Page 34 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

24 Chapter I

author of Debating War and Peace: Media Coverage of U.S. Intervention in the
Post-Vietnam Era refers to the narrow range of debate in media through the In-
dexing effect, which has been explored in works by other media scholars.69
Mermin summarizes: "if there is debate inside the American government over
U.S. policy, critical perspectives appear in the news. If government policy has
bipartisan support in Washington, however, critical perspectives expressed out-
side the government are not well reported."70
While mainstream journalists are technically independent of govemment as
a result of private, rather than government ownership of the press, they have, in
reality, "turned over to official actors the power to set the news agenda and the
spectrum of debate in the new^."^' As a result, the press has generally failed in
promoting an open-ended public debate over war that transcends narrow partisan
perspectives.

Progressive-Left Propaganda

While corporate media coverage is often classified as propaganda, such propa-
ganda necessarily cames with it a much different connotation than Progressive-
Left media propaganda, which is not referred to in negative terms throughout
this work. The main reason for this distinction between the two types of propa-
ganda (positive and negative) is clear enough: corporate media institutions main-
tain a monopoly when it comes to reporting the news, whereas Progressive-Left
outlets are far smaller and retain much more limited audiences, and, as a result,
less influence with the mass public. Public debate inevitably suffers in light of
the monopoly dominance of corporate propaganda, as progressive views and
criticisms are blackballed from mainstream reporting and editorializing.
Progressive-Left media outlets, on the other hand, have grown primarily as
a response to the lack of open debate throughout the mainstream media. Surely it
should be considered a positive thing that they add long-neglected arguments
(whether one agrees with them or not is irrelevant) to discussions that are sorely
lacking in dissident points of view. The very idea of placing Progressive media
propaganda on par with corporate propaganda in terms of negative effects is
absurd, given the dramatic differences in audience and reader levels between the
two types of media. Corporations have thoroughly dominated the mass media
since the rise of the modem American media state, thereby limiting debate to
those views accepted within corporate culture. As Ben Bagdikian explains about
corporate monopoly power that, "By 2000, of all cities with a daily paper, 99
percent had only one newspaper management"-effectively ensuring that each
paper retained monopoly rights within its respective area of operation.72
While corporate newspapers reach tens millions of people everyday, the
Progressive-Left does not even publish a single daily newspaper, let alone one
that can reach millions. Even monthly and weekly progressive magazines cannot
come close to corporate weekly magazines in terms of distribution levels. Maga-
zines like the Nation and In These Times retain small circulations of 173,000 and