Primary Documents

Trumbull White writes in "Our War With Spain", the war was “civilization against barbarism, freedom against oppression, education against ignorance, progress against retrogression, the west against the east, the United Stated against Spain.” He goes on to state that the US had been at peace for thirty years and now the American people must fight for “humanity and righteous justice, to take arms again in the cause of liberty.” These statements show right away the presses involvement. This author was in full support of the war and made it seem everyone else was too. He made them seem proud and happy to be fighters.

I think this is a really great example of how the newspapers influenced the war. The paper is telling the reader that this is a good thing and that the war is good, not bad. He's raising support for the war through the paper.

More misinformation from President Bush

One of the most notable points raised by President Bush during the State of the Union Adress was his admission that America was "addicted to oil". Addressing many American's concerns, the President said he would seek to cut dependance on middle-east oil by 75%.

Many of President Bush's critics lauded him for making these bold statements. Although he failed to mention increased fuel efficiency standards or other specific measures, critics found his new stance on energy too good to be true.

It turns out they were right, it was too good to be true. Administration officials admitted today that President Bush, "didn't really mean it". One administration official was quoted as saying, "Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands."

In other words, since Americans are no longer willing to accept President Bush's real policy on energy (tax cuts for oil companies and arctic drilling), he "dramatized" his policy by telling people what they wanted to hear, even though it wasn't true.

Americans should be outraged that President Bush continues to use false propaganda in order to hide his real agenda.

Manufacturing the News Through Filters

"Another reason for the heavy weight given to official sources is that the mass media claim to be 'objective' dispensers of the news. Partly to maintain the image of objectivity, but also to protect themselves from criticisms of bias and the threat of libel suits, they need material that can be portrayed as presumptively accurate." (Chomsky, Herman p.19) If this is the case, then it is clear to me that the media is pure propaganda masked as objective news. They, the media, are reporting facts, but only the facts that official sources, such as government officials, wish to give them. Any information received from a government official will certainly be presumptuously accurate as it is straight from the source. An audience will be more likely to trust a report with a source in an official position.

A source that is not "official" faces the possibility of having no credibility because it does not have the protection that an official source has. If a scientist were to state that global warming is having an effect of the earth, the information would be considered more credible if the scientist was working directly for the government, as opposed a scientist performing independent experiments in a castle in Europe. Although the scientist in Europe may not have stake in the governments policies concerning global warming and is more objective than a scientist with ties to the government's policies, the medium reporting such information would be prone to "flak" from not only scientists working with the government and the government itself that may disagree with said scientist, but rival media outlets fighting for audience and profits. The medium's credibility will be at stake as well if the non-official source has skeletons in his or her closet that will label him or her a "liar."

It appears to me that a "free press" is concerned only with the bottom-line. This is understandable as the "free press" is run as a business, and essentially is a business. The alternative to this would be state-run press... Which would not exactly be a "free press," and much more susceptible to propaganda.

The filters that Chomsky and Herman speak have a tremendous effect on what news we as the public receive. It's as though the media must bow to the government and publishers concerned only with the bottom-line, or walk on glass in order to report and investigate news.

Media Control (Spectator Democracy)

According to this article, there are two different classes of citizens, "Specialized class" and "bewildered herd" who have different parts in the society. It states that only small elite, "Specialized class" should make decisions because other people, the "bewildered herds" are not capable of making decisions. "Mass of the public are just too stupid to be able to understand things. If they try to participate in managing their own affairs, they're just going to cause trouble. Therefore, it would be immoral and improper to permit them to do this." (p270)

The article also states that these people should stay as "spectators of action", occasionally lending their weight to one or another of the real leaders, who they may select among. (p272)
"People have to be atomized and segregated and alone. They're not supposed to organize, because then they might be something beyond spectators of action." (p272) If "bewildered herds" become participants, it causes serious problems. In order to stop them from organizing, the experts must mobilize community opinion in favor of vapid, empty concepts like Americanism. (p273) Empty concepts like Americanism and harmony that no one can't be against of, anything that's totally vacuous would work as stated in the article.

Another interesting point was that Government have to help educated Elite to manage public using the Media. They don't want the people to participate in the public, therefore distract the public to watch something else. Leaving decision to small elite, "bewildered herd" should be going on with life.

"They should be watching the Superbowl or sitcoms or violent movies. Every
once in a while you call on them to chant meaningless slogans like "Support our
troops". You've got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they're
properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy
them from outside of inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very
dangerous, because they're not competent to think. Therefore it's
important to distract them and marginalize them." (p275)

Chomsky and the Bewildered Herd

Which is the correct concept of democracy :
"A democratic society is one in which the public has the means to participate in some meaningful way in the management of their own affairs and the means of information are open and free. " or "Democracy is that the public must be barred from managing their own affairs and the means of information must be narrowly and rigidly controlled. " (pg. 267)
According to Chomsky's reading it is the latter one, which also states that only a few should control the democratic government. Those few would be the higher educated intellectuals of society making choices for the rest of society. The rest of society would be known as the "bewildered herd ... Their function in a democracy he said is to be ' spectators' , not participants in action . " (pg 270)

The intellectuals that is referred to in the reading is the politicians, who have used the media to its advantage. One good example given is the phrase used in the Persian Gulf War "support our troops" (pg 273). The idea was to have the public believe that you were supporting the troops in Kuwait, and if you didn't you were being unpatriotic. The issue at hand was not do you support the troops, but do you support the governments policy. The government has used the media wisely and to its advantage, while trying to keep its citizen's involvement to a minimum.

The Characteristics of Propaganda

This article is great in showing its reader what is propaganda. The one part of this article that interested me the most is when he spoke of the “crowd”. He spoke that even though propaganda is aimed at the group it has to connect personally with each individual. That seems a great a way to influence its subjects. Every person is different but every one has something in common so if everyone is reached at a certain level the propaganda has succeeded. Ellul also speaks of that even though propaganda is not for the individual but a large amount of people it is a better if the do not know this fact. Then it would make them feel as if they were not important or dumb. People really do not like to be put in a group it hurts their ego. Everyone is an individual and if you try to take that away from them then your propaganda might not work.

Herman and Chomsky- Manufacturing Consent

In this article it talks about how monopolistic control and official sensorship give the dominant elite a opportunity to use propaganda. And in a private, non censored media form it is less likely to see propaganda. This immediately made me think of sateillite radio and the absence of censorship in that form of media. The two bigger programs that will be talked about are: The Oppie and Anthony Show and The Howard Stern Show. Both programs were limited in their programing by the FCC, ased on topics and language. The had to avoid certain topics such as bad mouthing the President or government otherwise face a fine. Now that they have moved to a private uncensorsed form of communication they will be able to talk about whatever topic and use any language they want. These two programs were targeted by the government because it was indecent programming. The government couldn't change them and didn't want that type of programming to be listened to because it went against what the government was trying to propagandise.

I also liked the way the authors broke this article up into sections of the different filtersof the mass media. In the first three sections they gave charts to back up their concepts on and in sections four and five they use many interesting facts to justify themseleves. But in the final section: Dichotomization and Propaganda Campaigns, I got confused very easily. The were talking so much about Poland and Vietnam and then Nazi German, that I was confused at times which example they were currently talking about.

This was a very informative article yet it was a little hard to understand towards the end and it took me a couple of times to read through to completely understand the key points.

Rational and Irrational Propaganda

The differences in rational and irrational propaganda is like the difference between information and propaganda. Information is to address reason, it completes facts where propaganda is to address feelings and passion. The key word there is passion. When you can discover what people are passionate about you have a discovered a very powerful weapon.

Rational propaganda is based on facts, statistics, and economic ideas. Even though this mostly information it can be propaganda, for it uses to show rationality. When these facts are proven, it will demand everyone's support. To create irrational propaganda is a little different.

Ellul says "The problem is to create an irrational response on the basis of
rational and factual elements. That response must be fed with facts, those
frenzies must be provoked by rigorously logical proofs. Thus propaganda in
itself becomes honest, strict, exact, but its effect remains irrational
because of the spontaneous transformation of all its contents by the
individual."

Elluls continues to say that it is more powerful to use one piece of information instead of many, many facts because you keep the information in the person's mind. If you give him a great deal of information on the topic, he will not retain it all and will just get a general summary of the information. If you give him one statement the reader will not only retain the information, but it will be hard for him to put the information into his own words, which can decrease the passion of it. For example. If you give someone a great deal of information on all the good points of American he might come up with the opinion that America is a good nation, but if you simply but America is the world's superpower, the reader can only think that America is a world super power, instead of just being a good nation.

Manufacturing Consent

"The Mass Media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace."
This is the opening statement in "A Propaganda Model", and I feel as though it is a rather important one at that. The general public rely on the media to inform them of what is happening in the world today. We rely on the news, newspapers, magazines, and even movies to educate us as to what is happening around us. There are a few problems that come of this. If what Herman and Chomsky have written is true, then how much do we really know as to what is happening in society? There is an unsettling amount of "inequality of wealth and power" and it's "multilevel effects on mass-edia interests and choices". The majority of the mass-media is owned by upper-class, middle aged, white business men. Because these are the men that own our mass-media, we receive a slanted view on many topics in the news. There are also very many news items that don't even make it into the news. How can we possibly "get the news" properly if the majority of media ownership is held by non-media companies?
"GE and Westinghouse are both huge, diversified multinational companies heavily involved in the controversial areans of weapons production and nuclear power". These two companies own a majority of the mass-media. It is because of this that our news is mainly one sided. We will not hear of topics that may cause problems for these companies, the same way that we will hear nothing if anything wrong with the companies themselves. Free press is what we are promised in this country, yet do we really have it? No we don't actually have a free press, not unless you call freedom of the press having to answer to someone and be approved before airing a news item. Propaganda has obviously worked on "the general populace", because we don't even question any of this. Our rights have been taken away in a sense, yet no one is fighting for them back.

Response to Herman & Chomsky

Manufacturing consent by Herman & Chomsky talks of different filters in the propaganda model, advertising is the second filter. Advertising plays a big role in the function of the mass media, especially with relation to the television. The success of advertisements relies on the type of programs it is aired with. It is interesting to note that certain networks will air specific programs to meet the advertisers needs. I was not aware that the advertisers actually bought and paid for the programs, I just thought they paid for their adds to be run. The successful ratings of television programs are really important to the amount of money that companies can bring in due to advertising, " For a television network, an audience gain or loss of one percentage point in the Nielsen ratings translates into a change in advertising revenue of from $80 to $100 million a year, with some variation depending on measures of audience quality"(16). Advertising is valuable to the mass media because it is the source of income for much of the mass media, and the mass media is a very valuable method of helping promote different types of propaganda to the public, especially through the television where a large audience can be reached at any given time.

The Propagation of "Useful" Information

In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media, by Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky, there was a passage I found particularly interesting:

For stories that are useful, the process will get under way with a series of government leaks, press conferences, white pages, etc., or with one or more of the mass media starting the ball rolling...If the other media like the story, they will follow it up with their own versions, and the matter quickly becomes newsworthy by familiarity. If the articles are written in an assured and convincing style, are subject to no criticisms or alternative interpretations in the mass media, and command support by authority figures, the propaganda themes quickly become established as true even without real evidence. (pg 34)

The reason I find this passage so interesting is because it seems to be the tactic used in preparing the country to enter war with Iraq. We were first told that we were going to war because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and even without evidence of this, a good deal of the country bought into this idea. When it was proven that there were no weapons of mass destruction, the new message made a connection between Bin Laden and Hussein (which also had no supporting evidence). Was the formula highlighted by Chomsky and Herman used intentionally to gain support for the War in Iraq?

The Characteristic of Propaganda

Jacqules Ellul opens up my expressing that modern propaganda is only functional with the context of the modern scientific system. Also that propaganda is a technique rather than a science. Ellul demonstrates that propaganda branches science; it moves with them, shares in their successes and bears witness to their failures.
One of the most important part is Propaganda and Truth. Ellul states that we should focus on the relationship between propaganda and truth or between propaganda and accuracy or reality and not of truth. He generalizes this concept that propaganda is a series of "tall stories," "a tissue of lies," basically lies are necessary for effective propaganda. Ellul gives a good example that Hitler confirms this point saying that the bigger the lie, the more its chance of being believed.

The Political Economy of the Mass Media

In The Political Economy of the Mass Media, it discusses how the newspaper was a huge seller. "The cost of establishing a national weekly on a profitable basis in 1837 was under a thousand pounds, with a break-even circulation of 6,200 copies". The start up cost for the new London daily in 1867 was 50,000 pounds. The United States was doing this process as well. The start up cost for a newspaper in New York City was 69,000 in 1851. "Even small-newspaper publishing is big business". In the late 1980's , 1500 daily newspapers, 9,000 radio and 1,500 t.v stations and 11,000 magazines in the United States. Another big part in the world was the use of the technology of television."Centralization within the top tier was substanially incresed by the post- World War II rise of the television and the national networking of this important medium". It provided national and international news. The television was now considered to be the most reliable source for any news to the public. I think that media has a huge effect on our lives today. The media is talked about in our daily lifes, most people watch television or read a daily newspaper. The news is on all the time, for example if you want to hear any news especially things going on in Iraq you can just flip to CNN. The news is also on at least three times a day on NBC, FOX, UPN,WPIX, ETC... The television and newspaper are part of our daily lifes today. When we watch the television it is not unusal to flip through and see the news, or to get the daily newspaper without being able to escape the realtity of war, terror and crime.

"To Serve a the Ends of a Dominant Elite"

Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Norm Chomsky is a interesting look into the straggle hold the media in this country has on this nation. I hear arguments everyday about how this media group is extreme left, while another is extreme right (left or right of the political "wing"), but are any of them giving us the "News"?


I agree with Herman and Chomsky in the basic sense that the media has a political and elite agenda. The system is setup so that a limited few can own and operate a media group. These laws restricting ownership are put in place by the government - the elite. This, in a way, ensures that they (the elite) can choose and manipulate the heads of news sources.

It also does not help the situation when, by nature of media, the cost to operate a media institution is so enormous that only larger corporations and conglomerates can afford the cost. (i.e. Westinghouse; General Electric.)

The bottom line of this portion of Herman and Chomsky's Propaganda Model is that mass media is not aiming to provide you (the consumer) with the most accurate recent news, but rather, their goal is to fulfill a political agenda and accumulate more of the All-Mighty-Dollar.


R. O'Dell

A Question to my Fellow Bloggers...

The story of Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt has been headline news for all of the major networks. Each of the stories were written in a way that highlight the risks that the reporters and crews take so regularly so they can show us what is really going on in Iraq (as well as other conflicts and wars).

"Bob and Doug were in Iraq doing what reporters do, trying to find out what's happening there up-close and firsthand. All of us are mindful of the risks and the dangers," Vargas said Sunday night in a closing note. Dozens of journalists have been injured, killed or kidnapped in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein -CBS

Woodruff and Vogt suffered in their efforts to give the Iraqi military's perspective - escpecially because their lives are in just as much danger, if not more so than the American troops, because the insurgents see them as collaborating with the enemy. They undertook the type of embed that western media rarely set about doing - telling the Iraqi soldier's story. -MSNBC Blogging Baghdad

We all know that what we see on the news is not the truth that the reporters are out there in the trenches trying to expose, but the viewpoints of the network on which they are aired, carefully edited to represent the story they want to present. Keeping that in mind, is it possible that the network media is exploiting this tragic incident (as well others like it) to highlight their own quest to get us the truth, and to help persuade us to trust them because of the lengths their crews go to so we can be informed?

Propaganda By Way Of Filtration

In Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman's Manufacturing Consent, the reader is given insight into the propaganda model that exists in the United States. According to the authors, the inequality of wealth and power in this country creates a propaganda model in a which a very few control the content of the news that is disseminated to the masses. This is done by way of what Chomsky and Herman call "filtration." From the very beginning of media in the United States the powers that be have found subtle ways to avoid change. The creation of libel laws and various taxes were designed to drive out the radical media and strip the working class of their voice in society.
Today, the power to disseminate news is divided amongst 24 "media giants." By making it all but impossible to create a new media outlet, these 24 media companies are able to cater to the ideas of those whom they are owned by. By keeping the amount media outlets limited, we have a limited number of views on existing issues.
Another of these methods of filtration discussed in this piece is anticommunism. The government, by way of media, essentially creates a bogeyman for the people to fear. This helps "mobilize the populace against an enemy..." They kept the the concept of communism so fuzzy to the public that people were able to redirect the ills of society as a fault of communism. This same technique exists today in the United States. Communism has effectively been replaced by Terrorism. The Cold War seems to have become the "War on Terror." The American people are never told exactly what the "War on Terror" is or what the overall goal is. Once again the American people have a faceless evil to fear. An evil with which we use to make monsters of those we disagree with. This is not to say that terrorism does not exist. Nor am I implying that those whom engage in terrorism are not evil. What I am suggesting is that in today's media anyone who does not disagree with the United States' government can be painted with the stigma of terrorist or terrorist sympathizer. Such an observation leads me to agree with Chomsky and Herman with regards to the existence of a propaganda model in the United States.

Something Jacques Ellul did not mention:

This article will take China, North and South Korea and Japan, four countries as examples to tell the four great collective sociological presuppositions in the world exiting in Asian cultures.


In THE CHARACTERISTICS OF PROPAGANDA, Jacques Ellul said: It seems to us that there are four great collective sociological presuppositions in the world. By this we mean not only the western world, but including communist world, though not yet the African or Asian worlds. These common presupposition of bourgeois and proletarian are that man’s aim in life is happiness, that man is naturally good, that history develops in endless progress, and that everything is matter. (P22 Top Column)

Jacques Ellul stated that his understanding about the four great collective sociological presuppositions in the world does not apply to African and Asian cultures. But, what about those cultures? Leave them untouched?

There is no doubt about the idea that it is extremely hard to have a unified understanding about the world view or social philosophy hold by African or Asian cultures. Actually Africa, still a land of mysteries and diversified lifestyle today, has so many cultures and sub-cultures, even some primitive cultures existing at the same time, does not even have a unified worldview. It is a shame that people today still doesn’t know exactly how many ethnic tribes are there in Africa, let along the world views or the four great collective sociological presuppositions in the world.

Asian cultures, for most of the time, were taken as a whole. Actually, among Asian countries, even within a single Asian country, people’s idea about the four great collective sociological presuppositions in the world are dramatically different.

This article will take China, both North and South Korea and Japan, four countries as examples to tell the four great collective sociological presuppositions in the world exiting in Asian cultures. These four countries, due to the geographic and historic relations have a lot of things in common in the field of world view. But individually, they are totally different.
When the term “Asian Culture” was mentioned, for most of the time, it refers to the combination of cultures existing in these four countries.

During the Spring and Autumn Period, (see links) the Emperor of China started to loose his control over the whole country. Taken as the “the Son of Heaven”, he was officially the ruler of the whole country consists of tens of small states, but with no real authority over them. Rulers of individual states were their own kings, and in order to have the authority over each other, they began to hire Wiseman to help rule their country.

Due to this situation, several important philosophers came onto the stage and began to use their knowledge and understanding to influence the others. Both the founder of Confucianism—Confucius, and the founder of Taoism—Lao-Zi, appeared at that time as Wiseman and leading thinkers. Their thinking, latter on, would be taken as the main body of Asian, at least Chinese philosophy.

Lao-zi came earlier than Confucius did; he was believed to be the teacher of Confucius to some degree. He believed both the bad and the good takes each other as the condition of existence. In this way, people after him did not believe that man was born naturally good or evil. Both are possible.

Confucius was once in charge of the writing of the history of the Spring and Autumn period. He admired the time before the country fell into small pieces de facto, the time when the “Son of Heaven”—the Emperor was still the real ruler of the whole country and he believed that the latter generations would gradually loose the good traditions of their fathers and in this way, the whole society cannot be believed to develop constantly. His ideal society only existed in the past, he believe the society one after another does not necessarily get better. He always admired the “order” existing among different people and believed the “responsibility” was the most important thing for every individual. When his idea and philosophy was latter taken as the dominant, people in China began to believe that the reason for man to live is not for his own happiness but those of his family and his people if he is the ruler.

People latter began to use Confucius idea about the responsibility of family members to promote their idea about the authority of rulers. Chinese emperor after that was always taken as the “son of the heaven” and the “father of all the people on earth”. In this way, he should be only responsible for heaven, but all the people under him should be responsible for him. Even those Emperors, due to their belief of the teaching of Confucius, believed that as the “father of all the people on earth” their aim of life should not be the happiness of their own, but that of his family—all the people under him or the whole world.

Most Chinese Empires had the tradition to keep a detailed historic record of it own. When the dynasty was over, the following dynasty, usually people from another clan will use that record to write the history. In this way, the following people tend to think that all dynasties, no matter how long the period will be, will eventually be replaced by new one, because of the corruption of the government and the problem of the Emperor.
In this way, people do not really believe in the development of the whole society but expect the new beginning of a new society.


Gosh, too tired to continue, I will finish this soon……
just want to tell everybody
1. The man's aim in life is the happiness of family members
2. If man is naturally good or naturally bad never has a conclusion in Asian culture ever since 200BC (proofs will be offered)
3. The history dose not develops in endless progress. It is changing towards better and worse. The technology and science in it is developing, but, social relations are blieved to get worse one generation after another. Society has its routine from birth to death, and from birth to death again.(history means a different thing in Asian country )
4. Only important things matters. (Mainland China, North Korea(Communist), Taiwan, South Korea (capitalist) has different explanation about it. )
5. Ideology difference, like communism orf capitalism did not change anything, but tries to use different presupposition and myth to promote their idea. (this part will be interesting)
6. Neither China nor North Korea really uses the teaching of Karl Marx (you can not believe this, but this will be proved true)


TOO BE CONTINUED ……

Herman and Chomsky Manfacturing Consent

This reading offers alot of good points concerning propaganda and the media. The opening sentence says alot when the author writes that mass media serves as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general population. The media is like a funnel, funneling messages and information to the public. Propaganda works best using the media especially when the media is private and formal censorship is absent. Money and Power seem to be strong tools when it comes to propaganda and getting messages across to the general public. Herman and Chomsky write about the propaganda model and the propaganda approach to media coverage based on domestic power interests. This way of propaganda should be best viewed when dissecting choices of certian views and stories.

Scott Filaski