Page 63 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Promise of Democracy

media coverage, where news segments like the “world in a minute”
or the “global minute” are the cultural indicators of foreign affairs
programming. Equally inconsequential is the newspaper or news
magazine coverage of genuinely global developments.This includes
the tendency to report on international news primarily after a
national, regional, or local angle converts stories into domestic inci-
dents that happen to occur abroad.The net effect is a lack of infor-
mation about the social, political, cultural, or economic conditions
of autonomous societies elsewhere, an issue that is rarely addressed
by journalists and summarily ignored by American audiences.
Consequently, Americans have a selective (and superficial) know-
ledge of some parts of the world, which – over the years – have
included Vietnam, Panama, Haiti, Kuwait, Bosnia, or more recently,
Afghanistan and Iraq; these are places, where American military
involvement draws media attention and results in extended conflict
coverage.
Indeed, television organizations, from CNN and Fox to MSNBC,
in particular, thrive on conflict, utilize sensational headlines, and
employ a confirmational lingo that corroborates rather than chal-
lenges official versions of events. “We report, you decide” or “real
journalism: fair and balanced” are public relations slogans intent on
obscuring the ideological nature of news. Moreover, several media
organizations rely on the credibility of their institution (the New York
Times or MSNBC, respectively) or on the veracity attributed to their
presentation, and perpetuate deceptions that come with slogans like
“all the news that’s fit to print” or “fiercely independent.”
Yet there is still not much variety in content, especially within
television or the press. The result is a numbing conformity of
content, style, or even color schemes across the media spectrum that
affects all forms of mass communication and makes the landscape
of popular culture look colorful and shallow, but utterly familiar.
In this sense, there is no free press – or freedom of expression –
in a society of captive audiences, where mass communication turns
into an ideologically predetermined performance for the purpose of
commercial gain rather than public enlightenment. Since it seems
impossible to accomplish both goals, the public always receives what
it wants rather then what it needs, and typically before it will know

51