Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact,–very momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. – Thomas Carlyle 1840
The democracies of the west and the great human project of freedom and respect for life, which began with the enlightenment, depend upon individuals having access to good information about the actions of their governments. If information is curtailed by censorship and manipulated by propaganda then no one can vote in your their own best interest and democracy becomes a sham. Governments can exercise power unchecked by either the prospect of losing a future election or even the ability of the people to march and protest and demand change.
Every illegitimate government understands this and is frightened of its own people. In Burma the generals closed down six of the seven newspapers which existed before their coup and heavily censor the remaining one. During the recent protests they repeatedly severed internet connection to that country. More importantly SLORC conducts a campaign of misinformation and propaganda, and plants spies and agent provocateurs in what has become a land of Orwellian doublespeak.
Such cautionary tales highlight the importance of something we take for granted – that the mainstream media (MSM) accurately reflects the truth about our government and about the world. Or rather, that it at least gives us enough information that with a bit of reading between the lines an intelligent person has a clear picture of what is going on.
So is this confidence justified in the case of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire?
Fox News is a contentious example, of course, but I’m not interested in bias. (By the way I’ve also not seen Outfoxed) That’s not to say that the editorial slant a news organisation takes is not important, but there’s a difference between that and failing to report certain information which might reflect badly on government policy, or even worse lying about events or reporting false information. In this article I want to see whether there is systematic censorship, misinformation, or propaganda. I take that last to mean reporting things which may or may not be true for the purpose of engendering a particular action or psychological response in the public. Because if influential parts of the MSM engage in these practises then we do not have the fourth estate we need so as to allow a functioning democracy.
Murdoch is a big target, and there have been quite a few questions raised, big and small.
- Chris Patton, former governor of Hong Kong, had his book East and West dropped by publisher HarperCollins because the content offended Beijing. Murdoch, who has business interests in China, suspended the editor in charge of the manuscript (Stuart Proffitt) when he refused requests to end the project. HarperCollins was later forced to pay compensation and issue an apology.
- MySpace began automatically deleting links and even discussion about YouTube in 2006, but was forced to end this policy when a revolt began amongst users.
- A popular blogger, Tim Dunlop, writing for one Murdoch paper in Australia, had columns critical of another Murdoch owned paper deleted from the site. This has happened to other respected journalists employed by Murdoch papers including Margo Kingston. It’s hard to get clear examples from the newspapers or the television news because editors act as gatekeepers to publication.
- Mr Gay, a United Church Minister employed as a religious columnist for the Times in London, resigned after a dispute with his editor over an opinion piece he wrote critical of Murdoch’s monopolistic practices.
There’s little doubt that Murdoch is a ‘hands on’ media owner. Harold Evans, the outgoing editor of The Times in London had this to say:
[Murdoch guaranteed that] “the editors would have control of the political policy of their newspapers” [and] “not be subject to instruction from either the proprietor or management on the selection and balance of news and opinion.” [however] “In my year as editor of the Times, Murdoch broke all these guarantees”
It’s telling that Evans mentions selection as well as balance of news. Other editors have been more charitable. This may be because Murdoch is one of the major employers in the industry, but it’s more likely because he chooses editors who share his politics unprompted and are respectful of his business interests. Andrew Neil puts it this way:
He is quite interventionist but he gives more latitude to his quality newspapers than his tabloids. He realises for quality newspapers you can’t just hire people you boss around. To survive, you have to be on the same planet as Rupert but you don’t have to be on the same continent.
So let’s take this more limited view of Murdoch’s direct influence. It’s effects are nevertheless far reaching, for reasons which become obvious when the psychology of the editor’s job is considered. Murdoch will clearly pick up the phone when his personal or business interests are threatened by a story. He expects these interests to be put ahead of the newsworthiness of the story, as is shown by the Patton case, and ahead of the sales implications for any particular business, as is shown by both the Patton and Dunlop examples. So without ever having to lean on an editor Murdoch’s shadow looms large over each of his publications. How much does anyone want to offend their employer? How much less when your contract is up for renewal in a year or two and that same employer owns a lot of the other media in town?
This relates to editorial slant and choice of story. Here is Margo Kingston again, talking about Australia’s media culture, and Fairfax, one of it’s biggest newspaper groups:
In my twenty years in journalism, I have witnessed the decay and near annihilation of a strong, confident journalistic culture in Fairfax based on scepticism of the powerful and sustained scrutiny of the actions of the powerful and the underlying reasons for those actions whatever their political colour business type. I have seen public debate degenerate into endless name calling by scream, and a systematic play by neo-liberals and their henchmen paid to win the ideological battle to dismember any sense of shared values or common cause in shaping our future. It is in the interests of those who would control us for their profit and power to do so. I have seen the disintegration of the concept of “public interest” in the big issues of our time – political, economic, social and personal. Instead, fear and ‘us and them’ rules, deliberately designed, it seems to me, to compel people to serve only their individual, short term interests because no one else will give a damn if they fall over.
Margo is biased, of course. She’s a long standing and well respected journalist but she’s left-of-centre in a country moving rapidly to the right. She addresses the question of whether the media properly performs its role as the Fourth Estate, but not whether it becomes a tool of oppression. Does the situation ever reach the level of outright censorship, misinformation, or propaganda?
A leaked document showing that British MI6 believed the Bush administration manipulated intelligence in support of the case for war against Iraq surfaced in 2005. Mediamatters looked at coverage of the story:
In the five weeks following its disclosure, both newspapers and the broadcast media in the United States largely ignored the Downing Street memo, a secret British intelligence document indicating that British intelligence officials believed the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to support its case for war in Iraq.
News coverage of the memo exploded after Bush and Blair were asked about it during their June 7 joint press conference. Numerous stories reported Bush’s and Blair’s denials of the memo’s central allegations — that the United States had decided to go to war as early as July 2002 and that the “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” — but only one included new reporting about the content of the memo and the events surrounding its creation in July 2002.
Of the papers covering the Downing Street memo following the Sunday Times and the Knight Ridder stories, Media Matters identified only three — the May 12 Los Angeles Times, the May 13 Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the June 12 Philadelphia Inquirer — that provided new information concerning the memo’s content, authenticity, or events surrounding its creation. Of these, only the Los Angeles Times’ story reflected any effort to consult with British sources — with Michael Smith, the Sunday Times reporter who broke the original story.
Because it’s not usually censorship. That would be impossible without taking Burma’s approach and “accidentally” cutting off internet access. Once an important story gets into the news, it does get reported. It rarely gets investigated and until it’s “out there” it may be either ignored or relegated to the back pages. Paul Krugman points out that in the first quarter of 2007 Fox News devoted only 6% of their time to the Iraq war compared with around 20% at MSNBC and CNN. In contrast 17% of the Fox’s bulletins in that period were about a large-busted actress who died of a drug overdose. As for misinformation, he puts it like this:
Now, Mr. Murdoch’s people rarely make flatly false claims. Instead, they usually convey misinformation through innuendo. During the early months of the Iraq occupation, for example, Fox gave breathless coverage to each report of possible W.M.D.’s, with little or no coverage of the subsequent discovery that it was a false alarm. No wonder, then, that many Fox viewers got the impression that W.M.D.’s had been found.
That’s the thing about democracies. You don’t have to fool all the people all the time, you only have to fool most of the people around election time. There are dissenting voices out there. So long as they are sidelined by the media as unimportant, and so long as they remain a few voices here and there, they will never shape policy or public discourse. When more people get the truth from the internet than the television, then the MSM will change or simply be sidelined. Until then it will represent the views of its owners rather than serving the needs of its readers. Not quite propaganda, but close.
And perhaps a bit closer than you’d think. Robert Parry:
[In the] 1980s when the Reagan-Bush administration began collaborating secretly with conservative media tycoons to promote propaganda strategies aimed at the American people. In 1983, a plan, hatched by CIA Director William J. Casey, called for raising private money to sell the administration’s Central American policies to the American public through an outreach program designed to look independent but which was secretly managed by Reagan-Bush officials.
The project was implemented by a CIA propaganda veteran, Walter Raymond Jr., who had been moved to the National Security Council staff and put in charge of a “perception management†campaign that had both international and domestic objectives. In one initiative, Raymond arranged to have Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch chip in money for ostensibly private groups that would back Reagan-Bush policies. [...]
At the time, a Reagan-Bush National Security Council official told me that the administration’s domestic propaganda campaign was modelled after CIA psychological operations abroad where information is manipulated to bring a population into line with a desired political position. “They were trying to manipulate [U.S.] public opinion – using the tools of Walt Raymond’s tradecraft which he learned from his career in the CIA covert operations shop,†the official said.
The question is, are we being set up for another round of the same? Here is the New Yorker Magazine from August 31 this year.
They [the source’s institution] have “instructions†(yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained.
Honestly, I don’t know if this is possible. I wish I could sincerely believe that it was impossible, however, and it clearly is not.
This article is written in part to address the Ideas for Peace group’s topic on “Transparency and truth in politics”.