privileged audiences.
So we have major corporations selling fairly wealthy and
privileged audiences to other businesses. Not surprisingly, the
picture of the world presented reflects the narrow and biased
interests and values of the sellers, the buyers and the product.
Other factors reinforce the same distortion. The cultural
managers (editors, leading columnists, etc.) share class interests and
associations with state and business managers and other privileged
sectors. There is, in fact, a regular flow of high-level people among
corporations, government and media. Access to state authorities is
important to maintain a competitive position; “leaks,” for example,
are often fabrications and deceit produced by the authorities with
the cooperation of the media, who pretend they don’t know.
In return, state authorities demand cooperation and
submissiveness. Other power centers also have devices to punish
departures from orthodoxy, ranging from the stock market to an
effective vilification and defamation apparatus.
The outcome is not, of course, entirely uniform. To serve the
interests of the powerful, the media must present a tolerably
realistic picture of the world. And professional integrity and honesty
sometimes interfere with the overriding mission. The best
journalists are, typically, quite aware of the factors that shape the
media product, and seek to use such openings as are provided. The
result is that one can learn a lot by a critical and skeptical reading of
what the media produce.
The media are only one part of a larger doctrinal system; other
parts are journals of opinion, the schools and universities, academic
scholarship and so on. We’re much more aware of the media,
particularly the prestige media, because those who critically analyze
ideology have focused on them. The larger system hasn’t been
studied as much because it’s harder to investigate systematically.
But there’s good reason to believe that it represents the same
interests as the media, just as one would anticipate.
The doctrinal system, which produces what we call “propaganda”
when discussing enemies, has two distinct targets. One target is
what’s sometimes called the “political class,” the roughly 20% of the
population that’s relatively educated, more or less articulate, playing
some role in decision-making. Their acceptance of doctrine is
crucial, because they’re in a position to design and implement
policy.
ann
(Ann)
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