“War is not meant to be won but is actually continuous. It is raised by the ruling group over its subject. War functions not to destroy but to keep the very structure of society intact.”
George Orwell’s words only echoes the Propaganda Model of Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their book “Manufacturing Consent the Political Economy of the Mass Media” which was published by Pantheon Books in 1988. In their study, Mass Media takes into the same structural function of war as it “socialize individuals into dominant norms of society.” Media then takes a “socializing role” in the form of propaganda “in any society that is characterized by systematic disparities of wealth and power.” War can be seen as, just like media erroneously allows, “pervasive misrepresentation of unequal and exploitative social relationships”
Under the Propaganda theory, “mass media is more insidious and much harder to see in societies like the United States where mass media systems are not run by the state; where they are run as private businesses; and where the press often stands in an adversarial relationship with the state and, less frequently, with corporate power (Chomsky & Herman, 1988.)
The documentary, Farenheit 9/11 clearly exposed the “institutional relationship” between mass media, the government and the corporate sphere. Director Michael Moore erased doubts on whether or not US President Bush did manipulate the media in his War on Terrorism and use it as a tool to represent his elite business linkage. Effectively using the propaganda theory, Moore traced the “routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across the public (Chomsky & Herman, 1988.)
The documentary depicted how George W. Bush, then son of US President H.W Bush, first owned an oil drilling company in West Texas, Arbusto Limited and soon became a board member of Harken Energy Corporation. Nothing could be thought of as amiss there if not for the investor of the companies who is Major James R. Bath, the Texas money manager for the Bin Ladens, one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia. The family of Osamma Bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11 tragedy.
The “friendship” of the Bush and the Bin Ladens did not end there. In fact, former President H.W. Bush became one of the board members of the Carlyle Group, which owns the United Defense, one of the largest defense contractors. A chilling detail neglected by many Americans is that the Bin Ladens are big time investors of the said group. With the Bradley arms vehicle, “September 11 guaranteed Carlyle Group and the Bin Ladens a good year (Moore, 2004).”
The Propaganda model poses that information is actually controlled or “filtered” wherein those information deemed by the ruling class appropriate are allowed to “trickle to the masses” or in layman’s terms these are what passes for circulation. The first filter is the “size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass media firms.(p.180)” The supposedly independent media has after all, its own “control groups” through board directors and social links. These investor holdings, individually and collectively, do not convey control, but these large investors can make themselves heard. (1988, p. 182) Farenheit 9/11 started with how Bush social links, how advantageous it is for his electoral campaign to have his 1st cousin John Hallis at Fox network. It was Fox network that started the trend whereupon, other networks soon followed suit, that Bush topped the polls and would win the election (Moore, 2004).
Advertising serves as the second filter of media. However, advertising gives in to the ugly reality that firms, being very profit-oriented, would not spend much on the poor since they do not wield buying power. “The working class and radical media also suffer from the political discrimination of advertisers.” Often, the voice of the minorities, the disadvantaged in the society is ignored since “firms refuse to patronize ideological enemies and those whom they perceive as damaging their interests (1988, p.184). In the documentary, it was shown how those financially disadvantaged families would send their kids to military school as they could not afford to pay for the expenses of a normal university. Moore puts it aptly: “I’ve always been amazed by the fact that the very people forced to live in the worst part of towns, go to the worst school and those who have it the hardest, are the first to step up to defend that very system.” A number of these kids, mostly coming from minority families, died in the Iraq war. And yet it would be disheartening to note that, the American media rarely covered the death of these American heroes.
What is targeted always is the market that will be deluded into buying. After September 11, many news programs showed a lot of “new products” that emerged. These products catered to the terror-stricken needs of America. There was the promotional video from Zytech Engineering selling a “safe room”, one that is needed, according to the advertisement, “of every family in America to prepare itself for a terrorist attack.(Moore,2004)”
The third filter focuses on the “principle of bureaucratic affinity”. Since media would always want to use “official sources” the State already gains advantage then in being able to select the kind of data they want the public to take into consideration. “In effect, the citizenry pays to be propagandized in the interest of powerful groups such as military contractors and other sponsors of state terrorism. (1988, p.186)”
How did Bush managed to convince the Americans to accept his War on Terrorism? Simply by creating an aura of endless threat as aggressively depicted by the media in Fox, CNN and CBS news. Terror alerts, threats of poisoned pens, frequent warnings were all but disseminated to the city to small towns of America. “Fear does work. You can make people do anything if they are afraid,” Congressman and psychiatrist Jim Mcdermott said (Moore, 2004). It would be easy to feed the public “whoppers” then and one can make believe that Iraq purported hoards weapons of mass destructions then to justify the Iraq war.
The anticommunism filter is given another name in Fahrenehit 9/11. It is the War on Terrorism ideology that serves as a “control mechanism” and serves only to streamline policy that would satisfy the interest of those that would profit in the war. Everyone felt it was okay to sacrifice some of their rights in order to feel safe. While big investors, Carlyle Group, Halliburton, Microsoft, DHL, Innovations Inc. meet and talk about how they could make money with the war. The invasion in Iraq was not really about, freeing the Iraqis from the regime of terror by Saddam Hussein or saving the world from weapons of mass destruction. It was all about the oil. “While the oil starts flowing. It’s gonna get better. Start building relationship. The good news is the government will pay you,” said Youssef Sleiman of Harris Corporation ( Moore, 2004).
War is definitely good for companies in the business of war. Bush was able to effectively make use of the media using the propaganda theory to manipulate the minds of Americans. Moore’s documentary can be certainly considered as anti-American. Indeed, if being an American, according to Bush’s dictionary, is being duped into consenting to his war.
Note: I hope I won’t get in trouble sa Friendster for this ha! Hehe.
