Authors: Mickey Huff
Censored 2012 (60 page)
Nowhere was mass-mediated Tea Party propaganda more apparent than in national coverage of protests of “Obamacare” in mid-to-late 2009 and early 2010. Tea Partiers and Republican leaders symbiotically joined together during this period to promote some of the most extreme distortions of Democratic health care proposals. As I document in my book,
The Rise of the Tea Party
, by mid-2009 coverage of nonexistent “death panels” that were allegedly intent on denying senior citizens health care were rampant throughout media coverage across the board. Furthermore, my content analysis of news reporting from major national agenda-setting newspapers and television outlets
found systematic evidence that reporting was tilted toward conservative perspectives, with mentions of concerns over the “costs” and “price” of health care, and of allegedly high levels of “debt” that would accompany Democratic reforms. These mentions greatly outnumbered any discussion of the proposed “public option,” of Democratically supported health insurance “exchanges,” or of more progressive policy proposals such as Medicare-for-all, universal health care coverage. As expected, conservative media outlets such as Fox News led the way in warning against fictitious “government takeovers” and “Obama socialism,” despite the fact that “Obamacare” represented one of the largest expansions of the private insurance health care market in US history.
18
Reactionary Tea Party-Republican propaganda on health care reform was flagrantly inaccurate with regard to the actual reforms being proposed by Democrats. This inconvenient detail was largely inconsequential, however, in a media climate in which the Democrats were publicly abandoning progressive reforms such as the public option and universal health care, and leaving a vacuum Tea Partiers and Republicans were more than happy to fill with their many scare tactics and messages. As Steuter and Wills remind us, propaganda is not interested in accurate, nuanced discussions of public policy. Emotion and fear are powerful tools, and they were extremely successful in blunting discussion of possible steps the government could take to help those in medical need.
Media censorship of critical views of the Tea Party is accompanied by dramatic costs when looking at public opinion. By systematically denying the public access to the findings discussed, media outlets play an instrumental role in fostering public support for the Tea Party and opposition to health care reforms. My study of Tea Party reporting and rhetoric in the mass media finds effects of such coverage on public opinion, as reflected in analysis of national surveys, at two levels. First, one sees that increased attention to the national debate and reporting on the Tea Party is accompanied by growing support for the group. After controlling for respondent ideology, partisanship, income, sex,
race, and a number of other demographic variables during analysis, a strong, positive statistical relationship is still found between consumption of Tea Party news and positive attitudes toward the group.
19
On a second level, one sees that the increasingly negative media coverage of health care reform also influenced public attitudes. After controlling for the demographic variables mentioned above, one also finds a positive, statistically significant relationship between attention to the national debate on health care reform on the one hand, and opposition to government efforts at promoting reform on the other. Such increased opposition is not the result of citizens becoming more actively informed about the dangers of liberal and potentially progressive health care proposals. National statistics from the
Pew Research Center
find that those who paid the closest attention to the health care reform debate in the news were actually the most likely to be confused with regard to the basic contours of that debate. The problem only got worse over time, with the proportion of those finding the debate hard to understand increasing from July through September 2009.
20
This finding is precisely what one would expect to find in a media system that propagandizes citizens, stirring public opposition over fictitious “death panels,” nonexistent “government takeovers,” and Democratic Party “socialism.”
The Tea Party’s preferred treatment in the mass media, accompanied by the censorship of critical viewpoints with regard to the group, is the result of numerous structural factors. For one, the Tea Party is closely aligned with business elites in their efforts to fight off any potential health care and Wall Street reforms that could cost investors and insurance companies profits, or cost the wealthy in terms of increased taxation. The interests of business elites, then, serve as one important pressure upon the corporate media system to promote free market “movements” like the Tea Party.
On another level, the Tea Party’s symbiotic relationship with the Republican Party ensures that it will be granted favorable treatment in the national press. Tea Party leaders and rank-and-file members
speak a language similar to that of journalists in Washington who share an obsession with “unsustainable” debt, and who have also been calling for the leadership needed to enact deeply unpopular and dramatic cuts in social welfare spending in a time of economic crisis and stagnation. The Republican Party’s embrace of neoliberal policies that directly assault the welfare state have also grown increasingly popular among Democrats who have indicated openness to cutting popular programs such as Medicare and Social Security, and entirely ended other programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Under such a political system, where Democrats abandon progressive positions in favor of center-right ones, journalists become subject to strong pressures from political elites to embrace their “movements” of choice, and ignore those that fail to fall within the bi-partisan spectrum of opinion.
Despite strong political, business, and media support, the Tea Party appears to have hit a plateau with regard to public sympathies. National polls suggest that support for the group has stagnated at between one-fourth to one-third of the public throughout 2010 and 2011.
21
Minority support, however, is hardly inconsequential. The dramatic successes of Republicans in the 2010 midterms in mobilizing their Tea Party-affiliated base should demonstrate the power of determined minorities. The national media has played a critical role with regard to motivating this minority to recommit to national electoral politics in order to return Republican officials to majority status in Congress. Republican officials’ dressing up of the top-down Tea Party phenomenon as a “grassroots movement” represents a concession that the Republican Party is no longer able to effectively govern on its own. At a time of mass distrust of government, conservatives have concluded that populist facades reframing Republicans as opposed to bailouts and Washington or Wall Street corruption represent the best hope for garnering votes in the run-up to midterm and presidential elections. These officials can count on the mass media to play an instrumental role in fostering public rebellion at a time of economic instability and suspicion of government.
ANTHONY DIMAGGIO
is the author of numerous books including
The Rise of the Tea Party
(Monthly Review Press, 2011),
Crashing the Tea Party
(with Paul Street, Paradigm Publishers,
2011),
When Media Goes to War
(2010), and
Mass Media, Mass Propaganda
(2008). He has taught US and Global Politics at Illinois State University, and has written for numerous publications, including
Z Magazine, Counterpunch, Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Monthly Review, Common Dreams, and AlterNet
. He can be reached at
[email protected]
.
1
. Noam Chomsky,
Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 1997), 16.
2
. The role of advertising, for example, in ensuring the censorship of views critical of corporate America has been thoroughly documented in previous studies. For examples, see: Robert W. McChesney,
Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times
(New York: New Press, 1999); Robert W. McChesney,
The Problem of the Media
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004), 83; Dean Alger,
Megamedia: How Giant Corporations Dominate Mass Media, Distort Competition, and Endanger Democracy
(Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 163–164; David Croteau and William Hoynes,
The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest
(California: Pine Forge Press, 2001), 179–180; “Self-Censorship: How Often and Why,” Pew Research Center, April 30, 2000,
http://people-press.org/report/39/
.
3
. Academic studies typically find that objectivity, as understood by journalists, entails the restricting of political views (in reporting and editorializing) to those views already accepted by the two major political parties. For more on this wide literature, see: Jonathan Mermin,
Debating War and Peace: Media Coverage of U.S. Intervention in the Post-Vietnam Era
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); Daniel C. Hallin,
The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston,
When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media From Iraq to Katrina
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); and Anthony R. DiMaggio,
When Media Goes to War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion, and the Limits of Dissent
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010).
4
. Erin Steuter and Deborah Wills,
At War With Metaphor: Media, Propaganda, and Racism in the War on Terror
(Maryland: Lexington Books, 2008), 18.
5
. For a review of the Patchwork Nation study and my own survey of Tea Party chapters, see Anthony R. DiMaggio,
The Rise of the Tea Party: Political Discontent and Corporate Media in the Age of Obama
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011).
6
. For more details, see chapter 2 of
The Rise of the Tea Party
.
7
. For more details on the state of Wisconsin’s opposition to Governor Scott Walker’s attack on unions, see Anthony DiMaggio, “Masters of Spin: Rightwing Manipulation of the Wisconsin Revolt,”
Counterpunch
, February 25–26, 2011,
http://www.counterpunch.org/dimaggio02252011.html
.
8
. Paul Street, “It’s Not About $, It’s About Rights,”
Z Magazine
, February 24, 2011,
http://www.zcommunications.org/it-s-not-about-it-s-about-rights-by-paul-street
.
9
. Stephanie Mencimer, “Wisconsin: Tea Partiers, Breitbart Coming to Fight Unions,”
Mother Jones
, February 18, 2011,
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/02/wisconsin-tea-partiers-breitbart-fight-unions
.
10
. For more, see chapter 2 of
The Rise of the Tea Party
.
11
. For more, see chapter 4 of
The Rise of the Tea Party
.
12
. David von Drehle, “Why the Tea Party Movement Matters,”
Time
, February 18, 2010,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1966475,00.html
.
13
.
“After the Election Victories, Tea Party Activists Look Ahead to 2012,”
FoxNews.com
, November 5, 2010,
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/11/05/election-victories-tea-party-activists-look-ahead/
.
14
. The Tea Party’s many Republican ties are explored consistently throughout
Crashing the Tea Party
and
The Rise of the Tea Party
.
15
. See chapter 1 of
The Rise of the Tea Party
for more on these studies.
16
. See Paul L. Street and Anthony R. DiMaggio,
Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics
(Boulder, Co.: Paradigm Publishers, 2011).
17
. See chapter 1 of
The Rise of the Tea Party
.
18
. For a more thorough description of my findings, see chapter 5 of
The Rise of the Tea Party
.
19
. For more, see chapter 4 of
The Rise of the Tea Party
.
20
. My findings with result to the impact of health care coverage on public opinion are explored in greater detail in chapter 6 of
The Rise of the Tea Party
.
21
. For more on these findings, see the regular updates of Tea Party polling questions available at
www.pollingreport.com
.
Project Censored International
Human Rights and the Right to Know
INTRODUCTION BY MICKEY HUFF
WITH AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FAIR SHARING
OF THE COMMON HERITAGE BY MARY LIA
Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.… At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is “not done” to say it.… Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals
.
—George Orwell, from his unpublished “Freedom of the Press” introduction to
Animal Farm
, eventually published in 1972,
New York Times Literary Supplement
The final section of
Censored 2012
is designed to give unfashionable opinions a fair hearing, whether they are from the United States or around the globe. We hope we are giving these following contributions, all serious journalistic and scholarly investigations, a pedestal from which to spring forth into the world of public debate. Our authors here examine media censorship issues and their ramifications in the US and internationally through the topics of peace movements worldwide, Western policy and action in Africa, human rights abuses in Palestine, distorted natural disaster coverage, bias against universal health care, and natural child birth and midwifery, with a focus on human rights and the right to know,
and especially highlighting the right of people everywhere to learn about and understand the conditions of their fellow planetary inhabitants.
There are ever many global issues that impact people locally. And so our media analysis in this section looks at these diverse subjects with the hope of broadening our awareness of international human rights and the importance of media freedom as a holistic, global issue in the struggle for peace and equality. After all, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 by the UN General Assembly, affirmed that “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” We need to live up to and enforce these rights, as together these are the cornerstones of democratic self-governance.
This year, we proudly welcome people whose views are oft not heard by readers of highbrow periodicals or the popular press despite their wisdom and importance: professor Cynthia Boaz looks at movements of nonviolence and their media depiction worldwide; independent journalist Ann Garrison outlines the massive blackout in US press coverage of what is happening across the African continent; Jon Elmer details the ongoing suppression of reporting about Palestine, and the neglect by the international community concerning human rights abuses there; professor Robin Andersen looks at HBO’s television show
Treme
and what it says about the media’s depiction of the post-Katrina flood disaster in New Orleans; Margaret Flowers points out the lack of corporate media coverage of the overwhelming support for single-payer health care in the US; and Ina May Gaskin rounds out our book this year looking at how the media ignore and distort the issues of maternity and natural childbirth in America. All of these are subjects for further study, and could be or already are full-length books. We include them here to put them on the radar, under the guise of un-censoring issues that matter to the public, generating real news for real people.
In that same spirit, this year we also introduce the Media Freedom Foundation and Project Censored collaboration on the Fair Sharing of the Common Heritage, which will be outlined below. In future
editions of
Censored
, writings on this theme will be included as part of Project Censored International. Reclaiming the commons of a free press and public information, in support of the right of people “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media” as outlined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights above, is of paramount concern to Project Censored. As journalist and scholar David Bollier wrote in his 2002 work,
Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth
, “The loss of a public commons in broadcasting must be counted as one of the great civic and cultural losses of the twentieth century.”
1
We intend to continue combating censorship and propaganda as one means of protecting the human right to knowledge while working to realize an information commons—a true free press.
Together, working for media freedom across the globe, we can create more functional democracies, and, one community at a time, we can help birth a better world for the next generation to inherit. Project Censored engages over thirty colleges and universities in the US as well as activists and scholars in over a dozen countries in the effort to support media freedom. Quite clearly our survival as a species depends upon how successful we all are in this endeavor to foster the rights to information, education, and a free press for all. Here’s to a prosperous, and well-informed tomorrow.
by Mary Lia
The Fair Sharing of the Common Heritage is a social action agenda supported by the Media Freedom Foundation and Project Censored. This global and local grassroots movement supports the mission of Alfred F. and Dorothy Andersen, which is based on one significant idea: every sentient being, human and nonhuman, has a right to the fair share of the material and economic wealth of the Common Heritage.
2
Included in this Common Heritage are all Earth’s natural resources: land surfaces, sub-surface minerals and fuels, water, and air—indeed the entire physical environment. This Heritage wealth
should not be privately owned, especially not by an elite few. It should be held in democratically controlled local, regional, national, and global trusts. The renewable parts (land, water, and air) should be leased out and the income used to distribute financial and other benefits among the earth’s inhabitants.
3
In addition, Common Heritage recognizes the knowledge and inventions created by previous generations. Cyberspace is such an example.
Alfred Andersen and his wife Dorothy have entrusted the Media Freedom Foundation to encourage discourse on the Common Heritage. In 2010, the Foundation began an essay contest for the Fair Sharing of the Common Heritage Award. Entries proposed ways in which the Fair Sharing of the Common Heritage could be accomplished. One proposal, from Alfred F. Andersen himself, was that natural resource extractors could be required to pay the full value of what they take into a Common Heritage fund for all living things.
4
Media Freedom Foundation received twenty-six total nominations. Works varied in topic and scope, ranging from an entry by former US Senator Mike Gravel on citizen power to a creative play written by David Giesen named “Dino on the Line.”
5
In order to judge these diverse works, the Media Freedom Foundation board members used a structured survey and voted two rounds before presenting the results to Dorothy Andersen. Copies of all nominations can be found at the website
www.FairShareCommonHeritage.org
. Two exemplary works by James K. Boyce and Clifford Cobb were chosen to bring the selection process to an exciting close, with the first and second place winners receiving $3500 and $1500, respectively. Five honorable mentions received $100 each, including one to author and longtime activist Mickey Z., who now writes for the Fair Share blog.
University of Massachusetts economics professor James K. Boyce won first place with his paper, “Is Inequality Bad for the Environment?” Boyce supported the idea that by respecting nature’s limits and investing in nature’s wealth, humans can protect and enhance the environment’s ability to sustain our well-being. The way humans interact presently with nature is tied directly to how humans interact with each other. For example, those who are relatively powerful and wealthy typically gain disproportionate benefits from the economic activities that degrade the environment, while those who are relatively
poor and powerless typically bear disproportionate costs. All else equal, wider political and economic inequalities tend to result in higher levels of environmental harm. For this reason, efforts to safeguard the natural environment must include polices that achieve a more equitable distribution of power and wealth in human societies.
6
Second-place winner Clifford Cobb, who hails from San Francisco, offered historical context and some suggestions for how to expand the discourse on the Common Heritage in his article, “Broadening the Movement: A Blueprint for Achieving Social Justice through Sharing Common Heritage.”
7
Cobb explained that efforts to promote the idea of a shared Common Heritage and its assets have so far failed to gain a political constituency. In addition to introducing the philosophical precedents for a Common Heritage, Cobb discussed efforts by Alfred Andersen’s Tom Paine Institute and other groups to propagate the relevant principles. He also illuminated the enormous political obstacles that any policy based on economic justice must contend with.
Cobb made the point that to connect with others in the social justice movement, advocates for sharing common assets should frame their arguments broadly so that they speak to a range of social issues. Indeed, to build a coalition we must develop a new language, just as political theorists in the seventeenth century created a language of “natural rights” in order to justify the growth of property rights. Yet Cobb rightly explained that the modern social justice movement needs to help activists and to understand that their work is related to the issues of the commons. “They will see it [is]to their advantage to make those connections only if a common, inclusive language treats their concerns as central, not peripheral,” noted Cobb. He then quoted journalist Jay Walljasper: “It’s not necessary that everyone adopt the word commons. What matters is that people understand that what we share together (and how we share it) is as important as what we possess individually.”
8
Cobb underscored the idea that “creating a new language of shared connections will almost certainly mean dropping the heavy reliance on the unwieldy metaphor of ‘the commons’ ” for “the problem of language is a more formidable obstacle to political cooperation than is generally recognized.”
9
And yet, coalition-building among groups with diverse interests is possible through the development of inclusive discourses, and by working to understand one another. Today as we ponder issues of the commons, we can almost certainly unite around a common cause: promoting the long-term existence of a beautiful Earth and a vibrant culture.
1
. David Bollier,
Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth
(New York: Routledge, 2002), 148.
2
. The Fair Share of the Common Heritage Mission Statement, May 2011,
http://www.fairsharecommonheritage.org/the-fair-share-of-the-common-heritage-mission-statement/
. See more on this in the “Nature and Technology” section of chapter 4 of this book.
3
. Alfred F. Andersen,
Liberating the Early American Dream: A Way to Transcend the Capitalist/Communist Dilemma Nonviolently
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1985), 145.
4
. Alfred F. Andersen, “Fair Share Capitalism Merits Researching,”
Eugene Oregon Register Guard
, September 9, 1996. Also see more on no-waste [full-cycle] accounting in the “Economy and Fair Exchange” section of chapter 4 of this book.
5
. “Common Heritage Award Nominations,” The Fair Share of the Common Heritage, May 1, 2011,
http://www.fairsharecommonheritage.org/2011/05/01/common-heritage-award-nominations/
.
6
. James K. Boyce, “Is Inequality Bad for the Environment and Bad for Your Health?” Population & Development Program, Hampshire College,
http://popdev.hampshire.edu/sites/popdev/files/uploads/dt/DifferenTakes_08.pdf
.
7
. Clifford Cobb, “Broadening the Movement: A Blueprint for Achieving Social Justice through Sharing Common Heritage,” The Commons San Francisco,
http://www.thecommonssf.org/commons_literature
.
8
. For more on this, see the “Community and Collaboration” section of chapter 4 of this book.
9
. Ibid.