The Media System Goes Global

excerpted from the book

Rich Media, Poor Democracy

by Robert McChesney

The New Press, 1999

p110
... Consumerism, the market, class inequality, and individualism tend to be taken as natural and often benevolent, whereas political activity, civic values, and antimarket activities tend to be marginalized or denounced. This does not portend mind-control or "Big Brother," for it is much more subtle than that... Indeed, the genius of the commercial media system is the general lack of overt censorship. As George Orwell noted in his unpublished introduction to Animal Farm, censorship in free societies is infinitely more sophisticated and thorough than in dictatorships because "unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for an official ban.'' The logical consequence of a commercial media system is less to instill adherence to any ruling powers that be - though that can and does of course happen - than to promote a general belief that politics is unimportant and that there is little hope for organized social change.

As such, the global media system buttresses what could be termed "neoliberal" democracy, that is, the largely vacuous political culture that exists in the formally democratic market-driven nations of the world ... neoliberalism operates not only as an economic system but as a political and cultural system as well. Neoliberalism works best when there is formal electoral democracy, but when the population is diverted from the information, access, and public forums necessary for meaningful participation in decision making. As neoliberal theorist Milton Friedman put it in his seminal Capitalism and Freedom, because profit making is the essence of democracy, any government that pursues antimarket policies is being antidemocratic, no matter how much informed popular support they might enjoy. Therefore it is best to restrict governments to the job of protecting private property and enforcing contracts, and to limit political debate to minor issues. The real matters of resource production and distribution and social organization should be determined by market forces.

Equipped with this peculiar understanding of democracy, neoliberals like Friedman had no qualms over the military overthrow of Chile's democratically elected Allende government in I973, because Allende was interfering with business control of Chilean society. After fifteen years of often brutal and savage dictatorship-all in the name of the free market-formal democracy was restored in I989 with a constitution that made it vastly more difficult, if not impossible, for the citizenry to challenge the business-military domination of Chilean society. That is neoliberal democracy in a nutshell: trivial debate over minor issues by parties that basically pursue the same probusiness policies regardless of formal differences and campaign debate. Democracy is permissible as long as the control of business is off-limits to popular deliberation or change; that is, so long as it isn't democracy.

Neoliberal democracy therefore has an important and necessary by-product - a depoliticized citizenry marked by apathy and cynicism. If electoral democracy affects little of social life, it is irrational to devote much attention to it. The United States provides the preeminent model of "neoliberal" democracy and shows the way for combining a capitalist economy with a largely toothless democratic polity. Sometimes these points are made explicit. Jaime Guzman, principal author of Chile's I980 constitution, believed that private property and investors' rights needed to be off-limits to popular debate or consideration, and he crafted Chile's "democracy" accordingly. Consider Guzman's thoughts. "A democracy can only be stable when in popular elections . . . the essential form of life of a people is not at play, is not at risk," Guzman explained. "In the great democracies of the world, the high levels of electoral abstention do not indicate, as many erroneously interpret them, a supposed distancing of the people from the reigning system." Noninvolvement by the bulk of the population is in fact a healthy development. Guzman concludes that in the best form of capitalist democracy, "if one's adversaries come to power, they are constrained to pursue a course of action not very different than that which one would desire because the set of alternatives that the playing held imposes on those who play on it are sufficiently reduced to render anything else extremely difficult.'

Chile is held up as the greatest neoliberal success story in Latin America, perhaps even the world. As the New York Times put it, Pinochet's coup "began Chile's transformation from a backwater banana republic to the economic star of Latin America." And while there has been strong overall economic growth over the past decade, Chile has also seen a widening of economic inequality such that it ranks seventh worst in a World Bank study of economic stratification in sixty-five nations. But what is the caliber of political and social life in this neoliberal miracle? Prior to the I973 coup, Chile was legendary for the intense politicization of its population, reflected by voter turnouts as high as 95 percent of the adult population. One U.S. researcher found in I970 that Chilean teenagers were among the three least alienated, most optimistic groups of youth on earth. In the I990s Chile is a very different nation. As one observer puts it, "Chile is perhaps the one place on earth where idolatry of the market has most deeply penetrated." In the most recent elections 4I percent of the population either did not vote, defaced their ballots, or left them blank. Voter participation among Chileans under twenty-five was considerably lower. By the canons of neoliberalism, then, Chile is a success both economically and politically.' Chile has seen political life reduced to a placid, tangential spectator sport.

p113
... the global media system plays a[n] explicit role in generating a passive, depoliticized populace that prefers personal consumption to social understanding and activity, a mass more likely to take orders than to make waves. Lacking any necessarily "conspiratorial" intent, and merely following rational market calculations, the media system simply exists to provide light escapist entertainment. In the developing world, where public relations and marketing hyperbole are only beginning to realize their awesome potential, and where the ruling elites are well aware of the need to keep the rabble, in line, the importance of commercial media is sometimes stated quite candidly. In the words of the late Emilio Azcarraga, the billionaire head of Mexico's Televisa: "Mexico is a country of a modest, very fucked class, which will never stop being fucked. Television has the obligation to bring diversion to these people and remove them from their sad reality and difficult future."

The global journalism of the corporate media system reinforces these trends, with devastating implications for the functioning of political democracies... Privately owned press systems historically have been conservative forces, and for logical reasons: they tended to reflect the values of their owners. That bias remains: in I998 Sweden's three largest newspapers, all Swedish-owned, take explicit "free-market" editorial positions, despite the fact that Sweden continues to have significant support for pro-labor, welfare state, and socialist politics.'

But as in the United States, journalism worldwide is deteriorating, as it has become an important profit source for the media giants.' Because investigative journalism or coverage of foreign affairs makes little economic sense, it is discouraged as being too expensive.' On the one hand, there is a relatively sophisticated business news pitched at the upper and upper-middle classes and shaped to their needs and prejudices. CNN International, for example, presents itself as providing advertisers "unrivaled access to reach high-income consumers." But even in "elite" media there is a decline. The Economist noted that in I 898 the first page of a sample copy of the Times of London contained nineteen columns of foreign news, eight columns of domestic news, and three columns on salmon fishing. In I998 a sample copy of the Times, now owned by Rupert Murdoch, had one international story on its front page: an account of actor Leonardo DiCaprio's new girlfriend. "In this information age," the Economist concluded, "the newspapers which used to be full of politics and economics are thick with stars and sport.'' On the other hand, there is an appalling schlock journalism for the masses, based upon lurid tabloid-type stories. For the occasional "serious" story, there is the mindless regurgitation of press releases from one source or another, with the range of debate mostly limited to what is being debated among the elite. "Bad journalism," a British observer concluded in I998, "is a consequence of an unregulated market in which would-be monopolists are free to treat the channels of democratic debate as their private property."

As with entertainment, at times the media giants generate first-rate journalism, but it is a minuscule fraction of their output and often causes just the sort of uproar that media firms prefer to avoid. It is also true that some well-organized social movements and dissident political views can get coverage in the world of commercial journalism, but the playing held is far from level. And, as John Keane noted, "in times of crisis"-meaning when antibusiness social movements gain too much political strength-"market censorship tends to become overt."

Rich Media, Poor Democracy

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