10/6/2016 Media Power: The Structure of the Status Quo - Criticl

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Media Power: The Structure of the Status Quo 
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            What is the role of the corporate news media in America? Certainly there are the
prescribed functions: being gatekeepers to what is covered, signaling important
developments, serving as a channel for public of cials to communicate with the public,
being a watchdog for public of cials, and in cable news, utilizing a partisan approach. But
what exactly does the media establishment in America represent? Generic understandings
of what the media is supposed to represent are important, however in a super-connected
and ever changing world, the content of what is reported, and what isn’t reported, is crucial.

In this study, the very structure of cable news will be questioned and dissected. By
analyzing the consolidation of corporate ownership of media, identifying the oligarchic
control on the American political process by economic elites and business groups,
highlighting historical manipulation of the media, and by illustrating psychological truths,
the case will be made for an elite agenda driving the corporate news media.

The hypothesized agenda of the corporate owned cable news media is to divide the
population by utilizing the partisan nature of cable news networks as a framework of
perpetual blame, and thus perpetual division. By implementing a culture of contempt for
ideological positions contrary to your respective socialized position, there is implicitly never
a need to identify who is to blame, as it is naturally deemed as the enemy party.

Noam Chomsky alludes to how the true function of media is identi ed in his article, What
Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream, where he says, “You can do systematic investigation.
You can compare yesterday’s version to today’s version. There is a lot of evidence about
what’s played up and what isn’t and the way things are structured.” To understand the
agenda of the media, it must be understood what content is being reported, in what way,
and also what else is going on in the world that isn’t being reported.

            What does this mean today? Chomsky offers further perspective from the article
into how the media attempts to intercede agendas into public thought, “…the product of the
media, what appears, what doesn’t appear, the way it is slanted, will re ect the best interest
of the buyers and sellers, the institutions, and the power systems that are around them.”
Chomsky theorizes that the media is essentially a tool for the elite. An elite class
undoubtedly controls the control of the media establishment in terms of scal ownership.
However, to explore the validity of the hypothesis that the economically elite implement
speci c agendas, there are a multitude of factors that must be analyzed.

The potential dangers of media can be highlighted by the idea of, as coined by Noam
Chomsky, “manufacturing consent.” This skepticism towards the media establishment is
based on the principle that public opinion can be coerced and essentially manufactured.
Similar thinking can be found in the warning of Malcolm X. He claimed, “If you’re not careful,
the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the
people who are doing the oppressing.” Malcolm X offered this warning during a time where

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people who are doing the oppressing.” Malcolm X offered this warning during a time where
media was limited in consolidation of power and scope of reach, however was still
instrumental in framing public perspectives of events and people of the time.

            The media landscape has changed, or rather, consolidated, over the past few
decades. According to Business Insider, in 1983 50 corporations controlled 90% of American
media, while in 2011 6 corporations controlled 90% of American media. To assess the gravity
of this reality, the fundamental power of economic and business elites in the United States
must be addressed. A 2014 study at Princeton, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites,
Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” studied 1,779 policy issues and deduced,
“Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing
business interests have substantial impacts on U.S. government policy, while average
citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no in uence” (Martin Giles and
Benjamin Page). Comparatively analyzing a consolidation of power/in uence in the media,
with the revelation of economic interest’s “substantial impact” on policy, warranted
skepticism invokes deeper analysis of the potential gains from interceding in public
thought.

            The ability for media to in uence public discourse and thought can be explained
through the in uences of the re ective and automatic functions of the brain. Re ective
preferences explain how, “the power of conscious thoughts and feelings is to create a
particular type of fuel for action” (Banaji & Greenwald, 55). Thus, the ability to establish
parameters on public discourse can be understood to be plausibly powerful, considering
the importance of thoughts on actions. Coercing and/or in uencing re ective cognitive
thinking directly holds power. However, the in uence of automatic preferences must be
adhered to as well, regarding perceptual in uence. Automatic preferences are crucial in
fundamentally understanding/forming prejudices, as well as identifying implicit in uences
that come from environmental exposure. To understand this, “Our minds pick up a lot of
what’s out there, and it seems nearly impossible to resist the pull toward culturally rooted
stereotypes” (68). By understanding the role the human subconscious in forming
categorizations and stereotypes, the manipulative potential of media increases in
conceivability.

            To further perceive the potential of media’s explicit and implicit perceptual impact,
the amount of attention the average American pays to media must be highlighted. Eugene
Cho offers a perplexing statistic; he reveals that the average American will watch 9 years of
television in their lifetime (Cho, 80). Compounding this astounding amount of time exposed
to television with the nature of how our minds form categories and stereotypes, a deeper
comprehension of automatic preferences must be established. Regarding stereotypes,
“Stereotypes do not take special effort to acquire. Quite the opposite – they are acquired
effortlessly, and take special effort to discount” (Banaji & Greenwald, 109). Essentially, our
subconscious absorbs our social and cultural environment and establishes implicit
categorizations. The process of forming categorizations occurs naturally for cognitive
simplicity. This natural phenomenon directly impacts human perceptions and perspectives,
“Every day, automatic preferences steer us towards less conscious decisions, but they are
hard to explain because they remain impervious to the probes of conscious motivation”
(55). This encapsulates the powerful and hidden in uence that automatic preferences
have on human perceptions.

By illuminating the psychological components constantly at work in the media landscape,

and by utilizing the wisdom of Chomsky regarding how, why and what is portrayed on the
media, an analysis can be made about the role of cable news in America.

Powerful economics and business elites indirectly controlling the policies of the American
government is deeply troublesome. The implications of a political environment that adheres
to big money interests as well as a media environment that does so is hard to fully
perceive, yet it is a reality that is conceivable. Patterson explains that, “Research suggests
that faulty perceptions are becoming more prevalent, and that changes in communication
are largely to blame. During the buildup to the Iraq invasion for example, the worst-
informed Americans were those that obtained their information from cable television
shows” (Patterson, 5). The false pre-tenses that launched the U.S. into Iraq, and eventually
the Middle East, were magni ed through many media platforms, and as Patterson alluded
to, the worst informed Americans were those who watched cable television.
The mainstream media’s buildup to the war in Iraq didn’t simply coerce a large amount of

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The mainstream media’s buildup to the war in Iraq didn’t simply coerce a large amount of
the population to support an invasion of Iraq. The public’s support justi ed a fundamentally
unjust invasion. That decision that went against the will of the majority of the international
community, has incurred over $6 trillion in debt, was instrumental in the radicalization of the
region, instrumental in the creation of ISIS, resulted in the deaths of millions of Iraqis, and
has thrust the U.S. on trajectory for perpetual warfare in the Middle East. This chain of
events stemmed from the misinformation from the government to the mainstream media
and stands as an example to the media’s potential puppet power.

            Given these incredulous consequences that have resulted from an invasion that was
founded on faulty intelligence, what other factors are at play in the Middle East campaign?
Interestingly enough, a perplexing connection can be drawn between alternate or
coinciding motives regarding the support Fox News issued for entry into the Middle East,
and staying there. The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade reported in 2003 prior to U.S. entry into
Iraq, that billionaire Robert Murdoch, the founder of Murdoch News Corporation (owner of
Fox News) issued a perplexing statement about possible implications from the Iraq war,
“The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy…would be $20 a barrel for oil.
That’s bigger than any tax cut in any country.” This interest in oil that preceded the Iraq
invasion has even more relevant context after investigative journalist Christopher Bollyn
reported in 2013 that Genie energy company, which Murdoch is a large shareholder of, was
given oil drilling rights in Israeli-occupied Syria, a location that Fox News has supported
military intervention of in the name of the war on terror.                  Interestingly enough, Dick
Cheney sits as an advisory board member for the Genie energy company. This isn’t the only
oil company in the Middle East that Cheney has connections to. Cheney used to be the CEO
of Halliburton, up until 2000 when he became vice president and received a $34 million
severance package, according to Politifact. The International Business Times reported that,
“The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with
many of the deals given without any bidding from competing rms, such as a $568-million
contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to
soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by
Bloomberg.” The nature of observing correlations, such as Cheney and Murdoch’s support of
the war on terror that justi es occupation in the Middle East, as well as a vested interest in
Middle Eastern oil and vast pro ts, doesn’t indicate causation regarding media
manipulation, however it does justify speculation and scrutiny.

            Unfortunately, further scrutiny doesn’t re ect transparent agendas from either the
United States government or the corporate media establishment as a whole. Sheila
Carapico and Chris Toensing, however, believe that scrutinies of the true intentions of the
U.S. occupation are justi ed. They elaborate in the 2006 report, “The Strategic Blunder of the
Iraq Blunder,” and say, “to hear American politicians and the commercial news media tell it,
the greatest military power in world history hastily launched an ill-conceived invasion
because of intelligence failures and wishful fantasies of sweets and owers. It is as if, to
paraphrase a sentiment heard in White House hallways on September 11, 2001, history really
did start on that day, and nothing that happened beforehand mattered. It is as if the United
States had never articulated a global vision of ‘full-spectrum dominance,’ acted upon
hegemonic ambitions in the Persian Gulf or planned for forcible ‘regime change’ in Iraq.”
This practically hidden perspective on the U.S. role in the Middle East offers a rational
construct of the nature and economic gains of the occupation.

It also alludes to the role of the mainstream corporate media in terms of their lack of
acknowledgement towards this perspective on foreign policy. The widespread apathy
towards this viewpoint within the corporate media either establishes direct focus
redirection, or belief that the claims are baseless. Alas, the latter isn’t possible as, according
to the Guardian, the CIA and UK were behind the coup of the Iranian President in 1953. The
need for the coup was on the basis of a very perplexing precept, “Britain, and in particular
Sir Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary, regarded Mosaddeq as a serious threat to its
strategic and economic interests after the Iranian leader nationalized the British Anglo-
Iranian Oil Company, latterly known as BP. But the UK needed US support.” This stunning
revelation concurs with the perspective that the United States has exed their might in the
Middle East in the pursuit of oil since after WWII.

Further applied study into the relationship between the U.S., oil, Middle East and media
negligence, can be found in the almost-never-heard-of Petrodollar. This little known
phenomenon is actually one of the most important aspects of the U.S. economy. Alexander

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phenomenon is actually one of the most important aspects of the U.S. economy. Alexander
Clackson from Global Research explains the true fundamental need for the petrodollar (as
well as what it is) in order to maintain global economic dominance, “The existence of
petrodollars is one of the pillars of America’s economic might, because it creates a
signi cant external demand for the American currency, allowing the U.S. to accumulate
enormous debts without defaulting. What makes the dollar unique is the fact that since the
early 1970s it has been, with a few notable exceptions, the only currency used to buy and
sell oil on the global market. This began when in 1973 the Richard Nixon administration
began negotiations with the government of Saudi Arabia to establish what came to be
referred to as the petrodollar recycling system. Under the arrangement, the Saudis would
only sell their oil in U.S. dollars, and would invest the majority of their excess oil pro ts into
U.S. banks and Capital markets. The IMF would then use this money to facilitate loans to oil
importers who were having dif culties covering the increase in oil prices. The payments and
interest on these loans would of course be denominated in U.S. dollars.” This illustration into
the nature of the petrodollar, its vitality to U.S. economic security, and the potential dangers
that could result from its failure are of great interest to the people of the United States.

            By engaging in a large-scale analysis of the current political, economic and media
landscape, a perplexing paradigm begins to take place. The original proposition that the
media ‘manufactures consent’ is not only conceivable but it is applicable. Further than
identifying strange correlations between people with extreme power – such as Cheney and
Murdoch – and connections to powerful oil tycoons, is their connection and role in the
media. The Mother Jones shines light on a timeline of events that led to the U.S. invasion of
Iraq that are very troubling. This news source highlights that in June of 1998 Cheney, then
Halliburton’s CEO, made the statement, “The good Lord didn’t see t to put oil and gas only
where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States.” Next there is
the revelation that on February 14, 2001, Cheney’s energy task force began secret meetings
with oil executives. These events were in the public domain, yet mainstream media never
even remotely speculated about their implications.

            Given the clear relationship and economic prosperity that Robert Murdoch can gain
from vested oil interests in the Middle East, he personally is faced with great incentive to
keep business booming. This can only occur if the United States occupation remains for the
protection and expansion of oil extraction. By highlighting the incentives for the Fox News
owner and comprehending the important factors in the global landscape that could
devalue public opinion towards his economic objectives, what is actually reported on his
station (and other media platforms) could have very good or bad implications for him.

            By analyzing the brief summaries offered for daily headlines given by two of the
most popular Fox News hosts, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, since Michael Brown’s death; I
was able to form some inferred notions about the true agenda of the conservative
corporate news establishment. In this mini sample, I found that Bill O’Reilly negatively
referred to Obama 43 times, often regarding his foreign policy. He mentioned radical
Islam/terrorism/ISIS 40 times. Race relations were mentioned 20 times, Hillary Clinton 11
times and Ebola 8 times. Hannity took up race relations 26 times, Hillary Clinton 12 times,
Islam/terrorism/ISIS 33 times and Chris Kyle 9 times. This isn’t a complete transcript
evaluation of each of these pundits; rather it is a simple assessment about the general
contexts of the messages they bestow as news.

            The fundamental issue that must be addressed and dealt with in this entire debacle
is the role of the media establishment. The supposed fourth branch of the government is
observably a corporate agenda-enhancing tool, rather than the watchdog news was
intended to be. The principle practice of divide and conquer is the norm within the
corporate media establishment. Essentially, he-said she-said rhetoric that serve more to
enhance a partisan ideological perspective than to further the straight truth. By invoking
emotional and primitive stories as news, forging perspectives that convolute to entice class
divisions within the middle and lower classes, while the true source of the problems, and the
answers are within the super elite who not only control our media, but also in uence just
about all policy in the United States governing body.

            To illuminate the realityPopular Stories

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oligarchic-elite, would be key to addressing the intersectionality of injustice. Addressing the
underlying forces that enforce government coups for the sake of colonialist control of
natural resources, the outsourcing of jobs to low wage countries for slave labor conditions,

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natural resources, the outsourcing of jobs to low wage countries for slave labor conditions,
and the basic racial and class divisions that this country has dealt with for its entire history.
The true power of the media comes from the stories they don’t tell, to the past they are
trying to hide. The magnitude of the enormity of the true global paradigm for power and
economic domination is one that has remained in the shadows, and in their place, into the
national spotlight are primitive, divisive and often childish.

The gradual consolidation of power within the corporate media establishment as well as in
the political process has been gradual, but the effects are at play. The U.S. political system
plays to the interests of the money. The money interests also observably impact the media.
Not just in the negligence of reporting on the dynamic and complex world, but in the
intentionality of super cial issues that don’t get to the core of the issues of injustice, and
thus are just band aids for the real reconciliation work that needs to happen in so many
ways and in so many places. The next steps for action in the current media landscape are
the full-scale pursuit of the truth and the illumination of corrupting practices within our
bodies of authority. The quest for justice is a never-ending marathon, but in addressing
core malpractice, can be the start of an enlightened and righteous revolution.

Citations:

“What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream, by Noam Chomsky.”  Z Magazine, 1997. Web.
18 May 2015. <http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710–.htm>.
Gilens, Martin, and Benjamin I. Page. “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest
Groups, and Average Citizens.”  Polit. Perspectives on Politics12.03 (2014): 564-81. Web.
Bollyn, Christopher. “Rupert Murdoch and Lord Rothschild: The Oil Barons of Occupied
Syria.” The Truthseeker. Rebel News, 2 Sept. 2013. Web. 18 May 2015.
<http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=78822>.
Jacobson, Louis. “Chris Matthews Says Cheney Got $34 Million Payday from
Halliburton.” @politifact. N.p., 24 Mar. 2010. Web. 18 May 2015.
<http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/may/24/chris-
matthews/chris-matthews-says-cheney-got-34-million-payday-h/>.
Banaji, Mahzarin R., and Anthony G. Greenwald. Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.
New York: Delacorte, 2013. Print.
Lutz, Ashley. “These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America.”Business Insider.
Business Insider, Inc, 14 June 2012. Web. 18 May 2015.
<http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-
america-2012-6>.
“And The Winner For The Most Iraq War Contracts Is . . . KBR, With $39.5 Billion In A
Decade.” International Business Times. N.p., 19 Mar. 2013. Web. 18 May 2015.
<http://www.ibtimes.com/winner-most-iraq-war-contracts-kbr-395-billion-decade-
1135905>.
Cho, Eugene. Overrated: Are We More in Love with the Idea of Changing the World than
Actually Changing the World?Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2014. Print.
Greenslade, Roy. “Their Master’s Voice.” theguardian.com. The Guardian, 17 Feb. 2003. Web.
<http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fmedia%2F2003%2Ffeb%2F17%2Fmondaymediasection.iraq>.
Sheila Carapico and Chris Toensing, “The Strategic Logic of the Iraq Blunder,”Middle East
Report(no. 239, Summer 2006), 6–11, esp. 6.
Norton-Taylor, Richard. “CIA Admits Role in 1953 Iranian Coup.”theguardian.com. N.p., 19
Aug. 2013. Web.
<http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fworld%2F2013%2Faug%2F19%2Fcia-admits-role-
1953-iranian-coup>.
Clackson, Alexander. “The Real Reason Russia Is Demonized and Sanctioned: The
American Petrodollar.” The Real Reason Russia Is Demonized and Sanctioned: The
American Petrodollar. Global Research, 18 Sept. 2014. Web. 18 May 2015.
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-reason-russia-is-demonized-and-sanctioned-
the-american-petrodollar/5402592?print=1>.
Stein, Jonathan. “Lie by Lie: A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq.” Mother Jones. N.p., Sept.
2006. Web. 18 May 2015. <http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/leadup-iraq-
war-timeline>

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