Means of Manipulation and the Problems With the “Free Press.”
Many believe that the alleged capitalist “free market” leads to a “free press”, but what is not understood is that while there is (debatably) little direct censorship, the hoops one must jump through in order to present information, whether it be factual or an opinion, that is adverse to the agenda of the Western governments, render our “liberal media” a feeding tube straight from political and corporate powerhouses to us.
This is much more elaborately detailed in Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s book, Manufacturing Consent, but I will outline two of the key issues with the capitalist media.
The first is that when the financial gain of media outlets comes from advertising space, they must pander to the big businesses in order to make themselves look like something advertisers will want to be associated with. In this way, it becomes counter intuitive to report on the harsher aspects of right-wing rule, such as exploitation of workers, particularly people of colour, and the treatment of Indigenous people in the Americas and Australia, just to name a few. Valuable information about terrible things we may well be supporting (animal agriculture, fast fashion, governmental policies) is hidden from us, replaced by inoffensive news stories with just enough shock factor to make us believe we are receiving the truth. This practice of the press pandering to large corporations has been in practice since the 1800s, and would undoubtedly have existed earlier had print news more quickly reached mass production.
The second, and arguably most disturbing, is the determination of victims as either “worthy” or “unworthy”, depending on their ability to be used as propaganda and equally the threat they pose to the chosen agenda and public image of the state. Herman and Chomsky use several cold war examples, for example the murders in Poland and Nicaragua in comparison to those in Guatemala and El Salvador: communist vs capitalist. Portrayed as innocent and completely undeserving victims of brutal abuse, the American population (and indeed most of the West) were told of the horrors that Soviet rule brought to its people, in most cases with a hurried and less than spectacular mention of the completely fair trials that followed. They were not told, however of the countless political rapes, tortures, murders and other undesirable goings on in American client states El Salvador and Guatemala. This was for the simple reason that the US sought to maintain its image as morally superior and entirely honourable. Close relations with two corrupt and murderous Central American countries would not help their cause, so the victims of political cruelty there were swept under the carpet, not regarded as “worthy” of scrutinous report. Gory details of political murders in Eastern Europe, however, indulged the drama and scare-factor so crucial in managing a crowd such as the American (or British, or Australian, etc.) people. Parallels can be (and are, in Manufacturing Consent) drawn between the Central American cases and the case of the Vietnam War, the corruption of the reporting of which is so appalling and extensive that I couldn’t possibly discuss it in this article.
My piece has only touched the surface of what is indefinitely a much larger and insidious iceberg, and if this interests you I recommend strongly that you read Manufacturing Consent and indeed any political commentary by Noam Chomsky or any of your favourite leftist intellectuals.
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