Interesting exchange with Medialens
Medialens campaign to highlight bias in the mass media, applying the Propaganda Model developed by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman to reports in UK press and television news.
The Propaganda Model is one of those essential analyses which, whether read here in depth and in action, or here in an abridged version, can really illuminate one’s understanding of the world around us, let alone the political economy of the mass media.
I've had an interesting debate with the editors of Medialens on an instance where I don't believe they've applied the Propaganda Model as successfully as they might have. They issued a "media alert" on coverage of the death of General Pinochet where they took the writer and commentator Isabel Hilton to task. My view was that there are far more deserving targets for their efforts than Hilton, that actually her writing's pretty useful and that its pretty crude and unhelpful to simply consign her to the catagory marked "corporate propagandists".
Its interesting to see how the debate unfolds and the points that the editors and others make. The thread starts here. Have a read.
posted by David Wearing at 12:37 PM
7 Comments:
Excellent stuff, David. Merry Christmas :-)
I agree with you that there are better targets than Hilton, although it is also true that Hilton's record (from what I saw quoted in the exchange) isn't perfect.
But the Davids have gone after 'honourable exceptions' before, too. For example, they wrote a piece criticising George Monbiot. Not (of course) wishing to speak for them, I think the purpose of this is twofold; a) to show that it is necessary to confront bias wherever it is present and b) because those rare exceptions have the heavy responsibility on their shoulders to push the envelope. They truly set outermost boundaries of debate within the mainstream media, and so when they slip up its even more important to correct them.
I take your point, Jamie. But if you want writers to produce exactly the same analysis as you would, using exactly the same words - which ML apparenlty often do - then frankly, no one's going to be perfect.
Notice that when I mentioned neo-conservative adventurism as a useful perspective on recent US policy, the Davids literally didn't know what I was talking about.
Of course the fact that invading Iraq fits the Nuremburg definition of the "Supreme War Crime" is the most important thing for us to remember about the war we started. But is any other description of any other aspect of these events always and necessarily the work of a state-corporate propagandist?
And don't we impoverish our understanding of government policies and our ability to campaign against them if every description of them other than "supreme war crime" is excluded?
Why do these other descriptions have to be seen as conflicting anyway? Where's the contradiction between seeing Iraq as a war crime and as coming as the result of neo-con adventurism?
Now I don't believe anyone's writing is above comment or criticism. That's not the point I was making. I was saying two things:
1/ that your analysis of media behaviour is going to be crude to the point of uselessness if you base it on the inclusion or exclusion of certain narrowly selected key words. Note that not only could they not answer my point about using a wordsearch to judge Hilton's entire output, they thought the question of how they analyse the media was "academic"; and
2/ that if a journalist fails this fundamentally flawed keyword test, its a bit much to condemn them on this basis as a corporate-propagandist, especially when they've e.g. described US Latin America policy as consisting of "campaigns of terror" designed to counter the laughable "threat" that popular independence might emerge in small impoverished countries.
When you accuse people like that of being "superficial" and burying the truth you put yourself in a pretty ridiculous position. And when you've done it on the basis of a word search its even worse.
There's no reason why you can't get in touch with any writer to raise points they make where you disagree, but with Hilton the Davids went a bit further than that.
It doesn't give me any pleasure to say this. I think most of the time ML do fantastic work. If you look at what they wrote on the Lancet study for example, that was something that absolutely had to be done, they were the only ones who did it, and they did it quite brilliantly, I thought.
But I also think that their approach can be far too crude at times. Chomsky's Propaganda Model is an very useful analytical tool, and is based on important ideas which need an airing, especially at this point in history. Burning bridges with people like Hilton and Monbiot doesn't help that. By all means debate with people - and vigorously. But when you paint them as beyond the pale on the basis of not very much then...well that's something else.
"Of course the fact that invading Iraq fits the Nuremburg definition of the "Supreme War Crime" is the most important thing for us to remember about the war we started. But is any other description of any other aspect of these events always and necessarily the work of a state-corporate propagandist?"
No, and I don't think anyone is arguing that it would be. Usually, Media Lens use the "supreme international crime" reference to criticise either a) journalists describing the Iraq war as an 'adventure' or a 'mistake' or an 'error' or some other term of whitewash, or b) to simply remind readers of the crucial fact underlying the Iraq war and Tony Blair's reign in power - that the invasion of Iraq was a war crime. This is, as you say, the most important thing for us to remember about the war, and yet we rarely hear it expressed in the mainstream media. It is therefore very important that people like the Davids keep bringing it up and shoving it in people's faces. In a free press, the majority of articles would describe the Iraq war for what it was - a supreme war crime. That description is therefore a good benchmark to illustrate how pitifully our current press is performing.
That isn't to say that context shouldn't be taken into account. If you have a journalist who has a good record of writing proper articles about Iraq (for example) who then writes an article analysing it in terms of neo-conservative adventurism, then of course his description of it as an 'adventure' or anything else should not be used to paint him as a something he isn't (a corporate propagandist). Context matters, certainly.
Because context matters, basing one's entire analysis on searching for key words in LexisNexis would be, as you say, very crude. But I don't think Media Lens do that. They use database searches to compliment and illustrate their analyses, but they do not base what they write on the key word searches. For example, in the Media Alert in which they criticised Hilton ('Born in the USA - Pinochet's Bloodbath'), the authors wrote:
'A media database search showed that the words ‘Pinochet’ and ‘CIA’ have been
mentioned in seven articles in the UK national press since Pinochet’s death.'
That is a useful statistic that really does tell us something. Sure, it is possible to write about the issue honestly and sensibly without mentioning 'CIA', but realistically, the fact that only seven articles about Pinochet included the word 'CIA' in them in the entire national press does tell us that the U.S.' role has not been fully explored, to say the least.
But, as you say, database searches are crude and so should be used with care. I haven't scoured through Hilton's record myself, but if the samples of her work quoted by you are representative of her record as a whole, then I think Media Lens were perhaps a little unfair to her. I think the Davids recognise that - in your exchange with them, they did concede that you raised some 'good points'.
In short, then, Lexis Nexis searches can be useful if handled with care, and even if ML slipped up on this occasion, most of the time they do. Overall, I think Media Lens make good use of Lexis Nexis figures and very rarely make an unfair criticism of someone, and, like you, I very much appreciate the work that they do.
Thanks, Jamie. I think we basically agree with each other
best wishes
David
Tried to post the following on the Medialens forum, but had technical difficulties. Anyway, here's my two cents ...
-----
On the whole, I think David Wearing is right on this question - calling Hilton a corporate propagandist is clearly an inadequate and unfair description. One can perhaps say more aptly that she displays some tendencies towards aligning her account with that of the mainstream, perhaps a reaction (conscious or otherwise) to her position as a writer within, or on the fringes of, the mainstream - while at the same time she reveals important truths that are not ordinarily given voice. In this sense, David is correct to state that "the distinction between the workings of the system and the work of the "honorable exceptions" isn't as utterly stark" as you seem to suggest.
On questions of methodology, I also think there are some clear problems. As Wearing points out, the search for particular keywords is somewhat inefficient in terms of judging general content. That's a matter of judgement, of course, but I happen to agree with it.
On the question of the "big names", like Chomsky, Curtis, Finkelstein, whoever you want - again it seems to be a rather poor methodology for passing judgement on a particular author (except in the context, say, of a broader analysis of these dissidents' exclusion from the mainstream, for which an examination of their occurrence within one individual writer's output, as opposed to a broad sampling, is largely useless). I think you've described Paul Krugman as "admirable" in the past, but I doubt whether the big names feature much, if at all, in his writing (though I may be wrong ...)
As for Hilton on Iraq, does the use of the term "Iraq adventure" imply a euphemistic/apologetic treatment? Surely not, unless the same can be said of its application by Chris Harman in The Socialist Review, Robert Fisk in the Independent, and the 10 articles the Znet search engine dredges up.
http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=9874
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article220506.ece
Hilton on "international action against rogue states" - on this the Medialens editors may be correct: at first her line of argument only seems to make sense in the context of a "liberal" preference for US-supported military action in "multilateral" form, in which framing the Bush administration are only guilty on account of their unilateralist excesses. Then again, "international action" has a true meaning and an ideological meaning, and it's not clear exactly which one Hilton means; the same applies to "rogue states". Indeed considering her criticisms of the US and its clients, perhaps she would claim the term is meant to apply more broadly. One can only tell with reference to her other published work, and from what I've seen that would lead me to agree with Wearing. Would Hilton exempt, say, Israel from those she designates as "rogue states"? The idea seems very unlikely to me.
That's not in the least to imply that Hilton should be somehow exempt from any criticism - far from it - only that some of the specific criticisms, accusations and descriptions levelled at her seem to me inaccurate and unfair. Should she be held to account for failing to mention US complicity in Pinochet's atrocities? Absolutely.
Tim - thanks for your comments. Not much for me to add I suppose since we seem to agree. I guess you could post this on the thread on the message board (I'm sure its still there) if you want the Davids to know your views. I'm not sure they read my blog.
Interesting that Krugman should be called "admirable" since he certainly fails the keyword/famous writers test. For example:
"I found myself wondering what Noam Chomsky--who epitomized the left-wing view that all bad things are the result of Western intervention--is saying now. Well, I couldn't find anything about the current crisis, but thanks to the miracle of search engine technology I did find some remarks about Bosnia, which are pathetic but revealing: First he tries to blame it all on the Western Right, then suddenly gets all judicious and practical." --Paul Krugman, March 29, 1999
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky
..pretty much the usual poison from liberal critics of Chomsky, complete with the standard "he blames the west for everything" tantrum.
That said, I think Krugman's often very good. How do I square this? Not sure I can do. I suppose it just shows that any model or paradigm is going to have its limits and you need to bear that in mind when applying it.
Post a Comment
<< Home