Global Flows: Kathryn Caminiti

Source: http://mediacultureandglobalization.yolasite.com/menu.php

Global Flows
By: Kathryn Caminiti

There is a complex relationship between dominant international media flows and subaltern, contra-flows today that a large majority of people around the world are not aware of. Most people today are so caught up in their daily cultural lives that they do not realize the major impact of global media flows and counter-flows on nationhood and cultural identity. The dominant international media flows are large, rich and powerful with global capitalism on their side. They have the sources, connections and supporters at their fingertips with their many investments and partnerships that allow them to spread a biased, one-way flow of information. In contrast, contra-flows in international media are other flows, some alternative flows of information, ideas/ideologies, media, and communication that participate in a two-way flow of discourse about news, information, politics, culture, etc. They are “contra-“ in that they counter the dominant media flows who control the majority of the news and media outlets today. One big fear with this process of globalization is that the values and images of the dominant international media flows are threatening to choke out the world’s “native flora,” as Appiah (2006) describes it, of other flows of information. The Hindi film Industry called Bollywood, the traditional motion-picture industry of India + Hollywood, is an example of a billion dollar entertainment contra-flow. It is the world’s largest (even bigger than Hollywood) but its influence is largely confined to the Indian subcontinent and among the South Asian diaspora. The issue at hand is that although these other “contra-flows” exist in the mediascape of the world, they are still not big enough, powerful enough, nor developed enough to put a dent in the dominant transnational mainstream media today. In fact, just by having such contra-flows dedicated to specific regions actually reinforces the dominance of international media flows given the limitability of global access. In order to understand further the impact overlapping narratives of global, national and local identities have on the world, I look to Daya Kishan Thussu’s (2006) case study, “Mapping Global Media Flow and Contra-flow,” to critically examine the complex relationship between global media flows. In addition, I ask for further research on implications for a new global media order with respect to advancements in digital technology and growth of broadband, equal reach advantages, and reformed news and entertainment regulations in order to increase global access in all media flows.

Our contemporary society is built around flows. These flows are described by Castells (2000) to include “flows of capital, flows of information, flows of technology, flows of organizational interactions, flows of images, sounds, and symbols” (p. 442). These flows can also be described as “mediascapes,” according to Arjun Appadurai (1996), which are one of five “scapes” or building blocks of culture that consist of many different shapes and sizes and flow in multiple directions, serving as images of cultural processes. He describes these mediascapes to refer, “both to the distribution of the electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information (newspapers, magazines, television stations, and film-production studios),” (p. 53) and explain how they are available to increasing private and public interests though out the world and to the images of the world created by these media. In other words, they describe the ways in which so many products become available to so many places around the world. These images or flows also supply many complications depending on their audiences (local, national, or transnational) and the interests of those who own and control them. There are dominant international media flows and there are smaller, contra-flows that make up the global spectrum of media flows. 

Dominant international media flows are those predominantly coming from the global North (with the U.S. at its core) that are mainstreamed and consumed by heterogeneous global audiences. Contra-flows, or designated “subaltern flows” according to Thussu (2006), follow the dominant flows, stemming from past peripheries of global media industries. As the global society becomes increasingly networked, such flows have continued to grow in size and direction at rapid rates. In Thussu’s (2006) case study, “Mapping Global Media Flow and Contra-flow,” he discusses how digital technology has aided in the proliferation of satellite and cable television and the growing use of the internet, “partly as a result of the deregulation and privatization of broadcasting and telecommunication networks,” (p. 12) and that this has empowered media companies to seek and create new consumers on a transnational level rather than on a national level. As a result, the convergence of television and broadband has opened up new opportunities for the flow of media content. 

However, the relationship between dominant global media flows and contra-flows is more complex than people believe. At first, preservationists used to make their case of “the evil of cultural imperialism” by viewing the world system of capitalism as having a center and a periphery; cultural imperialism “structuring the consciousness” of those in a periphery. Kwame Anthony Appiah (2006) describes this in his article featured in the New York Times, “The Case for Contamination.” He states, “At the center— in Europe and the United States— is a set of multinational corporations. Some of these are in the media business. The products they sell around the world promote the creation of desires that can be fulfilled only by the purchase and use of their products” (p. 3), done explicitly through advertising and implicitly through the messages illustrated in film and television. This is also commonly described by Thussu (2006) as the “West to the Rest” phenomenon. However, this initial theory did not match up with the evidence. Researchers whom disagreed with this “cultural imperialism” theory went out to examine the actual content of television media and film in various parts of the world and discovered how American popular culture was adopted by different regional artists and transformed to fit their own cultures’ needs locally. People were responding differently to cultural imports depending on their existing cultural context, thus, proving the cultural imperialism theory wrong, biased, and honestly, condescending.

In order to properly understand global media flows, the world cannot be looked at from a center-periphery perspective anymore. As stated in the article “Media, Culture & Society,” authors Hartmut Wessler and Manuel Adophsen (2008) re-state Sakr and Thussu’s (2007) argument in saying that, “the concept of contra-flow is not only a mere geographical shift of production capacities towards peripheral locations. More important is the appreciation of contra-flow content in Western locations and a certain degree of interaction with dominant media — be it of an appreciative or confrontational nature” (p. 440). Going off this, I use Thussu’s configuration of media flows— the dominant global flows, transnational flows, and geo-cultural contra-flows— to better explain how information is spread via communication channels.

Dominant global flows are large media corporations that have a big impact on society with their extensive reach in obtaining many viewers. The U.S. continues to lead the field in the export of audio-visual products, from news and current affairs through youth programming to feature films, sports and the Internet. Dominant flows include ESPN, MTV, Google, BBC News, Hollywood, CNN and Fox News. An everyday example of dominant flows can be explained when I open up my browser to check my email. I click on the “Yahoo!” Home Screen tab in my browser menu and as my eyes scroll the left-hand column in search for the small graphic envelope symbolizing my “Mail” button, I can’t help but notice the top news headlines of five different Western-based stories listed on my center screen; the top 5 being CNN, Fox News, or Yahoo! stories. These are the dominant media flows that control my news feed everyday, and I am conditioned as a consumer to not question this observation. 

Media contra-flows are smaller flows, but they still represent multiple media sites of production, flow and identification. They are important but their impact remains small in comparison to dominant flows. Contra-flows can exist on the transnational level, such as Al-Jazeera, Euro-News, Bollywood, Brazilian shows and Korean drama. With new communication technologies evolving and other sources for information multiplying, smaller, alternative forms of communication, such as minority and protest media, have emerged with active and dedicated followers. Al-Jazeera English, joined in 2006 by the original Arabic-language station founded in Qatar in 1996, is one example of a transnational and alternative contra-flow news channel that contests the monopoly of Western-dominanted global TV news journalism today. It presents a view of the world in a different way from dominant media flows in which it provides objective journalism to America and its viewers rather than subjective journalism, allowing for the views and voices of other people to be heard. It takes the global news and makes it local, and takes the local/regional news and makes it global. 

Contra-flows can also exist on the geo-cultural level, which is more linguistic as its purpose is to allow foreigners in other countries to view their country’s media in their own language. For instance, in his article “Reconsidering Geo-cultural Contraflow: Intercultural Information Flows Through Trends in Global Audiovisual Trade,” Douglas Bicket (2005) speaks to a development in the globalization of media products being consumed by foreign people inside another country: “the desire of people around the world to watch television programming that originates from a cultural or geographic background close to their own” (p. 1). Contra-flows are “glocalized” in which the circulation and adaptation of media products is adapted inside and across regions. For example, an Arab living in New York City can open up his computer and read his homeland’s news written in Arabic. 

While these contra-flows exist in the global media flow sphere, the problem is that these mix of flows on a glocal, geo-cultural level are not necessarily impacting a dominant flow or driving force. Wessler and Adolphsen (2008) explain this in the case of Al-Jazeera, how this leads to the construction of a “communication bridge between the West and the Arab world” (p. 440); or in my case, to a communication bridge between the West and the Middle East. For my case study, I look at the Indian Film Industry of Bollywood in the Middle East as a major transnational contra-flow operating in a glocalized commercial environment; Bollywood also categorized as representing transnational “subaltern flows.”

According to Thussu (2006), “One result of the privatization and proliferation of television outlets and the growing glocalization of U.S. media products is that American film and television exports witnessed nearly a five-fold increase between 1992 and 2004” (p. 12). Today that number is even higher. The shift from a local and national view of media to a transnational one defined by consumer interest and market revenue became a main component in the growth and advancement of media flows: from North to South, East to West, and South to South. Such contra-flows are happening all over different parts of the world. The wider struggle that media flows and contra-flows form is over information flows which define power relations in the global information economy. The emerging transnational and geo-cultural networks today represent these contra-flows and they operate in both dimensions. Thussu (2006) explains, “The extension of satellite footprints and the growth of Direct-to-home (DTH) broadcasting have enabled Southern media networks to operate across the globe, feeding into and developing the emergent diasporic public spheres” (p. 14). With economic globalization and the growing efforts of movements across populations around the world, major geo-cultural markets based off languages are distinguishing themselves in transnational communication. 

The US-led Western media available online and offline and in various forms of information and entertainment are global in their reach and influence given their political and economic power. The US is the leading exporter of cultural products with the entertainment industry being one of its largest export earners. According to UNESCO’s 2005 report on International Flows of Selected Goods and Services, between 1994 and 2002 international trade in cultural goods increased from $38 billion to $60 billion (UNESCO, 2005a), demonstrating how trade is heavily weighed in favor of the industrialized world. These dominant global media flows are not only in English but are also in “dubbed or indigenized versions,” (Thussu, 2013, p. 20) those involving creating a new narrative for a film or TV show, since translation of its original content is never word-for-word. These are a form of glocalization, taking a global media format and re-appropriating it to fit a local context. For example, Rupert Murdoch owns News Corp. and STAR TV which are dominant media flows in the West and Australia. However, STAR TV has aggressively adopted an indigenization policy in offering localized channels, being STAR Chinese, STAR Japan, STAR Plus, and STAR News (the latter two for India), that are glocalized contra-flows of their specific region. As a commercial imperative, media content and services have been tailored to specific cultural regions in order to maintain the dominant flow.

The U.S. dominates the global entertainment market due largely to its film industry. Hollywood films are reported to be shown in more than 150 countries worldwide and dominate market share in a majority of the countries in which the films are shown (Miller et all. 2005). In 2005, Hollywood earned more than half of its revenue from overseas (European Audiovisual Observatory, 2005), the worldwide box office being worth $25.24 billion in 2004 with the world’s top ten grossing films being produced by Hollywood (Thussu, 2006, p. 18). This extensive reach of US-based media contributes to the global flow of consumerist messages and helps the U.S. use its “soft power” to promote its national economic and political interests. Soft power is another word for media power and media capital that dominant media flows like the U.S. utilize. Certain countries have more of this soft power than others that they can exercise globally, some regionally, with other countries at the receiving end. Castells (2007) states, “The media are not the holders of power but they constitute by and large the space where power is decided” (p. 242). Media is said to have soft power because it is so powerful that people don’t realize it. It does not involve direct contact of power in which it does not force people to do anything (like the military, which we call “hard power”), but it does persuade people, typically involving the use of economic or cultural influence via the media. The point is that we need to adapt to this and understand how the dominant media flows exert their power and operate in the global sphere of things. 

The impact of dominant media flows and their content is that if they own and control too much then therefore they own opinions, resources, and information that goes with them; if we are not having our voices heard or controlling anything, then we are controlled and it is harder for us to make an impact or dent in these huge media flows. However, with transnational television and its ability to transcend linguistic and geographical boundaries, it is extremely important in relation to media flows. Even though the flow of international television programs from the West to other parts of the world has become more pronounced in the era of multi-channel television, there is a small but significant contra-flow from the non-Western world. The one-way vertical flow has given way for multiple, horizontal, subaltern flows to emerge as an ever growing geo-cultural market. What most people don’t realize is that these subaltern flows have created new transnational configurations as they connect with gradually localizing global dominant flows on their own. Thussu (2006) suggests that there is evidence that global media traffic is not just one way (from the West to the rest) even though the former dominant flows are still in favor. He states, “The availability of digital technology, privatized and deregulated broadcasting and satellite networks has enabled the increasing glow of content from the global South to the North, for example, the growing international visibility of Indian films…” (Thussu, 2006, p. 23) like Bollywood. 

Given its size and diverse cultural and social precursors, India is one of the few non-Western countries to have established themselves in the global cultural market due to their $3.5 billion Hindi film industry. This is particularly significant due to the fact that they are the world’s largest in terms of production and viewership: “every year a billion more people buy tickets for Indian movies than for Hollywood films” (Thussu, 2006, p. 26). Even though more films are made in India each year than in Hollywood, their influence is largely confined to the Indian subcontinent and among the South Asian diaspora. However, according to Kaur and Sinha (2005), in recent years many “cross-over” films have opened the communication bridge between India and the West. 

The emergence of many dedicate film-based pay-channels and advancements in digital technology and the growth of broadband have ensured that Indian films are shown outside India on the regular. They dominate the cinema of South Asia and the South Asian diaspora as well as construct the popular culture based on “Bollywood.” The globalization of Bollywood has made sure than Indian films increasingly be watched both inside and outside their national audience. Thussu (2006) states that, “Hindi films are shown in more than 70 countries and are popular in the Arab world, in central and southeast Asia and among many African countries” (p. 26). This has made it imperative for producers to invest in dubbed/indigenized versions of their films to widen their reach and privilege scripts which interest audiences in foreign markets. Joint ventures between Indian film producers and Hollywood giants have received a boost after the Indian government announced in 2000, “to allow foreign companies to invest in the film industry” (Thussu, 2006, p. 26). A result of this interest is that diasporic film makers, like Mira Nair (director of Monsoon Wedding) and Gurvinder Chaddha (director of internationally successful British-Asian films like Bend it Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice), have served as a bridge between Western and Indian popular cinema. Thus, rather than defining Indian films in terms of their modernity and desire for nationhood, Indian cinema cannot be understood on a national paradigm and must be more accurately described as a field of visual and cultural production that interlinks diverse sites and countries. 

The impact of the global media order is complex as reception of these cultural products is never uniform. The world is complex and we have only begun to theorize about it. Media flows and contra-flows create part of the wider struggle over information flows which define power relations in the global information economy. Soft power is supported by “hard” political and economic power, despite the massive movement of media flows across continents, cultures and communities. The significant examples of subaltern, contra-flows of media serve to show that the world communication is not, in fact, diverse and democratic like some may have previously supposed. This analysis about the reality of global media flows and contra-flows demonstrates a more complex process of globalization, the imbalance between the dominant and subaltern global media flows proving to be real in reflecting the asymmetries in flows of ideas and goods. Even though there is a growing trend towards contra-flow, non-Western media organizations are relatively small and do not have high enough revenues to make a global impact. Despite the growing existence of the Indian film industry as a contra-flow, Bollywood’s share in the global film industry in 2004 valued at $200 billion was still less than 0.2 percent. 

At the same time, dominant international media flows are becoming stronger as they continue to shape the global media order and serve as big influences around the world. The question then probes to ask: how contra is contra and contra against whom exactly? It is a question of focus, of where do we get our media content from? Contra doesn't necessarily mean that the media product has to be anti-hegemonic. Soft power is still power and glocalization processes, while important, still reinforce a dominant media order. Ideologically, commercial contra-flows reinforce free-market capitalism by supporting a privatized and commodified media system. Therefore, I contend that people should stop assuming they are “counter-hegemonic” to the dominant media flows for it is unlikely that subaltern flows will have a significant impact on the U.S. hegemony of global media cultures that have grown stronger given the localization of media content, despite the supposed displacing of global media from the center. In addition, as dominant international media flows expands its reach and power, “a hybridized and localized media product,” according to Thussu (2006), “can provide the more acceptable face of globalization and therefore effectively legitimize the ideological imperatives of a free-market capitalism” (p. 28). Or in other words, they can more appropriately describe globalization as a process and more effectively explain the dictatorial ideology of capitalism. 

In addition to my conclusion, I believe further research should be done involving implications for a new global media order. This new media order includes developing new advancements in digital technology and growth of broadband in order to increase global access in media flows; it requires equal advantages for all companies, big or small, in reaching people (seeing people as “citizens” and not as “consumers”); and it asks for an establishment of new regulations for mandating all news and entertainment in global media flows. 

Bibliography

Appadurai, Arjun. Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. From Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. 27-47.

Appiah, Anthony K. The Case for Contamination. New York Times, 2006.

Bicket, Douglas. Reconsidering Geocultural Contraflow: Intercultural Information Flows Through Trends in Global Audiovisual Trade. Global Media Journal. No. 8, 4.6 (2005) Purdue University.

Castells, Manuel. Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society. International Journal of Communication: University of Southern California, 2007. 238-266.

Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, 1.2 (2000). Oxford: Blackwell.

Focus 2005: World Film Market Trends. European Audiovisual Observatory. Strasbourg, 2005.

Kaur, Raminder and Ajay Sinha, eds. Bollyworld: Popular Indian Cinema Through a Transnational Lens. New Delhi: Sage, 2005.

Miller, Toby, Nitin Govil, Richard Maxwell and John McMurria. Global Hollywood, 2nd edn. London: British Film Institute, 2005.

Seib, Philip, and Amelia Arsenault., eds. “Ch. 5 Covering and Reaching Africa.” Al Jazeera English: Global News in a Changing World. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 79-96.

Thussu, Daya K., Communicating India’s Soft Power: Buddha to Bollywood. Palgrave Macmillian, 2013.

Thussu, Daya K., “Mapping Global Media Flow and Contra-Flow,” Media on the Move: Global Flow and Contra-Flow, ed. New York: Routledge, 2006.

UNESCO (2005a) International Flows of Selected Cultural Goods and Services 1994-2003, UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Wessler, Hartmut and Manuel Adophsen., “Contra-flow from the Arab world? How Arab television coverage of the 2003 Iraq war was used and framed on Western international news channels.” Media, Culture & Society. Sage Publications, 30.4 (2008): 439-461.

The Propaganda Model Revisited

Source: http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/199607--.htm

The Propaganda Model Revisited

Edward S. Herman

Monthly Review, July, 1996

In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Pantheon, 1988) Noam Chomsky and I put forward a "propaganda model" as a framework for analyzing and understanding how the mainstream U.S. media work and why they perform as they do. We had long been impressed with the regularity with which the media operate within restricted assumptions, depend heavily and uncritically on elite information sources, and participate in propaganda campaigns helpful to elite interests. In trying to explain why they do this we looked for structural factors as the only possible root of systematic behavior and performance patterns.

The propaganda model was and is in distinct contrast to the prevailing mainstream explanations -- both liberal and conservative -- of media behavior and performance. These approaches downplay structural factors, generally presupposing their unimportance or positive impact because of the multiplicity of agents and thus competition and diversity. Liberal and conservative analysts emphasize journalistic conduct, public opinion, and news source initiatives as the main determining variables. The analysts are inconsistent in this regard, however. When they discuss media systems in communist or other authoritarian states, the idea that journalists or public opinion can override the power of those who own and control the media is dismissed as nonsense and even considered an apology for tyranny. There is a distinct difference, too, between the political implications of the propaganda model and mainstream scholarship. If structural factors shape the broad contours of media performance, and if that performance is incompatible with a truly democratic political culture, then a basic change in media ownership, organization, and purpose is necessary for the achievement of genuine democracy. In mainstream analyses such a perspective is politically unacceptable, and its supportive arguments and evidence are rarely subject to debate.

In this article I will describe the propaganda model, address some of the criticism that has been leveled against it, and discuss how the model holds up nearly a decade after its publication.1 I will also provide some examples of how the propaganda model can help explain the nature of media coverage of important political topics in the 1990s.

The Propaganda Model

What is the propaganda model and how does it work? The crucial structural factors derive from the fact that the dominant media are firmly imbedded in the market system. They are profit-seeking businesses, owned by very wealthy people (or other companies); they are funded largely by advertisers who are also profit-seeking entities, and who want their ads to appear in a supportive selling environment. The media are also dependent on government and major business firms as information sources, and both efficiency and political considerations, and frequently overlapping interests, cause a certain degree of solidarity to prevail among the government, major media, and other corporate businesses. Government and large non-media business firms are also best positioned (and sufficiently wealthy) to be able to pressure the media with threats of withdrawal of advertising or TV licenses, libel suits, and other direct and indirect modes of attack. The media are also constrained by the dominant ideology, which heavily featured anticommunism before and during the Cold War era, and was mobilized often to prevent the media from criticizing attacks on small states labelled communist.

These factors are linked together, reflecting the multi-leveled capability of powerful business and government entities and collectives (e.g., the Business Roundtable; U.S. Chamber of Commerce; industry lobbies and front groups) to exert power over the flow of information. We noted that the five factors involved -- ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak, and anticommunist ideology -- work as "filters" through which information must pass, and that individually and often in additive fashion they help shape media choices. We stressed that the filters work mainly by the independent action of many individuals and organizations; these frequently, but not always, share a common view of issues and similar interests. In short, the propaganda model describes a decentralized and non-conspiratorial market system of control and processing, although at times the government or one or more private actors may take initiatives and mobilize coordinated elite handling of an issue.

Propaganda campaigns can occur only when consistent with the interests of those controlling and managing the filters. For example, these managers all accepted the view that the Polish government's crackdown on the Solidarity union in 1980-81 was extremely newsworthy and deserved severe condemnation; whereas the same interests did not find the Turkish military government's equally brutal crackdown on trade unions in Turkey at about the same time to be newsworthy or reprehensible. In the latter case the U.S. government and business community liked the military government's anticommunist stance and open door economic policy; and the crackdown on Turkish unions had the merit of weakening the Left and keeping wages down. In the Polish case, propaganda points could be scored against a Soviet-supported government, and concern could be expressed for workers whose wages were not paid by Free World employers! The fit of this dichotomization to corporate interests and anticommunist ideology is obvious.

We used the concepts of "worthy" and "unworthy" victims to describe this dichotomization, with a trace of irony, as the differential treatment was clearly related to political and economic advantage rather than anything like actual worth. In fact, the Polish trade unionists quickly ceased to be worthy when communism was overthrown and the workers were struggling against a western-oriented neoliberal regime. The travails of Polish workers now, like those of Turkish workers, do not pass through the propaganda model filters. They are both unworthy victims at this point.

We never claimed that the propaganda model explains everything or that it shows media omnipotence and complete effectiveness in manufacturing consent. It is a model of media behavior and performance, not media effects. We explicitly pointed to alternative media, grass roots information sources, and public skepticism about media veracity as important limits on media effectiveness in propaganda service, and we urged the support and more effective use of these alternatives. We have frequently pointed to the general public's disagreement with the media and elite over the morality of the Vietnam War and the desirability of the assault on Nicaragua in the 1980s (among other matters). The power of the U.S. propaganda system lies in its ability to mobilize an elite consensus, to give the appearance of democratic consent, and to create enough confusion, misunderstanding, and apathy in the general population to allow elite programs to go forward. We also emphasized the fact that there are often differences within the elite that open up space for some debate and even occasional (but very rare) attacks on the intent, as well as the tactical means of achieving elite ends.

Although the propaganda model was generally well received on the Left, some complained of an allegedly pessimistic thrust and implication of hopeless odds to be overcome. A closely related objection was its inapplicability to local conflicts where the possibility of effective resistance was greater. But the propaganda model does not suggest that local and even larger victories are impossible, especially where the elites are divided or have limited interest in an issue. For example, coverage of issues like gun control, school prayer, and abortion rights may well receive more varied treatment than, say, global trade, taxation, and economic policy. Moreover, well organized campaigns by labor, human rights, or environmental organizations fighting against abusive local businesses can sometimes elicit positive media coverage. In fact, we would like to think that the propaganda model even suggests where and how activists can best deploy their efforts to influence mainstream media coverage of issues.

The model does suggest that the mainstream media, as elite institutions, commonly frame news and allow debate only within the parameters of elite interests; and that where the elite is really concerned and unified, and/or where ordinary citizens are not aware of their own stake in an issue or are immobilized by effective propaganda, the media will serve elite interests uncompromisingly.

Mainstream Liberal and Academic "Left" Critiques

Many liberals and a number of academic media analysts of the left did not like the propaganda model. Some of them found repugnant a wholesale condemnation of a system in which they played a respected role; for them it is a basically sound system, its inequalities of access regrettable but tolerable, its pluralism and competition effectively responding to consumer demands. In the postmodernist mode, global analyses and global solutions are rejected and derided; individual struggles and small victories are stressed, even by nominally leftist thinkers.

Many of the critiques displayed barely-concealed anger; and in most the propaganda model was dismissed with a few superficial cliches (conspiratorial, simplistic, etc.) without minimal presentation of the model or subjecting it to the test of evidence. Let me discuss briefly some of the main criticisms.

Conspiracy theory. We explained in Manufacturing Consent that critical analyses like ours would inevitably elicit cries of conspiracy theory, and in a futile effort to prevent this we devoted several pages of the Preface to showing that the propaganda model is best described as a "guided market system," and explicitly rejecting conspiracy. Mainstream critics still could not abandon the charge, partly because they knew that falsely accusing a radical critique of conspiracy theory would not cost them anything and partly because of their superficial assumption that since the media comprise thousands of "independent" journalists and companies any finding that they follow a "party line" serving the state must rest on an assumed conspiracy. (In fact it can result from a widespread gullible acceptance of official handouts, common internalized beliefs, fear of reprisal for critical analysis, etc.). The propaganda model explains media behavior and performance in structural terms, and intent is an unmeasurable red herring. All we know is that the media and journalists mislead in tandem -- some no doubt internalize a propaganda line as true, some may know it is false, but the point is unknowable and irrelevant.

Failure to take account of media professionalism and objectivity. Communications professor Dan Hallin argued that we failed to take account of the maturing of journalist professionalism, which he claimed to be "central to understanding how the media operate." (Keeping America On Top of the World, 13) Hallin also stated that in protecting and rehabilitating the public sphere "professionalism is surely part of the answer."(4)

But professionalism and objectivity rules are fuzzy, flexible, and superficial manifestations of deeper power and control relationships. Professionalism arose in journalism in the years when the newspaper business was becoming less competitive and more dependent on advertising. Professionalism was not an antagonistic movement by the workers against the press owners, but was actively encouraged by many of the latter. It gave a badge of legitimacy to journalism, ostensibly assuring readers that the news would not be influenced by the biases of owners, advertisers, or the journalists themselves. In certain circumstances it has provided a degree of autonomy, but professionalism has also internalized some of the commercial values that media owners hold most dear, like relying on inexpensive official sources as the credible news source. As Ben Bagdikian has noted, professionalism has made journalists oblivious to the compromises with authority they are constantly making. Even Hallin acknowledges that professional journalism can allow something close to complete government control via sourcing domination.

While Hallin claimed that the propaganda model cannot explain the case of media coverage of the Central American wars of the 1980s, where there was considerable domestic hostility to the Reagan policies, in fact the propaganda model works extremely well there, whereas Hallin's focus on "professionalism" fails abysmally. Hallin acknowledged that "the administration was able more often than not to prevail in the battle to determine the dominant frame of television coverage," (64) "the broad patterns in the framing of the story can be accounted for almost entirely by the evolution of policy and elite debate in Washington," (74) and "coherent statements of alternative visions of the world order and U.S. policy rarely appeared in the news."(77) This is exactly what the propaganda model would forecast. And if, as Hallin contended, a majority of the public opposed the elite view, what kind of "professionalism" allows a virtually complete suppression of the issues as the majority perceives them?

Hallin mentions a "nascent alternative perspective" in reporting on El Salvador -- a "human rights" framework -- that "never caught hold." The propaganda model can explain why it never took hold; Hallin does not. With 700 journalists present at the Salvadoran election of 1982, allegedly "often skeptical" of election integrity, (72) why did it yield a "public relations victory" for the administration and a major falsification of reality (as described in Manufacturing Consent)? Hallin did not explain this. He never mentioned the Office of Public Diplomacy or the firing of reporter Raymond Bonner and the work of the flak machines. He never explained the failure of the media to report even a tiny fraction of the crimes of the contras in Nicaragua and the death machines of El Salvador and Guatemala, in contrast with their inflation of Sandinista misdeeds and double standard in reporting on the Nicaraguan election of 1984. Given the elite divisions and public hostility to the Reagan policy, media subservience was phenomenal and arguably exceeded that which the propaganda model might have anticipated.2

Failure to explain continued opposition and resistance. Both Hallin and historian Walter LaFeber (in a review in theNew York Times) pointed to the continued opposition to Reagan's Central America policy as somehow incompatible with the model. These critics failed to comprehend that the propaganda model is about how the media work, not how effective they are. By the logic of this form of criticism, as many Soviet citizens did not swallow the lines put forward by Pravda, this demonstrates that Pravda was not serving a state propaganda function.

Propaganda model too mechanical, functionalist, ignores existence of space, contestation, and interaction. This set of criticisms is at the heart of the negative reactions of the serious left-of-center media analysts such as Philip Schlesinger, James Curran, Peter Golding, Graham Murdoch, and John Eldridge, as well as of Dan Hallin. Of these critics, only Schlesinger both summarizes the elements of our model and discusses our evidence. He acknowledges that the case studies make telling points, but in the end he finds ours "a highly deterministic vision of how the media operate coupled with a straightforward functionalist conception of ideology" (Media, Culture and Society, 1989). Specifically, we failed to explain the weights to be given our five filters; we did not allow for external influences, nor did we offer a "thoroughgoing analysis of the ways in which economic dynamics operate to structure both the range and form of press presentations" (quoting Graham Murdoch); and while putting forward "a powerful effects model" we admit that the system is not all-powerful, which calls into question our determinism.

The criticism of the propaganda model for being deterministic ignores several important considerations. Any model involves deterministic elements, so that this is a straw person unless the critics also show that the system is not logically consistent, operates on false premises, or that the predictive power of the determining variables is poor.The critics often acknowledge that the case studies we present are powerful, but they do not show where the alleged determinism leads to error nor do they offer or point to alternative models that would do a better job.3

The propaganda model is dealing with extraordinarily complex sets of events, and only claims to offer a broad framework of analysis that requires modification depending on many local and special factors, and may be entirely inapplicable in some cases. But if it offers insight in numerous important cases that have large effects and cumulative ideological force, it is defensible unless a better model is provided. Usually the critics wisely stick to generalities and offer no critical detail or alternative model; when they do provide alternatives, the results are not impressive.4

The criticism of the propaganda model for functionalism is also dubious and the critics sometimes seem to call for more functionalism. The model does describe a system in which the media serve the elite, but by complex processes incorporated into the model as means whereby the powerful protect their interests naturally and without overt conspiracy. This would seem one of the propaganda model's merits; it shows a dynamic and self-protecting system in operation. The same corporate community that influences the media through its power as owner, dominant funder (advertising), and a major news source also underwrites Accuracy in Media and the American Enterprise Institute to influence the media through harassment and the provision of "sound" experts. Critics of propaganda model functionalism like Eldridge and Schlesinger contradictorily point to the merit of analyses that focus on "how sources organize media strategies" to achieve their ends. Apparently it is admirable to analyze micro corporate strategies to influence the media, but to focus on global corporate efforts to influence the media -- along with the complementary effects of thousands of local strategies -- is illegitimate functionalism!

It is also untrue that the propaganda model implies no constraints on media owners/managers. We spell out the conditions affecting when the media will be relatively open or closed -- mainly disagreements among the elite and the extent to which other groups in society are interested in, informed about, and organized to fight about issues. But the propaganda model does start from the premise that a critical political economy will put front and center the analysis of the locus of media control and the mechanisms by which the powerful are able to dominate the flow of messages and limit the space of contesting parties. The limits on their power are certainly important, but why should they get first place, except as a means of minimizing the power of the dominant interests, inflating the elements of contestation, and pretending that the marginalized have more strength than they really possess?

Enhanced Relevance of the Propaganda Model

The dramatic changes in the economy, communications industries, and politics over the past decade have tended to enhance the applicability of the propaganda model. The first two filters -- ownership and advertising -- have become ever more important. The decline of public broadcasting, the increase in corporate power and global reach, and the mergers and centralization of the media, have made bottom line considerations more controlling. The competition for serving advertisers has become more intense. Newsrooms have been more thoroughly incorporated into transnational corporate empires, with shrunken resources and even less management enthusiasm for investigative journalism that would challenge the structure of power. In short, the professional autonomy of journalists has been reduced.

Some argue that the Internet and the new communication technologies are breaking the corporate stranglehold on journalism and opening an unprecedented era of interactive democratic media. There is no evidence to support this view as regards journalism and mass communication. In fact, one could argue that the new technologies are exacerbating the problem. They permit media firms to shrink staff while achieving greater outputs and they make possible global distribution systems, thus reducing the number of media entities. Although the new technologies have great potential for democratic communication, left to the market there is little reason to expect the Internet to serve democratic ends.

The third and fourth filters -- sourcing and flak -- have also strengthened as mechanisms of elite influence. A reduction in the resources devoted to journalism means that those who subsidize the media by providing sources for copy gain greater leverage. Moreover, work by people like Alex Carey, John Stauber, and Sheldon Rampton has helped us see how the public relations industry has been able to manipulate press coverage of issues on behalf of corporate America. The PR industry understands how to use journalistic conventions to serve its own ends. Studies of news sources reveal that a significant proportion of news originates in the PR industry. There are, by one conservative count, 20,000 more PR agents working to doctor the news today than there are journalists writing it.

The fifth filter -- anticommunist ideology -- is possibly weakened by the collapse of the Soviet Union and global socialism, but this is easily offset by the greater ideological force of the belief in the "miracle of the market." (Reagan) There is now an almost religious faith in the market, at least among the elite, so that regardless of evidence, markets are assumed benevolent and non-market mechanisms are suspect. When the Soviet economy stagnated in the 1980s, it was attributed to the absence of markets; when capitalist Russia disintegrated in the 1990s it was because politicians and workers were not letting markets work their magic. Journalism has internalized this ideology. Adding it to the fifth filter, in a world where the global power of market institutions makes anything other than market options seem utopian, gives us an ideological package of immense strength.

Further Applications

The propaganda model applies exceedingly well to the media's treatment of the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the subsequent Mexican crisis and meltdown of 1994-95. Once again there was a sharp split between the preferences of ordinary citizens and the elite and business community, with polls consistently showing substantial majorities opposed to NAFTA -- and to the bailout of investors in Mexican securities -- but the elite in favor. Media news coverage, selection of "experts," and opinion columns were skewed accordingly; their judgment was that the benefits of NAFTA were obvious, agreed to by all qualified authorities, and that only demagogues and "special interests" were opposed. Meg Greenfield, Washington Post Op Ed editor explained the huge imbalance in her opinion column: "On the rare occasion when columnists of the left, right, and middle are all in agreement ... I don't believe it is right to create an artificial balance where none exists." But with a majority of the public opposing NAFTA, the pro-NAFTA unity among the pundits simply highlighted the huge elite bias of mainstream punditry. It may be worth noting that the transnational media corporations have a distinct self-interest in global trade agreements, as they are among their foremost beneficiaries.

The pro-corporate and anti-labor bias of the mainstream media was also evident in the editorial denunciations (both in the New York Times and Washington Post) of labor's attempt to influence votes on NAFTA, with no comparable criticism of corporate or governmental (U.S. and Mexican) lobbying and PR. After having touted the puny labor and environmental protective side-agreements belatedly added to NAFTA as admirable, the media then failed to follow up on their enforcement and, in fact, when labor tried to use their provisions to prevent attacks on union organization in Mexico, the press ignored the case or derided it as labor "aggression."5 With the Mexican meltdown beginning in December 1994, the media were clear that NAFTA was not to blame, and in virtual lock-step they supported the Mexican (investor) bailout, despite poll reports of massive general public opposition. Experts and media repeatedly explained that the merit of NAFTA was that it had "locked Mexico in" so that it could not resort to controls to protect itself from severe deflation. They were oblivious to the profoundly undemocratic nature of this lock-in.6

As is suggested by the treatment of NAFTA and labor's right to participate in its debates, the propaganda model applies to domestic as well as foreign issues. Labor has been under siege in the United States for the past fifteen years, but you would hardly know this from the mainstream media. The decertification of unions, use of replacement workers, and long and debilitating strikes like that involving Caterpillar were treated in a very low key, and in a notable illustration of the applicability of the propaganda model, the long Pittston miners strike was accorded much less attention than the strike of miners in the Soviet Union.7 For years the media found the evidence that the majority of ordinary citizens were doing badly in the New Economic Order to be of marginal interest; they "discovered" this issue only under the impetus of Pat Buchanan's rightwing populist outcries.

The coverage of the "drug wars" is well explained by the propaganda model.8 In the health insurance controversy of 1992-93, the media's refusal to take the single-payer option seriously, despite apparent widespread public support and the effectiveness of the system in Canada, served well the interests of the insurance and medical service complex. The uncritical media reporting and commentary on the alleged urgency of fiscal restraint and a balanced budget in the years 1992-96 fit well the business community's desire to reduce the social budget and weaken regulation, culminating in the Contract With America.9 The applicability of the propaganda model in these and other cases seems clear.

Final note

In retrospect, perhaps we should have made it clearer that the propaganda model was about media behavior and performance, with uncertain and variable effects. Maybe we should have spelled out in more detail the contesting forces both within and outside the media and the conditions under which these are likely to be influential. But we clearly made these points, and it is quite possible that nothing we could have done would have prevented our being labelled conspiracy theorists, rigid determinists, and deniers of the possibility that people can resist (even as we called for resistance).

The propaganda model still seems a very workable framework for analyzing and understanding the mainstream media -- perhaps even more so than in 1988. As noted earlier in reference to Central America, it often surpasses expectations of media subservience to government propaganda. And we are still waiting for our critics to provide a better model.

Notes

1. Noam Chomsky analyzes some of these criticisms in his Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies (Boston: South End Press, 1989), appendix 1.

2. For compelling documentation on this extraordinary subservience, ibid., pp. 197-261.

3. It should be noted that the case studies in Manufacturing Consent are only a small proportion of those that Chomsky and I have done which support the analysis of the propaganda model. Special mention should be made of those covering the Middle East, Central America, and terrorism. See esp. Chomsky's Necessary Illusions, The Fateful Triangle (London: Pluto Press, 1983), and Pirates & Emperors (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1987), and my The Real Terror Network (Boston: South End, 1982), and (with Gerry O'Sullivan) The Terrorism Industry (New York: Pantheon, 1989).

4. In fact, the only attempt to offer an alternative model was by Nicholas Lemann in the New Republic. For an analysis of this effort, see Chomsky's Necessary Illusions, pp. 145-148.

5. For a discussion see Edward Herman, "Labor Aggression in Mexico," Lies of Our Times (December 1994): 6-7.

6. For discussions of the media treatment of NAFTA and the Mexican meltdown, see Thea Lee, "False Prophets: The Selling of NAFRA," Economic Policy Institute, 1995; Edward Herman, "Mexican Meltdown: NAFTA and the Propaganda System," Z Magazine (September 1995).

7. "Lost in the Margins: Labor and the Media,! EXTRA! (Summer 1990).

8. See Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 114-121.

9. "Health Care Reform: Not Journalistically Viable," EXTRA! (July-August 1993); John Canham-Clyne, "When Both Sides' aren't enough: The Restricted Debate over Health Care Reform," EXTRA! (January-February 1994).