Page 26 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

16 Chapter 1

stood at 22.7 million per week, distributed in over 600 different newspapers
throughout the country.39 Other major newspaper conglomerates retain impres-
sive local audiences as well. The Knight Ridder Corporation alone owns thirty-
two daily newspapers in fifty-eight different markets:' while news services like
Reuters and the Associated Press reach millions more every week. As the self-
proclaimed "backbone of the world's information system," the Associated Press
serves thousands of newspapers, radio stations, and television channels in the
United ~tates.~' These statistics demonstrate that the newspaper is not just a me-
dium for the very rich, although it does cater to more privileged middle and
higher income Americans.
The power of the elite national print media is in large part based upon its
indirect ideological influence over the rest of the national media. The New York
Times is considered the nation's "paper of record" for good reason. As James
Dearing and Everett M. Rogers explain:

The New York Times is generally regarded as the most respected U.S. news
medium. When the Times indicates that an issue is newsworthy, other US.
news organizations take note. When producers and editors at television stations,
radio stations, newspapers, and to a lesser degree, newsmagazines sit down to
decide which stories will receive the most time, the best placement, and the
biggest headlines that day, they often have checked first to see what decisions
the editors at the Times have made about the same issues.42
And the New York Times is but one member of the elite national media. As
scholar and media critic Noarn Chomsky states: "the elite media are sort of the
agenda-setting media. That means the New York Times, the Washington Post,
the major television channels, and so on. They set the general framework. Local
media more or less adapt to their structure." This agenda setting media attempts
to reach the most educated, affluent, and economically and politically powerful
Americans, although it also produces reporting that is filtered down to the mass
public. Chomsky continues:

There's maybe 20 percent of the population that is relatively educated, more or
less articulate, [that] plays some kind of role in [national and local] decision-
making. They're supposed to participate in social life-either as managers, or
cultural managers like teachers and writers and so on. They're supposed to
vote, they're supposed to play some role in the way economic and political and
cultural life goes on. Now their consent [to national policies and major politi-
cal, economic, and social agendas] is crucial.43
Americans newspapers-whether at the local, state, or national level--claim
privileged middle and upper class individuals and families as their primary mar-
ket demographic. This group, however, has also become the target for all com-
mercial news mediums, as it represents the largest source of revenues in a media
system run by profit-driven corporations.