The Role of the Mass Media
excerpted from the book
The Real Terror Network
by Edward S. Herman
South End Press
Introduction
The mass media of the United States are a part of the 4 national
power structure and they therefore reflect its biases and a, mobilize
popular opinion to serve its interests. This is not accomplished
by any conspiratorial plotting or explicit censorship-it is built
into the structure of the system, and flows naturally and easily
from the assorted ownership, sponsor, governmental and other interest
group pressures that set limits within which media personnel can
operate, and from the nature of the sources on which the media
depend for their steady flow of news.(As we have seen) these interest
groups find the National Security State (NSS) good, and this preference
underlies U.S. sponsorship and support of this terror network.
We would therefore expect the mass media to treat the NSS kindly
and deflect attention from its abuses. Any other route would be
very surprising as the "national interest" itself has
long been defined by the very forces that cause the country to
support the NSS.
If we examine the larger patterns of selection by the mass
media, one of its most notable characteristics is stress on "enemy"
misbehavior and problems and a corresponding de-emphasis of misbehavior
and problems of "friends." Terror abroad can be classified
roughly but usefully as constructive, benign and nefarious. Constructive
terror is defined as that which positively serves important domestic
interests; benign terror is that which is of little direct interest
to the U.S. elite but may sometimes serve the interests of a friendly
client; and nefarious terror is that committed by enemy states
(or by bearers of hostile ideologies).
Constructive terror would include the holocaust in Indonesia
in 1965-1966 and the large scale political murders in Chile in
1973-1974, where the terror in both instances decimated a political
opposition deemed threatening to U.S. and western interests, and
was quickly followed by an opening of the door to relatively free
western economic penetration. In such cases, where business and
government like the political outcome, and in fact make notable
contributions to the origination and implementation of the terror,'
the mass media play down the violence irrespective of its level.
Reports on the scope and character of the terror are few and antiseptic,
details of the human suffering involved are sparse, indignation
and rage at the human agony are rare, and no sustained campaign
of daily information or appeals for intervention is mounted. Government
attitudes range from mild expressions of regret at the alleged
excesses, interspersed with a hard-headed recognition of the (implicitly)
just grievances that led to the violence, (communist provocations
and threats), to even more explicit apologetics. Thus, Robert
McNamara, the U. S. Secretary of Defense at the time of the 1965-
1966 Indonesian coup and massacre of an estimated 500,000-1,000,000
people, described these events as a "dividend" showing
that our military aid and training there "was well justified."
James Reston of the New York Times wrote of "A Gleam of Light"
rising in Indonesia as a result of "developments" in
process there. It is worth noting and reflecting on the fact that
the numbers slaughtered in cold blood in Indonesia in 1965-1966
exceed by a substantial factor any official U.S. or scholarly
estimate of numbers deliberately killed in Cambodia by the Khmer
Rouge. As regards the Chilean massacres of 1973-1974, probably
in excess of 20,000, William Colby, then CIA head and formerly
manager of a national system of death squads in South Vietnam,
explained to a Congressional committee in late 1973 that the ongoing
mass murder by the Chilean junta was a "good" thing,
as it was "rooting out Marxist influence" and reducing
the possibility of a civil war which might otherwise have taken
place.
Benign terror is well exemplified by the Indonesian invasion
and occupation of East Timor from 1975 up to the present time.
As Indonesia is a friendly client, its aggression in East Timor
aroused negligible interest in the west (with the exception of
neighboring Australia), because the health and welfare of the
Indonesian NSS was important to western interests (notably those
of the United States and Japan), whereas East Timor was otherwise
of little concern. The Indonesian invasion was a blatant act of
aggression that resulted in the deaths of somewhere between 100,000
and 200,000 victims. U. S. arms were extensively employed in this
invasion and occupation, in violation of U.S. law, but U.S. officials,
including Presidents Ford and Carter, Vice President Mondale,
and Secretary of State Kissinger, colluded with the Indonesian
generals in playing down the aggression, its illegalities and
its savagery. In fact, during the Carter years 1977-1978 arms
flows to Indonesia were sharply increased, facilitating the huge
massacres of that period. It has been shown in detail elsewhere
that, given western support of the Indonesian NSS, and thus the
"benign" character of the terror brought to East Timor
by the Indonesian military, this quite brutal and illegal state
terrorism was off-the-agenda for the western mass media. And just
as the media played down this terror, similarly, any explanations
and questions about the selective suppression were also duly suppressed!
In sharp, even startling, contrast with western media silence
on the events in East Timor was the attention given to Cambodia.
There undoubtedly was a holocaust in Cambodia during the same
period in which Indonesia was invading and attempting to subjugate
East Timor, with many thousands executed and a great many more
dying of disease and starvation. A question that western patriots
hate to confront, however, is: why the immense attention to the
Cambodian violence and the virtually total suppression of discussion
of the Indonesian violence in East Timor? It should be noted that
the indignation over Cambodia had no practical significance for
the victims, as events in that country were beyond western influence
after April 1975, and no useful suggestions for alleviating Cambodian
misery were even put forward; whereas, in contrast, East Timorese
deaths were being carried out in the U.S. sphere of influence,
with U.S. weapons, and therefore under circumstances where western
indignation and pressure might have had an impact. (It may also
be asked, similarly, how we reconcile the outpouring of compassion
and indignation over Cambodia and the placidity and apologetics
about dividends and the gleam of new light in reference to the
even larger massacre in Indonesia in 1965- 1966?) Patriots react
negatively to a focus on this selectivity of concern because it
obviously compromises the idea that western benevolence is pure-or
perhaps even real-and suggests essentially political definitions
of worthy victims, and a large measure of hypocrisy. Precisely.
This is not to imply that many individuals concerned about Cambodian
violence were not sincere and honorable. What happens, however,
is that the more powerful forces in the system succeed in mobilizing
human decency in a highly selective and politically skewed manner.
Sometimes decent things are done for those selected as worthy
victims. But victims of benign terror (East Timorese) or constructive
terror (500,000 or more Indonesians, 20,000 or more Chileans,
many millions of dispossessed and abused peasants in Brazil, Chile,
Paraguay, Indonesia and the Philippines) are frozen out of this
system of channeled benevolence.
*****
Western "ignorance" about East Timor can hardly
be advanced as a serious explanation of non-concern-this differential
knowledgeability is precisely what has to be explained. Cambodia
is a very remote and small country, and U.S. citizens could have
been allowed to remain in ignorance of the sequel of events there
(as they have about events in, say, Burma, or Thailand since 1975).
What is more, media attention to East Timor was not negligible
in 1974-1975, during the period of Portuguese withdrawal, when
the fate of Timor was of some interest to the west. East Timor
became "remote" after the Indonesian invasion, and western
media coverage was inversely related to the extent of the Indonesian
massacre.
It is clear, then, that if the Readers Digest, Time, the New
York Times, the U.S. government, or important businessmen in the
United States had concluded that the Indonesian invasion of East
Timor was detrimental to U.S. interests, or that political capital
could be extracted from focusing on its victims, the U.S. public
would have become quickly "knowledgeable." But the important
power interests in the United States, including multinational
investors and the military-security complex, were closely tied
to the Indonesian invaders, and there was certainly no political
advantage to be gained from focusing on the abuses of a NSS. U.S.
policy, in fact, was supportive of the invasion and the massacre,
both in the U.N. and via arms transfers (provided in violation
of U.S. and international law). The mass media saw things in the
same light, and decided to "lay off." This was helped
along by the fact that primary government sources also clammed
up, provided no news, and were obviously interested in coverup-which
ensued.
*****
... what the general public knows and is interested in is
managed. A small elite sets the agenda for discussion, and while
there are limits on its ability to make people think in a certain
way, through the mass media it is "stunningly successful
in telling [the public]...what to think about."" The
U.S. people knew about and were interested in Cambodian atrocities
because the mass media latched on to Cambodian violence and made
it familiar ground (although the level of distortion was extraordinarily
high). They are able to prove the evils of Communism by focusing
attention on negative events in Poland, and by simultaneously
"blacking out" the facts on the literal murder of hundreds
of trade union leaders and permanent martial law of varying levels
of intensity in more than a score of western client states. This
is a system of self-fulfilling "news interest management"
in which constructive and benign terror are never allowed to become
the subject of intense scrutiny and concern.
As the NSS has come into being and is protected and supported
by the economic and political elite that defines the national
interest, its ugly proclivities produce "dividends"
and are "constructive." As was the case with the huge
bloodbath in Indonesia, therefore, the mass media of the United
States will not characterize its organizers as madmen, mass murderers
and terrorists. By one route or other the Suhartos, Pinochets,
Stroessners and their NSS colleagues and operatives will be protected.
...
*****
The Mass Media as Protectors of the Real Terror Network
Bias is built-in by a number of basic structural facts. One
is the close relationship and literal overlap between the leaders
of I the mass media and the businessmen and officials who like
the NSS. The dozen or so top level mass media enterprises that
have real clout ~ 2 are all large, profit-seeking businesses,
with boards of directors that interlock with the rest of the business
community. Most of them have diversified out of single media operations,
some of them out of exclusive media activity, so that they are
generally business conglomerates. Some of them are in the defense
business (most notably, RCA, the parent of NBC), and a number
have substantial foreign interests that make them dependent on
the goodwill of host governments. The second tier of mass media
enterprises includes even more diversified, defense-oriented and
multinational enterprises-most significantly Westinghouse, General
Electric, Avco and Kaiser Industries. This commonality of corporate
purpose, structure of interlocks, and geographic and product divers)fication
make it likely that the mass media leaders will have the same
values and the same vision of the national interest as the general
community of large corporations. Eric Barnouw goes farther in
his survey of TV, the most powerful of all media forms.
The symbiotic growth of American television and global enterprise
has made them so interrelated that they cannot be thought of as
separate. They are essentially the same phenomenon. Preceded far
and wide by military advisers, lobbyists, equipment salesmen,
advertising specialists, merchandising experts, and telefilm salesmen
as advance agents, the enterprise penetrates much of the non-socialist
world. Television is simply its most visible portion.
A second structural fact is the importance of the sponsor.
The mass media depend heavily on advertising, which produces well
over 50% of their gross revenue. Advertisers are mainly business
firms, although the NSS governments also advertise fairly heavily
with large ads and supplements in newspapers like the New York
Times and Wall Street Journal and business-oriented publications
like Business Week. The general interest and even the specific
interests of these advertisers are likely to have an impact on
mass media selection processes. Thus, during ITTs time of troubles
in the early 1970s, sponsorship of its Big Blue Marble program
on TV led to a significant drop-off in mention of ITT on TV news
programs. Far more important, however, is the general effect of
sponsorship as the prime source of TV revenue-the need to produce
programs that will not seriously offend sponsors, and the mutual
interest of network and sponsor in providing an environment congenial
to selling advertised goods. CBS president Frank Stanton explained
in 1960 that "Since we are advertiser-supported we must take
into account the general objectives and desires of advertisers
as a whole. Barnouw gives persuasive evidence that the sponsor
exercises a huge influence on TV programming.
Their influence over it is spearheaded by "commercials"-the
"focal point of creative effort"; protected by "entertainment"
designed to fit sponsor needs; bordered by a fringe of successfully
neutralized "public service" elements; and by a buffer
zone of approved "culture.
Barnouw uses as an illustration of sponsor impact the long-time
suppression by the TV networks of any negative or minimally objective
analysis of the implications of nuclear power. Until the end of
the 1960s, "nothing seen or heard on television could lead
viewers to think that atomic energy involved risks of any serious
kind. Documentaries and public service messages had come overwhelmingly,
perhaps exclusively, from those who had a stake in promoting the
industry;" and, "As in the early stages of the Vietnam
war, the medium had served largely as a transmission belt for
official and corporate promotion, closely coordinated."
On foreign news and conditions in the NSSs, the situation
tends to be even worse than in the handling of domestic issues
like nuclear power, as negative impacts on distant peasants have
no political consequences in the home country. As Time, Readers
Digest and dozens of U.S. multinational banks and non-financial
corporations have extensive interests in Brazil, built up under
the auspices of the hospitable generals ruling that NSS, these
important members of the mass media and powerful advertisers have
an important vested interest in the NSS status quo. The mass media
may occasionally bite the hands that feed them, but not very hard
or long, and they more than make up for these small falls from
grace. They do not focus on dispossessed Brazilian peasants.
The ideological range of the top media leadership extends
from enlightened cold war and corporate liberalism to militant
conservative or reactionary. For the latter, in large circulation
publications like Readers Digest, TV-Guide and within the Hearst
and Luce empires, news and opinion bias is blatant and oriented
to conservative ideological mobilization. In these publications,
the death squads of Latin America, the systematic torture, the
looting, and the condition and treatment of the lower 80% of the
population, are for all practical purposes completely suppressed.
Retail terror and Communist abuses are given enormous and highly
emotional play. The Readers Digest, for example, over the decade
1971-1980, had more articles on Castro's Cuba than it did on all
26 U.S. client states that were using torture on an administrative
basis in the early and mid-1970s.
This large and blatant brainwashing by the right has no counterpart
on the left in the United States-the "left" in the mass
media is cold-war liberalism, strongly pro-free enterprise and
devoted to the national interest as it would be defined by the
progressive managements of large multinational corporations such
as IBM or Bank of America. Not exactly a real left in the sense
of a critical opposition. Therefore, in the mainstream respectable
mass media, abuses in the NSSs are mentioned, and on rare occasion
are even highlighted, but always episodically, never in a sustained
manner that would build up public indignation and bring political
consequences. Relatively miniscule abuses in the Soviet Union
can produce day-in-day-out coverage in the mass media; huge and
sustained abuses in the NSSs cannot.' That the NSS abuses were
a result of U.S. intervention, as in Guatemala, where the ClA-sponsored
coup, military aid and training, and the huge U.S.-managed counterinsurgency
operations of 1966-1968 were absolutely decisive factors in maintaining
27 years of rightwing terror, is rarely noted and never given
its proper weight.
A third structural constraint is the nature of mass media
sources. Analysts of the mass media point out that they need steady
and reliable sources to meet their day-by-day demands for news,
and that the only sources that can produce large volumes with
some minimal credibility are very powerful and rich entities-like
governments and, secondarily, business firms. Thus, 46.5% of the
information sources for stories appearing in the New York Times
and Washington Post between 1949 and 1969 were U.S. government
officials and agencies, and the trend toward reliance on government
sources during that period was upward. The business community
is the next most important information source. Foreign news is
even more thoroughly dominated by a small and powerful group with
vested interests in the NSS-U.S. government officials, the three
western news services (A.P., U.P.I. and Reuters), businesses operating
abroad and foreign governments. The big news services rely heavily
on the local governments for news about events in the NSSs, as
do the small contingent of western reporters located there. The
news services depend on these governments not only for news, but
they also sell news to these governments, who are frequently owners
of large media units. The news services are also sold to private
NSS media. Any sustained focus by the media on torture, or on
the parlous state of the NSS peasantry, would jeopardize relationships
with primary and efficient news sources (and, for the wire services,
buyers of news services). The U.S. government and businesses operating
in the NSSs are the other leading news sources-the former is the
Godfather; the latter are the Godfather's progeny obtaining the
benefits of the immiserating economic growth in the NSS's.
The lower echelons of the mass media are given a fair amount
of freedom of action by the top managements. The top managements
themselves, or at least some of them, accept an ideology of staff
freedom to do things based on news value, postulated as an objective
standard. Is it not possible that this ideology allows reporters,
writers, editors, analysts, researchers and broadcasters to disseminate
a broad range of views, some hostile to establishment interests?
There is some truth in this, and I have noted that NSS abuses
can be aired-it is a question of how frequently and in what terms
relative to the newsworthiness and human values involved. The
terror that has engulfed Guatemala under the Garcia regime (to
go back no farther in time) has involved thousands of-deaths,
unimaginable violence against ordinary civilians-in a region of
predominant U.S. influence and frequent intervention. Trade union
leaders have been murdered by the hundreds, peasants have been
killed, robbed and pushed off their lands by the thousands with
Nazi-like ruthlessness; the center parties have been decimated
by scores of murders. By any standard of human values and responsibility
Guatemala deserves more indignation than Poland. I have offered
the simple and obvious explanation of the lack of attention and
indignation in the U.S. mass media: these terrible events and
large social processes of abuse in states like Guatemala are serviceable
to important domestic economic interests. The abused do not advertise,
vote, threaten or complain in ways that can be heard; Bank of
America, Dow, GM, Westinghouse, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and
the U.S. government can be heard, often and with compelling force.
In the face of this complex of interests, well intentioned individuals
in the mass media, while they can occasionally help lift the lid
a little, can have only marginal impact; they cannot alter the
overall drift of mass media priorities, which rests on basic structural
facts and constraints.
Media staff are also predominantly middle class people who
tend to share the values of the corporate leadership, and they
are affected by the fact that approval, advancement and even job
survival depend on acceptance of certain priorities. The biases
at the top are filtered down by long term penalties and rewards.
The mass media top leadership puts into key positions individuals
who reflect their values: "I surround myself with people
who generally see the way I do...," says Otis Chandler, publisher
of the Los Angeles Times. Bias is also a consequence of the nature
of mass media news sources and the subtle impact of depending
on and entering into relationships with them. In the NSSs primary
news sources are government officials and local and multinational
businessmen, not peasants or disaffected intellectuals. Newspeople
who actively sought out abused people would run into difficulties:
(I)They would weaken their links to primary sources in these states.
(2)This might result not only in loss of availability of ready
information but possibly also complaints to the head office, ouster
and even physical damage. (3) They would have to work harder,
in contrast with the case of reliance on official sources. (4)
Their stories might well be rejected at the top as (a) too controversial;
(b) lacking in adequate source confirmation; or (c) not of general
interest. Reports seriously critical of the NSSs would elicit
flak from the powerful friends of the NSS, including enforcers
like Accuracy in Media, Freedom House, the U.S. government, the
governments of the NSSs, businesses end banks operating there,
and advertising firms and their customers who have relationships
with the NSSs. In consequence, the sources for stories describing
abuses must be extra authoritative. But most dissident sources
are inherently unauthoritative and will be contradicted by official
sources. The Latin Church is, of course, an exception-a credible
source of abuses-which is why it is feared and persecuted by the
NSSs, and why it is under increasing attack by current U.S. leaders
now aggressively protecting NSS terrorism. It takes a combination
of extreme abuse, exceptional reporters and receptive home office
people in the media agency for such news to surface. Since this
kind of news does not surface that often, it tends to be unfamiliar
and is therefore not of "general interest." Thus we
have a full circle, in which NSS abuses are suppressed by a built-in
process.
My conclusions then, are first, that most members of the mass
media avoid a focus on NSS terror for ideological reasons; terror
that is "constructive" from the standpoint of important
U. S. interests is seen as a regrettable necessity serving the
"national interests." And although some of the leaders
and a still larger number of the lower echelons of the mass media
find the reality of terror reprehensible and push for some coverage,
since terror is a regrettable necessity, the primary route taken
is looking the other way. Second, this ideological bias is strongly
reinforced by the fact that primary sources of information on
which the mass media depend are either pro-NSS or have ties of
interest and reciprocity that compromise any ability to focus
on serious abuses. Third, as the generation and production of
information on abuses would involve extra costs in search, and
assured negative repercussions from the vocal supporters of the
NSS, even episodic treatment of NSS abuses is further constrained,
and tends to be handled with a balance and a degree of understatement
that is not required of enemy terror. Fourth, this system of watered-down
and episodic treatment of terror, in the larger context of mass
media protectiveness of the NSS, may actually serve the interests
of the real terror network. The muted treatment of friendly terror
gives the mass media more credibility as purveyors of "all
the news that's fit to print" than would total suppression.
The dispensing of small doses of the uglier aspects of the NSSs
makes the central apologetic and diversionary role of the mass
media less obvious. This allows the more liberal western elites
to deceive themselves into thinking that the United States has
been a neutral bystander, not an active sponsor of these unfortunate
NSS "abuses," which are discussed and debated so openly
here at home. We may even be too harsh in criticizing human rights
violations which seem to arise so naturally in these I backward
cultures.
*****
Real
Terror Network