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This is the final part of the media guide, which I will wrap up with some miscelaneous topics such as cognitive biases, Herman & Chomsky's propaganda model, and propaganda in Hollywood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
There is a long list of known cognitive biases. A few of them are relevant to understanding how we make sense of news. For example:
In the context of biases, it is interesting to notice that there are some real cultural differences in certain areas of cognition. One case that has been researched is the difference between collectivist and individualist cultures.
In a psychological experiment subjects were shown pictures of a rabbit, a carrot, and a dog. Their task was to pick two of them that seemed to belong together. In the individualist West, the two animals are associated, but in the collectivist East the rabbit goes with the carrot. Apparently, the explanation for this difference is that people in a collectivist society are better capable of seeing things from someone else's perspective, such as imagining what food the rabbit might like. In the individualist West we prefer to see things from our own perspective, so obviously two animals seem more related than a vegetable and an animal.
It bears keeping in mind that these and other cultural differences permeat international relations.
In wars and other international conflicts we may have access to two conflicting versions of a reality most of us have no direct access to. News outlets that try to uphold the remnants of an aura of objectivity are likely to first present the version of events that is in accordance with the interests of their government, then, in an aside, the opposing party's claims will be briefly quoted, and probably denounced.
As long as the opposing point of view escapes censorship, we have the two conflicting views and we can compare statements from both sides. Then it is mostly a matter of trust which version we perceive as being more credible. For those who don't actively seek out alternative perspectives and news sources, a completely one-sided coverage is the likely result.
The standard reference, Herman & Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent, proposed "a propaganda model" specifically for US media, although much of it applies in other countries as well. We briefly hinted at it in the last part, but it's worth summarising the main ideas. They constantly refer to _a_ propaganda model, not _the_ propaganda model, but it's the only model they propose and, in effect, it still remains relevant after more than three decades.
Herman & Chomsky's model of the five media filters has become widely known. The filters control what is able to become news, and they are:
Launching a newspaper or TV station requires substantial investments, so the ability to finance a news outlet is the first filter. We have discussed questions of ownership in part 10. In the internet age, citizen journalism has become a more accessible option, although scaling it up is still costly.
To cover the costs, newspapers and commercial broadcasters get revenues from advertisers. In order to make themselves reasonably attractive to advertisers, they can't run stories that are too critical of them. Hence a limitation of what may become news.
For reasons of efficiency, journalists gather where newsworthy events are likely to happen, which is to say, in close proximity to government. Big corporations are another important source. These sources also have the benefit of being credible because of their status (but often not in actual fact, as is a main point of the book). The sources and journalists enter a kind of symbiotic relationship; the journalists don't want to risk offending and losing the trust of their sources.
This refers to all kinds of negative response to programs or articles in the media and takes the form of complaints by letters, phone calls, telegrams, even threats and lawfare. TV advertising of consumer goods is vulnerable to boycotting. We have not covered flak as such in this media guide, but without doubt it is an important phenomenon. Organised forms of flak can be very powerful, and are closely related in methods to smear campaigns such as the recent one against Corbyn, being accused of anti-semitism with fatal consequences for his political career.
The official American state religion, nowadays transformed into russophobia and sinophobia. It should be obvious how this works as a filter: there are certain views that simply cannot be expressed in media above a certain size.
Apart from the media filters, the other idea that still stands is that of worthy victims. Those who are the victims of the enemies are worthy, those who happen to fall in fights against American or their allied forces are unworthy. Although many of the stories covered in Manufacturing Consent are now long forgotten, the pattern is still the same.
A mini-review of the book has also been promised to appear here, which I hope it will:
gemini://rawtext.club/~cmccabe/
In the broader view, propaganda can be slower and more pervasive than the fake or spun news and slogans we might first associate with the term. It can be about generating acceptance for certain general world views in a slow form of advertising. A good example is the effort to gain acceptance of hi-tech solutions, or "technocracy". Such efforts do not have to be explained by some conspiracy theory with a few individuals driving the development, although that would not necessarily be wrong either, but it may suffice to consider it a mere side-effect of capitalism.
TED Talks (for Technology, Entertainment, Design) could be considered a platform for such techo-optimist propaganda or, as Oscar Schwartz writes:
TED is probably best understood as the propaganda arm of an ascendant technocracy.
The talks had to be tech- and future-oriented, but also, crucially, entertaining and visionary.
https://www.thedriftmag.com/what-was-the-ted-talk/
The talk must be interesting and inspiring, it shoud make you want to become a better person. Techno-optimism is so pervasive that it is difficult to discuss. Recent doubts about the utility or otherwise of social media may have begun to complicate public opinion on that particular sector. Ellul wrote presciently about the technical society long before the internet, and regarded technique as a force almost of its own will.
Entertainment is an excellent propaganda channel. Film is fiction; even when based on "a true story" there is artistic licence to tell the story the way the director sees it. Dull nuances of reality may be swept away, characters can be presented as villains or saints and there is nothing in the way of using racial or other stereotypes in the name of artistic freedom (other objections aside). Or the director may want to do the opposite and portray characters in all their complexity.
This is a somewhat naïve view, because big expensive cinema productions need financing and inevitably become beholden to the sponsor. If the sponsor disagrees with the director's vision, the script must be rewritten or there is no support. It may also be overly optimistic to think that a general audience will not be swayed by film narratives dealing with real events or actual institutions; that they would always be able to separate fact from fiction and see through the propaganda, for example, depicting war as righteous and soldiers as glorious.
In recent years, it has become increasingly clear how the CIA and Pentagon have been involved in Hollywood film production, engaging in a role somewhere inbetween that of a co-author and a censor. The main source for this topic is:
A few other articles:
https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Snider/2021/11/28/a-cia-and-pentagon-production/
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/03/27/hollywood-is-full-of-cia-agents-says-ben-affleck/
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/03/27/black-ops-in-hollywood-from-censorship-to-normalization/
An interesting development is that, at first, the CIA tried to hide or deny its operations (regime change, etc) and dissuade film makers from putting the organisation in a negative light. Since so much of their wrongdoing is now widely documented and available online and in books, the tactic has changed to one of normalisation. In more recent films, the nefarious activities are instead depicted as necessary evils in a complex world.
If you don't read the news you are uninformed, but if you do, then you become misinformed.
(I don't remember who said it.)
There are active efforts of deception and manipulation of the public mind through mass media (as well as by think tanks and other organisations which I have barely touched), but these efforts can often be recognised as such, and alternative sources of information can be sought. If it seems like the press only lies, it may be tempting to ignore them altogether in favour of engaging in a "spiritual journey," a fringe steampunk project like gemini and the smolnet, or consuming some shallow entertainment. As an antidote, the long annotated list of independent media in Part 2 indicates that there are alternatives, some better than others. Most of them are small and of limited resources, which means they usually have to focus on certain issues and don't cover the broad range of news as a major print newspaper would. On the other hand, the best independent outlets have a depth of coverage in the stories they chose to pursue that is usually missing in mainstream media. Another point worth stressing again is that it is essential to access a variety of news sources, across the political spectrum and from different countries. Doing so will likely hurt your brain, or your sense of decency, which might indicate that you feel vulnerable to being convinced by opinions of people you previously didn't consider to be serious, but it might also be the symptom of listening to a moron.
As several media studies have shown (discussed in part five), trust in mainstream media is not great these days. Unfortunately, independent media are not usually covered by these studies, which could be for the perfectly legitimate reason that they have too small an audience.
Fake news spread faster than accurate ones, and in response to the threat of a misinformed public the fact checking industry has blossomed. Even if the efforts may be well-meaning, one can easily see the risk of fact checkers turning into gate-keepers who decide what points of view may be allowed. The modest task they set for themselves is typically restricted to checking for factual errors such as who said what. There is usually an implicit bias towards the corporate media and their fast-paced news cycle that chews on the same details over and over, but ignores historical or contextual background that can be crucial to understanding events. There is often an exaggerated belief in the value of strictly factual and so-called objective reporting, as opposed to analysis and opinion pieces. What is obviously missing is the realisation that the careful selection and framing of factual pieces of information can be used as an efficient propaganda tool. Omitted perspectives tend to go unnoticed.
On top of that, there is the accelerating censorship of dissidents by cancelling and de-platforming. First they went after the nuts, the likes of Alex Jones whom few wanted to defend, then they expanded the range to people on the left (and probably some libertarians, anarchists, peace activists and others), including award-winning journalists such as Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald, not to speak of Julian Assange. It should not come as a surprise. Let me offer two points of potential consolation: (1) If these voices are silenced, it's probably because those in power are fearful of their message and their possible influence. (2) The big social media delegitimise themselves in the eyes of a growing number of users as they kick off ever more people from their platforms. [Caveat: I'm speculating, having never been on any social media platform.]
There is still some way to go before we have to resort to circulating samizdat. But in practice, the perception management by mainstream media in collaboration with think tanks and social media already has tightened the grip considerably.
Part eleven (internet censorship)
Part twelve (conspiratorial thinking)
Part thirteen (psychology of propaganda)
Part fourteen (information warfare)
Part fifteen (this conclusion)
The Oxymoronist Media Guide is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
This part published on April 24, 2022.