Media ‘Biases’ and ‘Filters’

1. Media ‘Biases’ and ‘Filters’ CMNS 130

2. A Propaganda Model • Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, 1988: • NEWS FILTERS: • Size, Concentrated Ownership, owner’s wealth, and profit orientation of media organizations. • Advertising as primary income source of mass media. • Reliance of media on information provided by • Government, • Business and • “Experts” • “Flak” or negative response to ‘discipline’ the media. • ‘Anti-Communism’ as a national religion and control mechanism CMNS 130

3. Size, Ownership, and Profit Orientation of the Mass Media: The First Filter • Top tier of media (measured by prestige, resources and outreach) consists of government and news agencies • Government and news agencies define ‘news agenda’ • They supply national and international news to lower tiers of the media. • Media depend on government for general policy support. CMNS 130

4. Global “Networks” • Many large media corporations are integrated into the market through stockholders, directors and bankers. • Other factors include: Globalization, convergence, de-regulation and synergy. • These apply to manoeuverings of corporations as well as the strategies of governments. • Convergence—or erosion of boundaries —between communication sectors results from digital technologies and their capacity to transfer information between formerly segregated areas in broadcasting, telecommunications and computers CMNS 130

5. Privatization and De-regulation • Privatization and de-regulation or, more appropriately, ‘re-regulation’—from regulation in the public interest to new regulatory regimes based on economic and entrepreneurial imperatives—have shifted the focus from public service mandates and monopoly structures to commercial forms of production and a more open economy. • De-regulation of communication industries is the result of global trade liberalization and new technologies—satellite, cable and the internet—which are no longer tied to geographical boundaries. CMNS 130

6. Synergy • Corporations have created synergy—”the process of taking a media brand and exploiting it for all the profit possible” (McChesney, 1998)—via the vertical (The control over cultural production, distribution and exhibition ) and horizontal (Ownership and control across a variety of media and industries ) integration of industries. • Global conglomeration has resulted in the predominance of a few media mega giants controlling the world-wide flow of communication goods such as Time Warner, Disney, News Corporation, Sony, Viacom, General Electric (owner of NBC), Dutch Phillips (owner of Polygram) and Bertelsmann CMNS 130

7. Who owns What? • The combination of hardware and software enables these companies to cross-promote films and television programs through tie-ins and spin-offs, such as home-videos, computer games, books and toys. • Website: Who owns what? (Canwest overhead) • http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/canwest.asp CMNS 130

8. The Advertising License to do business: The Second Filter • Before advertising became prominent, the price of a newspaper had to cover the cost of doing business. • With the growth of advertising, papers who attracted ads could be sold below production costs. This placed papers who lacked advertising at a disadvantage. • “The advertisers’ choices influence media prosperity and survival. • As a result, working class papers and a more radical press are at a disadvantage. CMNS 130

9. The Influence of Advertisers • Large corporate advertisers will rarely support programs with serious criticisms of corporate activities, environmental degradation, and interconnections between military and industry. • Advertisers will also avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that may interfere with the ‘buying mood’ of its readership/audiences. • This dependence on advertising dollars, therefore, translates into less critical content being printed or aired, resulting in articles and programs, which are culturally and politically more conservative. CMNS 130

10. “TABLOID” TV • Instead of critical documentaries, ‘Discovery’ and ‘National Geographic Television’ programs feature adventure and travel type shows which invite viewers to escape into exotic landscapes and scenarios. • News programs are becoming increasingly ‘tabloidizised”, in their “relentless search for a nightly extravaganza of chaos, conflict, confrontation, and controversy (Fleras, p. 47) CMNS 130

11. Sourcing Mass-media News: The Third Filter • The mass media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest. • Media organizations need a steady, reliable flow of the ‘raw material of news’. • Media organizations have daily news demands and imperative news schedules that they must meet. CMNS 130

12. Central Nodes for Gathering News • Economics dictate media organizations to concentrate their resources where • significant news occurs on a frequent basis • where important rumors and leaks abound, • and where regular press conferences are held. • Central nodes of such activities include • The White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department, in Washington, DC • Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and provincial parliaments. • Courts • City Hall • Police Headquarters (New York City) • Special Events (Film Festivals, Sports event, etc.) (Gaye Tuchman, 1978; Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, 1988) CMNS 130

13. Government Sources • Government and corporate sources are easily recognizable • They have credibility by their status and prestige. • This helps media’s claim to be “objective” dispensers of the news. • It is a protection from criticisms of bias and the threat of libel suits, they need material that can be portrayed as presumptively accurate. • It is also cost efficient: taking information from sources that may be presumed credible reduces investigative expenses. • However, materials from sources that need to be checked, requires costly research. CMNS 130

14. Information and Circulation Government and corporations release information to the media via: • Press releases • Public relations efforts • Purchasing newspaper space to get viewpoint across Professional Organizations (commerce and trade) use: • Public Relations and Lobbing activities • Advertising, direct-mail campaigns, distribution of educational films, booklets, pamphlets, outlays on initiatives and referendums, political and think tank contributions. CMNS 130

15. Government and business promoters make things ‘easy’ for news organizations • They provide media organizations with facilities in which they can gather. • They provide advance copies of speeches and forthcoming reports. • They schedule press conferences at hours well-geared to news deadlines. • They write press releases in usable language . • They carefully organize their press conferences and ‘photo opportunities’. CMNS 130

16. The Role of “EXPERTS” • ‘Experts’ tend to echo the official point of view. • They impart ‘objectivity’ and ‘authority’ to a news story (Stuart Hall, 1978) CMNS 130

17. “The large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access by their contribution to reducing the media’s cost of acquiring the raw materials of, and producing news”. • Non-routine sources must struggle for access, and may be ignored by the arbitrary decision of the gatekeepers”. • “Critical sources may be avoided not only because of their lesser availability and higher cost of establishing credibility, but also because the primary sources may be offended and may even threaten the media using them”. • From Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (1988). Manufactoring Consent CMNS 130

18. Flak and the Enforcers: The Fourth Filter • “Flak” refers to negative response to a media statement or program. • It may take the form of • Letters • Telegrams • Phone calls • Petitions • Lawsuits • Speeches • Bills before Congress (US) or Parliament (Canada) • Other modes of complaint, threat, and punitive action. CMNS 130

19. How ‘Flak’ affects the Media • If flak is produced on a large scale, it can be both uncomfortable and costly to the media. • Positions have to be defended within the organization and without, sometimes before legislature and even in courts. • Advertisers may withdraw patronage. • If certain kinds of fact, position, or program are thought to elicit flak, this may act to a deterrent to media organizations. CMNS 130

20. How ‘Flak’ is produced • Flak can be produced indirectly • by complaining to constituencies (stockholders, employees) about the media, • by generating institutional advertising that does the same, • or by funding think-tank operations designed to attack the media. • Corporations also sponsor organizations who keep a close eye on media, and produce ‘flak’ when media ‘fail’ to portray business in an appropriate light. CMNS 130

21. Anticommunism as a Control Mechanism: The Fifth Filter • Communism as the ‘ultimate evil’ has always been the specter haunting property owners, as it threatens the basis of their class position and superior status. • The Soviet, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were traumas to Western elites. • The ideology helps mobilize the populace against an ‘enemy’. • It also fragments the political left and labour movements. From Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (1988). Manufactoring Consent CMNS 130

22. The Framing of Issues • When anti-communist fervour is aroused, the demand for serious evidence in support of claims of ‘communist’ abuses is suspended. • Defectors, informers move to the center stage as ‘experts’. • Anti-Communist control mechanism exerts strong influence on mass media. • Issues tend to be framed in terms of a dichotomized world—the ‘axes of evil’. CMNS 130

23. The Five Filters—Summary • The five filters narrow the range of news that passes through the ‘gates’. • They limit what can be made into ‘big news’ items. • Messages from and about dissidents and weak, unorganized groups and individuals, are at a disadvantage in sourcing costs and credibility. CMNS 130

24. The propaganda approach to media suggests a systemic and highly political dichotomization in news coverage based on serviceability to important power interests. • This can be discerned in dichotomized choices of story and in the volume of coverage. CMNS 130

25. Constructing News Images • “Seeing is believing”; “The camera never lies”—are clichés which draw attention to popular beliefs and apparent faith in observation and visual representation. • However, camera positioning and angle, picture framing and lighting, image selection, photographic retouching, digital image manipulation, editorial cropping and final juxtaposition can all radically change or even invert the sense of depicted scenes—’the camera can lie”. • ‘Time for Peace: Time to Go’! (overhead) CMNS 130

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28. Chavez: Inside the Coup • Filmed & Directed By Kim Bartley & Donnacha O Briain • Edited By Angel Hernandez Zoido • Produced in Association with The Irish Film Board NPS & COBO, RTE, BBC, ZDF/ARTE, YLE CMNS 130