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Woensdag, 18 Juni, 2008

Socialistische Arbeider | Onze heersers kunnen niet dwaas alle mensen alle tijd, Sadie Robinson debatteert. Het idee dat de massamedia onze ideeën controleert is zeer gemeenschappelijke. Volgens deze theorie, doen de media dienst als een soort spuit dat direct propaganda in onze meningen inspuit.

De mensen worden gezien als schapen die de media min of meer unthinkingly volgen. De conclusie is dat wij in aanwezigheid van massapropaganda machteloos zijn die brainwashes ons in naleving.

Deze mening van de media bestaat niet alleen bij de marges van de maatschappij. Het is ook een dominant idee binnen heersende stromingspolitiek. De leidende figuren in alle belangrijkste politieke partijen zien het winnen over de massamedia als sleutel aan het winnen van verkiezingen - eerder dan het hebben van fatsoenlijk beleid dat de gewone mensen konden steunen.

Het begrip dat de media almachtig zijn wordt ook gebruikt om om het even welke betekenis dat de mensen tegen het systeem kunnen weerstand bieden, of dat af te schrijven zij vanaf racistische of seksistische ideeën kunnen worden gewonnen.

Dit alles stelt twee vragen. Who controleert eigenlijk de massamedia? En werkelijk hoeveel invloed heeft het op de ideeënmensen houdt?

Onder kapitalisme wordt de massamedia bezeten door een handvol rijke en krachtige mensen die een deel van de „uitspraakklasse“ - het uiterst kleine aantal mensen bij de bovenkant van de maatschappij vormen die de fabrieken, bureaus en andere werkplaatsen bezitten.

Rupert Murdoch, bijvoorbeeld, bezit meer dan 175 drukpublicaties over de wereld, met inbegrip van de Zon, The Times en het Nieuws hier van de Wereld in Groot-Brittannië.

Status-quo

De uitspraakklasse heeft een duidelijke rente in het bevorderen van ideeën die de status-quo rechtvaardigen en het globale systeem onderschrijven het waarvan profiteert. Dat is waarom er zo vele duidelijke instanties van de massamedia die propaganda namens de werkgevers duwen zijn.

In 2002 en 2003, toen Groot-Brittannië en de V.S. aan loonoorlog op Irak voorbereidingen troffen, de krant van de Zon zich pagina's gaf aan het detailleren van over hoe de beweerde „wapens van Saddam Hussein van massavernietiging“ Britse troepen in Cyprus binnen 45 minuten konden raken na wordt in brand gestoken.

Het of negeerde of viel anti-war activisten aan en verstrekt „steun onze jongens“ affiches voor lezers aan vertoning in hun vensters.

But media bias towards the ruling class can also be seen in less extreme times. After the National Union of Teachers (NUT) conference earlier this year sections of the media ran hysterical articles condemning the teachers’ decision to strike over pay and conditions.

The Daily Telegraph declared that it was “time to crush the NUT like the miners” – referring to the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85.

This bias goes wider than simply attacking strikers or building support for war. The mass media operates within an ideological framework that accepts and promotes the dominant ideas in society – such as the idea that capitalism is the only way to organise society.

The bias does not exist only in the openly right wing media, but also in media outlets that pride themselves on being “neutral” or “liberal”.

The Guardian newspaper recently ran a week-long series of articles on the global food crisis. This was presented as in-depth, serious analysis. Yet it reiterated some of the worst myths about the food crisis, myths that would rather blame the Chinese for eating too much meat than suggest there might be something wrong with the free market.

The revolutionaries Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in the 19th century that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas”. But this doesn’t arise out of some kind of shady conspiracy within the ruling class.

It’s true that owners sometimes intervene directly in the running of their media franchises. Murdoch is well known for regularly intervening in the editorial decisions of the Sun newspaper.

In May this year Murdoch was asked if he had anything to do with the New York Post’s support for Barack Obama in the US Democratic presidential run off. He answered simply, “Yes.”

Assumptions

But for the most part owners rely on well-paid senior managers and editors who are closely tied to the capitalist class and so share their assumptions and ideas about the world.

If the mass media is owned by an elite that tries to use it to back up their system, how do we explain political differences in the message put out by different media outlets? The point here is that the ruling class is not a homogenous group. There are divisions within it – and the media reflects these.

The Daily Mirror’s stance in the run up to the Iraq war is a good example of this. It took an anti-war position in the context of divisions among the ruling class and an unprecedented mass movement against the war. So it reflected the fact that the ruling class was divided – but it also knew that there was an audience for an anti-war newspaper.

The profit motive can sometimes pull the mass media in different directions and make it appear that it is posing a challenge to the dominant ideology.

For instance, the Daily Mail has recently run several front pages on the rising cost of living in Britain. These rising costs are real. But the Daily Mail’s explanation for them is one that diverts people’s anger away from the bosses and towards immigrants.

Although the ruling class owns the mass media, it does not always completely control it.

The media needs workers to get produced in the first place. And media workers can and have refused to produce some of the worst excesses of racism and anti-union propaganda.

In 2006, workers at the Daily Star prevented the printing of an anti-Muslim page titled, “How Britain’s fave newspaper would look under Muslim rule.” Planned features included “Burqa Babes” and a “censored” editorial.

Workers in the National Union of Journalists called an emergency meeting and forced the Daily Star management to pull the page.

Similarly, during the Miners’ Strike printers at the Sun refused to print a front page of miners’ leader Arthur Scargill that made him look as if he was giving a Nazi salute.

How much notice do people really take of the mass media? It is certainly important as a major source of information and news for many people.

So it isn’t true to suggest that the media has no influence on people’s ideas. But the way our ideas are shaped by the media is much more complex than the simplistic “syringe” theory.

Our consciousness is shaped by our experiences of the world. Marx and Engels argued, “Consciousness does not determine life, but life consciousness.” People’s ideas are shaped by the material reality of their lives.

The majority of people that the mass media is sold and marketed to are working class. There is a huge gulf between the reality of their lives and the dominant ideology of capitalism. That gap can open up a space for that ideology to be questioned, challenged or rejected.

In the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, 96 people were killed after police allowed too many Liverpool football fans into overcrowded terraces.

The Sun newspaper ran a front page condemning the fans, claiming that they were drunken hooligans who stole from the dead. In fact the fans were key to helping the injured.

The scandal of the Sun’s coverage led to a boycott of the paper by newsagents across Liverpool. Sales plummeted and have never recovered. In 2004, the average circulation for the Sun in Liverpool was 12,000 copies a day – 200,000 less than before it printed the Hillsborough story.

Yet the dominant ideology remains and is promoted not just by the media, but by all of the major institutions in our society – including the education system and the legal system.

This leads to a situation where people hold contradictory ideas. People can have anti-immigrant opinions, but also support anti-deportation campaigns that involve someone they know personally.

Although people may reject obvious propaganda in the media, over time it can have an impact in generating racist or sexist assumptions. The mass media can reinforce backward ideas and it’s important that we challenge this.

But the mass media is not the fundamental reason why bigotry persists. Racism and sexism exist because of the kind of society that we live in.

Ideology

They form part of the dominant ideology of our society because the ruling class uses such ideas to divide and weaken the working class – and thereby preserve ruling class power.

Faced with ruling class bias in the mass media, many people turn to “alternative” sources of media. This is a positive development. Anti-war websites or other alternative media outlets can give people the facts and figures to argue their case with others. They can increase their understanding of the world and their confidence to fight back.

Revolutionaries have always seen producing socialist newspapers such as Socialist Worker as important.

But we recognise that these papers should do more than challenge the ideology of the ruling class – they should act as a tool for organising the struggle against the system.

The Russian revolutionary Lenin described the revolutionary paper as the “scaffolding” around which a revolutionary organisation is built. The scaffolding is clearly important. But it is there for a reason – to build up networks and organisation of people on the ground who can take on the system.

Research has found that the mass media has the biggest impact on those with no political affiliation. The mass media is most powerful when people are politically passive. Building resistance to capitalism can lead millions to question dominant ideas – and can see the power of that mass media melt away.

See More:UK News 

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 3:18 pm and is filed under Contributions & Guests, Media News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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