e., "sell" readers as potential consumers--with the Power-based initiative of commerce and investment all but displacing the realities of dissident journalism, and, in turn, labor and its pressing concerns--which concerns perennially contradicting those of the investor class and the business sector, i.e., a "nuisance" to be kept in check.

With the advent of advertising revenues, therefore, the per-issue price of newspapers is reduced--offered below cost--thus eroding the market share of those outlets without advertising who must sell at a much higher per-issue price in order to function, much less compete. The result is the decline and eventual displacing of media outlets serving the labor force, leaving the finance and market-biased media as the only news resource to the community. Chomsky and Herman:

"From the time of the introduction of press advertising,
therefore, working-class and radical papers have been at a
serious disadvantage. Their readers have tended to be of
modest means, a factor that has always affected advertiser
interest. One advertising executive stated in 1856 that some
journals are poor vehicles because, `their readers are not
purchasers, and any money spent on them is so much thrown
away'" [MC 15].

Yet, they note, although market-biased news outlets will tend towards a readership equally inclined towards market interests, investment, and commerce, "they easily pick up a large part of the `down-scale' audience, and their rivals lose market share and are eventually driven out or marginalized" [MC 14-15].

Then, too, the news outlet--i.e., print or other media-will cater to the commercial interests and political leanings of the advertisers by promoting consumerism while declining news critical of, e.g., the corporation as adversary of American labor, or the State as corporate functionary via campaign funding and K Street liberality. The program content of network media reflects those interests even as it avoids content analyzing, e.g., corporate malfeasance, the drive to defeat the EFCA bill, or the channeling of taxpayer dollars to financial interests "too big to fail"--which dollars, an alternative news outlet would argue, might be spent to develop jobs and improve social services for the elderly and other less economically advantaged groups.

"Advertisers will want, more generally, to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the `buying mood.' They seek programs that will lightly entertain and thus fit in with the spirit of the primary purpose of program purchases--the dissemination of a selling message" [MC 17-18].

Further, those news outlets who fail to garner their share of the advertising market owing to, e.g., a readership known by advertisers as economically disadvantaged--and, therefore, not "viable"--will be displaced by its market-biased competitors, with the upshot being that labor now lacks a media outlet favorable to their cause. Citing the research of media analyst James Curran regarding the failure of three newspapers favorable to a working class and its concerns in London, Chomsky and Herman note conclusions similar to their own, arguing:

"...the loss of these three papers was an important contribution to the declining fortunes of the Labour Party, in the case of the Herald specifically removing a mass-circulation institution that provided `an alternate framework of analysis and understanding that contested the dominant systems of representation in both broadcasting and the mainstream press.' A mass movement without any major media support, and subject to a great deal of active press hostility, suffers a serious disability, and struggles against grave odds" [MC 15-16].

III. Mutuality and influence: the media industry and the news-source bureaucracies

The third filter informing the propaganda model as analytical tool is the necessity of a consistently credible--by corporate media standards--source of information distributed as news by the mass media outlets, i.e., "the reliance of the media on information provided by the government, business, and `experts' funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power."

Chomsky and Herman note the extensive news vacuum which media outlets must now fill in order to sustain both the industry as consistent source of news and--more to the point--its advertiser-revenue flows, on a day-to-day basis. The commerce-driven proliferation of news as exchange value commodity is manifest in the now cumbrous mass media, whose needs will be met via repetition of the received view, with said view shored up by the acquiring of "experts"--e.g., academics who proffer their credentials as "verification" of their argument to the news-buying public and are compensated, in exchange, by the corporate media outlets.

"The relation between power and sourcing extends beyond official and corporate provision of day-to-day news to shaping the supply of `experts.' The dominance of official sources is weakened by the existence of highly respectable unofficial sources that give dissident views with great authority. This problem is alleviated by `co-opting the experts'--i.e., putting them on the payroll as consultants, funding their research, and organizing think tanks that will hire them directly and help disseminate their messages. In this way bias may be structured, and the supply of experts may be skewed in the direction desired by the government and `the market'" [MC 23].

The ready supply of processed spin is to be found within both the State and corporate regimes, those bureaucracies providing the daily fodder with which the corporate media outlets fill out their printed matter and evening-news time slots. The unremitting exchange of "news" as commodity has a convenient resource in the State and corporate regimes equally intent upon serving the prerogatives of the investor class as well as hindering dissent and limiting the occasion of meaningful social reform.

"In effect, the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access by their contribution to reducing the media's costs of acquiring the raw materials of, and producing, news. The large entities that provide this subsidy become `routine' news sources and have privileged access to the gates. Non-routine sources must struggle for access, and may be ignored by the arbitrary decision of the gatekeepers" [MC 22].

The policy of what one media executive referred to as the need for "concision" in the relaying of news, i.e., a brief retelling of the received view as party line with minimal deviation from the preferred program is also standard procedure within the mainstream media, and this is particularly the case with network "journalism." Alternative assessments require substantiated data and facts to support dissent and criticism of the party line, which policy of concision conveniently disallowing that necessary additional time allotment. The outcome is predictable and approved, by both advertiser and news outlet, and the policy is strictly observed in the service of the market agenda.

IV. Right-wing antagonists: a State/corporate bludgeon...

The fourth filter refers to the existence of agencies funded by the corporate regime whose purpose is to criticise, censure and otherwise attack the media for any perceived lapse in adhering to the received, politically correct view as defined by the corporate regime, i.e., "`flak' as a means of disciplining the media." Said agencies exist in tandem to the State's censure of "lapses" by a media occasionally critical of, e.g., faulty policy or legislation pursued for reasons of lobby influence versus ethical necessity.

One such agency, Accuracy in Media (AIM) is typical of the aggregate right-wing edifice of control of the media via large infusions of funds from those whose interests are being secured from criticism--and even analysis--when said examination may serve to cast the enterprise in a less than favorable light. Chomsky and Herman:

"AIM was formed in 1969 , and it grew spectacularly in the seventies. Its annual income rose from $5,000 in 1971 to $1.5 million in the early 1980s, with funding mainly from large corporations and the wealthy heirs and foundations of the corporate system. At least eight separate oil companies were contributors to AIM in the early 1980s, but the wide representation in sponsors from the corporate community is impressive. The function of AIM is to harass the media and put pressure on them to follow the corporate agenda and a hard-line, right-wing foreign policy....It conditions the media to expect trouble (and cost increases) for violating right-wing standards of bias" [MC 27-28).

The fall-out occasioned by these attacks from the right may be manifest in litigation, propaganda against the offending media outlet, or withdrawal of advertising revenues, all costly deterrents to any perceived departure from the mainstream media's assigned role of defending investor-class privilege and entitlements, whether in the press or network news outlets.

V. News taboo: the ideological line that is not crossed

The fifth propaganda model filter pertains to the anti-communism mindset as secular religion in the US. With the demise of the Soviet Union, however, that "religion" is now practiced as merely another ideological bias, i.e., an unquestioned belief in "the System," that being the virtually sacrosanct place in the US of capitalism and business as "the American Way." And, Chomsky and Herman note, "Journalism has internalized this ideology."

And, to sustain the analogy, just as communism was perceived to be a haunting dynamic and ideology throughout Europe in Marx's nineteenth century and manifest in the October Revolution and the left-of-center labor activism in Europe and the US---i.e., an unremitting drive to deliver the workers of the world from thrall to industry---so, too, is capitalism and the market economy seen as inevitable and the prevailing "spirit" informing the market's version of democracy---quote-unquote. It is the fifth filter through which news in the US is refracted, the not-to-be-questioned reality informing Empire. Or, as Coolidge avowed, "the business of America is business," i.e., the generating of capital is what we are about.

As those who espoused labor activism as a means to achieve worker's rights were once stigmatized as being un-American, so, too, are those who question the free-market ideology of, e.g., Alan Greenspan---or, latterly, Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner---seen to be un-American adherents of, e.g., Socialism, or, more radically, libertarian socialists as virtual enemies of the State, a view fostered by the market-biased media with few exceptions. Chomsky and Herman:

"A final filter is the ideology of anticommunism. Communism as the ultimate evil has always been the specter haunting property owners, as it threatens the very root of their class position and superior status. The Soviet, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were traumas to Western elites, and the ongoing conflicts and the well-publicized abuses of Communist states have contributed to elevating opposition to communism to a first principle of Western ideology and politics. This ideology helps mobilize the populace against an enemy, AND BECAUSE THE CONCEPT IS FUZZY IT CAN BE USED AGAINST ANYBODY ADVOCATING POLICIES THAT THREATEN PROPERTY INTERESTS....It therefore helps fragment the left and labor movements and serves as a political control mechanism" [MC 29; stress added].

Therefore, and even though the Red scare of the fifties has all but been dismissed, with, e.g., the fall of the Berlin wall, there persists a line in the media establishment beyond which corporate news outlets are not fain to cross, i.e., a left-of-center éminence grise is assumed present and threatening to subvert the values held inviolable by those interests the media is to safeguard. Whether that threat is labor activism contending for fair wages yet perceived as a nuisance to the reified market and investor class, or a political activist in the Dominican Republic working to establish a participatory democracy--in contradiction, e.g., to the wishes of policy makers in DC unnerved by the possibility of a functioning democracy in its proximate sphere of influence--the media filter takes precedence over unbiased coverage of those events of the day.

Coda: the lessons of the Creel Committee

Chomsky and Herman delineate with meticulous and thoroughgoing research the bias present in the mainstream media, and the effect of this predisposition to favor and sustain market and investor-class interests upon those groups kept out of view because their issues, concerns, and needs inconveniently contradict the status quo of wealth and privilege. As the Creel Committee was established to galvanize opinion and "manage consent" during a time of war, so, too, is there a perceived need to manage the consent of the "bewildered herd" in this ongoing class war between, on the one side, the investor, entrepreneurial, and finance regimes, and in contradistinction to privilege and its entitlements, American labor, its workers and families.

Learned a lot from this classic. The denatured, mainstream media serve the rich and powerful first and foremost and the masses second, if the masses are even in on the charade at all, which is extremely rare and not intended by the design.

If people went into issues this deeply it would be impossible to have the politicians we have.
But who wants an engaged populace ?

Very thickly written book. The insights have shaped my world perspective, but Herman / Chomsky do little to make these insights accessible to the reader. The book seems to belabor its points, and works harder than it needs to in order to prove its assertions to the casual reader. Perhaps this book would be better appreciated by a more hard core academic.

LOVE

This is nothing like the conspiracy theory some people always accuse the righteous people of doing. The book is convincing and is highly detailed in its argument and scholarship. Taking on the powerful and their abuses is not something Mr. Chomsky shies away from.