Embedded Files
Volume 5 | Issue 1 - Media
Written by Samuel Ralph. Edited by Joscelin Woodend.
Propaganda is a word that has distinctly negative connotations. It brings to mind totalitarianism, the foul doings of Goebbels and the Nazi party, the strict media censorship in Russia and other ‘repressed’ nations. It is not normally a word one would associate with Britain. In Western society, throughout the modern era, propaganda has been used by successive governments for varying purposes. It is only because it is far more subtle that we do not hear much of it. This model was mastered under Tony Blair’s New Labour using its well-oiled PR machine headed by spin-doctors such as Alastair Campbell and Damien McBride.
However, propaganda in Britain did not start in 1997. The most prominent historical example of propaganda in Britain was the Ministry of Information that was set up for a while at the end of the First World War and for the duration of the Second. Famous, for its slogans such as ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ and ‘Dig For Victory’, its primary goal was to keep up morale on the home front, which in the age of total war had become just as important as the battlefield. This was achieved by hugely restricting the information that was given to the public through strict censorship of the media. Stories that did appear on newsreels in cinemas and in the newspapers were directed for the purpose of keeping the British public positive. Overall it is probable that the Ministry of Information was created with decent intentions and in desperate times of war perhaps propaganda and censorship is required. Following the Second World War, the Ministry of Information was dismantled, but in many ways the government censorship and propaganda still remained. Even in the 21stcentury the idea still pervades, and the majority of the media serves to project particular messages and ideas onto the public.
In 1988, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman wrote an influential work called Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy in the Mass Media, outlining their ‘propaganda model’ which views private media as businesses interested in the sale of a product to other businesses i.e. advertisers. This essentially means that the media do not primarily provide quality news to the public. Chomsky and Herman illustrated this idea through five ‘filters’ that determine the type of news that is displayed. Although the book primarily deals with America, the model fits Britain under New Labour perfectly.
The first filter is the ownership of the medium, relating to the size and profit-seeking incentive of the huge media corporations in Britain, creating a news bias towards ideas that would represent the interests of the conglomerate.
The second filter is funding, relating to the media’s reliance on advertising revenue, meaning that published stories must comply with the ‘buying moods’ of the targeted consumer. In this way, the media can be an outlet of propaganda not only for governments but for corporations.
The third is sourcing, which in terms of Blair’s government relates to how the media were given information through press conferences, where spokesmen of the government could project a calculated message. This allowed spin doctors to essentially decide exactly what news the public were able to hear. In some cases it could be used to leak information to destroy opponents and further one’s own political career. Since New Labour, spin doctors are now an accepted, albeit despised, part of the British political system.
The fourth filter is called ‘flak’, described as negative responses to a media statement. PR companies representing the interests of large corporations can create negative press on an issue in the hope of changing public opinion and consequently affecting government policy. This tactic has been used many times by oil companies to attack the credibility of scientists warning governments about climate change.
The final filter of Chomsky and Herman’s model is fear. An excellent example of this is the attack on Saddam by the British tabloids, with bloodthirsty headlines such as ‘Smash Saddam’. The hypocrisy of this media tactic is that many horrific stories from around the world go unreported if they are not favourable to the government. Few newspapers questioned the motives for the invasion of Iraq, and while we often hear of the horrors of the undemocratic world, particularly in “enemy” nations such as Iran and North Korea, similar atrocities in countries more aligned with the Western liberal capitalist ideology, for example the continued violence of the Israeli military against Palestinians or shocking exploitation of the Timorese by Indonesian imperialists seem to be scarcely reported.
In the capitalist world, propaganda is not just a tool of governmental manipulation. It is a way for multinational corporations to promote a way of life that will ultimately benefit them. This culture was most prominent during the years of Blair, a government which created the idea of politicians as little more than PR men, spouting pre-written slogans created by legions of political analysts. One must wonder if we really live in a free press society, or if politicians are feeding the media the news they want the public to hear.
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