Politico-media complex
Encyclopedia
The politico-media complex (PMC, also referred to as the political-media complex) is a name that has been given to the close, systematized, symbiotic
-like network of relationships between a state's
political
and ruling class
es, its media industry
, and any interactions with or dependencies upon interest groups with other domains and agencies, such as law (and its enforcement through the police) and, particularly, corporation
s - especially the multinationals
. The term PMC is often used to name, derogatively, the collusion between governments or individual politicians and the media industry in an attempt to manipulate rather than inform the people. (See Criticism)
Evidence of the use of the arts of propaganda
in the implementation of what is being named as the politico-media complex, can be seen, easily, in all areas of the media industry: print, radio, film, television, and, most recently, the Internet
. Newsprint has turned out to be the most durable source for the serving-up of political news and acting as a platform for political propaganda. While some critics argue that today's newsprint and magazine industries are in decline, they are still an active industry in the politico-media complex as politicians and interest groups continue to attempt to influence editors and journalists. Radio also represents a potent form of media that remains susceptible to political influence — it was widely used by governments for propaganda during the two World Wars. Film also can be used to promote propaganda, as it was especially during the two World Wars. It is a medium that can manipulate not only words, but sound and moving imagery, as well. As a result, its capacity to influence the public can be all the more powerful as it not only describes, but ostensibly shows reality and can claim to truly represent it visually. Another media industry that plays a role in the politico-media complex—now one of the two main sources of news across the world—is television. With the same advantages of film, television has grown and transformed political campaigns so that they have come to center around the medium. The framing of television advertisements and programs has been found to have significant effects on people’s perceptions, especially when dealing with political issues or institutions, making the persuasive-power of political groups who can control such networking that much greater. The Internet has become the second main source of news and is rapidly increasing in uses and its number of users. The Internet's innovations, such as forums, blogs, and 24-hour news sites have dramatically affected the way by which the public views and digests news and politics, such as by giving them increased power to participate in what was once a mostly closed system between the government and the media industry. Every year elections rely more and more on the Internet as a source of advertisement and useful information to the public but continues to suffer the same pitfalls of other media as a means of political manipulation.
states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers". Most of the international papers present in the world today are national papers re-edited for a wider audience. Because of this, there can be biases based on nationality. In any publication there is some sort of bias just from what news is covered and what stories are shown at the forefront of the publication.
Although print media is said to be struggling in the West, newspapers and magazines in second and third world countries continue to do well. For countries in which the majority of the population do not have ready access to the Internet or television, newspapers and magazines are one of the few ways to get the news. However, the independence from political influence, and dependability of newsprint is questionable in many countries. The Reporters Without Borders
Press Freedom Index
suggests that even in many first world countries the rights of the press are not fully respected, and that the press is not completely free to investigate or criticize the government, though the situation is far worse in third world or politically unstable nations.
One of the more comprehensive judges of freedom of the press is Reporters Without Borders
. Every year it releases an index, drawing attention to how free the press is in every country in the world. “It is disturbing to see European democracies such as France, Italy and Slovakia fall steadily in the rankings year after year,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said at the release of this year's index. “Europe should be setting an example as regards civil liberties. How can you condemn human rights violations abroad if you do not behave irreproachably at home? The Obama effect, which has enabled the United States to recover 16 places in the index, is not enough to reassure us."
as "very serious," the worst possible ranking on their five-point scale. China's press was ranked 168th out of 175 countries in the 2009 Freedom of the Press Index. The Chinese government maintains the legal authority to censor
the press, and in defense of censorship claims that the Communist party in China has the most freedom of press, since there is no wealthy minority controlling it.
, ranked 172 out of 175 is described as highly censored, as the Iranian government maintains strict control over much of the media, including print. Israel
has experienced a media control crackdown as the government censors the military action coverage, displaying how governments often limit press freedom during times of war. According to Reporters Without Borders for 2009, Eritrea
in Northern Africa is the worst ranked country for journalism freedom, displaying the connection between political stability and media freedom. Eritrea is currently a one-party "transitional government" which has yet to enact its ratified constitution. Other African countries at the bottom of the Press Freedom Index include Syria
(165) and Somalia
(164). Both countries exhibit little journalistic freedom, and are both known for their unstable transitional governments and near constant warfare.
In addition to economic struggles and readership decline, newsprint has also struggled with losing readers' trust. Surveys have found that people tend to trust newspapers less than other news media because they believe commercial issues and political bias motivate journalists. Most people believe their local and national news television stations more than their local and national newspapers. The only news medium that people trust less than newspapers is print magazines.
Some speculation has shown that the youth today are more visually inclined, and are therefore less likely to be influenced by written political news or propaganda. One Pew Center study recently found that 28% of this generation read the paper on a given day, and average only 10 minutes of reading time. Professor Thomas Patterson concludes his study on young people and news with this insight: "What's happened over time is that we have become more of a viewing nation than a reading nation, and the internet is a little of both. My sense is that, like it or not, the future of news is going to be in the electronic media, but we don't really know what that form is going to look like."
, which required all ships to use radio communication and keep a constant radio watch, amateur users to be licensed, and began regulating the use of wavelengths for radio transmissions. This act represents one of the earliest interactions between the government and the radio media and also set a precedence for later radio legislation, including the Radio Act of 1927, which established the Federal Radio Commission
and added further regulation to radio users, both commercial and amateur. Government regulation increased again with the American entrance into World War I, when President Woodrow Wilson ordered naval control of all radio stations, and ordered that amateurs cease all radio activity. Jonathan Reed Winkler
, a noted WWI historian, says “It was only during World War I that the United States first came to comprehend how a strategic communications network-the collection of submarine telegraph cables, and long-distance radio stations used by a nation for diplomatic, commercial and military purposes- was vital to the global political and economic interests of a great power in the modern world.” After World War I radio was introduced to broader civilian audiences when Westinghouse released the Aeriola Jr. in 1919, and the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) released the Radiola in 1920. The Aeriola Jr. and Radiola helped established a new channel for the politico-media complex to enter into thousand of American homes. By 1919 the oldest licensed American radio station, KDKA, from Pittsburgh, PA began broadcasting regular music shows, and soon music, educational programming, sports coverage and eventually news coverage became popular. Coverage of politics quickly caught on across the countries, as stations began covering elections, and reporting news of government actions. The close politico-media complex between government and radio was finalized in 1924 when the Republican and Democratic National Conventions were covered, and candidates made eve of election speeches, the first instance of radio broadcasting that was meant to affect the American political process.
The radio industry's politico-media complex would only deepen as the years passed. The numbers of radio users exploded, by 1935 about 2 in 3 American homes owned a radio. Politicians quickly learned to reach these huge audiences. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Fireside Chats
are an excellent example of the politico-media complex. In his series of informal broadcasts from 1933 to 1944, Roosevelt developed a comforting rapport with the American public. The Fireside Chats enabled the President to communicate directly to the public through one of the most popular media outlets of the time. Politicians would continue to use the radio in World War II, in which the radio was used primarily for news transmissions and the spread of propaganda
. One example of radio propaganda and the politico-media complex are Iva Toguri D'Aquino, Ruth Hayakawa, June Suyamawho, and Myrtle Lipton collectively known as Tokyo Rose
. These women hosted anti-American programming intended to lower American soldiers' morale and illustrate the use of governments' use of the media to influence the public, or their enemies. However, many people, such as Iva Toguri D'Aquino
and Allied prisoners of war, were forced against their will to participate in these programs and worked hard to help Allied forces.
After WWII and throughout the Cold War
era, Democratic nations used long-range radio waves to broadcast news into countries behind the Iron Curtain or otherwise information-compromised nations. The American international radio program, the Voice of America
, founded during World War II, became a critical part of Cold War era "public diplomacy," which aimed to spread democratic values, and popularize American policies abroad. In 1950, President Harry S. Truman described the Cold War conflict as a "struggle, above all else, for the minds of men," which the American people would win by getting "the real story across to people in other countries." in other words, embracing the politico-media complex and using it to influence foreign listeners. The Voice of America, operating under the authority of the United States Information Agency
, supported programming in forty five languages, broadcasting over 400 hours of programming a week. Programming included unbiased news coverage, musical programs, and Special English
broadcasts, which intended to help listeners master American English. The VOA was not alone in its international broadcasting efforts, the United States Central Intelligence Agency supported Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, both propagandist radio networks intended to incite dissent against Communism. Other nations also used international radio as propaganda, for example, Deutsche Welle
, the German international radio program was a major broadcaster during the Cold War. By 1965 DW was airing 848 hours of programming to the Soviet Union and abroad and reached 5% of the USSR population weekly by 1980. Deutsche Welle's mission to “promote understanding of Germany as an independent nation with its roots in European culture and as a liberal, democratic, constitutional state based on the rule of law.” illustrates German use of the politico-media complex.
, for which there are entire books for individual countries and varying definitions. Films represent societies and countries as they are or how they should and should not be. In a way, it is a cultural gate-keeper that can influence the ideologies and behavior of citizens. As a form of popular entertainment it thus provides a political group or government with a powerful and dangerously imperceptible means of maintaining control over its citizens, though it can also provide non-governmental groups with the power to make change and galvanize the masses (where such films are free to be produced and screened.) Nations and ideological groups can construct and reinforce their collective identities through film, as well as the identities of foreigners.
and the globalizing process is non-symmetrical.
and Vsevolod Pudovkin
with the birth of propaganda aesthetics, for which the underlying assumption was that by manipulating cinematic images representing reality, they could manipulate spectators' concepts of reality. Documentaries can be an even more effective form of propaganda than other genre
films because the form of representation claims to mirror reality, making the manipulation of an audience that much more obscured.
Such British newsreels as The Battle of the Somme of World War I
were propaganda because they only showed the war from their own perspective, though it can be argued as being more honest and objective than more recent war documentaries (for they were edited without adjustments for dramatic or epic effect. Their photographers remained on their front lines, therefore presenting at least some truth. According to Furhammar and Isaksson, it was Russian filmmakers who were the "masters of montage
" who discovered film's power to create convincing illusion with cutting, rhythmic editing, and a didactic approach.
When sound became possible, documentaries could be all the more politically powerful with the use of speakers' voices and music. In Nazi Germany, newsreels were just as important as feature films, while in Fascist Italy propaganda was mostly limited to documentaries. A comparison of the first three installments of the American series Why We Fight
and the Nazi documentary Sieg im Westen
(Victory in the West) demonstrates how convincing even two opposing interpretations of the same events can be. The first covers years in a couple of hours but its density disguises any omission of truth while the latter manages to depict war with real images but without blood or death. The same is found in documentaries about the Spanish Civil War.
Falsification of political matter in documentaries can be created by lifting shots of events other than the one being dealt with and including them in the film so that they appear to be a part of the "reality" it claims to represent. The House Committee on Un-American Activities, for example, did this with Operation Abolition in 1960 and Nazi newsreels depicted scenes of the Allies' defeat at Dieppe as real scenes from the Normandy invasion just a few days afterward to convince audience of the Reich's success. Audience's political affiliations can also be manipulated by actually staging the ostensibly real events as the 1944 Nazi picture The Führer Gives the Jews a Town did.
World War II
propaganda persisted 30 years after Dachau
and Auschwitz such as in the thinly disguised fascist Italian film The Night Porter
(1974). The film sought to legitimize the Nazis' genocide, while glorifying sadism, brutality, and machismo. What amazes Henry Giroux
, as he explains in "Breaking into the Movies," is that such blatant ideological messages were ignored by critics and the general public. That society may be incapable of testing the present against the past has implications for post-industrial oppression in the West and the strategies for resisting it. Despite the writings of Antonio Gramsci
, Herbert Marcuse
, and Paulo Freire
, the majority of Americans (at least) do not recognize how important class hegemony
, or cultural domination, is in nations where populations are kept obedient to governments through ideological means. He argues, "We are not only victims in the political and material sense, but are also tied emotionally and intellectually to the prevailing ruling-class norms and values."
Though feature forms of propaganda lack documentaries' ostensible authenticity they can retain political power because directors' resources are less limited and they can create the reality of the film. They further compensate for lack of credibility with intensity.
, no other major American filmmaker has seriously presented central themes of citizenship, participation, and responsibility in civic life amidst the complexities and corruption of the political world. While Capra sought to "develop a positive American cinematic vocabulary for political action" of the individual, as Charles Lindholm and John A. Hall describe, he ultimately failed.
Capra's films are characterized by the same basic formula according to which the fundamental American values of fairness and honesty are challenged by the corruption and cruelty of politics. Ironically, Ronald Reagan later extensively quoted the speech made by Mr. Deeds in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
(1936) in which he expresses his disgust with the complexities of politics and calls for individual goodness. In his next film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
, (1939) Capra reinforces the integrity and decency of the everyman who can transcend politics despite the power and crookedness of special interest groups. After the hero of John Doe
realizes his need for others, he discovers and attempts to expose a fascist bidder for presidency planning to take advantage of his club support. He fails, however, in the midst of a violent mob with the depressing conclusion that the American public is a credulous crowd, susceptible to manipulation until the John Doe club members come begging his forgiveness and convince him to return to lead them.
The ending of John Doe was unsuccessful amongst audiences and critics, discouraging any more political films for Capra and no films of merit after It's a Wonderful Life
. Capra's ultimate fall from filmmaking and his advice that all American filmmakers should forget politics if they do not want to cut themselves in half signify the challenge filmmakers face when they attempt to criticize politics. Lindholm and Hall observe that "the problems that defeated Capra have also undercut later attempts by American filmmakers to portray the complex relationship between individualism and citizenship in the United States" and claim that Hollywood has instead adopted the paranoia of politics that Capra had tried to overcome. Consequently, political films in the U.S. have followed a trend of focusing on the flawed character of leaders, such a films like Citizen Kane
(1940) and Nixon
(1995). Otherwise, they show the corruption of power, such as in The Candidate
(1972) and Primary Colors (1998). Other films, like A Face in a Crowd (1957) and All the King's Men
(1949), follow John Does warning. JFK
(1991) and The Manchurian Candidate
(1962), on the other hand, are based on the premise that democracy is an illusion and Americans are the ignorant pawns of various conspiracies involving, for example, the collusion between the government and the media.
(1979), a film that presents a truer representation than is conventional of the complexities and politics of the working-class struggle and culture at the level of everyday life.
have always influenced the political process, but never more so than with the innovation of the television. As the most popular means by which voters obtain information on candidates and the news in general, television is a powerful means by which political groups can influence the public.
This transformation first kicked off in the early 1960s, when newscast programs were increased to a thirty-minute programs, which allowed for greater news coverage and capacity. This expanded time slot allowed more focus to be given to presidential candidates, and network news soon became the center of national politics coverage. Because newscasts were national, the aired political campaign
s were able to impact viewers across the country, enlarging the realm of influence.
Rick Shenkman also analyzes the media’s impact on politics in his book, Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter, and observes that although American voters have gained significant political power over the last 50 years, their knowledge of politics and world affairs have decreased, which makes them more vulnerable to manipulation. Shenkman finds that this ignorance stems from the fact that many Americans rely solely on television newscasts for their information on politics and political campaigns. This means that Americans primarily get their information on political candidates from their 30-second campaign commercials, which is very insufficient when considering how vast a politician's campaign actually is. In the past, Americans' primary source of information on politics was from the newspapers, which provided much greater information and detail on the stands of politicians. The great emphasis on passive entertainment in today’s competitive, capitalistic society has led the general public to be far less inclined to sit down and study a newspaper or an online article to determine what is going on in politics. Instead, they obtain their information from what they are able to see in the media entertainment. This method of information gathering has led to the superficial politics and ignorance of voters in America today. Shenkman demonstrates how the political-media complex is reinforced as "politicians have repeatedly misled voters" by "dumbing down of American politics via marketing, spin machines, and misinformation."
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Television's role within the politico-media complex is so powerful that its news media can set a nation’s political agenda by focusing public attention on whatever issue network producers and reporters choose to make the key public issues by broadcasting them. Through this power of prioritization, the news media play a significant role in determining the nation’s political reality; they provide the political information that will be regarded as fact and indicate to viewers how much importance to attach to each topic according to how much air time they dedicate to a given issue and the emphasis they place on it. For example, television news is able to offer cues on topic salience by deciding what the opening story on the newscast will be or by altering the length of time devoted a story. When these cues are repeated broadcast after broadcast, day after day, they are able to effectively communicate the amount of importance broadcasters want each topic to have. This illustrates how the news media is able to set the agenda for the public’s attention.
Rajagopal investigated the cultural and political economy of television in contemporary India
. His discussion of television revolves around the industrial and cultural politics of the serialized epic Ramayan. The serial epic, which generated unprecedented viewership, was based on the epic story of the Hindu god Ram
and aired on Doordarshan
, India's state-run television. Rajagopal made the argument that the national telecast of the Hindu religious epic Ramayan during the late 1980s provided much of the ideological groundwork for the launch of the Ram Janmabhumi movement. To defend his argument, Rajagopal stated that “television profoundly changes the context of politics” (p. 24).
The epic was broadcasted on national television, sponsored by the ruling Congress
government. Rajagopal argues that the Congress assumed that the mere sponsorship of the epic would aid its electoral future by bringing in the majority Hindu vote. Quite the opposite happened, however. Rather, it was the electorally weak Hindu nationalist political body, the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), that benefited from the serial's popularity. The BJP did so by avoiding the media effects framework
attempted by Congress and instead articulating a complex relationship between the televised Hindu epic and its own Hindu nationalist beliefs. The BJP mobilized the public around the symbol of Ram, the lead figure of the serial, but strategically reworked the symbol via the Ram Janmabhumi movement to articulate cultural authenticity, national belonging, and a renewed sense of national purpose and direction. Articulating the temple restoration project within its electoral promise, the BJP, not surprisingly, went on to form the national government in the next general election (p. 43). This illustrates that, as Rajagopal argues, television is capable of profoundly impacting politics.
Central to the BJP’s success was the party’s strategic use of using both the media and the market, by creating merchandise such as stickers, buttons, and audio tapes centering on the key figure of the Ram. Rajagopal argues that the televised epic also dealt with the tension between the past and the present at many levels. This can be seen in the reworking of the epic story of the Ram to fit the conventions of modern commercial television. In addition to this, the epic was laced with twenty minutes of advertising both before and after the program, which helped the serial to reconstruct the past through technologies of the present. This key fact highlights the power of advertisements in the media.
The main cultural form that binds together the Egyptian nation is, surprisingly, television serials. These serials are melodramatic programs, similar to American soap operas but more closely tied to political and social issues than their Western counterparts. Their contents reflect the changing dynamics of Islam, gender relations, and everyday life in the Middle Eastern nation of Egypt, while at the same time trying to influence and direct these changes.
Another group who studied the impact of television on politics included Holli Semetko and Patti Valenburg. In their studies, they analyzed the framing of press and television news in European politics. For reader clarification, they provided the best working definitions of news frames as defined from a wide range of sources. News frames are "conceptual tools which media and individuals rely on to convey, interpret and evaluate information" (Neuman et al., 1992 , p. 60). They set the parameters "in which citizens discuss public events" (Tuchman, 1978, p. IV). They are "persistent selection, emphasis, and exclusion" ( Gitlin, 1980 , p. 7). Framing is selecting "some aspects of a perceived reality" to enhance their salience "in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation" ( Entman, 1993 , p. 53). Frames are to help audiences "locate, perceive, identify, and label" the flow of information around them (Goffman, 1974, p. 21) and to "narrow the available political alternatives"(Tuchman, 1978, p. 156).” In other words, news frames act to direct the attention of viewers and promote a specific issue or idea.
News frames have what is known as the framing effect
. Framing effects are when relevant attributes of a message – such as its organization, content, or structure – make particular thoughts applicable, resulting in their activation and use in evaluations ( Price et al., 1997, p. 486). Framing has shown to have large effects on people’s perceptions, and has also been shown to shape public perceptions of political issues or institutions.
Like agenda-setting research, framing analysis focuses on the relationship between public policy issues in the news and the public perceptions of these issues. However, framing analysis "expands beyond agenda-setting research into what people talk or think about by examining how they think and talk about issues in the news" ( Pan & Kosicki, 1993 , p. 70, emphasis in the original).” The results of Semetko and Valenburg’s research indicate that the attribution of responsibility frame was most commonly employed by the news. This particular type of framing focuses on making viewers feel a sense of role responsibility
, in which they feel bound to perform whatever duties are attached to the given role, and feel a sense of moral accountability for not taking on the role. After understanding the attribution of responsibility frame, it is easy to see why it is such a powerful tool to news programs, as it evokes strong emotions within the viewer.
(the Web) - has given the world a tool for education, communication, and negotiation in political information and political roles and its use by individuals and organizations has increased and continues to increase, greatly. This rapid increase can be compared to the boom of the television and its impact on politics as a form of media. The Internet also opens up a world of commentary and criticism which in turn allows for new and better ideas to circulate amongst many people. It gives multidirectional communication, which allows people to stay in connection with organizations or people associated with politics more easily. However, there are many controversies regarding the Internet with respect to the PMC as it (the Internet) can encourage and facilitate the practice of providing bits of information extracted from a far wider context or biased information, which leads to public cynicism toward the media.
The relative ease of entry into publishing through Internet/Web channels yields opportunities, for those so inclined, to become, in the extreme, one-person contributors/players, with a foot on both sides of the fence - politics and media - in the PMC (and sometimes information, placed into the public domain through such channels, about a political entity (politician, party etc.), being perhap less than flattering, may be 'adjusted' by one or more other entities (individuals, organizations etc.) with publishing identities that barely, if at all, conceal a relationship with the political entity in question).
For example, Wikipedia
itself is a major global channel, currently being around the eighth most visited website, in 2009 found its objectivity being compromised at the highest levels with a 'conflict of interest' of a sitting member of the influential Arbitration Committee(ArbCom). It was shown that David Boothroyd - a serving Labour Party Councillor for Westminster City
- had gained a seat on the Arbitration Committee under the pseudonym of the Wikipedia account 'Sam Blacketer' and also, under this name, had gone on to make controversial edits to the Wikipedia entry for the then Leader of the Opposition, now Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron
. Boothroyd was also found to have operated earlier, before his appointment to the Arbitration Committee, but while an administrator, other cotemporary accounts - a practice in Wikipedia known as 'sock puppetry' - enabling the practitioner to give undue weight, through appearing as different identities, to a particular point of view as opposed to representing a neutral point of view (NPOV). Given Wikipedia's presence and influence in the world, the 'affair' attracted main stream media (MSM),
and other new media attention nationally and internationally,
contributing damage to Wikipedia's standing along the way. Boothroyd was forced to step down from the Arbitration Committee, although he claimed he had already asserted his intention to resign.
There is also, however, a positive aspect on politics and the media on the Internet in that it gives us the ability to use multiple forms of deliberation and decision making structures. The advancements of the Internet’s impact on politics are notable. This form of media has more current information than others since it is constantly constantly being updated. Another advancement is its capacity to have extensive information in one place, like voting records, periodicals, press releases, opinion polls, policy statements, speeches, etc. Obtaining a comprehensive understanding of an election, for example, is more convenient than it has been in the past. Political Information available on the internet covers every major activity of American politics. Users, nonetheless, remain susceptible to bias, especially on websites that represent themselves as objective sources.
E-mail
has achieved a large scale of usage amongst numerous levels of government, political groups, and even media companies as a means of communicating with the public and thus plays a significant role in the political-media complex. The boom of e-mail hit the Internet and the public in the mid 1990s as a way to keep in touch with family and friends. Different governments got a hold of this technology, and in 1993 the United States Congress
and the White House
were using this as communication as a means of communicating with general public. During the Clinton administration a director for e-mail and electronic publishing was appointed and by the summer of 1993, the White House was receiving 800 e-mails per day. In order to deal with the influx of e-mail a more sophisticated system was put in. When an e-mail is sent there is a standard form and is easily categorized. In a six month period, at one point, there were half a million e-mails sent to the president and vice president.
campaign
in 1996 between sitting-President Bill Clinton
and Bob Dole
was one of the first campaigns to utilize the Internet on a national level.
With so many campaigns using the Internet it raises a significant amount of money in a shorter period of time then with any other method. The web sites are set up like advertising sites. There are links to click on to watch ads, information and background on the candidate, photos from the campaign trail, schedules, donation links, etc. E-mail gives a great low-cost way of connecting with the campaign trail and voters.
During the 2008
United States Presidential election
between John McCain
and Barack Obama
, the Internet was extensively utilized by both candidates. Facebook
, an Internet social network, was used heavily to give people the ability to support their views and share information with their friends. Both sent out messages daily to promote themselves and the issues at hand, for leverage against the other candidate.
s use this as a stake in monitoring blogs and actively using them to spread information about their candidate.
The Internet creates a space in which people can voice their opinions and discuss political issues under the protection of anonymity. Some discussion forums are actually groups or organizations that set up discussion for a specific purpose about one issue or person in politics. Some problems with discussion forums include the lack of personal contact, which allows people not to take responsibility for posts. Many times online discussions lead to name calling and rude comments. Bias is another issue of online discussion forums because many websites attract like-minded individuals, making it less likely for alternative perspectives to be introduced.
on the afternoon of the 6 July 2011.
These comments refer to the apparent effects of the relationships between the members of (the UK) parliament and those that form the UK Government, the Metropolitan police
and News International
(NI [UK subsidiary of News Corporation
]) and the influence, expressed as malign, of the latter organization on the former two institutions.
The debate was precipitated by the type of some of the information procurement methods found to have been used by a major British Sunday newspaper (the title is now shut down) – the News of the World
(was owned by NI). Now known as the (News International) ‘phone hacking affair
’, the consequences for the British PMC and NI (as part of the world’s second largest media empire after The Walt Disney Company
) are likely to be unfolding for some considerable time as new sectors of vulnerable members of British society subjected to the particular malicious practice are brought to light.
. Such identifiable collaborations/collusions are almost to be expected and are a natural outcome to the working of the 'industrial system,' as it has evolved in the West (and then exported to the rest of the world in so-called 'globalization
'), having the state (taxpayer) funded sector at its core (that is as opposed to the contemporary 'conventional wisdom
' with a hard and fast distinction between the state and private sectors - the economist John Kenneth Galbraith
has also argued that the 'two sectors' represent an 'innocent fraud') and its necessary (but unstated) main reason for existence: the 'socialization of costs and the privatization of profits
' (corporate welfare
).
Chomsky discusses the so-called 'military-industrial complex
' (MIC) and argues that its embedded behavior is not just about the 'military' but is about ensuring that the modern economy, of which that behavior (emptied of particularly military connotations) is at the heart, is nothing much to do with freedom (of choice) or democracy
either.
Using the technology of computing
as a prime example, Chomsky notes that about the time Dwight Eisenhower was making his speech about the putative MIC, institutions like Harvard University
and his own, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), were working, using government funds (taxpayer dollars), to reduce roomfulls of machinery into a package that could be sold as a mainframe
(computer). Reaching that point, project heads began to leave to set up manufacturers. Similarly, established notables like International Business Machines (IBM) were using public funds to advance their technology from punch card sorting to advanced general purpose computers of their own around the beginning of the 1960s. None of this was about 'consumer choice' since the work was being done for government organs such as the National Security Agency
(NSA). It was about two and a half decades, the early 1980s, before these 'private tyrannies' were in a position to take all the results of public funding and sell them back, at considerable profit, to the very people who had already paid for them.
Observing the prophets of the 'free market
,' such as Alan Greenspan
, enthusing about the 'marvels of entrepreneurial initiative and consumer choice,' Chomsky asserts, in contrast, that the contribution here during the 'costly and risky period of development' was precisely nil, almost the entire burden, without any (democratic) consultation, being placed on the taxpayer (socialized).
Chomsky points to the same script being followed, now, in areas such as biotechnology
and neuroscience
and why, from the past, we now have such 'goods' as the Internet, telecommunications, lasers etc. While it may be 'nice' to have computers (or be able to command an aircraft by 'thought') the essential point is, assuming there is some real committment to freedom (of choice) and democracy in the elites and and structures of power, given a public, such as those in the 1950s, to ask what they want out of their taxes. Computers in twenty-five years or health care, good schools and jobs today ? This assumes their being informed, in good faith, of matters.
Chomsky summarizes that anybody/anything deeply embedded in the interests of the industrial system, with power (such as the corporations), is 'deathly afraid' of admitting such a state of affairs and that attitudes must be manipulated towards the 'appropriate' outcomes. Such manipulation is often best done in an atmosphere of fear and under pretence of external threat.
Edward S. Herman
and Chomsky, together, advanced a 'propaganda model
' to accomplish this 'manufacturing consent', showing the ways in which power and money filter the news and enable governments and dominant private interests to integrate the behavior of the citizenry into the structures of the industrial system. Earlier, political writer George Orwell
had noted, "All the papers that matter live off their advertisments and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over the news." ('Indirect censorship' obviates the need for obvious coercion.) This observation is at the heart of two of the filters that structure the propaganda model: advertising (of corporations) as the primary source of income for the mass media and the dependence upon information provided by government, business and 'experts' approved and paid for by these primary sources.
Herman and Chomsky see the ideas as being cast as testable hypotheses
such that they can be held in the light of corroboration through empirical evidence and not merely as assertions out of the blue. Examination of contemporary developments in the context of the hypotheses is encouraged.
Thus the general and fundamental understanding of the working of the industrial system in the modern economy, 'socialization of costs and privatization of profits,' is met with corroboration from the heart of the market system
(often called the free market
) - a contemporary and 'polite' euphemism for capitalism
according to Galbraith - for example, in the near collapse of the global banking system, beginning in 2008, spreading in 2011 to the areas of sovereign debt
, requiring almost constant appeal to the 'banker of last resort
' - the taxpayer. Under debt restructuring, 'good debt' is returned to private hands as soon as possible and the taxpayer is left saddled with the 'bad debt' which is probably unrecoverable.
The shadow that the corporations cast on the media through advertising (corroboration of Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model filters through advertising) was illustrated in the closure of News International's 168 year old flagship Sunday title, the News of the World, when major advertisers boycotted the paper as a consequence of the 'phone hacking scandal' - the corporations, understandably, not wishing to be seen associated with a paper whose production had been based on frequent engagement in serious criminal activity.(See also
When PMCs begin to fracture)
From Chomsky's perspective, then, whatever set of interactions is being named by the term 'politico-media complex' (PMC) simply instantiates the propaganda model to manufacture consent in the service of the industrial system.
Symbiosis
Symbiosis is close and often long-term interaction between different biological species. In 1877 Bennett used the word symbiosis to describe the mutualistic relationship in lichens...
-like network of relationships between a state's
Sovereign state
A sovereign state, or simply, state, is a state with a defined territory on which it exercises internal and external sovereignty, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states. It is also normally understood to be a state which is neither...
political
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
and ruling class
Ruling class
The term ruling class refers to the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy - assuming there is one such particular class in the given society....
es, its media industry
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
, and any interactions with or dependencies upon interest groups with other domains and agencies, such as law (and its enforcement through the police) and, particularly, corporation
Corporation
A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...
s - especially the multinationals
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...
. The term PMC is often used to name, derogatively, the collusion between governments or individual politicians and the media industry in an attempt to manipulate rather than inform the people. (See Criticism)
Evidence of the use of the arts of propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
in the implementation of what is being named as the politico-media complex, can be seen, easily, in all areas of the media industry: print, radio, film, television, and, most recently, the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. Newsprint has turned out to be the most durable source for the serving-up of political news and acting as a platform for political propaganda. While some critics argue that today's newsprint and magazine industries are in decline, they are still an active industry in the politico-media complex as politicians and interest groups continue to attempt to influence editors and journalists. Radio also represents a potent form of media that remains susceptible to political influence — it was widely used by governments for propaganda during the two World Wars. Film also can be used to promote propaganda, as it was especially during the two World Wars. It is a medium that can manipulate not only words, but sound and moving imagery, as well. As a result, its capacity to influence the public can be all the more powerful as it not only describes, but ostensibly shows reality and can claim to truly represent it visually. Another media industry that plays a role in the politico-media complex—now one of the two main sources of news across the world—is television. With the same advantages of film, television has grown and transformed political campaigns so that they have come to center around the medium. The framing of television advertisements and programs has been found to have significant effects on people’s perceptions, especially when dealing with political issues or institutions, making the persuasive-power of political groups who can control such networking that much greater. The Internet has become the second main source of news and is rapidly increasing in uses and its number of users. The Internet's innovations, such as forums, blogs, and 24-hour news sites have dramatically affected the way by which the public views and digests news and politics, such as by giving them increased power to participate in what was once a mostly closed system between the government and the media industry. Every year elections rely more and more on the Internet as a source of advertisement and useful information to the public but continues to suffer the same pitfalls of other media as a means of political manipulation.
Early media institutions
Before Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in 1450, most information was delivered by town criers, ministers from the pulpit, or bartenders. Town criers spread information and news including royal edicts, police regulations, important community events and war news. These early methods of communication were often delivered by messengers on foot, and could be easily controlled by the ruling class. With the invention of the printing press news began to be spread in writing. Corantos, which were semi-regular pamphlets that reported news, are an example of the early politico-media complex. Popular in England, corantos reported mostly foreign news, as the royal government attempted to control what domestic news reached the masses. Corantos eventually would become regular periodicals that were subject to less political control, and mark one of the earlier forms of industrialized media.Global print media
The Universal Declaration of Human RightsUniversal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers". Most of the international papers present in the world today are national papers re-edited for a wider audience. Because of this, there can be biases based on nationality. In any publication there is some sort of bias just from what news is covered and what stories are shown at the forefront of the publication.
Although print media is said to be struggling in the West, newspapers and magazines in second and third world countries continue to do well. For countries in which the majority of the population do not have ready access to the Internet or television, newspapers and magazines are one of the few ways to get the news. However, the independence from political influence, and dependability of newsprint is questionable in many countries. The Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
Press Freedom Index
Press Freedom Index
The Press Freedom Index is an annual ranking of countries compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders based upon the organization's assessment of their press freedom records. Small countries, such as Andorra, are excluded from this report...
suggests that even in many first world countries the rights of the press are not fully respected, and that the press is not completely free to investigate or criticize the government, though the situation is far worse in third world or politically unstable nations.
The West
Newspapers and magazines do have a back and forth between readers and journalists. Most studies show that the print media are more likely to reinforce existing political attitudes of the masses than change them. This makes it seem like print news is a mouthpiece for citizens, rather than a tool to oppress them. Of course, the media can only be a reflection of the masses if the masses are allowed to express their views. For this, freedom of the press is necessary.One of the more comprehensive judges of freedom of the press is Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
. Every year it releases an index, drawing attention to how free the press is in every country in the world. “It is disturbing to see European democracies such as France, Italy and Slovakia fall steadily in the rankings year after year,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said at the release of this year's index. “Europe should be setting an example as regards civil liberties. How can you condemn human rights violations abroad if you do not behave irreproachably at home? The Obama effect, which has enabled the United States to recover 16 places in the index, is not enough to reassure us."
Asia
The Communist Chinese government has claimed that Western freedom of press is illusory because it is controlled by a small wealthy minority. However, Reporters Without Borders ranks China's press situationMedia of the People's Republic of China
Media of the People's Republic of China primarily consists of television, newspapers, radio, and magazines. Since 2000, the Internet has also emerged as an important communications medium....
as "very serious," the worst possible ranking on their five-point scale. China's press was ranked 168th out of 175 countries in the 2009 Freedom of the Press Index. The Chinese government maintains the legal authority to censor
Censor
Censor may refer to:*Censorship, the control of speech and other forms of human expression*Roman censor, a magistrate for maintaining the census, supervising public morality, etc*Cato Censor , Roman statesman...
the press, and in defense of censorship claims that the Communist party in China has the most freedom of press, since there is no wealthy minority controlling it.
The Middle East and North Africa
Middle Eastern print media is mainly paid for by private funders, either a specific family or specific government party. These newspapers and magazines are rather obvious in their political ties, and clearly display the politico-media complex. Many countries in the Middle East and Africa have harsh government restrictions as to what can be published when, for various reasons depending on political and economic circumstances. IranCensorship in Iran
Censorship in Iran is the limiting or suppressing of the publishing, dissemination, and viewing of certain information in the Islamic Republic of Iran...
, ranked 172 out of 175 is described as highly censored, as the Iranian government maintains strict control over much of the media, including print. Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
has experienced a media control crackdown as the government censors the military action coverage, displaying how governments often limit press freedom during times of war. According to Reporters Without Borders for 2009, Eritrea
Eritrea
Eritrea , officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea derives it's name from the Greek word Erethria, meaning 'red land'. The capital is Asmara. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast...
in Northern Africa is the worst ranked country for journalism freedom, displaying the connection between political stability and media freedom. Eritrea is currently a one-party "transitional government" which has yet to enact its ratified constitution. Other African countries at the bottom of the Press Freedom Index include Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
(165) and Somalia
Somalia
Somalia , officially the Somali Republic and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under Socialist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Since the outbreak of the Somali Civil War in 1991 there has been no central government control over most of the country's territory...
(164). Both countries exhibit little journalistic freedom, and are both known for their unstable transitional governments and near constant warfare.
Struggles
Where newspapers used to represent an exclusive connection between readers and advertisers, print media must now compete with the power of the entire Internet. For reasons of expense, and reduced audiences, print press is described as declining. Today a little more than half of Americans read a newspaper every day. However, 55 million newspapers are still sold daily in the United States, and newsprint still plays a significant role in the politico-media complex.In addition to economic struggles and readership decline, newsprint has also struggled with losing readers' trust. Surveys have found that people tend to trust newspapers less than other news media because they believe commercial issues and political bias motivate journalists. Most people believe their local and national news television stations more than their local and national newspapers. The only news medium that people trust less than newspapers is print magazines.
Some speculation has shown that the youth today are more visually inclined, and are therefore less likely to be influenced by written political news or propaganda. One Pew Center study recently found that 28% of this generation read the paper on a given day, and average only 10 minutes of reading time. Professor Thomas Patterson concludes his study on young people and news with this insight: "What's happened over time is that we have become more of a viewing nation than a reading nation, and the internet is a little of both. My sense is that, like it or not, the future of news is going to be in the electronic media, but we don't really know what that form is going to look like."
History of political radio
The early American radio industry was composed of commercial shipping companies that used radio for navigation, and amateur radio enthusiasts, who built radios at home. This mixture of military, industry and community went unregulated until the Radio Act of 1912Radio Act of 1912
The Radio Act of 1912 is a United States federal law that mandated that all radio stations in the US be licensed by the federal government, as well as mandating that seagoing vessels continuously monitor distress frequencies....
, which required all ships to use radio communication and keep a constant radio watch, amateur users to be licensed, and began regulating the use of wavelengths for radio transmissions. This act represents one of the earliest interactions between the government and the radio media and also set a precedence for later radio legislation, including the Radio Act of 1927, which established the Federal Radio Commission
Federal Radio Commission
The Federal Radio Commission was a government body that regulated radio use in the United States from its creation in 1926 until its replacement by the Federal Communications Commission in 1934...
and added further regulation to radio users, both commercial and amateur. Government regulation increased again with the American entrance into World War I, when President Woodrow Wilson ordered naval control of all radio stations, and ordered that amateurs cease all radio activity. Jonathan Reed Winkler
Jonathan Reed Winkler
Jonathan Reed Winkler is a historian and an associate professor of history at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. He teaches and researches on U.S. foreign relations, U.S. military and naval history, international history, security studies and strategic thought...
, a noted WWI historian, says “It was only during World War I that the United States first came to comprehend how a strategic communications network-the collection of submarine telegraph cables, and long-distance radio stations used by a nation for diplomatic, commercial and military purposes- was vital to the global political and economic interests of a great power in the modern world.” After World War I radio was introduced to broader civilian audiences when Westinghouse released the Aeriola Jr. in 1919, and the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) released the Radiola in 1920. The Aeriola Jr. and Radiola helped established a new channel for the politico-media complex to enter into thousand of American homes. By 1919 the oldest licensed American radio station, KDKA, from Pittsburgh, PA began broadcasting regular music shows, and soon music, educational programming, sports coverage and eventually news coverage became popular. Coverage of politics quickly caught on across the countries, as stations began covering elections, and reporting news of government actions. The close politico-media complex between government and radio was finalized in 1924 when the Republican and Democratic National Conventions were covered, and candidates made eve of election speeches, the first instance of radio broadcasting that was meant to affect the American political process.
The radio industry's politico-media complex would only deepen as the years passed. The numbers of radio users exploded, by 1935 about 2 in 3 American homes owned a radio. Politicians quickly learned to reach these huge audiences. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Fireside Chats
Fireside chats
The fireside chats were a series of thirty evening radio addresses given by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1944.-Origin of radio address:...
are an excellent example of the politico-media complex. In his series of informal broadcasts from 1933 to 1944, Roosevelt developed a comforting rapport with the American public. The Fireside Chats enabled the President to communicate directly to the public through one of the most popular media outlets of the time. Politicians would continue to use the radio in World War II, in which the radio was used primarily for news transmissions and the spread of propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
. One example of radio propaganda and the politico-media complex are Iva Toguri D'Aquino, Ruth Hayakawa, June Suyamawho, and Myrtle Lipton collectively known as Tokyo Rose
Tokyo Rose
Tokyo Rose was a generic name given by Allied forces in the South Pacific during World War II to any of approximately a dozen English-speaking female broadcasters of Japanese propaganda. The intent of these broadcasts was to disrupt the morale of Allied forces listening to the broadcast...
. These women hosted anti-American programming intended to lower American soldiers' morale and illustrate the use of governments' use of the media to influence the public, or their enemies. However, many people, such as Iva Toguri D'Aquino
Iva Toguri D'Aquino
Iva Ikuko Toguri D'Aquino , was an American citizen who participated in English-language propaganda broadcast transmitted by Radio Tokyo to Allied soldiers in the South Pacific during World War II...
and Allied prisoners of war, were forced against their will to participate in these programs and worked hard to help Allied forces.
After WWII and throughout the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
era, Democratic nations used long-range radio waves to broadcast news into countries behind the Iron Curtain or otherwise information-compromised nations. The American international radio program, the Voice of America
Voice of America
Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...
, founded during World War II, became a critical part of Cold War era "public diplomacy," which aimed to spread democratic values, and popularize American policies abroad. In 1950, President Harry S. Truman described the Cold War conflict as a "struggle, above all else, for the minds of men," which the American people would win by getting "the real story across to people in other countries." in other words, embracing the politico-media complex and using it to influence foreign listeners. The Voice of America, operating under the authority of the United States Information Agency
United States Information Agency
The United States Information Agency , which existed from 1953 to 1999, was a United States agency devoted to "public diplomacy". In 1999, USIA's broadcasting functions were moved to the newly created Broadcasting Board of Governors, and its exchange and non-broadcasting information functions were...
, supported programming in forty five languages, broadcasting over 400 hours of programming a week. Programming included unbiased news coverage, musical programs, and Special English
Special English
Special English is a controlled version of the English language first used on October 19, 1959, and still presented daily by the United States broadcasting service Voice of America. World news and other programs are read one-third slower than regular VOA English. Reporters avoid idioms and use a...
broadcasts, which intended to help listeners master American English. The VOA was not alone in its international broadcasting efforts, the United States Central Intelligence Agency supported Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, both propagandist radio networks intended to incite dissent against Communism. Other nations also used international radio as propaganda, for example, Deutsche Welle
Deutsche Welle
Deutsche Welle or DW, is Germany's international broadcaster. The service is aimed at the overseas market. It broadcasts news and information on shortwave, Internet and satellite radio on 98.7 DZFE in 30 languages . It has a satellite television service , that is available in four languages, and...
, the German international radio program was a major broadcaster during the Cold War. By 1965 DW was airing 848 hours of programming to the Soviet Union and abroad and reached 5% of the USSR population weekly by 1980. Deutsche Welle's mission to “promote understanding of Germany as an independent nation with its roots in European culture and as a liberal, democratic, constitutional state based on the rule of law.” illustrates German use of the politico-media complex.
Modern political radio
The Golden Age of Radio may have only lasted from 1935–1950, yet radio is still an active medium in the politico-media complex. Today there is extensive radio programming on politics. One notable example is the Rush Limbaugh Show, which broadcasts the political commentary of Rush Limbaugh, referred to by listeners as "America's Truth Detector," the "Doctor of Democracy," and the "Most Dangerous Man in America." The Rush Limbaugh Show has hosted numerous politicians, illustrating that politicians still use the radio to affect public opinion and the political process. The Air America Media company, provides progressive political commentary and news coverage and is described as "most recognized progressive talk radio network, providing an independent and unfiltered voice to a grateful listening nation." Air America programs such as The Rachel Maddow Show, The Lionel Show, and Live in Washington with Jack Rice discuss recordings of politicians, host politicians as live guests, and act as a connection between the political classes and the media.National cinema
One of film's most powerful political and sociological forms is national cinemaNational cinema
Like other film theory or film criticism terms , the term "national cinema" is hard to define, and its meaning is debated by film scholars and critics. National cinema is a term sometimes used in film theory and film criticism to describe the films associated with a specific country...
, for which there are entire books for individual countries and varying definitions. Films represent societies and countries as they are or how they should and should not be. In a way, it is a cultural gate-keeper that can influence the ideologies and behavior of citizens. As a form of popular entertainment it thus provides a political group or government with a powerful and dangerously imperceptible means of maintaining control over its citizens, though it can also provide non-governmental groups with the power to make change and galvanize the masses (where such films are free to be produced and screened.) Nations and ideological groups can construct and reinforce their collective identities through film, as well as the identities of foreigners.
Cultural politics
Ulf Hedetoft has observed, "In the real world of politics and influence, certain nationalisms, cultures, ideas and interpretations are more transnationally powerful, assertive and successful than others. Where the less influential ones are not necessarily less self-congratulatory, they are certainly more inward-looking and always carry the label of national specificity." He goes on, however, to say that these more transnationally powerful films actually become de-nationalized as a result of its "national-cultural currency" more widely and easily dispersed, mixing with other cultures, becoming either a "positive admixture" to other countries' cultures and identities or a "model for emulation." He compares national cinema that undergoes such processes to English becoming a global lingua franca: the cultural sharing that results is hegemonicHegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...
and the globalizing process is non-symmetrical.
Propaganda
Propaganda is a way that politics can be represented and manipulated in film. Leif Furhammar and Folke Isaksson credit Russian producers Sergei EisensteinSergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
and Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage...
with the birth of propaganda aesthetics, for which the underlying assumption was that by manipulating cinematic images representing reality, they could manipulate spectators' concepts of reality. Documentaries can be an even more effective form of propaganda than other genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
films because the form of representation claims to mirror reality, making the manipulation of an audience that much more obscured.
Such British newsreels as The Battle of the Somme of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
were propaganda because they only showed the war from their own perspective, though it can be argued as being more honest and objective than more recent war documentaries (for they were edited without adjustments for dramatic or epic effect. Their photographers remained on their front lines, therefore presenting at least some truth. According to Furhammar and Isaksson, it was Russian filmmakers who were the "masters of montage
Soviet montage theory
Soviet montage theory is an approach to understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily upon editing...
" who discovered film's power to create convincing illusion with cutting, rhythmic editing, and a didactic approach.
When sound became possible, documentaries could be all the more politically powerful with the use of speakers' voices and music. In Nazi Germany, newsreels were just as important as feature films, while in Fascist Italy propaganda was mostly limited to documentaries. A comparison of the first three installments of the American series Why We Fight
Why We Fight
Why We Fight is a series of seven war information training films commissioned by the United States government during World War II whose purpose was to show American soldiers the reason for U.S. involvement in the war. Later on they were also shown to the general U.S...
and the Nazi documentary Sieg im Westen
Sieg im Westen
Sieg im Westen is a 1941 German propaganda film.It was produced by the Oberkommando des Heeres, the German Army High Command, rather than the Propaganda Ministry of Joseph Goebbels.Robert Edwin Hertzstein, The War That Hitler Won p281 ISBN 399-11845-4 Goebbels indeed sabotaged its release in...
(Victory in the West) demonstrates how convincing even two opposing interpretations of the same events can be. The first covers years in a couple of hours but its density disguises any omission of truth while the latter manages to depict war with real images but without blood or death. The same is found in documentaries about the Spanish Civil War.
Falsification of political matter in documentaries can be created by lifting shots of events other than the one being dealt with and including them in the film so that they appear to be a part of the "reality" it claims to represent. The House Committee on Un-American Activities, for example, did this with Operation Abolition in 1960 and Nazi newsreels depicted scenes of the Allies' defeat at Dieppe as real scenes from the Normandy invasion just a few days afterward to convince audience of the Reich's success. Audience's political affiliations can also be manipulated by actually staging the ostensibly real events as the 1944 Nazi picture The Führer Gives the Jews a Town did.
World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
propaganda persisted 30 years after Dachau
Dachau
Dachau is a town in Upper Bavaria, in the southern part of Germany. It is a major district town—a Große Kreisstadt—of the administrative region of Upper Bavaria, about 20 km north-west of Munich. It is now a popular residential area for people working in Munich with roughly 40,000 inhabitants...
and Auschwitz such as in the thinly disguised fascist Italian film The Night Porter
The Night Porter
The Night Porter is a controversial 1974 film by Italian director Liliana Cavani, starring Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling.- Synopsis :...
(1974). The film sought to legitimize the Nazis' genocide, while glorifying sadism, brutality, and machismo. What amazes Henry Giroux
Henry Giroux
Henry Giroux, born September 18, 1943, in Providence, Rhode Island, is an American cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth studies, higher education, media studies,...
, as he explains in "Breaking into the Movies," is that such blatant ideological messages were ignored by critics and the general public. That society may be incapable of testing the present against the past has implications for post-industrial oppression in the West and the strategies for resisting it. Despite the writings of Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...
, Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
, and Paulo Freire
Paulo Freire
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and influential theorist of critical pedagogy.-Biography:...
, the majority of Americans (at least) do not recognize how important class hegemony
Hegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...
, or cultural domination, is in nations where populations are kept obedient to governments through ideological means. He argues, "We are not only victims in the political and material sense, but are also tied emotionally and intellectually to the prevailing ruling-class norms and values."
Though feature forms of propaganda lack documentaries' ostensible authenticity they can retain political power because directors' resources are less limited and they can create the reality of the film. They further compensate for lack of credibility with intensity.
Anti-politics in film
Despite the strong patriotism and nationalism of Americans, overtly political films have never been popular in the U.S. while films that have represented politics inconspicuously (such as in the form of propaganda) have remained popular. Besides Frank CapraFrank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
, no other major American filmmaker has seriously presented central themes of citizenship, participation, and responsibility in civic life amidst the complexities and corruption of the political world. While Capra sought to "develop a positive American cinematic vocabulary for political action" of the individual, as Charles Lindholm and John A. Hall describe, he ultimately failed.
Capra's films are characterized by the same basic formula according to which the fundamental American values of fairness and honesty are challenged by the corruption and cruelty of politics. Ironically, Ronald Reagan later extensively quoted the speech made by Mr. Deeds in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is a 1936 American screwball comedy film directed by Frank Capra, and starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur in her first featured role...
(1936) in which he expresses his disgust with the complexities of politics and calls for individual goodness. In his next film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a 1939 American drama film starring Jean Arthur and James Stewart about one man's effect on American politics. It was directed by Frank Capra and written by Sidney Buchman, based on Lewis R. Foster's unpublished story. Mr...
, (1939) Capra reinforces the integrity and decency of the everyman who can transcend politics despite the power and crookedness of special interest groups. After the hero of John Doe
John Doe
The name "John Doe" is used as a placeholder name in a legal action, case or discussion for a male party, whose true identity is unknown or must be withheld for legal reasons. The name is also used to refer to a male corpse or hospital patient whose identity is unknown...
realizes his need for others, he discovers and attempts to expose a fascist bidder for presidency planning to take advantage of his club support. He fails, however, in the midst of a violent mob with the depressing conclusion that the American public is a credulous crowd, susceptible to manipulation until the John Doe club members come begging his forgiveness and convince him to return to lead them.
The ending of John Doe was unsuccessful amongst audiences and critics, discouraging any more political films for Capra and no films of merit after It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern....
. Capra's ultimate fall from filmmaking and his advice that all American filmmakers should forget politics if they do not want to cut themselves in half signify the challenge filmmakers face when they attempt to criticize politics. Lindholm and Hall observe that "the problems that defeated Capra have also undercut later attempts by American filmmakers to portray the complex relationship between individualism and citizenship in the United States" and claim that Hollywood has instead adopted the paranoia of politics that Capra had tried to overcome. Consequently, political films in the U.S. have followed a trend of focusing on the flawed character of leaders, such a films like Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
(1940) and Nixon
Nixon (film)
Nixon is a 1995 American biographical film directed by Oliver Stone for Cinergi Pictures that tells the story of the political and personal life of former US President Richard Nixon, played by Anthony Hopkins....
(1995). Otherwise, they show the corruption of power, such as in The Candidate
The Candidate (1972 film)
The Candidate is a 1972 American film starring Robert Redford. Its themes include how the political machine corrupts. There are many parallels between the then-recent 1970 California Senate election between John V. Tunney and George Murphy; however, Redford's character Bill McKay is a political...
(1972) and Primary Colors (1998). Other films, like A Face in a Crowd (1957) and All the King's Men
All the King's Men
All the King's Men is a novel by Robert Penn Warren first published in 1946. Its title is drawn from the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty. In 1947 Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for All the King's Men....
(1949), follow John Does warning. JFK
JFK (film)
JFK is a 1991 American film directed by Oliver Stone. It examines the events leading to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and alleged subsequent cover-up, through the eyes of former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison .Garrison filed charges against New Orleans businessman Clay...
(1991) and The Manchurian Candidate
The Manchurian Candidate
The Manchurian Candidate , by Richard Condon, is a political thriller novel about the son of a prominent US political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for the Communist Party....
(1962), on the other hand, are based on the premise that democracy is an illusion and Americans are the ignorant pawns of various conspiracies involving, for example, the collusion between the government and the media.
The depoliticizing effect of cinema
While films can be overtly political they can also depoliticize and oversimplify what is inherently complex, such as class struggle. Film, as it contributes to mass culture, has been criticized for reducing the concept of class to stereotypes and predictable formulas that promote superficial understandings of ideology. Such misrepresentation and the ignorance that it promotes and perpetuates makes audiences and citizens vulnerable to manipulative tactics of politicians in a reality that is complex. One of the exceptions to oversimplification and ideological flattening in cinema is Norma RaeNorma Rae
Norma Rae is a 1979 American drama film that tells the story of a factory worker from a small town in North Carolina, who becomes involved in the labor union activities at the textile factory where she works...
(1979), a film that presents a truer representation than is conventional of the complexities and politics of the working-class struggle and culture at the level of everyday life.
Role of television in United States presidential elections
The role of television within the politico-media complex has only become more powerful its growth has led to such a transformation in political campaigns that presidential election campaigns now center on it. Extensive studies have shown that mass mediaMass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
have always influenced the political process, but never more so than with the innovation of the television. As the most popular means by which voters obtain information on candidates and the news in general, television is a powerful means by which political groups can influence the public.
This transformation first kicked off in the early 1960s, when newscast programs were increased to a thirty-minute programs, which allowed for greater news coverage and capacity. This expanded time slot allowed more focus to be given to presidential candidates, and network news soon became the center of national politics coverage. Because newscasts were national, the aired political campaign
Political campaign
A political campaign is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making process within a specific group. In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, wherein representatives are chosen or referendums are decided...
s were able to impact viewers across the country, enlarging the realm of influence.
Rick Shenkman also analyzes the media’s impact on politics in his book, Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter, and observes that although American voters have gained significant political power over the last 50 years, their knowledge of politics and world affairs have decreased, which makes them more vulnerable to manipulation. Shenkman finds that this ignorance stems from the fact that many Americans rely solely on television newscasts for their information on politics and political campaigns. This means that Americans primarily get their information on political candidates from their 30-second campaign commercials, which is very insufficient when considering how vast a politician's campaign actually is. In the past, Americans' primary source of information on politics was from the newspapers, which provided much greater information and detail on the stands of politicians. The great emphasis on passive entertainment in today’s competitive, capitalistic society has led the general public to be far less inclined to sit down and study a newspaper or an online article to determine what is going on in politics. Instead, they obtain their information from what they are able to see in the media entertainment. This method of information gathering has led to the superficial politics and ignorance of voters in America today. Shenkman demonstrates how the political-media complex is reinforced as "politicians have repeatedly misled voters" by "dumbing down of American politics via marketing, spin machines, and misinformation."
Political influence on religion via television
In his book, “Politics After Television: Religious Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India,” Arvind Rajagopal examines Hindu nationalism during the late 1980s and 1990s in India. Rajagopal analyzed the role of the media in the public’s construction of national, cultural, class, and regional identity. More specifically, he studied the hegemonic role of the Ram Janmabhumi movement and how the Ram project was played out on Indian national television. In his study, Rajagopal found that the Ram project played a role in “shaping discourses about national and cultural identities through the 1990s to the present” in India.Rajagopal investigated the cultural and political economy of television in contemporary India
Television in India
Television is one of the major mass media of India and is a huge industry and has thousands of programmes in all the states of India. The small screen has produced numerous celebrities of their own kind some even attaining national fame. TV soaps are extremely popular with housewives as well as...
. His discussion of television revolves around the industrial and cultural politics of the serialized epic Ramayan. The serial epic, which generated unprecedented viewership, was based on the epic story of the Hindu god Ram
Rama
Rama or full name Ramachandra is considered to be the seventh avatar of Vishnu in Hinduism, and a king of Ayodhya in ancient Indian...
and aired on Doordarshan
DoorDarshan
Doordarshan is an Indian public service broadcaster, a division of Prasar Bharati. It is one of the largest broadcasting organizations in India in terms of the infrastructure of studios and transmitters. Recently, it has also started Digital Terrestrial Transmitters. On September 15, 2009,...
, India's state-run television. Rajagopal made the argument that the national telecast of the Hindu religious epic Ramayan during the late 1980s provided much of the ideological groundwork for the launch of the Ram Janmabhumi movement. To defend his argument, Rajagopal stated that “television profoundly changes the context of politics” (p. 24).
The epic was broadcasted on national television, sponsored by the ruling Congress
Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world. The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in the Indian...
government. Rajagopal argues that the Congress assumed that the mere sponsorship of the epic would aid its electoral future by bringing in the majority Hindu vote. Quite the opposite happened, however. Rather, it was the electorally weak Hindu nationalist political body, the Bharatiya Janata Party
Bharatiya Janata Party
The Bharatiya Janata Party ,; translation: Indian People's Party) is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Indian National Congress. Established in 1980, it is India's second largest political party in terms of representation in the parliament...
(BJP), that benefited from the serial's popularity. The BJP did so by avoiding the media effects framework
Framing (social sciences)
A frame in social theory consists of a schema of interpretation — that is, a collection of anecdotes and stereotypes—that individuals rely on to understand and respond to events. In simpler terms, people build a series of mental filters through biological and cultural influences. They use these...
attempted by Congress and instead articulating a complex relationship between the televised Hindu epic and its own Hindu nationalist beliefs. The BJP mobilized the public around the symbol of Ram, the lead figure of the serial, but strategically reworked the symbol via the Ram Janmabhumi movement to articulate cultural authenticity, national belonging, and a renewed sense of national purpose and direction. Articulating the temple restoration project within its electoral promise, the BJP, not surprisingly, went on to form the national government in the next general election (p. 43). This illustrates that, as Rajagopal argues, television is capable of profoundly impacting politics.
Central to the BJP’s success was the party’s strategic use of using both the media and the market, by creating merchandise such as stickers, buttons, and audio tapes centering on the key figure of the Ram. Rajagopal argues that the televised epic also dealt with the tension between the past and the present at many levels. This can be seen in the reworking of the epic story of the Ram to fit the conventions of modern commercial television. In addition to this, the epic was laced with twenty minutes of advertising both before and after the program, which helped the serial to reconstruct the past through technologies of the present. This key fact highlights the power of advertisements in the media.
Television and politics around the world
In the “Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt,” Lila Abu-Lughod suggests that a nation’s television should be studied to answer larger questions about the culture, power, and modern self-fashioning of that nation. Abu-Lughod focuses on the Egyptian nation and investigates the elements of developmentalist ideology and the dreams of national progress that dominated Egyptian television in the past. She analyzes the nation’s television broadcasts and highlights the attempt to depict authentic national culture and the intentional strategies for fighting religious extremism.The main cultural form that binds together the Egyptian nation is, surprisingly, television serials. These serials are melodramatic programs, similar to American soap operas but more closely tied to political and social issues than their Western counterparts. Their contents reflect the changing dynamics of Islam, gender relations, and everyday life in the Middle Eastern nation of Egypt, while at the same time trying to influence and direct these changes.
Another group who studied the impact of television on politics included Holli Semetko and Patti Valenburg. In their studies, they analyzed the framing of press and television news in European politics. For reader clarification, they provided the best working definitions of news frames as defined from a wide range of sources. News frames are "conceptual tools which media and individuals rely on to convey, interpret and evaluate information" (Neuman et al., 1992 , p. 60). They set the parameters "in which citizens discuss public events" (Tuchman, 1978, p. IV). They are "persistent selection, emphasis, and exclusion" ( Gitlin, 1980 , p. 7). Framing is selecting "some aspects of a perceived reality" to enhance their salience "in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation" ( Entman, 1993 , p. 53). Frames are to help audiences "locate, perceive, identify, and label" the flow of information around them (Goffman, 1974, p. 21) and to "narrow the available political alternatives"(Tuchman, 1978, p. 156).” In other words, news frames act to direct the attention of viewers and promote a specific issue or idea.
News frames have what is known as the framing effect
Framing (social sciences)
A frame in social theory consists of a schema of interpretation — that is, a collection of anecdotes and stereotypes—that individuals rely on to understand and respond to events. In simpler terms, people build a series of mental filters through biological and cultural influences. They use these...
. Framing effects are when relevant attributes of a message – such as its organization, content, or structure – make particular thoughts applicable, resulting in their activation and use in evaluations ( Price et al., 1997, p. 486). Framing has shown to have large effects on people’s perceptions, and has also been shown to shape public perceptions of political issues or institutions.
Like agenda-setting research, framing analysis focuses on the relationship between public policy issues in the news and the public perceptions of these issues. However, framing analysis "expands beyond agenda-setting research into what people talk or think about by examining how they think and talk about issues in the news" ( Pan & Kosicki, 1993 , p. 70, emphasis in the original).” The results of Semetko and Valenburg’s research indicate that the attribution of responsibility frame was most commonly employed by the news. This particular type of framing focuses on making viewers feel a sense of role responsibility
Role
A role or a social role is a set of connected behaviours, rights and obligations as conceptualised by actors in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continuously changing behaviour and may have a given individual social status or social position...
, in which they feel bound to perform whatever duties are attached to the given role, and feel a sense of moral accountability for not taking on the role. After understanding the attribution of responsibility frame, it is easy to see why it is such a powerful tool to news programs, as it evokes strong emotions within the viewer.
Impact on political media
The Internet - particularly in the form of the World Wide WebWorld Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
(the Web) - has given the world a tool for education, communication, and negotiation in political information and political roles and its use by individuals and organizations has increased and continues to increase, greatly. This rapid increase can be compared to the boom of the television and its impact on politics as a form of media. The Internet also opens up a world of commentary and criticism which in turn allows for new and better ideas to circulate amongst many people. It gives multidirectional communication, which allows people to stay in connection with organizations or people associated with politics more easily. However, there are many controversies regarding the Internet with respect to the PMC as it (the Internet) can encourage and facilitate the practice of providing bits of information extracted from a far wider context or biased information, which leads to public cynicism toward the media.
The relative ease of entry into publishing through Internet/Web channels yields opportunities, for those so inclined, to become, in the extreme, one-person contributors/players, with a foot on both sides of the fence - politics and media - in the PMC (and sometimes information, placed into the public domain through such channels, about a political entity (politician, party etc.), being perhap less than flattering, may be 'adjusted' by one or more other entities (individuals, organizations etc.) with publishing identities that barely, if at all, conceal a relationship with the political entity in question).
For example, Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
itself is a major global channel, currently being around the eighth most visited website, in 2009 found its objectivity being compromised at the highest levels with a 'conflict of interest' of a sitting member of the influential Arbitration Committee(ArbCom). It was shown that David Boothroyd - a serving Labour Party Councillor for Westminster City
- had gained a seat on the Arbitration Committee under the pseudonym of the Wikipedia account 'Sam Blacketer' and also, under this name, had gone on to make controversial edits to the Wikipedia entry for the then Leader of the Opposition, now Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament ....
. Boothroyd was also found to have operated earlier, before his appointment to the Arbitration Committee, but while an administrator, other cotemporary accounts - a practice in Wikipedia known as 'sock puppetry' - enabling the practitioner to give undue weight, through appearing as different identities, to a particular point of view as opposed to representing a neutral point of view (NPOV). Given Wikipedia's presence and influence in the world, the 'affair' attracted main stream media (MSM),
and other new media attention nationally and internationally,
contributing damage to Wikipedia's standing along the way. Boothroyd was forced to step down from the Arbitration Committee, although he claimed he had already asserted his intention to resign.
There is also, however, a positive aspect on politics and the media on the Internet in that it gives us the ability to use multiple forms of deliberation and decision making structures. The advancements of the Internet’s impact on politics are notable. This form of media has more current information than others since it is constantly constantly being updated. Another advancement is its capacity to have extensive information in one place, like voting records, periodicals, press releases, opinion polls, policy statements, speeches, etc. Obtaining a comprehensive understanding of an election, for example, is more convenient than it has been in the past. Political Information available on the internet covers every major activity of American politics. Users, nonetheless, remain susceptible to bias, especially on websites that represent themselves as objective sources.
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
has achieved a large scale of usage amongst numerous levels of government, political groups, and even media companies as a means of communicating with the public and thus plays a significant role in the political-media complex. The boom of e-mail hit the Internet and the public in the mid 1990s as a way to keep in touch with family and friends. Different governments got a hold of this technology, and in 1993 the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
and the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
were using this as communication as a means of communicating with general public. During the Clinton administration a director for e-mail and electronic publishing was appointed and by the summer of 1993, the White House was receiving 800 e-mails per day. In order to deal with the influx of e-mail a more sophisticated system was put in. When an e-mail is sent there is a standard form and is easily categorized. In a six month period, at one point, there were half a million e-mails sent to the president and vice president.
Elections
The Internet had given people a great resource for information about elections like: candidates, issues, and a place to give and receive opinions and ideas about elections. As the use of the Internet increases, so do the relationship with candidates and their issues. The ability of the candidates to reach as many people as they can through the Internet is becoming a terrific resource in their campaigns. The United States PresidentialPresident of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
campaign
United States presidential election, 1996
The United States presidential election of 1996 was a contest between the Democratic national ticket of President Bill Clinton of Arkansas and Vice President Al Gore of Tennessee and the Republican national ticket of former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas for President and former Housing Secretary Jack...
in 1996 between sitting-President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
and Bob Dole
Bob Dole
Robert Joseph "Bob" Dole is an American attorney and politician. Dole represented Kansas in the United States Senate from 1969 to 1996, was Gerald Ford's Vice Presidential running mate in the 1976 presidential election, and was Senate Majority Leader from 1985 to 1987 and in 1995 and 1996...
was one of the first campaigns to utilize the Internet on a national level.
With so many campaigns using the Internet it raises a significant amount of money in a shorter period of time then with any other method. The web sites are set up like advertising sites. There are links to click on to watch ads, information and background on the candidate, photos from the campaign trail, schedules, donation links, etc. E-mail gives a great low-cost way of connecting with the campaign trail and voters.
During the 2008
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...
United States Presidential election
Presidential election
A presidential election is the election of any head of state whose official title is president.- United States :The United States has elections on the state and local levels...
between John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
and Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
, the Internet was extensively utilized by both candidates. Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
, an Internet social network, was used heavily to give people the ability to support their views and share information with their friends. Both sent out messages daily to promote themselves and the issues at hand, for leverage against the other candidate.
Discussion forums
Blogging is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Blogging started to become popular at the start of the millennium, and was used mostly by highly educated, highly paid, males. Around 2004 blogging became more main stream and was typically used for political interaction. Many political campaignPolitical campaign
A political campaign is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making process within a specific group. In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, wherein representatives are chosen or referendums are decided...
s use this as a stake in monitoring blogs and actively using them to spread information about their candidate.
The Internet creates a space in which people can voice their opinions and discuss political issues under the protection of anonymity. Some discussion forums are actually groups or organizations that set up discussion for a specific purpose about one issue or person in politics. Some problems with discussion forums include the lack of personal contact, which allows people not to take responsibility for posts. Many times online discussions lead to name calling and rude comments. Bias is another issue of online discussion forums because many websites attract like-minded individuals, making it less likely for alternative perspectives to be introduced.
Electronic government
An e-Government is a government that is inter-networked through digital technology for mass media distribution and communication for voters, taxpayers, schools, hospitals, etc. This is a radical new way to transform government programs by closing the gap between distance and time. This idea gives a more cost effective and convenient way to form programs around the needs of citizens rather than civil servants.When PMCs begin to fracture
In perhaps what is the beginning of the first major reappraisal of the relationship between a political elite/class and the media in a major modern Western PMC, with respect to the enervation of representative political and legal processes and the consequent erosion of and dangers to the public interest in a Western democracy, is captured in excerpts from three contributions to an emergency three hour debate conducted by members of parliament (MPs) in the Parliament of the United KingdomParliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
on the afternoon of the 6 July 2011.
- We politicians have colluded for far too long with the media: we rely on them, we seek their favour, and we live and we die politically because of what they write and what they show, and sometimes that means we lack the courage or the spine to stand up when wrong has occurred.
- As MPs, we depend on the media. We like to be liked by them; we need to be liked by them. We depend on the media, and that applies still more to Governments. It is an unavoidable observation that Parliament has behaved with extraordinary cowardice for many years, …
- We are faced with a scandal of expanding proportions, including hacking, allegations of interference in police investigations, and claims that payments have been made to officers. To restore faith and trust in the police and the media, we must lock up the guilty, establish a statutory inquiry, shine a cleansing light on the culture of the media and, if necessary, of the police, and implement the reforms necessary to ensure that the privacy of victims and citizens is never intruded on again. It is clear from today’s debate that this is the will of the House, and we are committed to making it happen.
These comments refer to the apparent effects of the relationships between the members of (the UK) parliament and those that form the UK Government, the Metropolitan police
Metropolitan Police Service
The Metropolitan Police Service is the territorial police force responsible for Greater London, excluding the "square mile" of the City of London which is the responsibility of the City of London Police...
and News International
News International
News International Ltd is the United Kingdom newspaper publishing division of News Corporation. Until June 2002, it was called News International plc....
(NI [UK subsidiary of News Corporation
News Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
]) and the influence, expressed as malign, of the latter organization on the former two institutions.
The debate was precipitated by the type of some of the information procurement methods found to have been used by a major British Sunday newspaper (the title is now shut down) – the News of the World
News of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...
(was owned by NI). Now known as the (News International) ‘phone hacking affair
News of the World phone hacking affair
The News International phone-hacking scandal is an ongoing controversy involving mainly the News of the World but also other British tabloid newspapers published by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation. Employees of the newspaper were accused of engaging in phone hacking, police...
’, the consequences for the British PMC and NI (as part of the world’s second largest media empire after The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
) are likely to be unfolding for some considerable time as new sectors of vulnerable members of British society subjected to the particular malicious practice are brought to light.
Criticism
Naming (as a 'complex') points of intersection and apparent cooperative benefit, to some degree, of diverse, nominally independent, areas of public faced activity puts us in danger of missing a much more fundamental and general insight according to linguist and dissident Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
. Such identifiable collaborations/collusions are almost to be expected and are a natural outcome to the working of the 'industrial system,' as it has evolved in the West (and then exported to the rest of the world in so-called 'globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
'), having the state (taxpayer) funded sector at its core (that is as opposed to the contemporary 'conventional wisdom
Conventional wisdom
Conventional wisdom is a term used to describe ideas or explanations that are generally accepted as true by the public or by experts in a field. Such ideas or explanations, though widely held, are unexamined. Unqualified societal discourse preserves the status quo. It codifies existing social...
' with a hard and fast distinction between the state and private sectors - the economist John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith , OC was a Canadian-American economist. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism...
has also argued that the 'two sectors' represent an 'innocent fraud') and its necessary (but unstated) main reason for existence: the 'socialization of costs and the privatization of profits
Privatizing profits and socializing losses
In political discourse, the phrase "privatizing profits and socializing losses" refers to any instance of speculators benefitting from profits, but not taking losses, by pushing the losses onto society at large, particularly via the government....
' (corporate welfare
Corporate welfare
Corporate welfare is a pejorative term describing a government's bestowal of money grants, tax breaks, or other special favorable treatment on corporations or selected corporations. The term compares corporate subsidies and welfare payments to the poor, and implies that corporations are much less...
).
Chomsky discusses the so-called 'military-industrial complex
Military-industrial complex
Military–industrial complex , or Military–industrial-congressional complex is a concept commonly used to refer to policy and monetary relationships between legislators, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them...
' (MIC) and argues that its embedded behavior is not just about the 'military' but is about ensuring that the modern economy, of which that behavior (emptied of particularly military connotations) is at the heart, is nothing much to do with freedom (of choice) or democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
either.
Using the technology of computing
Computing
Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...
as a prime example, Chomsky notes that about the time Dwight Eisenhower was making his speech about the putative MIC, institutions like Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and his own, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
(MIT), were working, using government funds (taxpayer dollars), to reduce roomfulls of machinery into a package that could be sold as a mainframe
Mainframe computer
Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...
(computer). Reaching that point, project heads began to leave to set up manufacturers. Similarly, established notables like International Business Machines (IBM) were using public funds to advance their technology from punch card sorting to advanced general purpose computers of their own around the beginning of the 1960s. None of this was about 'consumer choice' since the work was being done for government organs such as the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
(NSA). It was about two and a half decades, the early 1980s, before these 'private tyrannies' were in a position to take all the results of public funding and sell them back, at considerable profit, to the very people who had already paid for them.
Observing the prophets of the 'free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
,' such as Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan is an American economist who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. He currently works as a private advisor and provides consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC...
, enthusing about the 'marvels of entrepreneurial initiative and consumer choice,' Chomsky asserts, in contrast, that the contribution here during the 'costly and risky period of development' was precisely nil, almost the entire burden, without any (democratic) consultation, being placed on the taxpayer (socialized).
Chomsky points to the same script being followed, now, in areas such as biotechnology
Biotechnology
Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...
and neuroscience
Neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...
and why, from the past, we now have such 'goods' as the Internet, telecommunications, lasers etc. While it may be 'nice' to have computers (or be able to command an aircraft by 'thought') the essential point is, assuming there is some real committment to freedom (of choice) and democracy in the elites and and structures of power, given a public, such as those in the 1950s, to ask what they want out of their taxes. Computers in twenty-five years or health care, good schools and jobs today ? This assumes their being informed, in good faith, of matters.
Chomsky summarizes that anybody/anything deeply embedded in the interests of the industrial system, with power (such as the corporations), is 'deathly afraid' of admitting such a state of affairs and that attitudes must be manipulated towards the 'appropriate' outcomes. Such manipulation is often best done in an atmosphere of fear and under pretence of external threat.
Edward S. Herman
Edward S. Herman
Edward S. Herman is an American economist and media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy and the media. He is Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also teaches at Annenberg School for...
and Chomsky, together, advanced a 'propaganda model
Propaganda model
The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that states how propaganda, including systemic biases, function in mass media...
' to accomplish this 'manufacturing consent', showing the ways in which power and money filter the news and enable governments and dominant private interests to integrate the behavior of the citizenry into the structures of the industrial system. Earlier, political writer George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
had noted, "All the papers that matter live off their advertisments and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over the news." ('Indirect censorship' obviates the need for obvious coercion.) This observation is at the heart of two of the filters that structure the propaganda model: advertising (of corporations) as the primary source of income for the mass media and the dependence upon information provided by government, business and 'experts' approved and paid for by these primary sources.
Herman and Chomsky see the ideas as being cast as testable hypotheses
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...
such that they can be held in the light of corroboration through empirical evidence and not merely as assertions out of the blue. Examination of contemporary developments in the context of the hypotheses is encouraged.
Thus the general and fundamental understanding of the working of the industrial system in the modern economy, 'socialization of costs and privatization of profits,' is met with corroboration from the heart of the market system
Market system
A market system is any systematic process enabling many market players to bid and ask: helping bidders and sellers interact and make deals. It is not just the price mechanism but the entire system of regulation, qualification, credentials, reputations and clearing that surrounds that mechanism and...
(often called the free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...
) - a contemporary and 'polite' euphemism for capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
according to Galbraith - for example, in the near collapse of the global banking system, beginning in 2008, spreading in 2011 to the areas of sovereign debt
Government debt
Government debt is money owed by a central government. In the US, "government debt" may also refer to the debt of a municipal or local government...
, requiring almost constant appeal to the 'banker of last resort
Lender of last resort
A lender of last resort is an institution willing to extend credit when no one else will. The term refers especially to a reserve financial institution, most often the central bank of a country, intended to avoid bankruptcy of banks or other institutions deemed systemically important or 'too big to...
' - the taxpayer. Under debt restructuring, 'good debt' is returned to private hands as soon as possible and the taxpayer is left saddled with the 'bad debt' which is probably unrecoverable.
The shadow that the corporations cast on the media through advertising (corroboration of Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model filters through advertising) was illustrated in the closure of News International's 168 year old flagship Sunday title, the News of the World, when major advertisers boycotted the paper as a consequence of the 'phone hacking scandal' - the corporations, understandably, not wishing to be seen associated with a paper whose production had been based on frequent engagement in serious criminal activity.(See also
When PMCs begin to fracture)
From Chomsky's perspective, then, whatever set of interactions is being named by the term 'politico-media complex' (PMC) simply instantiates the propaganda model to manufacture consent in the service of the industrial system.
See also
- Celebrity-industrial complexCelebrity-industrial complexThe celebrity-industrial complex is a social and economic construct which involves a symbiotic relationship between celebrities and business corporations...
- Freedom of the pressFreedom of the pressFreedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...
- History of RadioHistory of radioThe early history of radio is the history of technology that produced radio instruments that use radio waves. Within the timeline of radio, many people contributed theory and inventions in what became radio. Radio development began as "wireless telegraphy"...
- KDKA (AM)KDKA (AM)KDKA is a radio station licensed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Created by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation on November 2, 1920, it is one of the world's first modern radio stations , a distinction that has also been challenged by other stations, although it has claimed to be the first in...
- Leveson InquiryLeveson InquiryThe Leveson Inquiry is an ongoing public inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press following the News International phone hacking scandal. On 6 July 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron announced to Parliament that a public government inquiry would convene to further...
- Prison-industrial complexPrison-industrial complex"Prison–industrial complex" is a term used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. The term is analogous to the military–industrial complex that...
- Spin (public relations)Spin (public relations)In public relations, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through providing an interpretation of an event or campaign to persuade public opinion in favor or against a certain organization or public figure...
Further reading
- Horten, Gerd (2002). Radio Goes to War: the cultural politics of propaganda during World War II. University of California PressUniversity of California PressUniversity of California Press, also known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish books and papers for the faculty of the University of California, established 25 years earlier in 1868...
. ISBN 0-520-20783-1. - Land, Jeff (1999). Active Radio: Pacifica's Brash Experiment. Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaUniversity of MinnesotaThe University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
. ISBN 0-8166-3157-3. - Smail, David (1984). "The Language of Anxiety". Illusion and Reality: The Meaning of Anxiety. Dent. pp. 81–98. ISBN 0-094-77440-4.
External links
- BBC.co.uk, A Very Special Relationship
- Manufacturing Consent, video documentary
- Guardian.co.uk, Revealed: Blair's talks with Murdoch on eve of war
- Aber.ac.uk Semiotics: The Basics, web version. For Positioning of the Subject, select Modes of Address and 'Find (on This Page)'
- Chomsky.info , The Propaganda Model: A Retrospective, by Edward S. Herman, December 9, 2003
- Newsroom Magazine, "Big Media: America's Political Gatekeeper," September 25, 2009