Steven de Jong van de NRC 4

NRC-webredacteur Steven de Jong. 'The public is exposed to powerful persuasive messages from above and is unable to communicate meaningfully through the media in response to the messages.'

Een van de grote problemen waarmee de commerciele media, de mainstream media, zijn opgezadeld is dat ze voor hun nieuwsvoorziening direct afhankelijk zijn van de macht, van de staat, van de overheid. De journalist die het spel niet meespeelt wordt gemarginaliseerd en buitenspel gezet. Vandaar dat ook zoveel informatie achter gehouden wordt. Ik weet uit eigen ervaring en de ervaringen van mijn collega's in Hilversum. Er worden maar al te vaak vooraf afspraken gemaakt wat beproken mag worden en wat niet, en de journalist die deze afspraken tijdens de uitzending schendt, wordt onherroepelijk voorgoed buitengesloten. Op die manier begint de corruptie van de commerciele media. Dit zou Steven de Jong eens ter discussie moeten stellen, het is niet goed voor zijn loopbaan maar wel voor de kwaliteit van de NRC-journalistiek.

In hun uitgebreid gedocumenteerde studie Manufacturing Consent. The political economy of the Mass Media schrijven de Amerikaanse geleerden Edward S. Herman en Noam Chomsky over de berichtgeving van de westerse commerciele media:

'In contrast to the standard conception of the media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and their independence of authority, we have spelled out and applied a propaganda model that indeed sees the media as serving a "societal purpose," but not that of enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process by providing them with the information needed for the intelligent discharge of political responsibilities. On the contrary, a propaganda model suggests that the "societal purpose" of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state. The media serve this purpose in many ways: through selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping debate within the bounds of acceptable premises,' aldus Chomsky, die door de New York Times omschreven wordt als 'arguably the most important intellectual alive.'

Beide wetenschappers concluderen na ruim 400 pagina's documentatie tenslotte:

'As we have stressed throughout this book, the U.S. media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit -- indeed, encourage -- spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalized largely without awareness. No one instructed the media to focus on Cambodia and ignore East Timor. They gravitated naturally to the Khmer Rouge and discussed them freely -- just as they naturally suppressed information on Indonesian atrocities in East Timor and U.S. responsibility for the agression and massacres. In the process, the media provided neither facts nor analyses that would have enabled the public to understand the issues or the bases of government policies toward Cambodia and Timor, and they thereby assured that the public could not exert any meaningful influence on the decisions that were made. This is quite typical of the actual "societal purpose" of the media on matters that are of significance for established power; not "enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process," but rather averting any such danger. In these cases, as in numerous others, the public was managed and mobilized from above, by means of the media's highly selective messages and evasions. As noted by media analyst W. Lance Bennett: "the public is exposed to powerful persuasive messages from above and is unable to communicate meaningfully through the media in response to the messages... Leaders have usurped enormous amounts of political power and reduced popular control over the political system by using the media to generate support, compliance, and just plain confusion among the public".'

En: 'Given the imperatives of corporate organization and the workings of the various filters, conformity to the needs and interests of privileged sectors is essential to succes. In the media, as in other major institutions, those who do not display the requistite values and perspectives will be regarded as "irresponsible", "ideological," or otherwise aberrant, and will tend to fall by the wayside. While there may be a small number of exeptions, the pattern is pervasive, and expected. Those who adapt, perhaps quite honestly, will then be free to express themselves with little managerial control, and they will be able to assert, accurately, that they perceive no pressures to conform. The media are indeed free -- for those who adopt the principles required for "societal purpose".'

Dat wat betreft de ideologische achtergrond, maar ook qua opzet en functioneren van de commerciele massamedia valt het nodige op te merken.

'The technical structure of the media virtually compels adherence to conventional thoughts; nothing else can be expressed between two commercials, or in seven hunderd words, without the appearance of absurdity that is difficult to avoid when one is challenging familiar doctrine with no opportunity to develop facts or argument... The critic must also be prepared to face a defamation apparatus against which there is little recourse, an inhibiting factor that is not insubstantial... The result is a powerful system of induced conformity to the needs of privilege and power. In sum, the mass media of the United States are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without significant overt coercion. This propaganda system has become even more efficient in recent decades with the rise of the national television networks, greater mass-media concentration, right-wing pressures on public radio and television, and the growth in scope and sophistication of public relations and news management.'

Onder de kop 'The New York Times Versus The Civil Society' schreef de onafhankelijke Amerikaanse media-analist en econoom Edward S. Herman een vernietigend artikel over 's werelds invloedrijkste krant.

'The veteran Times reporter John Hess has said that in all 24 years of his service at the paper he “never saw a foreign intervention that the Times did not support, never saw a fare increase or a rent increase or a utility rate increase that it did not endorse, never saw it take the side of labor in a strike or lockout, or advocate a raise for underpaid workers. And don’t let me get started on universal health care and Social Security. So why do people think the Times is liberal?” The paper is an establishment institution and serves establishment ends. As Times historian Harrison Salisbury said about former executive editor Max Frankel, “The last thing that would have entered his mind would be to hassle the American Establishment, of which he was so proud to be a part.”' Het hele artikel vindt u hier:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/NYTimes_CivilSociety.html

En op zijn beurt schreef een van de belangrijkste onderzoeksjournalisten, John Pilger: ‘On August 24 2006 the New York Times declared this in an editorial: “If we had known then what we know now the invasion if Iraq would have been stopped by a popular outcry.” This amazing admission was saying, in effect, that journalists had betrayed the public by not doing their job and by accepting and amplifying and echoing the lies of Bush and his gang, instead of challenging them and exposing them. What the Times didn’t say was that had that paper and the rest of the media exposed the lies, up to a million people might be alive today. That’s the belief now of a number of senior establishment journalists. Few of them—they’ve spoken to me about it—few of them will say it in public.’

De berichtgeving in het Westen is handel, volledig onderworpen aan de markt van vraag en aanbod. Ralph Nader schreef terecht:

‘Face it, America. You are a corporate-controlled country with the symbols of democracy in the constitution and statutes just that-symbols of what the founding fathers believed or hoped would be reality.’

En de rest is propaganda van de commerciele media, die maar al te graag zelfcensuur toepassen.