I was a journalist for the Daily Herald in Chicago and also the Medill News Service. I experienced the daily beat reporting on companies, how their stocks were performing, and how their quarterly-earning reports looked. I made calls each morning to gain access to corporate heads or financial analysts to get some nuggets of great information to put in my articles that would make my pieces the most intriguing for the editors to select and print, hopefully front page of the business section. It was interesting who allowed me to gain access. Some companies’ CEOs said yes to my calls and answered my questions. I suppose they wanted the free press. Other companies had multi-layers of protection from reporters like me and wanted nothing to do with the press. Those companies selected one-way teleconferences to convey their messages to the networks, which provided them a controlled environment and a change to spin the negative information any way they wanted. The point that Herman, Chomsky and Lippmann made of control or propaganda shaping by companies is real and I experienced it often.
Are journalists just corporately censored, or do they self-censor as well? Yes and no. Yes they know that they need to produce stories that will get published. That means the information in their stories should link in a favorable way to the advertisers of the station. That limits what they write.
Other times, journalists don’t even know they are being indoctrinated by their news channel or corporate heads. They are taught to respond in certain ways, write in a certain way, and deliver information that will gain viewership but not rock the boat in a negative way, in terms of revenue.
Additionally the fast-paced news cycle makes it hard for journalists to do much investigative reporting and deliver deep material on the daily beat. Most journalists are expected to output multiple articles a day. Due to this, journalists rely on experts and political set-ups such as press conferences to get information and deliver it quickly, in hopes that those speaking are credible and reliable.
Moreover only a few news conglomerates like the Associated Press or Bloomberg have the man power and budgets to have journalists on the ground around the globe. So the news stories dispensed from those sources trickle down to local newspapers and nightly news junkets. The majority of what we read and hear comes from the AP. So let’s hope the AP has good journalists. Let’s be real that the journalists are working in controlling environments involving: corporate interests, advertising interests, governmental interests such as national security- which keeps a lot of information from hitting the air waves- and circulation interests, which require journalists to write on stuff that is sensationalized, trendy, and eye catching.
Although rebutters of Manufactured Consent will say the theories of Herman and Chomsky are based on: conspiracies, failure to touch base with reporters, failure to take account of media professionalism and objectivity, failure to explain opposition and resistance, and that the press is free to report on whatever it wants. My guess is that those rebutters are likely right-leaning elites that are part of the hierarchical system of information management.
It would be very interesting to do a survey of journalists, off the record in hopes of protecting them from their companies’ backlashes, and citizens to see if they can truly think about: what information they know and don’t know, what is released, if their thoughts are corrupted from a young age from corporate speak and delivery methods, if they can identify the indoctrination by this flow of communication, and if they even care.
I am reminded of 9/11 in America. For the following year, it was seen as unpatriotic for the press to critique President Bush. No news network did so, very little reporting was allotted to topics like: Bush-Saudi relations, how Bush handled the crisis, or how we were thrown into a war with misinformation about weapons of mass destruction. It took years for information to come out about the USA Patriot Act, which in my opinion is the greatest attack on American constitutional freedoms ever pushed into law. In other words, the press, due to special interests and control, were silenced. That in itself demonstrates exactly what Herman and Chomsky explained in their book.
Reference:
Chomsky, N. and Herman, E. (1988). Manufacturing consent: a propaganda model. Third World Traveler. Retrieved from http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html
YouTube. (2007). The corporation (17/23) unsettling accounts. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw
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