cance to his audience.
In explaining the method by which
propaganda works, Bernays said that news
receives attention in the competitive
marketplace by virtue of its ‘superior inher-
ent interest’. Therefore, the PR executive
must “lift startling facts from his whole
subject and present them as news. He must
isolate ideas and develop them into events so
that they can be more readily understood
and may claim attention as news” (p. 171).
In just this way, Nightcrawler’s Nina sees
how connections between separate events
can be woven into a tapestry that makes
them more ‘newsworthy’ (that is, more
sensational): “Tie it in with the carjacking
last month in Glendale and the other one,
the van in Palms, when was that? March. It’s
a carjacking crime wave. That’s the banner.
Call the victim’s family. Get a quote. Mike
it. You know what to do.” Meanwhile Lou
wants to move up the corporate ladder into
the editorial side of the business. He is
acutely aware that the most sensational and
graphic content will ‘cut through’ and boost
the network’s market share: “I don’t think
it’s any secret that I’ve single-handedly
raised the unit price of your ratings book,”
he tells Nina. In his 1928 book Propaganda,
Bernays explains how news is as much made
as it is captured:“In the selection of news the editor is usually
entirely independent. In the New York Times- to take an outstanding example – [the
editors] determine with complete indepen-
dence what is and what is not news... The fact
of its accomplishment makes it news. If the
public relations counsel can breathe the
breath of life into an idea and make it take its
place among other ideas and events, it will
receive the public attention it merits” (p.150).
We can glean parallels between what
Bernays says about the role of the newspaper
editor and Nina’s job as a television news
editor. Her constructing the news is given its
most literal exposition in the ‘horror house’
segment of the movie, in which Nina tells
her anchor literally to “build it!”
Nightcrawler persistently reminds us how
the propagandist fulfils his client’s aspira-the media content it consumes. In convinc-
ing others to believe in his illusions and false
‘realities’, the broadcaster nurtures their
wildest fantasies and nightmares. As Lou
says, “You know what FEAR stands for?...
False Evidence Appearing Real.”
Nightcrawler makes us question how far
today’s media are transforming the world as
opposed to merely reflecting or observing
it. The consensus among media scholars is
that a ‘hypodermic’ (or we might say ‘direct
injection’) model of media effects overesti-
mates the power of the media to shape
perceptions and behaviour. Nevertheless,
the weight of evidence from dozens of stud-
ies supports the view that exposure to media
violence does lead to aggression, desensiti-
zation toward violence, and lack of sympa-
thy for its victims, particularly in children.
The US Surgeon General’s Office, the US
National Institute of Mental Health, and
many professional organisations around the
world, consider exposure to media violence
a risk factor for actual violence.The Unreality of the Presentation
All of this gives new relevance to the work
of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard
(1929-2007). Baudrillard, even before the
birth of the internet, used to emphasise that
we inhabit a world engulfed by constant and
pervasive images, or what he called ‘hyper-
reality’. He explored how the media trans-
form the reality that most of us take for
granted as being separate and distinct from
mere images or representations of it. For
example, in The Evil Demon of Images (1984)
Baudrillard explained how images have
‘imploded’ into the real world. Now imagesprecede and shape reality. This reverses the
conventional causal relationship between
reality and the image. One of Baudrillard’s
core arguments was that our world is so
thoroughly saturated with mediated images
of it that there’s no longer any way to access
a real world untainted by this flux of appear-
ances. Our experience of the world is
filtered through preconceptions and expec-
tations that are products of media culture;
and in a world saturated with reproductions,
representations, and imitations, it becomes
very difficult to conceptualise a ‘pure reality’
to which we can contrast the myriad of
simulations. Simulations have imploded
into us, into our behaviour, our bodies, our
buildings, our procedures, and our environ-
ment, such that our real world is regulated
by simulation. The arrow between the real
and the representation seems to have been
reversed: now ‘reality’ is an effect of media
culture, rather than culture springing from
something prior to and deeper than it.
Instead of art imitating life, life imitates art.
In his 1923 book Crystallizing Public
Opinion,the Austrian-American public rela-
tions and propaganda pioneer Edward
Bernays (1891-1995) wrote that the PR
executive’s most valuable asset is a capacity
for crystallizing the obscure tendencies of
the public mind before they find expression.
The propagandist must tap into instincts
and emotions that already exist in order to
extract the desired responses and reactions;
he cannot create reactions out of thin air.
His job is more akin to directing the public
towards, or deflecting them from, certain
aims or goals. By framing the facts in partic-
ular ways, he is able to change their signifi-Film
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Lou rearranges some
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