“In the absence of institutions and education by which the environment is so successfully reported that the realities of public life stand out very sharply against self-centred opinion, the common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality…” Noam Chomsky (2)
Because of the abuse media is subject to, it has received much attention as social scientists try to quantify its effects, pointing out its harmful qualities and ability to distort truth, swaying public opinion.
Critical theory of the effects of powerful groups such as the media, where they promote a false consciousness among the population, is concisely put by Herbert Marcuse 1964 (3). Believing that such powerful groups and their exploitative nature maintain class inequalities with a truly ideological function.
“If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television programme and visit the same resort, …if they all read the same newspaper. …Indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the establishment are shared by the underlying population”.
For Marcuse, we have been deluded, made to believe that we can all be the same, that we need ‘this’ service, and ‘that’ product. Capitalism has given us false needs and wants, deflecting attention from the underlying problems it wishes to disguise.
Books like Carl Jensen’s ‘20yrs of Censored News’, and Greg Philo’s ‘Seeing and Believing, the Influence of Television’, come from a neo-Marxist perspective, as does most criticism of media, and whose main aim’s are to enlighten the falsely informed public of the bias that occurs in mainstream media reporting.
Both these social scientists, along with others, have adopted different techniques to acquire their mountain of evidence, from content analysis to laboratory experiments, and each make their own claims as to its effects.
Those Pluralists in defence of the media however, claim that any bias perceived is unavoidable, they say that it only acts as a mirror, reflecting back to society the wide diversity of its citizens outlooks, needs and demands. There are many obstacles, like deadline pressures, human misjudgement, limited print space and scarce airtime. Other factors like budgetary restraints and the difficulty of reducing a complex story into a concise report also create problems, no communication system can hope to report everything, so selectivity is needed.
Critics of the media and the stories they report, however, believe that many misrepresentations are not the result of innocent error and everyday production problems. There is an understanding of selectivity, but it is the principle of selectivity involved that is in question. Mainstream media bias does not occur in random fashion, but occurs again and again favouring management over labour, affluent whites over inner-city poor, officialdom over protesters and corporations over corporate critics. The built in biases faithfully reflect the dominant ideology of the day, affecting public belief and behaviour, avoiding key issues and points of view, purposefully distorting the truth to protect the establishment, it’s allies and their control of political, military and economic power.
An example of this kind is the Glasgow University Media Group’s analysis of the coverage of six women’s peace demonstrations, which appeared between December 1982 and December 1983. Out of a total of 38 reports they found that many of the features central to the camp were not covered in the news.
“In all, 1 minute and 15 seconds are devoted to the protest, and 12 minutes and 25 seconds to the ‘technical background’. If it were not for the peace camp, the Greenham Common base would probably not be in the news at all, yet the political reasoning of the camp is virtually silenced”. (4)
It has been argued that there is always time and space to give full and proper explanations of the ‘official pro-message’ in mainstream media, and the most common misrepresentations for Jensen and Philo alike, are Omission. Vital details of a story are left out; whole sentences are taken out of context and adapted with new meanings.
The political repression of left-wing governments on their people is widely reported and condemned by the west, such as Castro in Cuba. Yet virtually nothing is reported about oppression and killings in western supported right-wing client states such as Turkey, Indonesia and Guatemala. For Jensen (8) the muting and downplaying of such sensational stories as the 1965, US financed, trained, advised and equipped overthrowing of Indonesian president Achmed Sukarno, eradicating the Indonesian Communist Party in the process, is typical of the suppression of stories reflecting poorly those of western power.
He also claims that when Omission proves to be ineffective, the media will resort to outright lies. For example when the CIA involved itself with drug traffickers in Italy, France, Corsica, Indochina, Afghanistan and Central and South America, it became the object of congressional investigations and a matter of public record. However the media did not report it, evidence was ignored and they repeatedly lied about its existence.
A British study by Grover and Soothill 1996 (5), on the press reporting of sexually motivated murders, believe the media has the power and ability to condemn and stereotype a lot of people, much in the same way as the term ‘underclass’ has, by representing a section of the public as deviant.
And because of this, they claim, “it prevented our understanding of the true nature of sexual violence”. They looked at nine British newspapers for one year, stating that, “the image constructed by the media, was one where only men of low socio-economic background were capable of sexual murder”. They believed that press reports lead the newspaper reading public to a greater fear of an already marginalised group of people, fuelling popular conceptions and crude stereotypes.
Press reporting of sexually motivated murder only helped to reproduce the idea that violent crime is something that is only capable by the lower classes, suggesting that ‘normal’ (i.e. typically middle class) men do not commit sexual violence.
This has important consequences for both the understanding of sexual violence and for those who find themselves economically and socially marginalised, making it easier to justify action, such as clearing the streets of homeless people, vermin, who commit crime rather than people who need a home.
Labelling is also a key issue for Jensen. As propagandists, the media seek to pre-figure our perception of a subject area with a positive or negative label, sort of making our mind up for us and affecting our perception of social reality.
Some positive labels can be, ‘stability’, ‘the Prime ministers firm leadership’, ‘a healthy economy’, labels that define the subject without having to deal with actual particulars that might lead us to a different conclusion. In contrast some negative labels could be, ‘underclass’, ‘leftist guerrillas’, ‘Islamic terrorists’, ‘conspiracy theories’, ‘inner-city gangs’ and ‘civil disturbances’, these are seldom treated within the larger context of social relations and issues concerned with them, further falsifying our perception of the real issues at hand.
Australian Stewart Fist, and his article on media manipulation (9) concerning the conclusions of the Adelaide Hospitals cellular phone and health project, is interesting as he spent a few years as a public relations consultant, with the worlds then, second largest PR company, Hill & Knowlton.
Claiming that media manipulation is easy and carried out on a daily basis, he say’s that a whole section of public relations is devoted to what they call ‘Crisis management’, where ‘risk management specialists’ are hired to independently prove a product or service to be safe.
Fist claims that from experience, he knows that crisis management companies utilise the ‘Scoop requirements’ of the media, with their need to be first with a story and “their inability to separate the wheat from the chaff”. Confusing issues with various claims until both public and the media give up and move on to the next headline.
For Fist, ‘spin doctors’ and some scientists have developed skilled ways of defusing issues with judicial and selective releases of information, running blacklists of technical journalists, who only ever get innocuous press releases, favouring general journalists with key releases.
As a result of these techniques, the Adelaide Hospital research release in April 1997 saw the effective suppression of disturbing news of the tumour potential of GSM cellular phones. The findings had been delayed for 18 months already and were finally released on the same day as the anniversary of the Port Arthur Massacre, when headline news was concentrating on this and related questions of gun control.
Any coverage that did get in a few city newspapers saw most of the attention directed toward public irritation at cellular phone towers and little was reported on the health risks of using a cellular phone.
Other techniques used by the media, according to fist, are also covered by Jensen and Philo, ‘false balancing’, where right wing spokespeople are often interviewed alone, while liberals, on the less frequent occasions that they appear are always offset by conservatives. Meanwhile left progressive and radical views are almost completely shut off or publicly condemned, humiliated, or silenced.
This was demonstrated more recently in the Daily Mail (Fri, Oct 6th 2000) (6). An article by Ian Smith looked at the apparently alarming figures of dropout rates at Universities. The Conservatives, Smith claims, say it is the result of falling standards as Universities engage in an ‘open door’ policy, allowing students from poorer areas, and with fewer formal qualifications, entry to University. Much of the statistics used by Smith highlighted the disparities between former Colleges, who more readily accepted those from poorer backgrounds, and the more traditional institutions, whose clientele had arrived from more privileged positions and private schooling. His statistics had effectively backed up the claims from the Conservatives, and the story even went on to report that University was not for everyone (indicating the lower classes). The only defence came from a spokesman from the NUS who pointed to the financial burden faced by students today and that was it! no response from a government minister or investigation into the financial situations of students today compared to 20yrs ago when Smith was probably a student.
Fist also noted this with pro-GSM scientists that were interviewed, and rarely were questions raised that the left radicals were asking. In effect you never hear both sides of the story to come to an informed decision, as media manipulation will distort our perception of social reality by giving us a tunnel vision of information.
Are we, however, totally blind to the truth, do we accept and take for granted that what is reported to us as the truth, or is selectivity utilised where our cultural upbringing defines our perception of mainstream media reporting. (Cultural Effects Theory. 1.)
The evidence is reflective in comments made by women of different socio-economic status (SES) in Philos book (pg. 133) (7). Women of a lower SES, who were asked about the media content of reports on Arthur Scargill during the miners strike, remarked with calls of, ‘they tell lies’, while those of an upper SES made remarks on ‘that awful Scargill’.
Media representations of Arthur Scargill at that time were not favourable, every attempt was being made to undermine the miners and their cause, and to break the strike, sentences were taken out of context, minor skirmishes reported as violent outbursts. Media representations favoured hugely on the side of the government, avoiding criticism from the Left, exploiting the nature of modern capitalist society drawing on right wing ideology to justify tighter control and more stringent measures.
However peoples perception of the events reflected their class or economic position in society, from the same reporting there were two completely opposite reactions to it. The middle and upper classes believed media reports of terrible acts of violence toward the police and authorities, whilst the lower classes were less inclined to believe such reporting as truth.
Powerful though the media is, it exists alongside other socialising factors such as, family, peers, schools and work and may have less effect on one person than it has on another and we also all have our own opinions on matters. So despite the pervasive impact of the media, evidence suggests that it cannot be agreed who controls it, the State, the Capitalists or the Audience.
The fast growing pace of the internet and digital TV and its access to media that suits the individual viewer places more power than ever before in the hands of the consumer, which would fit with the view of Alvin Toffler in ‘Future Shock’, who saw increasing options for the individual both as a consumer of media output and as a producer, in the future.
References.
1. Stephens, P. Leach, A. Taggart, L. Jones, H. ‘Think Sociology’, Stanley Thornes Ltd, Cheltenham 1998. Chpt15, pg470.
2. FW: How the Gingrinch Stole Christmas. Quote: Noam Chomsky.
3. Marcuse, H.‘Critical Theory and Human Needs’. Reading 20 in ‘Classical and Contemporary Readings in Sociology’. Ed by Marsh, I. Longman, Harlow, 1998.
4. Glasgow University Media Group. ‘War and Peace News’, 1985. Pg. 198-201.
5. Grover, C. Soothill, K. ‘A Murderous Underclass’. The Sociological Review, 1996.
6. Smith, I. Daily Mail, Friday October 6th 2000.
7. Philo, G. ‘Seeing and Believing, the Influence of Television’. Routledge, London, 1992.
8. Jensen, C. ‘20yrs of Censored News’.
9. Fist, S. ‘Media Manipulation’.
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