A Progressive Response to an Undemocratic Media

Misperceptions, The Media, and the Iraq War “Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions…” The PIPA/Knowledge Networks Poll

Jurgen Habermaswinner, 2004 Kyoto Prize “The Public Sphere”“Theory of Communicative Action” 20th Annual Kyoto Prizes for Lifetime Achievement in Arts and Philosophy awarded to Jurgen Habermas June 11, 2004 The 2004 Kyoto Prize for Arts and Philosophy was chosen from the field of Thought and Ethics and awarded to philosopher Jurgen Habermas, Ph.D., 75, of Starnber, Germany.Habermas received the award for achievements in social philosophy, in particular his establishment of the communicative action theory and discourse ethics.Considered among the world's leading awards for lifetime achievement, the Kyoto Prizes are presented to individuals and groups worldwide who have contributed significantly to human progress in the areas of “Advanced Technology,” “Basic Sciences,” and “Arts and Philosophy.”

“In private life we associate with people who share similar outlooks and values. In public life we meet people from backgrounds unlike our own. The first principle should not be that we’re all the same — an assumption privileging dominant cultural groups — but rather that we are dissimilar. This leads to a recognition of the moral ambiguity of politics, the awareness that we cannot expect simply to impose our values.” Harry C. Boyte, “The Pragmatic Ends of Popular Politics” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, MIT Press (1992), pp. 351-52.

“The First Amendment . . . rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public, that a free press is a condition of a free society. Surely a command that the government itself shall not impede the free flow of ideas does not afford non-governmental combinations a refuge if they impose restraints upon that constitutionally guaranteed freedom. Freedom to publish means freedom for all and not for some. Freedom to publish is guaranteed by the Constitution, but freedom to combine to keep others from publishing is not. Freedom of the press from governmental interference under the First Amendment does not sanction repression of that freedom by private interests.” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in ASSOCIATED PRESS v. U. S., 326 U.S.1 Argued Dec. 5, 6, 1944, Decided June 18, 1945

“In 1850, census data showed that 95% of all U.S. newspapers had a political affiliation … Traditional party journalism … eased readers’ participation in politics by creating an accessible political world.” C. Edwin Baker, Advertising and a Democratic Press, Princeton University Press (1994), p. 5.

“The province of men with money, the newspaper business generally represented their interests. That was why a region whose voters were roughly half Democrats and half Republicans had an overwhelmingly Republican press. The men who put up the capital, the Northern business class, were predominately Republican... Through the press, the well-to-do had the opportunity, largely unavailable to any other social group, to disseminate their conception of politics and partisanship and set the public agenda.” “The Press Transformed” from The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865-1928 by Michael McGerr, Oxford, 1986.

“The public must be put in its place... so that we may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd... The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality.” This specialized class of “public men” is responsible for “the formation of a sound public opinion.” “Manufacturing consent” is the means by which public opinion is directed in support of “the national interest.” Public Opinion by Walter Lippman, Macmillan, 1922.

“Leo Strauss was very pre-occupied with secrecy because he was convinced that the truth is too harsh for any society to bear; and that the truth-bearers are likely to be persecuted by society - specially a liberal society - because liberal democracy is about as far as one can get from the truth as Strauss understood it.“Strauss's disciples have inherited a superiority complex as well as a persecution complex. They are convinced that they are the superior few who know the truth and are entitled to rule. But they are afraid to speak the truth openly, lest they are persecuted by the vulgar many who do not wish to be ruled by them.”Shadia Drury, author of Leo Strauss and the American Right (1998) and The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (1988).

Christopher Hitchens, “Voting in the Passive Voice” Harper’s Magazine, April 1992. “Opinion polling was born out of a struggle not to discover the public mind but to master it. It was a weapon in the early wars to thwart organized labor and in the battle against Populism . . . . “. . . as all pollsters will tell you privately, the answers to poll questions are very greatly influenced by what has lately been defined as important by the television news. . .”

Christopher Hitchens, “Voting in the Passive Voice” Harper’s Magazine, April 1992. [Pollster Pat Caddell quoted]: “It’s all part of an attempt to keep order. It defines politics and politicians to suit those already in power. . . .Like many other technologies in politics [polling is] and instrument for deception whereby the truth is obscured and the public will be excluded and ignored.”

The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations by Larry Tye, Henry Holt & Co., 1998.

“In the United States the 170,000 public relations employees whose job it is to manipulate news, public opinion and public policy in the interests of their clients outnumber news reporters by 40,000. A study in 1990 discovered that almost 40 percent of the news content of a typical U.S. newspaper originates as public relations press releases, story memos, and suggestions. The Columbia Journalism Review reported that more than half the news stories in the Wall Street Journal are based solely on corporate press releases (cited in Korten 1995:146 [When Corporations Rule the World]). “United States corporations spend almost half as much on advertising (approximately $120 per person) as the state spends on education ($207 per person).” —Richard Robbins, “Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism,” (Allyn and Bacon, 1999) p. 138.

Media Orientations

“ …the impartial, objective form of television news situates the viewer as a ‘passive observer, a mere consumer of news. [By contrast] commercials ask us to become active, … to do something, to change, indeed to improve something. But what we’re asked to improve is not the world but our own private situations and selves’…news (objectivity) and commercials (partisanship) act together to ‘position viewers as depoliticized consumers…” C. Edwin Baker, Advertising and a Democratic Press, Princeton University Press (1994), p. 28, 41, 43.

From the March, 1926 “Midwest Employers Bulletin”: “ Think of the speeches that may go forth. Wild and radical speeches listened to by hundreds of thousands. These wild men in their wild talks regardless of consequences, may reach the ear, possibly inadvertently, of your influential and trusted employee, who may be detracted from paths favorable to his employer’s success.” Cited by Robert W. McChesney in Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy: The Battle for Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935, Oxford University Press, 1993.

“There is not room in the broadcast band for every school of thought, religious, political, social and economic to have its separate broadcasting station.” From General Order 40 of the Federal Radio Commission, cited by Robert W. McChesney in Telecommunications, Mass Media and Democracy: The Battle for Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935, Oxford University Press, 1993.

NOT ALL MINERS ARE CREATED EQUAL: Nine months of a dramatic coal strike against the Pittston Company in Virginia (23 network minutes) received far less coverage than eight days of a coal strike in the Soviet Union (37 minutes). The takeover of a coal processing plant by the Pittston strikers — the first major plant takeover since the Flint (Michigan) sitdown strike of 1937 — was ignored by all three networks and the New York Times. Source: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, www.fair.org

The Sound Bite Society: Television And The American Mind(Four Walls Eight Windows, New York : 1999) by Jeffrey Scheuer

“Television, in nearly all its forms and functions, and for both economic and structural reasons, acts as a simplying lens, filtering out complex ideas in favor of blunt emotional messages that appeal to the self and to narrower moral-political impulses. “For reasons that are inherent in the nature of ideology and do not impugn the politics of the left or right, simplication promotes, and epitomizes, political conservatism. Indeed, simplicity and complexity are the basic polar organizing principles of the political spectrum.”Jeffrey Scheuer, The Sound Bite Society: Television and the American Mind, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1999.

Conservative agenda is minimalist: • less government • less regulation • focus on individualism • democracy and market capitalism are synonymous “This simpler, minimalist view of the world is more vividly and coherently portrayed via the commercial media's ‘sound bite’ culture.” From Sound Bite Societyby Jeffrey Schnerer

Progressive agenda is more complex: • bigger role for government • collaborative approaches to social ills • market capitalism and democracy are not synonymous • democracy requires checks and balances on corporate and government power “The more complex, nuanced progressive perspective requires context and detailed explanation. Commercial media is not structured to portray this worldview accurately.” From Sound Bite Societyby Jeffrey Schnerer

“The problem with public broadcasting is bias — programming that does not disseminate a common culture but imposes a partisan attitude... Remove Federal funds and you remove officials’ ability to influence the system... to make programming more truly national and better able to serve its legitimate unifying purposes.” “How Not to Fix Public Broadcasting” by Leonard Garment, New York Times, Dec. 21, 1994.

Evolution of U.S. Media

A Progressive Response to an Undemocratic Media