Understanding where The Daily Show fits in the propaganda system requires a basic understanding of how modern propaganda functions. When most people think of propaganda they think of posters from WW2, or state controlled radio and television in authoritarian countries. While these traditional systems of propaganda still exist in many places around the world, they have rarely been the favored approach in modern western democracies (mainly due to their ineffectiveness). I think the propaganda model proposed by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their book Manufacturing Consent most accurately describes the functioning of the propaganda system in the modern US. They argue that democratic countries, with privately (generally corporately) owned mass media systems, will have to use systems of propaganda that are more subtle, and that therefore function somewhat differently from propaganda systems in dictatorships. Instead of serving the government's interest they serve the interests of their corporate owners (note that most of these owners are not single individuals but groups of shareholders represented by a board of directors). Subtlety makes modern propaganda less detectable and therefore more effective, but the structure of such systems, especially their independent private ownership, makes them much less controllable (each corporation serves its own interest not the system's interest).
Even though democracies must generally be subtler with their propaganda than dictatorships, Chomsky and Herman argue that democratic countries are even more reliant on effective propaganda. In authoritarian countries with rigidly controlled propaganda systems most people are bombarded by official messages. From the media they may only ever hear the official line, but people know that line is not trustworthy and easily dismiss it. They tend to rely instead on information spread interpersonally and through local community level networks. The major advantage of the propaganda system in the US is that its messages are more believable. The population has (until recent years) seen the mainstream news media as relatively trustworthy. Since the goal of all propaganda is persuasion, believability and trustworthiness go a long way. Democratic regimes count on these advantages since they generally do not have a dictatorship's ability to use force and violence to keep their populations in line.
In recent years trust in the US news media as a whole has declined sharply. As news organizations increasingly adopt ideological perspectives, as their reporting grows increasingly biased by these perspectives, people increasingly identify with and rely on the particular news outlets that most closely match their personal ideologies. Polls indicate that people's trust in the US news media as a whole has been declining since the '90s, but their trust in the particular news sources they rely on has stayed relatively stable. This is the result of an intentional branding effort by the corporate media. It has created extremely polarized audiences.
Traditional propaganda is most effective when there is uniformity of message. When people hear the same message from most (or at least from multiple) sources they are given the impression that there is consensus about the veracity of the message. It makes the actual level of consensus among experts in the field the message pertains to less relevant. Conversely, when an audience hears messages that contradict a propaganda message it creates doubt about the truth of the propaganda message. This makes controlling access to information essential to the successful dissemination of propaganda.
Increasingly ideological US news organizations regularly disseminate torrents of contradictory information. This goes against the message uniformity that traditional propaganda systems rely on. It would seemingly make their propaganda less persuasive. However, increasingly polarized news audiences rarely hear the contradictory messages because the blatantly ideological bias of the opposing side's news outlets repulses them. This polarization is also at the heart of the widening "red vs. blue" ideological divide in the US. Within each bubble the propaganda is very consistent and therefore very effective. Because both the "red" and the "blue" media outlets are so clearly manipulative from the other side's perspective, when people do hear information that contradicts their own side's propaganda, they simply dismiss it as blatant deception by the other side. This gives the corporate media a way of discrediting alternative narratives; a valuable tool in the Internet age, where the corporate media's gatekeeper role has waned.
The divisions created in the US working class by this media posturing are deep and strategically located to promote and avoid threats to the ruling class's common corporate interests. These rifts are manufactured by ginning up controversy over social and cultural issues that stoke emotional reactions but which only marginally affect people's quality of life. They often discuss real social pathologies, but their roots in corporate policies and regulations (or lack thereof) are usually obscured and dismissed. The issues discussed by the news media tend to be the issues that our elections are decided over. By preventing issues that challenge corporate interests or power from entering the political discussion they prevent politicians from challenging their interests or power.
Issues that do threaten corporate interests require a more dependable technique. The most reliable propaganda tool is still omission. If there is some controversial issue that a government or a private organization wants to prevent an audience from being roused by, this is more easily accomplished by keeping the audience from knowing about the issue all together than it would be by trying to convince an audience that already knows about the issue that it isn't something to be concerned about. The most effective tool of modern propaganda is to simply ignore anything that challenges the interests of the ruling class. This ignoring can become quite sophisticated.
The propaganda model that Chomsky and Herman describe does not rely on any kind of centralized control. They do not propose any mass conspiracy to deceive the public. Instead they describe a system in which a corporate media, as a result of their intrinsic interests, incentives, and world views, filter their messages in support of the interests of their primary stakeholders (i.e. owners, advertisers, sources "). Because corporate conglomerates with holdings in banking, investment, industry, and transnational trade own most media organizations, their messages also get filtered to support these wider corporate interests. Michael Parenti put it well, saying that they promote their class interest as the public interest.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
