Explaining Media Content

Ownership
"The largest ten media firms own all the U.S. television networks, most of the TV stations in the largest markets, all the major film studios, all the major music companies, nearly all of the cable TV channels, much of the book and magazine publising, and much, much more."
—Robert McChesney, "Into the Buzzsaw," p. 372

Who are the Big Ten Media Corporations? Read Marc Crispin Miller's report in The Nation

Concentration of ownership of the internet

Professional Routines

McChesney's three biases of professional media:

The "two sides" fallacy. Presenting "two sides" without evaluaton instead of reporting the truth

What is "objectivity"? A critique similar to McChesney's is in

Brent Cunningham, "Re-thinking Objectivity," Columbia Journalism Review, July-August 2003.

Silencing critical reporting

The Role of Ideology
Chomsky's critique
   Compare paired examples, such as coverage of two genocides occurring at the same time, in Cambodia and East Timor. How can you explain extensive coverage of Cambodian massacre and silence on East Timor? (See the film, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media)

Fairness and Accuracy in Media: how to detect Media Bias

Who was the correspondent or anchor speaking for? No one, or an interested point of view (government, corporate, political tendency)? Example: Broadcast reporters and commentators using "we," identifying with the US government

Use of politically charged labels and loaded language

   "moderate" describing US allies
   "extremists" describing "groups unfavorable to establishment interests"
   "special interests" describing "blacks, labor, feminists and seniors, but never..corporate interests."

Sources
    broadcasting "official" or "expert" information from government and corporations
   using unidentified official sources
When are non-elite,

Power legitimizes its values, ideas, policies and marginalizes dissident ideas.
   The extreme right is now in the mainstream, centrists accept right-wing premises, and anyone left of center is marginalized in the media
   Some ideological operators:
      mainstream, responsible, authoritative, reliable
     extreme, marginal, irresponsible, impractical, unrealistic

Demonization, marginalization, social exclusion, "the other"
    Labels of exclusion: the enemy must be "terrorist," "evil," "insane," "irrational," driven by hatred, so the enemy's actions can't be explained as response to US policy and behavior and there is point in questioning US attacks on the enemy. "The axis of evil," "rogue state."    

Orwell's memory hole, deleting from reality
   Compare US and European media, US and media from developing world

Pamela Shoemaker's media content diagram From Pamela J. Shoemaker, Stephen D. Reese, Mediating the Message: Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content. (Highly recommended.)

Lies in the Media

A Suppressed Story: An elite unit of U.S. soldiers mutilated and killed hundreds of unarmed villagers over seven months in 1967 during the Vietnam War, and an Army probe was closed with no charges filed.

Framing and news content

George Lakoff, "Simple Framing: an introduction to framing and its uses in politics." The author's Don't Think of an Elephant:Know your values and frame the debate claims to have the explanation for conservative Republican cultural/political hegemony and the answer for a Democratic/progressive comeback. His analysis of propaganda and media in terms of framing is insightful and offers useful tools for critical reading and thinking. Lakoff's Rockridge Institute website has topical analyses of political and social issues and is worth browsing.

Carl Conetta, " Spinning and Framing: A note on media 'spin' and news frames. Appendix1, Disappearing the Dead: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a 'New Warfare'
Project on Defense Alternatives Research Monograph #9
18 February 2004

Frank Luntz, an influential Republican strategist who was the pollster for the "Contract with America," is a source for "framing" strategies on the right. His strategy to counter environmentalism is widely circulated on the web. In a PBS Frontline interview, he talks about how "language can change a paradigm." Luntz's advice to Republicans on how to reframe the environmental debate is widely read on the web. It is excerpted from his detailed "playbook" on current political issues, which is at http://www.politicalstrategy.org/archives/001185.php#1185.

 

Essential Browsing

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) offers the most prominent media critique left-of-center, with years of consistent analysis of mainstream media archived in its journal EXTRA! and on its website. See the FAIR website for these and also its Media Alerts and links to other media criticism.

The Center for Media and Democracy publish the invaluable PR Watch and their site also has Source Watch and the cute Spin of the Day.

MediaChannel.org features Danny Shechter's "News Dissector" blog and MediaVision's monitoring of broadcast news.