Understanding Power: the indispensable Chomsky by Noam Chomsky, John Schoeffel, Peter R. Mitchell
Ads: Link
income, increase of business taxes for welfare purposes. Try that.
W OMAN : But that’s not reporting .
Why not? He says, “opinions on both sides.” That’s an opinion on both sides.
Look, one of the things that Edward Herman and I did in Manufacturing Consent was to just look at the sources that reporters go to. In a part that I wrote, I happened to be discussing Central America, so I went through fifty articles by Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times beginning in October 1987, and just asked: whose opinions did he try to get? Well, it turns out that in fifty articles he did not talk to one person in Nicaragua who was pro-Sandinista. Now, there’s got to be somebody—you know, Ortega’s mother, somebody’s got to be pro-Sandinista. Nope, in fact, everybody he quotes is anti-Sandinista. [Daniel Ortega was the Sandinista President.]
Well, there are polls, which the Times won’t report, and they show that all of the opposition parties in Nicaragua combined had the support of only 9 percent of the population. But they have 100 percent of Stephen Kinzer—everyone he’s found supports the opposition parties, 9 percent of the population. That’s in fifty articles. 56
M AN : I think your indictment of subtlety is again simplistic. For instance, I read an article you wrote for The Progressive about reporters’ dependence on government sources—that’s really important, you have to get economic figures, you have to develop long-term sources, you can’t get the information otherwise. 57 Why do you have such a low opinion of the readership to think that they’re not going to pick up on the subtlety? It may be in the fifth or sixth paragraph, but you can see the reporter’s own opinion there .
I don’t understand what you’re saying. What I’m saying is that if you look at the sources reporters select, they are not sources that are expert, they are sources that represent vested interests: that’s propaganda.
W OMAN : But I don’t think the journalists say that to themselves—they want to think they’re doing an honest job .
Sure they do, but you can see exactly how it works. Suppose that as a reporter you start going outside of vested interests. You will find, first of all, that the level of evidence that’s required is far higher. You don’t need verification when you go to vested interests, they’re self-verifying. Like, if you report an atrocity carried out by guerrillas, all you need is one hearsay witness. You talk about torture carried out by an American military officer, you’re going to need videotapes. And the same is true on every issue.
I mean, if a journalist quotes an unnamed “high U.S. government official,” that suffices as evidence. What if they were to quote some dissident, or some official from a foreign government that’s an enemy? Well, they’d have to start digging, and backing it up, and the reporter would have to have mountains of evidence, and expect to pick up a ton of flack, and maybe lose their job, and so on. With factors of that kind, it’s very predictable which way they’re going to go. And reporters generally pick the easy way; I mean, the laziness is phenomenal.
W OMAN : Would you characterize this media analysis as a “conspiracy theory” at all?
It’s precisely the opposite of conspiracy theory, actually—in fact, in general this analysis tends to downplay the role of individuals: they’re just replaceable pieces.
Look, part of the structure of corporate capitalism is that the players in the game try to increase profits and market shares—if they don’t do that, they will no longer be players in the game. Any economist knows this: it’s not a conspiracy theory to point that out, it’s just taken for granted as an institutional fact. If someone were to say, “Oh no, that’s a conspiracy theory,” people would laugh. Well, what we’ve been discussing are simply the institutional factors that set the boundaries for reporting and
W OMAN : But that’s not reporting .
Why not? He says, “opinions on both sides.” That’s an opinion on both sides.
Look, one of the things that Edward Herman and I did in Manufacturing Consent was to just look at the sources that reporters go to. In a part that I wrote, I happened to be discussing Central America, so I went through fifty articles by Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times beginning in October 1987, and just asked: whose opinions did he try to get? Well, it turns out that in fifty articles he did not talk to one person in Nicaragua who was pro-Sandinista. Now, there’s got to be somebody—you know, Ortega’s mother, somebody’s got to be pro-Sandinista. Nope, in fact, everybody he quotes is anti-Sandinista. [Daniel Ortega was the Sandinista President.]
Well, there are polls, which the Times won’t report, and they show that all of the opposition parties in Nicaragua combined had the support of only 9 percent of the population. But they have 100 percent of Stephen Kinzer—everyone he’s found supports the opposition parties, 9 percent of the population. That’s in fifty articles. 56
M AN : I think your indictment of subtlety is again simplistic. For instance, I read an article you wrote for The Progressive about reporters’ dependence on government sources—that’s really important, you have to get economic figures, you have to develop long-term sources, you can’t get the information otherwise. 57 Why do you have such a low opinion of the readership to think that they’re not going to pick up on the subtlety? It may be in the fifth or sixth paragraph, but you can see the reporter’s own opinion there .
I don’t understand what you’re saying. What I’m saying is that if you look at the sources reporters select, they are not sources that are expert, they are sources that represent vested interests: that’s propaganda.
W OMAN : But I don’t think the journalists say that to themselves—they want to think they’re doing an honest job .
Sure they do, but you can see exactly how it works. Suppose that as a reporter you start going outside of vested interests. You will find, first of all, that the level of evidence that’s required is far higher. You don’t need verification when you go to vested interests, they’re self-verifying. Like, if you report an atrocity carried out by guerrillas, all you need is one hearsay witness. You talk about torture carried out by an American military officer, you’re going to need videotapes. And the same is true on every issue.
I mean, if a journalist quotes an unnamed “high U.S. government official,” that suffices as evidence. What if they were to quote some dissident, or some official from a foreign government that’s an enemy? Well, they’d have to start digging, and backing it up, and the reporter would have to have mountains of evidence, and expect to pick up a ton of flack, and maybe lose their job, and so on. With factors of that kind, it’s very predictable which way they’re going to go. And reporters generally pick the easy way; I mean, the laziness is phenomenal.
W OMAN : Would you characterize this media analysis as a “conspiracy theory” at all?
It’s precisely the opposite of conspiracy theory, actually—in fact, in general this analysis tends to downplay the role of individuals: they’re just replaceable pieces.
Look, part of the structure of corporate capitalism is that the players in the game try to increase profits and market shares—if they don’t do that, they will no longer be players in the game. Any economist knows this: it’s not a conspiracy theory to point that out, it’s just taken for granted as an institutional fact. If someone were to say, “Oh no, that’s a conspiracy theory,” people would laugh. Well, what we’ve been discussing are simply the institutional factors that set the boundaries for reporting and
Similar Books
