Beyond Liberal & Conservative Bias; Noam Chomsky’s Propaganda Model
Presented by Jeremy Beahan, Adjunct Instructor of Aesthetics & Philosophy, Kendall College of Art & Design
About the Speaker
Fundamentalist raised and educated, Jeremy Beahan graduated from Grace Bible College and Cornerstone University with a dual degree in social studies and religious education. While training for ministry Jeremy underwent a dramatic de-conversion as a culmination to many years of questioning.
Today Jeremy works to promote critical thinking and skeptical inquiry in his local community - he has been an active member of the Freethought Association (now CFI Michigan) since 2002. When not hiking on Michigan's beautiful trails and beaches Jeremy teaches college classes in Philosophy, World Religions, Biblical Literature, Aesthetics, and Critical Thinking at Kendall College of Art and Design/Ferris State University. Jeremy is also a co-host and producer for the Reasonable Doubts podcast and radio show which provides a skeptical guide to religion with a focus on counter-apologetics.
About the Event
Announcements
Our topic presenter for this evening, Jeremy Beahan, hosts the Philosophy Book Discussion gatherings at his house. Contact him for more information on these book discussions at 616-706-2033 or send e-mail to .
The Freethought Movie Nights are now on alternate Wednesdays from our regular Freethought Association meetings. The next one is August 18, For more information, contact host Jason Pittman at 616-634-2471 or send e-mail to .
Our next regular meeting will be on August 25 on the topic pf “Mencius Tells About Confucius.” Joel Welty, of the Great Lakes Humanist Society (GLHS) will be our guest speaker for this presentation.
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We continue our lively post- meeting social gatherings at Vitales restaurant on Leonard, NE, where we have a standing reservation for a room for our group after each meeting. Join us for good food, drink and conversation. You will find there are no sacred cows or taboo subjects there.
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Upcoming events to make note of for the balance of the year include our Semi-annual Used Book Sale on the regular meeting night of October 13. This fund raiser will be going on both before and after that evening’s meeting.
Our Freethought Halloween Party will be on October 30 (Sat.) starting at 6PM at the Seaver house. Bonfire, hayride and fun times to be enjoyed. Bring a beverage and dish to pass. Costumes are optional.
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We participate in the annual Community Interfaith Thanksgiving Service, where we provide a volunteer from our group to talk about the holiday from a non-theistic perspective. This year’s service will be on November 22 at 7PM. More information to come in later postings.
Our Annual Winter Solstice Party will be on December 8 starting at 7PM at the Heritage Restaurant. Cost and RSVP to be announced.
Presentation
Our topic for this meeting was “Beyond Liberal & Conservative Bias; Noam Chomsky’s Propaganda Model.” It was presented by FA member Jeremy Beahan, who is finishing up his degree in secondary education. He began on a jocular note by saying that those in the room who agree with him may remain at the front, while those who disagree should head off to the “Free Speech Zone” at the back of the room.
The presentation proper commenced with a look to the Southeast Asian island nation of East Timor, just north of Australia. East Timor was given its independence from Portugal in 1974, after some 400 years as its colony. Destabilizing internal friction stemming from party loyalty changes and frustration of the populace erupted. Indonesia used this vulnerable time of fledgling independence to invade East Timor. The day before the invasion, Grand Rapids’ favorite son, Gerald Ford, along with Henry Kissinger visited the Indonesian capital of Jakarta to meet with the long reigning dictator, Suharto, offering understanding of the Indonesia position and greasing the tracks for the invasion and seizure of East Timor’s capital city. Kissinger and Ford monitored the resulting slaughter, where thousands of East Timorese were killed the first day, through electronic intercepts on their flight back to America. Indonesia was armed almost entirely by the US, including equipment that was useful in an invasion, but not for internal defense. An official for Indonesia in the State Dept. said that the frequent American shipments of military equipment to Indonesia was for keeping the peace in East Timor.
Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now, begins her book: Exception to the Rulers, with her first hand experiences of the massacre of East Timorese and makes many of the same points that antiwar scholar, Noam Chomsky does. She had thought that the outward signs of her profession as a journalist- the cameras and audio recording devices would stave off the killing. Not only was the slaughter unchecked by this display, but she and her crew were knocked to the ground and beaten, with guns ready to slay them. What saved them was when the Indonesian invaders learned that they were Americans. They were from the powerful nation that had armed and supported them. Goodman and crew were allowed to live, as horrified witnesses to this event.
The story that emerged was that the slaughter arose solely from the civil war in East Timor but a London Times journalist, finally allowed into the nation, reported that the stories fed to the public were not merely exaggerations, but constituted “...a purposeful campaign to plant lies.” When the New York Times carried the article there were notable deletions and omissions, thereby perpetuating the misinformation. The rest of the mainstream American press simply followed suit, using the Times story as the key source for their reports. In most cases there was not a conscious effort to spread error but simply a lack of independent fact checking by the press. L. Paul Bremmer, the current occupier in chief for the Iraq invasion was the note taker at the Kissinger meetings where the former Secretary of State sought to kill any paper trail of the US support for this massacre where entire communities were wiped out and East Timorese fleeing to the mountains were captured and placed in detention camps.
Four years later this misreported atrocity saw 100,000 dead, with no letup in US military and diplomatic support for the Indonesian invasion and slaughter. This, despite reports that made it out of the war torn region- including an admission from the Indonesian foreign minister himself- of the reality of the situation; reports the American press failed to disseminate. Instead, when any mention was made of it, the press repeated the government line of Indonesian protectors and the East Timorese deaths coming from their civil war. Decades later, with some 200,000 East Timorese dead, with more beaten and raped, there was at last disclosure of the reality of the actions of Indonesia, our close trading partner, upon the nation of East Timor, which has large oil reserves just off their coast. Contrast this with Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Hundreds of articles exposing his atrocities were carried in the US media. The difference was that Cambodia was an official enemy of the US and there was nothing seen to be gained by supporting Pot’s regime.
In other massacres, the US backed killers were called “Freedom Fighters” or were otherwise bestowed figurative “white hats.” The press was slow to investigate or report findings if those reports went against the power elite. Rather, the unofficial role of American journalism has too often been that of “manufacturing consent” as Chomsky terms it, for the official line of powerful interests; government, large corporations, etc. In his book, Hegemony or Survival, Chomsky points out the vast number of bloody invasions the US supported, having nothing to do with aid or building democracy but purely for access to resources or political gain with a useful dictatorship. When the killing is done by those we support, no mention is given to International Laws or treaties broken, but when it is an out-group, these actions are depicted as ruthless, lawless and evil.
Goodman speaks and writes of the “minority elite” overwhelming the voices of the “silenced majority” in this country. Regarding the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the media perpetuated the erroneous link between September 11 and Saddam Hussein, and kept up the “drumbeat to war” with, as Goodman reported, only 3 of the 393 stories provided by the major network broadcasters showing dissenters for the built up to war. Protesters were generally ignored or when shown, they were mostly spoken for, by those who labeled them as misguided or unpatriotic. Virtually no coverage was given to protesters speaking on their own behalf. Furthermore, when cited reports were made by those in the know, that ran counter to the official line, these too were either ignored or there was no follow up. The analogy would be, in a murder investigation, of someone having first hand knowledge about the specifics of the crime who was ignored or not questioned by the detectives.
This is what Noam Chomsky, the MIT professor of linguistics and philosophy, means by the propaganda model that goes beyond the traditional labels of conservative or liberal bias. While there are certainly mouthpieces and organs for both the political right and left (the FOX News Network being but one example of the former [see the documentary “Outfoxed” shown at our last Freethought Movie Night], and Al Franken [humorist, author and Air America radio host] being just one example of the latter), the “embeddedness” of journalists is another problem. Goodman called this “in-bed-with” journalists who have a symbiotic relationship with the powerful and influential. Too often they become mouthpieces for the authority power elite in exchange for easy access to the newsmakers. The journalists spread what the government official or corporate executives want disseminated and in return, they get big scoops, the sound bites, job security, prestige and easy access to stories, without having to be troubled with doing investigative reporting. Asking the tough questions or straying outside of the boundaries of this fraternal club with its unspoken rules and tacit agreements gets journalists alienated from their sources, which can be career suicide. The imbedded journalists in the Iraq invasion were a gift to the Pentagon, some media critics argue, as they began to be vulnerable to the Stockholm Effect of sympathizing with those they were captive audiences for, the troops. The military personnel were their protectors, they and the reporters ate and slept together and they came to be little more than propaganda film makers. Some got to hold weapons or alert troops to the enemy they saw in hiding, stepping outside of any journalistic objectiveness. Those who were not imbedded, in fact, were derided by the military and even targeted themselves in military action. The Baghdad Hotel shelling and other direct attacks on independent journalists (or at least those, like Al Jazeera, that were not officially attached to our units) were euphemistically described as casualties of friendly fire or wartime mistakes in the heat of battle.
Beahan noted that the press has Constitutionally guaranteed protections in providing unbiased, objective reporting so that an informed citizenry can form its own opinions as part of a democracy. It is, ideally, to be an empowering agent for the common citizen who would otherwise have no voice. Jeremy provided a quote to us on this from a federal judge who said “A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press, must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right to know.” Critics of the media bias, seen to stand in challenge of these ideals generally take it as the aforementioned liberal or conservative leanings of the press. But these critiques fail to address Chomsky’s argument that the press has evolved naturally in our free market economy to become a mouthpiece for the political and economic elite; one that actually indoctrinates society with the values and worldview of the powerful. Essentially it has become a de facto propaganda system.
In Chomsky’s book Manufacturing Consent, he presents several filters in the propaganda model. The first one deals with the size, ownership and profit orientation of the mass media. Beahan provided us with an historical overview of how a potent alternative press thrived in 19th century Britain that reported on the poor working conditions and governmental oppression of the working class people to incite change. Seeing this as a threat to its power, the government tried to demolish it by various means but despite governmental efforts, the alternative press continued on in a robust fashion. In the end it was economic factors that spelled disaster for this rallying voice of the common people. Technological improvements made for the cheap printing and distribution of local papers by an industry that emerged for this purpose. The industry papers simply out- competed the alternative press. Start up costs went from very meager levels to staggering ones that only those with significant wealth could meet. This inflation of start up costs was seen at the same time in the US.
This made for a double edged sword, as the institutionalization of the news product made it more readily available to the masses but led the way for alliances between those with great capital and the press, weakening democracy and drowning out dissenting voices, or at least filtering them through the established press. Deregulation, corporate buyouts and business mergers in recent times have created a mass media that operates as a monopolistic market with only a handful of firms producing nearly all of the media landscape. There was some alarm when there were fifty firms owning the news venues (in ‘83), but in seven years this had shrunk to only 23. Now it has fallen to a mere nine transnational conglomerates, with all the inherent dangers of such incredible consolidation into so few major news outlets. Among these are Disney, AOL/Time-Warner, Viacom, Rupert Murdock News Corporation (FOX), Sony, A T&T Liberty Media, and Vivendi Universal. Our presenter mentioned that this information may already be out of date, as further consolidation in the interval since this was reported may have occured.
It has become a newly emerging global media and advertising system, made possible by deregulation, globalization and the general mix of politics and business among other factors. Chomsky writes of a tiered media system with the giant conglomerates sitting at the pinnacle. Smaller broadcasting venues depend heavily upon the top ones for their sources, so the spin produced by the top trickles down to the smaller markets as well. The top tier has the resources to gain access to big business and government, to get to the story better. But this cooperation is maintained by the news makers refraining from criticism of the elite powers that be. When one adds advertising to the mix, it becomes even more likely to fall prey to what Chomsky calls the propaganda model. Since big corporations provide huge advertising revenue to the major news organizations, they are not likely to allow stories to be covered that put them in a bad light. Goodman has noted the link between builders of the weaponry and equipment for our military and what is seen on the news; essentially showcasing the military products as a car company displays its new line of automobiles, while there is almost nothing aired of the carnage and maiming of civilians, or anything else negative in these war glorifying and antiseptic corporate sponsored broadcasts. Only 4 major television networks feed what has been called “agenda setting media” to the public. Many of the media companies are owned by non-media businesses with interests having little to do with news and information and all to do with corporate spread and friendly spin.
When people only hear one side of a story they become less questioning of alternative viewpoints, making it more likely for the masses to follow along sheep- like to what is presented. Thoughtful discourse devolves into sound bites and “talking points.” In Comedy Central’s Daily Show, host Jon Stewart asked facetiously how the average citizen is supposed to absorb the talking points adequately. He answered this rhetorical query with: “By hammering it in over and over.” Then he showed a barrage of news clips where John Kerry and John Edwards were referred to as “Out of the mainstream.” This mirrors the Outfoxed documentary’s blizzard of news clips where a sea of FOX News talking heads inanely pronounced how “French” Kerry was. Advertising exists to a large degree to offer comforting feel- good messages that are easily digested and flow readily to the status quo thinking of the times. When this is fused to the main news that is absorbed by society, there is little room for critical thinking about complex issues or the fostering of a questioning attitude. Presented to our group, there were parallels seen to religion, as might be expected.
Chomsky notes the powerful pressures of stockholders, directors and bankers to focus on the bottom line, which has intensified as media stocks have become market favorites. Mass media is a business and the first priority of business is to make a profit. It is tough to be fair and balanced about the activities of one’s stockholders. Pressures, too, are strong for the journalist, who on the one hand is racing against deadlines, vying for the big story, striving for access to the powerful, seeking to build his/her reputation and aware of the importance of being the first to break a story, which leaves little time to check the veracity of the sources or for in depth analysis of what the journalist reports on. Some reporters who have broken into the treacherous territory of a more independent and deeper investigation of stories—ones that counter the established corporate media spin—have faced threats, hate mail and other intimidation.
Corporations are concerned with anti-trust law enforcement, interest rates, taxes, labor laws, and have a stake in the politics of business. They spend huge sums for lobbying, strengthening political ties, buying politicians and other things that become even more of a concern when they are also owners of media outlets. The non-media giant corporations that own media outlets have among them (GE and Westinghouse to name two) those that receive government subsidies for their weapons research and nuclear power programs. They court governmental and lawmaking support for easier access into other markets the seek to spread into throughout the world. Beahan quotes Chomsky on this where he writes “The media giants, advertising agencies, and great multinational corporations, have a joint and close interest in a favorable climate of investment in the Third World, and their interconnections and relationships with the government in these policies are symbiotic.”
The second filter that Chomsky writes about is advertising. Beahan quoted Chomsky, who pointed out that with advertising, “...the free market does not yield a neutral system in which final buyer choice decides. The advertiser’s choice influences media prosperity and survival. The ad- based media receive an advertising subsidy that gives them a price-marketing-quality edge which allows them to encroach on, and further weaken their ad-free (or ad disadvantaged) rivals.”
This puts the desire to please the advertisers, not the consumer, uppermost in the minds of the newspapers. They must appeal to and appease the advertisers, who generate the revenue that the newspapers depend on for their very survival. Chomsky discusses the CAP (Client Audience Profile) which helps the advertiser target the most likely consumers for its product or service, selecting not the largest audience but rather the most affluent. This puts pressure on the media to tailor its message and programming to that select group to appeal to advertisers and their revenue. Chomsky makes a political analogy to a voting system that is weighted by income.
Regarding the above concepts, Jeremy gave another historical example, this time of The Daily Herald in Britain. This paper enjoyed huge circulation and popularity. But it collapsed. The reason is that its large and eager readership was of a social democratic bent, with less inclination and ability to spend conspicuously. So while the Herald had a large percentage of the national daily circulation, they had only 3.5 % of the advertising revenue, bolstering Chomsky’s claim that a democratic media is impeded by advertising power and influence. This power is even greater in television programming where the advertisers are the patrons and can exert great influence on the broadcasts. Many firms, that have a vested interest in specific political ideologies, will not provide revenue for programming that is contrary to their worldview and corporate message. Documentaries and reports that are not deemed sufficiently “reassuring” are sometimes derailed. Beaham quoted a Corporate Communications manager for GE who said candidly: “We insist on a programming environment that reinforces our corporate messages.” There were other large corporation quotes along these lines provided as well. Networks that air more critical evaluation of themes are vulnerable to significant financial sacrifice, especially when a single rating point drop involves gigantic amounts of money loss and when competition for advertising dollars is so fierce.
Before moving on to the Third Filter that Chomsky talks about, it may be worthwhile to note the influence of our very natures upon what is presented to us. We are story telling animals who lived for most of our existence in small groups with clear boundaries and rules reinforced by myths and other stories. It is a difficult challenge for humankind to wrap its mind around global issues, or confusing policies. We have a built in xenophobia along with a love for stories of heroism especially when they feed into our tribal sense of unity and superiority. News stories often pander to oversimplified tales that flow easily into our collective national consciousness and very human biases. The coverage of cases such as Jon Benet Ramsey, O.J. Simpson, and Scott Peterson are examples that were given far more time and attention than they merited, but they feed into our tribal interests. One author on human nature wrote about how outraged and up in arms we would be, en masse, if we heard a report of a young girl on some American street being knocked down and assaulted by having her genitals cut away, but we can stir no such mass anger and horror over this very practice as part of a ritual in other societies. It’s not us and it is too large to grapple with.
The case of PFC Jessica Lynch is a recent example of our love of the hero-myth story. Almost nothing that was reported (let alone the books and movie deals) in the press had anything to do with the facts of the events portrayed so dramatically. There was no ambush, Lynch was neither stabbed nor shot, she sustained injuries that were a result of her vehicle crashing, and she was tended to in a hospital, receiving the best care the medical personnel were able to provide. She didn’t go out in a blaze of gun battle fire, taking our her nonexistent ambushers. The “rescue” was manufactured exactly as a Hollywood movie would have been made. Everything was carefully scripted and filmed for dramatic impact, if not for accuracy. There were no soldiers in the facility to subdue nor any challenge to US troop removal of the well cared for young private. The media and advertisers pander to our innate love of simple stories that reinforce our internal mythic concepts and national biases. Complex, critical evaluations of gray-area themes are a hard sell, more labor intensive for the purveyor and consumer, and far less satisfying for our individual or societal ego and interests.
The Third Filter that Chomsky wrote of was Sourcing Mass-Media News, which relates to the media’s information needs, the most inexpensive ways of satisfying them, and how the resulting dependence on these routine sources of information biases the news and marginalizes dissent. “Economics dictates that [media] concentrate their resources where significant news often occurs, where important rumors and leaks abound and where regular press conferences are held,” Chomsky writes. Such venues include the Pentagon, White House, business corporation activities, the State Dept., and other federal and local government apparatus’ and large business, with their own bias and self interest in what is reported and how messages are massaged. This means, Beahan notes, that much of the data that is used in our news is filtered through corporate/government bias before it even reaches the reporter. Mark Fishman calls this arrangement “The principle of Bureaucratic Affinity [whereby] only other bureaucracies can satisfy the input needs of a news bureaucracy.”
I quote Beahan extensively here on this issue: “It’s of great benefit to the press that these sources have a certain prestige, which helps them to be assumed as credible by much of the public. Good for the press but not good for the critical thinker. For us it is important that every claim to knowledge be recognized as just that—a claim [which] must be judged in relation to certain standards of evidence and understood in relation to the worldview it represents with all the biases, prejudices and consequences inherent in them. However, such skepticism is unlikely to happen as often as it should [because] skepticism costs money. Research [and] investigation [in] checking the claims of official sources against reality is costly in time and money and any benefit received from it cannot be [offset] by a fifteen second sound bite. The perceived credibility of official sources, like the Pentagon for example, makes it easy for the press to just accept what they say at face value, without too much public backlash.”
Contradicting the official line, then, becomes costly and resource intensive while increasing the hazard of law suits or other retribution, and, as mentioned, impeding access to news sources by becoming a source of trouble for purveyors of the official line. Advocating for whistleblowers or dissidents is in itself more time and money consuming that mere acceptance of what is claimed by the corporate or governmental spokesperson. When deadlines and budgets are a factor, getting the story uncritically becomes more tempting. The late Stephen Jay Gould lamented this as it related to science textbook publishing, noting how incorrect statements or outdated concepts were slavishly copied over and over again in subsequent editions, perpetuating the error through time, even while scientific knowledge itself progressed and self- corrected. The government, military and business sectors provide enormous PR resources that lends credibility to the reports the journalists write while enhancing the image of those reported upon in a nice little dance of reciprocity. The disparity between those groups that provide dissent and challenge the accepted viewpoint with those in power is immense. The budgets, resources and manpower differences are staggering. Critical voices, when there at all, are vastly overwhelmed.
Just one of the examples given of corporate special access involves Mobile Oil, with its large platoon of PR representatives. It engaged in the practice of hiring its own reporters, according to Chomsky’s book, Manufacturing Consent, to interview their own executives on issues such as gas prices. Besides individual companies, there are corporate collectives with significant PR resources of their own. This relationship between corporations and media reporting is shown for how cozy it is by how much effort and attention is given by the large corporations to make reporters feel comfortable and easily accommodated. This becomes almost an enabling and co-dependent situation. The ease of access to “privileged sources of information” becomes routine and difficult to break from. One wonders how much information never reaches us that could help us make critical evaluations and how much disinformation and distortion arises from this close relationship.
This mutual dependency fosters a media that is all too willing to oblige the powerful and mute stories that they would find offensive. There are cases where a powerful group dictates that access to it is dependent on disallowing a countering viewpoint to be aired. Dissent is anathema, thoughtful debate is to be avoided at all cost and a story that fails to fit nicely into preconceived notions is to be ignored.
The media also puts its own experts on the payroll; co-opting them, often funding their research, paying for their time and organizing think tanks to hire them. Market and governmental forces can dictate the slant of what is presented from biased authority figures while showing no figures from a dissenting point of view. With increased exposure of selected authority figures stating one line repetitively, credibility and consent ensues. When officials repeat disinformation enough, it becomes reality in the minds of the public. The link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussien, or Hussein’s WMD for instance was believed by a majority of the public simply by repetition of the error in official statements. The press uncritically aided these deceptions by its uncritical coverage.
Joseph Geobbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, said: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Retired Air Force colonel Sam Gardiner was a professional in psychological warfare or psyops, which is only to be used against foreign enemies. Of course now with secret surveillance, suspension of Constitutional law, and the denial of basic established jurisprudence for those designated by the Administration as “enemy combatants” whether home or abroad, it may not be surprising, but is no less appalling, that psyops too has now been turned against our own citizenry, as Colonel Gardiner discovered. He unearthed and detailed “blowback” on a grand scale where the power of the US military had been deployed to deceive the American public. While the futile search for WMD continued in Iraq, weapons of mass deception were unleashed on an unwitting American public, all enabled by the media. The cooperation in deceiving the public between the media and the government was referred to in the book The Exception to the Rulers as a classic disinformation two-step, where the White House leaks a story to a prominent paper, then that highly regarded paper publishes it as a startling expose’ and then the White House can conveniently masquerade behind the paper’s credibility.
Again, regarding the credulous acceptance of statements made by those in authority with a vested interest in crafting carefully slanted portrayals of events, we see now in hindsight, how experts saw no down- the road problem in selling Hussein weaponry and otherwise supporting him (and there’s that hearty handshake between Rumsfeld and the Iraqi dictator that was photographed to the Secretary of Defense’s current shame) any more than when the Reagan administration supported terrorists, so it became official- or common wisdom- that these activities were of no concern. The Washington supply of chemical weapons to Hussein that was later used in attacks (dropped from US made helicopters) resulted in US sanctions that were unanimously passed in the Senate but killed by the Reagan- Bush White House. After all, there was money to made in Iraq. Indeed at least 24 US corporations helped Iraq build its pre-Gulf War weapons programs, including Hewitt-Packard, Honeywell, Eastman-Kodak, DuPont and Rockwell among others. While this and what was to follow was big news abroad, it was met largely with silence in the US media.
Also not reported was the agenda of the PNAC (Project for a New American Century), founded by such luminaries as Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle and Abrams before morphing into our current administration’s officialdom. The PNACs goal was nothing short of global domination! As alarmist as this sounds, written memos outlining a future attack and takeover of Iraq to own its oil production, plans of building an oil pipeline across Afghanistan and later on, encouragement to think of 9/11 from an opportunistic standpoint—something to be capitalized on- were uncovered. Amy Goodman calls the administration’s ties to big oil and its plans, an OILYgarchy, which, she writes: “...typically require the abrogation of civil liberties, depict self- enrichment as a patriotic duty and rely on the cooperation of a slavish press.”
Terrorist attacks in advancing the neo-con agenda have been so effective that Rumsfeld’s Defense Science Board recommended the creation of what would be called the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG) to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception, for the purpose of, among other things, launching secret operations aimed at stimulating reactions among terrorists and states possessing WMD. It would prod terrorist cells into action, thereby exposing them to “quick response attacks” by US forces, signaling to harboring states that their sovereignty would be at risk. Bush’s un-signing of treaties that would exempt US soldiers and officials from World Court accountability, makes this agenda even more frightening. It might be fair to ask if some of this ought to get more coverage in mainstream media.
This funding of terrorists and tyrants continues into the present, excising any credibility we once had in our role of spreading democracy, since all the while we were flaming the fires of future terrorist attacks on the US. We have fulfilled, in some assessments, including Chomsky’s, bin Laden’s wildest dreams. Recruitment in terrorist organizations has gone up dramatically since the Bush policies have been put into place. The media merely parroted the official line and those officials spoon fed us what they wanted us to hear to get the necessary support from an uninformed public that was needed. By careful, selective focus on what gets reported and the slant given to that reporting, as when protesters or challengers to the official line are depicted as few and kooky, the media do us a disservice. Even if you happen to agree with the dissenters, who wants to join some ragtag bunch of “unpatriotic” troublemakers?
Flack and Enforcers is the phrase Chomsky employs as the title of his Fourth Filter, with flack essentially being any negative response to media statements, and which may take many and various forms (e-mails, bills, law-suits, phone calls, etc., etc.). Flack tells the media that it has done wrong and grievances need to be addressed. Flack is amoral—neither good nor bad. Sometimes it works in one’s self interested favor and sometimes it combats one’s own agenda. Flack, Jeremy pointed out, is only effective in eliciting change in the media when it costs it in time, money or prestige. Otherwise it is just whining. Flack is a form of coercion and when used by powerful interests, it can discipline the media for stepping outside of acceptable boundaries, which helps shield these interests and entities from critical coverage.
Beahan presented several specific cases of bias regarding those we are friendly with and those we oppose as a nation, where that support or opposition has little to do with the intrinsic merits of the individuals, countries, or policies, but is simply about what can be gained by those in power from the alliance or opposition. The murder of Polish priest Popielusko, for example, bolstered Reagan’s Cold War policies while comparable atrocities that were being committed against clergy in Latin America by regimes funded, armed and trained by the US were virtually ignored by the American media and therefore had no influence on public support or resistance to US policies and strategies. In his book Hegemony or Survival, Chomsky argues compellingly as to how much of our foreign activity is a result of top-level American opposition to up and coming democracies. Free and democratic societies are more difficult to control. Other nations gaining power become competitors and therefore threats to us. Support of strong arm dictators, juntas and death squads, quashes fledgling democracies while eliciting some control over those who massacre them via their dependence on us for their funding, training and equipment.
The extreme bias (beyond liberal and conservative) of coverage by the media regarding Third World elections was documented in the book by Chomsky that Beahan drew from. The media portrayal of elections in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador is instructive in showcasing how Guatemala’s and El Salvador’s elections were presented in gushing tones as triumphs of victory while Nicaragua’s were deemed illegitimate and a farce. The actual mechanics of the electoral process in Nicaragua were by far more democratic, however. Nicaragua had that fatal flaw of not being a US client state, which made all the difference in the picture painted of it. For the American press, which ignored the facts of the matter, it was the US backed rebels who were the heroes in the story, as they challenged the people in taking part in the elections (that was depicted as a farce). Conversely, when rebels similarly worked against elections in El Salvador and Guatemala, their actions were seen as cowardly. The biased reporting distills down to little more than raw propaganda, according to Chomsky. With news becoming similar to State Media, with the careful control of image, Orwellian News speak, abuses to our Constitutional rights by the Patriot Act and the encroaching marriage of State and Church, we grow ever closer to becoming what we supposedly oppose as an alleged democracy.
Other examples given of our schizophrenic official views on groups, depending on if they are designated as enemies or clients, that Beahan presented included the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the Korean airliner shot down by the Soviets. The former case ignored US involvement, in the years before the Khmer Rouge, in massive bombing campaigns and support of the civil war there that resulted in death and starvation and how our activity helped bring the K.R. to power. The latter case became a Reagan rallying cry for his policies against the Soviet Union but when Israel knowingly shot down a Libyan civilian airliner, this was dismissed and forgotten.
While our September 11 was unquestionably a horrific event, there have been others that received little or no media attention in the US., including 9/11 of 1973 in Chile where President Salvador Allende, the democratically elected leader, died in a CIA backed military coup. On September 11, 1977, Stephen Biko, the antiapartheid leader, lay unconscious on the floor of a police van after being beaten by the police and was driven 1,000 kilometers to Pretoria, where he would die the following day. On September 11, 1980, Guatemalan anthropologist Myrna Mack was murdered by the US backed military.
Another example of the under- or- non reported links to US governmental support of tyrants was when the Shah of Iran came to power as a result of the US and British backed overthrow of the popularly elected Prime Minister Mosaddek, for the crime of nationalizing his country’s oil industry. This cut into Anglo-Iranian Oil’s (what would be named British Petroleum) near monopoly—helping themselves to some 85% of the oil profits. The US was asked to intervene and so we did with Teddy Roosevelt’s grandson, Kermit, a CIA operative, who hired mobs to attack the prime minister’s residence, resulting in the deaths of 100s of Iranians. “Stormin’” Norman Schwarzkopf’s father influenced the Shah (who had fled the country but was brought back to Iran by the US) to illegally oust the elected prime minister. Later US efforts served to usher in the fundamentalist reign of Ayatolla Khomeini, sparking in a long-suppressed backlash (“blowback”).
Chomsky warns us that we are still not fully emancipated from the prejudices of the ruling class, all this time after the Enlightenment, and to not take on faith statements by those in authority. Jeremy ended his presentation to us with the thought that the world’s most powerful nation needs dissenters to keep it in line, lest the atrocities plaguing the world will continue to spill over onto our soil.
New York Daily News columnist, Juan Gonzales wrote: “Journalism is not just some consumer product like cornflakes or cars. At its best, it is a noble profession and a public service. It helps to right wrongs, it gives strength to the powerless, it informs and enlightens readers, viewers and listeners about events outside their direct experience. But as its worst, journalism becomes a bait for the commercials. It distorts reality, inflames passions, reinforces stereotypes, marginalizes dissenting views, and functions as a mouthpiece for the powerful.”
Secretary: Charles LaRue.
