9781529944389

NOAM CHOMSKY & EDWARD S. HERMAN MANUFACTURING CONSENT

The Political Economy of the Mass Media

‘A compelling indictment of the news media’s role in covering up errors and deceptions in American foreign policy’ New York Times Book Review

EX LIBRIS

VINTAGE CLASSICS

EDWARD S. HERMAN

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) was an American economist and media analyst with a speciality in corporate and regulatory issues, as well as political economy and the media. He was Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and co-authored two other books with Noam Chomsky, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism and After the Cataclysm.

NOAM CHOMSKY

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor (emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. He is the author of numerous bestselling political works, including The Essential Chomsky and Deterring Democracy.

BY THE SAME AUTHORS

The Political Economy of Human Rights: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism

The Political Economy of Human Rights 2: After the Cataclysm

EDWARD S. HERMAN AND NOAM CHOMSKY MANUFACTURING CONSENT

The Political Economy of the Mass Media

wi TH A n A f TER w OR d BY Edward S. Herman

Vintage Classics is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies

Vintage, Penguin Random House UK, One Embassy Gardens, 8 Viaduct Gardens, London SW11 7BW

penguin.co.uk/vintage-classics global.penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright © Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky 1988 Introduction © Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky 2002 Afterword © Edward S. Herman 2008

The moral right of the authors has been asserted

First published in the United States of America by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto in 1988 First published in Great Britain by the Bodley Head in 2008 This paperback published in Vintage Classics in 2025

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. In accordance with Article 4(3) of the DSM Directive 2019/790, Penguin Random House expressly reserves this work from the text and data mining exception.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781529944389

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

The authorised representative in the EEA is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH68

Penguin Random House is committed to a sustainable future for our business, our readers and our planet. This book is made from Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.

TO THE MEMORY OF ALEX CAREY AND

HERBERT I. SCHILLER

The Iran-contra scandals were blamed on the President’s easygoing habits, though the people had every opportunity to know this was his way ofdoing things or not doing before they put him in the White House, not once but twice.

James Reston

They who have put out the people’s eyes, reproach them oftheir blindness.

John Milton

The KGB-Bulgarian Plot to Kill the Pope: Free-Market Disinformation as “News”

Mainstream Media Usage of“Genocide” for Kosovo, East Timor, Turkey, and Iraq xxi

1–1Financial Data for Twenty-four Large Media Corporations (or Their Parent Firms), December 1986 6

1–2Wealth ofthe Control Groups ofTwenty-four Large Media Corporations (or Their Parent Companies), February 19869

1–3Affiliations ofthe Outside Directors ofTen Large Media Companies (or Their Parents) in 1986 11

1–4Experts on Terrorism and Defense on the “McNeil-Lehrer News Hour,” January 14, 1985, to January 27, 1986 24

2–1Mass-Media Coverage ofWorthy and Unworthy Victims (1): A Murdered Polish Priest versus One Hundred Murdered Religious in Latin America 38

2–2The Savageries Inflicted on Worthy and Unworthy Victims, as Depicted in the New York Times 41

2–3Mass-Media Coverage ofWorthy and Unworthy Victims (2): A Murdered Polish Priest versus Two Murdered Officials ofthe Guatemalan Mutual Support Group 79

3–1Topics Included and Excluded in the New York Times’s Coverage ofthe Salvadoran Election ofMarch 25, 1984123

3–2Topics Included and Excluded in the New York Times’s Coverage ofthe Nicaraguan Election Planned for November 4, 1984 125

3–3Topics Included and Excluded in the New York Times’s Coverage ofthe Nicaraguan Election ofNovember 4, 1984126

Introduction to the 2002 Edition

This book centers in what we call a “Propaganda model,” an analytical framework that attempts to explain the performance ofthe U.S. media in terms ofthe basic institutional structures and relationships within which they operate. It is our view that, among their other functions, the media serve, and propagandize on behalfof, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them. The representatives ofthese interests have important agendas and principles that they want to advance, and they are well positioned to shape and constrain media policy. This is normally not accomplished by crude intervention, but by the selection ofright-thinking personnel and by the editors’ and working journalists’ internalization of priorities and definitions ofnewsworthiness that conform to the institution’s policy.

Structural factors are those such as ownership and control, dependence on other major funding sources (notably, advertisers), and mutual interests and relationships between the media and those who make the news and have the power to define it and explain what it means. The propaganda model also incorporates other closely related factors such as the ability to complain about the media’s treatment ofnews (that is, produce “flak”), to provide “experts” to confirm the official slant on the news, and to fix the basic principles and ideologies that are taken for granted by media personnel and the elite, but are often resisted by the general population.1 In our view, the same underlying power sources that own the media and fund them as advertisers, that serve as primary definers ofthe news, and that produce flak and proper-thinking experts, also play a key role in fixing basic principles and the dominant ideologies. We

believe that what journalists do, what they see as newsworthy, and what they take for granted as premises oftheir work are frequently well explained by the incentives, pressures, and constraints incorporated into such a structural analysis.

These structural factors that dominate media operations are not allcontrolling and do not always produce simple and homogeneous results. It is well recognized, and may even be said to constitute a part ofan institutional critique such as we present in this volume, that the various parts ofmedia organizations have some limited autonomy, that individual and professional values influence media work, that policy is imperfectly enforced, and that media policy itselfmay allow some measure ofdissent and reporting that calls into question the accepted viewpoint. These considerations all work to assure some dissent and coverage ofinconvenient facts.2 The beauty ofthe system, however, is that such dissent and inconvenient information are kept within bounds and at the margins, so that while their presence shows that the system is not monolithic, they are not large enough to interfere unduly with the domination ofthe official agenda.

It should also be noted that we are talking about media structure and performance, not the effects ofthe media on the public. Certainly, the media’s adherence to an official agenda with little dissent is likely to influence public opinion in the desired direction, but this is a matter ofdegree, and where the public’s interests diverge sharply from that ofthe elite, and where they have their own independent sources ofinformation, the official line may be widely doubted. The point that we want to stress here, however, is that the propaganda model describes forces that shape what the media does; it does not imply that any propaganda emanating from the media is always effective.

Although now more than a dozen years old, both the propaganda model and the case studies presented with it in the first edition ofthis book have held up remarkably well.3 The purpose ofthis new Introduction is to update the model, add some materials to supplement the case studies already in place (and left intact in the chapters that follow), and finally, to point out the possible applicability ofthe model to a number ofissues under current or recent debate.

UPDATING THE PROPAGANDA MODEL

The propaganda model, spelled out in detail in chapter 1, explains the broad sweep ofthe mainstream media’s behavior and performance by their corporate character and integration into the political economy ofthe dominant

economic system. For this reason, we focused heavily on the rise in scale ofmedia enterprise, the media’s gradual centralization and concentration, the growth ofmedia conglomerates that control many different kinds of media (motion picture studios, TVnetworks, cable channels, magazines, and book publishing houses), and the spread ofthe media across borders in a globalization process. We also noted the gradual displacement offamily control by professional managers serving a wider array ofowners and more closely subject to market discipline.

All ofthese trends, and greater competition for advertising across media boundaries, have continued and strengthened over the past dozen years, making for an intensified bottom-line orientation. Thus, centralization ofthe media in a shrinking number ofvery large firms has accelerated, virtually unopposed by Republican and Democratic administrations and regulatory authority. Ben Bagdikian notes that when the first edition ofhis Media Monopoly was published in 1983, fifty giant firms dominated almost every mass medium; but just seven years later, in 1990, only twenty-three firms occupied the same commanding position.4

Since 1990, a wave ofmassive deals and rapid globalization have left the media industries further centralized in nine transnational conglomerates— Disney, AOLTime Warner, Viacom (owner ofCBS), News Corporation, Bertelsmann, General Electric (owner ofNBC), Sony, AT&T–Liberty Media, and Vivendi Universal. These giants own all the world’s major film studios, TVnetworks, and music companies, and a sizable fraction ofthe most important cable channels, cable systems, magazines, major-market TVstations, and book publishers. The largest, the recently merged AOLTime Warner, has integrated the leading Internet portal into the traditional media system. Another fifteen firms round out the system, meaning that two dozen firms control nearly the entirety ofmedia experienced by most U.S. citizens. Bagdikian concludes that “it is the overwhelming collective power ofthese firms, with their corporate interlocks and unified cultural and political values, that raises troubling questions about the individual’s role in the American democracy.”5

Ofthe nine giants that now dominate the media universe, all but General Electric have extensively conglomerated within the media, and are important in both producing content and distributing it. Four of them—Disney, AOLTime Warner, Viacom, and News Corporation— produce movies, books, magazines, newspapers, TVprograms, music, videos, toys, and theme parks, among other things; and they have extensive distribution facilities via broadcasting and cable ownership, retail stores, and movie-theater chains. They also provide news and occasional investigative reports and documentaries that address political issues, but

the leaders ofthese pop-cultural behemoths are mainly interested in entertainment, which produces large audiences with shows like ABC TV’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and CBS-TV’s Survivor , or with movies like Disney’s Lion King that also make possible the cross-selling “synergies” that are a focal point oftheir attention and resources.

Important branches ofthe media such as movies and books have had substantial global markets for many years, but only in the past two decades has a global media system come into being that is having major effects on national media systems, culture, and politics.6 It has been fueled by the globalization ofbusiness more generally, the associated rapid growth of global advertising, and improved communications technology that has facilitated cross-border operations and control. It has also been helped along by government policy and the consolidation ofneoliberal ideology. The United States and other Western governments have pressed the interests oftheir home-country firms eager to expand abroad, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have done the same, striving with considerable success to enlarge transnational corporate access to media markets across the globe. Neoliberal ideology has provided the intellectual rationale for policies that have opened up the ownership ofbroadcasting stations and cable and satellite systems to private transnational investors.

The culture and ideology fostered in this globalization process relate largely to “lifestyle” themes and goods and their acquisition; and they tend to weaken any sense ofcommunity helpful to civic life. Robert McChesney notes that “the hallmark ofthe global media system is its relentless, ubiquitous commercialism.”7 Shopping channels, “infomercials,” and product placement are booming in the global media system. McChesney adds that “it should come as no surprise that account after account in the late 1990s documents the fascination, even the obsession, ofthe world’s middle class youth with consumer brands and products.”8 The global media’s “news” attention in recent years, aside from reporting on crusades such as “Operation Allied Force” (the NATOwar against Yugoslavia) and on national elections, has been inordinately directed to sensationalism, as in their obsessive focus on the O. J. Simpson trial, the Lewinsky scandal, and the deaths oftwo ofthe West’s supercelebrities, Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy, Jr.

Globalization, along with deregulation and national budgetary pressures, has also helped reduce the importance ofnoncommercial media in country after country. This has been especially important in Europe and Asia, where public broadcasting systems were dominant (in contrast with the United States and Latin America). The financial pressures on public broadcasters has forced them to shrink or emulate the commercial systems in fund-raising

and programming, and some have been fully commercialized by policy change or privatization. The global balance ofpower has shifted decisively toward commercial systems. James Ledbetter points out that in the United States, under incessant right-wing political pressure and financial stringency, “the 90s have seen a tidal wave ofcommercialism overtake public broadcasting,” with public broadcasters “rushing as fast as they can to merge their services with those offered by commercial networks.”9 And in the process ofwhat Ledbetter calls the “malling” ofpublic broadcasting, its already modest differences from the commercial networks have almost disappeared. Most important, in their programming “they share either the avoidance or the defanging ofcontemporary political controversy, the kind that would bring trouble from powerful patrons.”10

Some argue that the Internet and the new communications technologies are breaking the corporate stranglehold on journalism and opening an unprecedented era ofinteractive democratic media. And it is true and important that the Internet has increased the efficiency and scope of individual and group networking. This has enabled people to escape the mainstream media’s constraints in many and diverse cases. Japanese women have been able to tap newly created Web sites devoted to their problems, where they can talk and share experiences and information with their peers and obtain expert advice on business, financial, and personal matters. 11 Chiapas resisters against abuse by the Mexican army and government were able to mobilize an international support base in 1995 to help them publicize their grievances and put pressure on the Mexican government to change its policies in the region.12 The enlarged ability ofBolivian peasants protesting against World Bank privatization programs and user fees for water in 2000, and Indonesian students taking to the streets against the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia in 1998, to communicate through the Internet produced a level ofpublicity and global attention that had important consequences: Bechtel Corporation, owner ofthe newly privatized water system in Bolivia that had quickly doubled water rates, backed offand the privatization sale was rescinded; the protests and associated publicity, along with the 1998 financial crisis, helped drive Suharto from office.13

Broader protest movements have also benefited from Internet-based communication. When the leading members ofthe World Trade Organization (WTO) attempted in 1998 to push through in secret a Multilateral Agreement on Investment that would have protected further the rights ofinternational investors as against the rights ofdemocratic bodies within states, the Internet was extremely valuable in alerting opposition forces to the threat and helping mobilize an opposition that prevented

acceptance ofthis agreement.14 Similarly, in the protest actions against the WTOmeetings in Seattle in November 1999 and the IMFand World Bank annual gatherings in Washington, D.C., in April 2000, communication via the Internet played an important role both in organizing the protests and in disseminating information on the events themselves that countered the mainstream media’s hostile portrayal ofthese protests.15

However, although the Internet has been a valuable addition to the communications arsenal ofdissidents and protesters, it has limitations as a critical tool. For one thing, those whose information needs are most acute are not well served by the Internet—many lack access, its databases are not designed to meet their needs, and the use ofdatabases (and effective use ofthe Internet in general) presupposes knowledge and organization. The Internet is not an instrument ofmass communication for those lacking brand names, an already existing large audience, and/or large resources. Only sizable commercial organizations have been able to make large numbers aware ofthe existence oftheir Internet offerings. The privatization ofthe Internet’s hardware, the rapid commercialization and concentration of Internet portals and servers and their integration into non-Internet conglomerates—the AOL–Time Warner merger was a giant step in that direction—and the private and concentrated control ofthe new broadband technology, together threaten to limit any future prospects ofthe Internet as a democratic media vehicle.

The past few years have witnessed a rapid penetration ofthe Internet by the leading newspapers and media conglomerates, all fearful ofbeing outflanked by small pioneer users ofthe new technology, and willing (and able) to accept losses for years while testing out these new waters. Anxious to reduce these losses, however, and with advertisers leery ofthe value ofspending in a medium characterized by excessive audience control and rapid surfing, the large media entrants into the Internet have gravitated to making familiar compromises—more attention to selling goods, cutting back on news, and providing features immediately attractive to audiences and advertisers. The Boston Globe (a subsidiary ofthe New York Times) and the Washington Post are offering e-commerce goods and services; and Ledbetter notes that “it’s troubling that none ofthe newspaper portals feels that quality journalism is at the center ofits strategy... because journalism doesn’t help you sell things.”16 Former New York Times editor Max Frankel says that the more newspapers pursue Internet audiences, “the more will sex, sports, violence, and comedy appear on their menus, slighting, ifnot altogether ignoring, the news offoreign wars or welfare reform.”17

New technologies are mainly introduced to meet corporate needs, and

those ofrecent years have permitted media firms to shrink staffeven as they achieve greater outputs, and they have made possible global distribution systems that reduce the number ofmedia entities. The audience “interaction” facilitated by advancing interactive capabilities mainly help audience members to shop, but they also allow media firms to collect detailed information on their audiences, and thus to fine-tune program features and ads to individual characteristics as well as to sell by a click during programs. Along with reducing privacy, this should intensify commercialization.

In short, the changes in politics and communication over the past dozen years have tended on balance to enhance the applicability ofthe propaganda model. The increase in corporate power and global reach, the mergers and further centralization ofthe media, and the decline ofpublic broadcasting, have made bottom-line considerations more influential both in the United States and abroad. The competition for advertising has become more intense and the boundaries between editorial and advertising departments have weakened further. Newsrooms have been more thoroughly incorporated into transnational corporate empires, with budget cuts and a further diminution ofmanagement enthusiasm for investigative journalism that would challenge the structures ofpower.

Over the past dozen years, sourcing and flak have also strengthened as mechanisms ofelite influence. Media centralization and the reduction in the resources devoted to journalism have made the media more dependent than ever on the primary definers who both make the news and subsidize the media by providing accessible and cheap copy. They now have greater leverage over the media, and the public relations firms working for these and other powerful interests also bulk larger as media sources. Alex Carey, Stuart Ewen, John Stauber, and Sheldon Rampton have helped us see how the public relations industry has been able to utilize journalistic conventions to serve its—and its corporate clients’—ends.18 Studies ofnews sources reveal that a significant proportion ofnews originates in public relations releases. There are, by one count, 20,000 more public relations agents working to doctor the news today than there are journalists writing it.19

The force ofanti-communist ideology has possibly weakened with the collapse ofthe Soviet Union and the virtual disappearance ofsocialist movements across the globe, but this is easily offset by the greater ideological force ofthe beliefin the “miracle ofthe market” (Reagan). The triumph ofcapitalism and the increasing power ofthose with an interest in privatization and market rule have strengthened the grip ofmarket ideology, at least among the elite, so that regardless ofevidence, markets are assumed to be benevolent and even democratic (“market populism”

in Thomas Frank’s phrase) and nonmarket mechanisms are suspect, although exceptions are allowed when private firms need subsidies, bailouts, and government help in doing business abroad. When the Soviet economy stagnated in the 1980s, it was attributed to the absence ofmarkets; when capitalist Russia disintegrated in the 1990s, this was blamed not on the now ruling market but on politicians’ and workers’ failure to let markets work their magic.20 Journalism has internalized this ideology. Adding it to the residual power ofanticommunism in a world in which the global power ofmarket institutions makes nonmarket options seem utopian gives us an ideological package ofimmense strength.

These changes, which have strengthened the applicability ofthe propaganda model, have seriously weakened the “public sphere,” which refers to the array ofplaces and forums in which matters important to a democratic community are debated and information relevant to intelligent citizen participation is provided. The steady advance, and cultural power, of marketing and advertising has caused “the displacement ofa political public sphere by a depoliticized consumer culture.” 21 And it has had the effect of creating a world ofvirtual communities built by advertisers and based on demographics and taste differences ofconsumers. These consumption- and style-based clusters are at odds with physical communities that share a social life and common concerns and which participate in a democratic order.22 These virtual communities are organized to buy and sell goods, not to create or service a public sphere.

Advertisers don’t like the public sphere, where audiences are relatively small, upsetting controversy takes place, and the settings are not ideal for selling goods. Their preference for entertainment underlies the gradual erosion ofthe public sphere under systems ofcommercial media, well exemplified in the history ofbroadcasting in the United States over the past seventy-five years.23 But entertainment has the merit not only ofbeing better suited to helping sell goods; it is an effective vehicle for hidden ideological messages.24 Furthermore, in a system ofhigh and growing inequality, entertainment is the contemporary equivalent ofthe Roman “games ofthe circus” that diverts the public from politics and generates a political apathy that is helpful to preservation ofthe status quo.

It would be a mistake to conclude from the fact that the public buys and watches the offerings ofthe increasingly commercialized media that the gradual erosion ofthe public sphere reflects the preferences and free choices ofthe public either as citizens or consumers. The citizenry was never given the opportunity to approve or disapprove the wholesale transfer ofbroadcasting rights to commercial interests back in 1934,25 and

the pledge made by those interests, and subsequently by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) itself, that public service offerings would never be buried in favor ofthe entertainment preferred by advertisers, was never fulfilled.26 The public is not sovereign over the media— the owners and managers, seeking ads, decide what is to be offered, and the public must choose among these. People watch and read in good part on the basis ofwhat is readily available and intensively promoted. Polls regularly show that the public would like more news, documentaries, and other information, and less sex, violence, and other entertainment, even as they do listen to and watch the latter. There is little reason to believe that they would not like to understand why they are working harder with stagnant or declining incomes, have inadequate medical care at high costs, and what is being done in their name all over the world. Ifthey are not getting much information on these topics, the propaganda model can explain why: the sovereigns who control the media choose not to offer such material.

UPDATING THE CASE STUDIES

In the case studies presented in chapters 2 through 6, we examine the differences in treatment ofsituations broadly similar in character, except for the political and economic interests at stake. Our expectation is that news as well as editorial opinion will be strongly influenced by those interests and should display a predictable bias. We would anticipate, for example, that an election held by a client-state government favored by U.S. officials would be treated differently by the media than an election held by a government that U.S. officials oppose. It is seen in chapter 3 that in the important elections analyzed there this dichotomous treatment and bias was displayed to an extraordinary degree.

WORTHY AND UNWORTHY VICTIMS

In chapter 2, we compare the media’s treatment ofvictims ofenemy states and those ofthe United States and U.S. client states. Our prediction is that the victims ofenemy states will be found “worthy” and will be subject to more intense and indignant coverage than those victimized by the United States or its clients, who are implicitly “unworthy.” It is shown in chapter 2 that a 1984 victim ofthe Polish Communists, the priest Jerzy Popieluszko, not only received far more coverage than Archbishop Oscar Romero,

murdered in the U.S. client-state El Salvador in 1980; he was given more coverage than the aggregate ofone hundred religious victims killed in U.S. client states, although eight ofthose victims were U.S. citizens.

This bias is politically advantageous to U.S. policy-makers, for focusing on victims ofenemy states shows those states to be wicked and deserving ofU.S. hostility; while ignoring U.S. and client-state victims allows ongoing U.S. policies to proceed more easily, unburdened by the interference of concern over the politically inconvenient victims. It is not a credible reply that difficulty in getting evidence on “unworthy” victims can account for the application ofsuch a gross double standard, as an alternative press with meager resources has been able to gather a great deal ofmaterial on their mistreatment from highly credible sources, such as major human rights organizations and church representatives.27 Furthermore, only political factors can explain the differences in quality oftreatment ofworthy and unworthy victims noted throughout this book, illustrated in chapter 2 by the more antiseptic reporting ofthe abuse ofunworthy victims (even U.S. women raped and murdered in El Salvador) and the greater indignation and search for responsibility at the top in the case ofworthy victims.

That the same massive political bias displayed earlier in the coverage of Popieluszko and the hundred religious victims in Latin America continues today is suggested by the media’s usage ofthe word “genocide” in the 1990s, as shown in the accompanying table. “Genocide” is an invidious word that officials apply readily to cases ofvictimization in enemy states, but rarely ifever to similar or worse cases ofvictimization by the United States itself or allied regimes. Thus, with Saddam Hussein and Iraq having been U.S. targets in the 1990s, whereas Turkey has been an ally and client and the United States its major arms supplier as it engaged in its severe ethnic cleansing ofKurds during those years, we find former U.S. Ambassador Peter Galbraith stating that “while Turkey represses its own Kurds, its cooperation is essential to an American-led mission to protect Iraq’s Kurds from renewed genocide at the hands ofSaddam Hussein.”28 Turkey’s treatment ofits Kurds was in no way less murderous than Iraq’s treatment ofIraqi Kurds, but for Galbraith, Turkey only “represses,” while Iraq engages in “genocide.”

The table shows that the five major print media surveyed engage in a similar biased usage, frequently using “genocide” to describe victimization in the enemy states, but applying the word far less frequently to equally severe victimization carried out by the United States or its allies and clients. We can even read who are U.S. friends and enemies from the media’s use ofthe word. Thus, with the United States and its NATOallies warring

Mainstream Media Usage of “Genocide” for Kosovo, East Timor, Turkey, and Iraq 1

1. NO. OF TIMES 2. NO. OF EDS,/3. NEWS 4. FRONT WORD APPLIEDOP-EDS DOING ARTICLESPAGE TO SERBS,THE SAME TURKS, ETC.2

COUNTRIES/DATES

1. Serbs/Kosovo220

1998–1999

2. Indonesia/East Timor,33 7

1990–1999

3. Turkey/Kurds,14

1990–1999

4. Iraq/Kurds, 132

1990–1999

5. Iraq Sanctions,18 1

1991–1999

1.Mainstream media used in this tabulation, based on a Nexus database search,were the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, and Time 2.The numbers in columns 2 and 3 do not add up to the total in column 1, which also includes letters, “World Briefings,” and summary items.

against Yugoslavia in 1999, allegedly in response to that country’s mistreatment ofthe Kosovo Albanians, official denunciations ofthat mistreatment flowed through the media, along with the repeated designation ofthe abuses as “genocidal.” The same pattern applies to the Iraqi regime’s abuse ofits Kurdish population—after it had ceased to be a U.S. ally29—an enemy state, official denunciations, harsh sanctions, and parallel media treatment.

On the other hand, Turkey and Indonesia have long been U.S. allies and client states and recipients ofmilitary and economic aid. In consequence, and just as the propaganda model would predict, the media not only gave minimal attention to the severe abuse ofthe Kurds by Turkey throughout the 1990s, and to the Clinton administration’s lavish help to Turkey’s implementation ofthat ethnic-cleansing program, they rarely applied the word “genocide” to these Turkish operations.

Similarly, the word was not often applied to the Indonesian mistreatment ofthe East Timorese, who were subjected to another wave ofterror as

Indonesia tried to prevent or defeat a U.N.-sponsored referendum on independence in 1999. The United States, after helping Suharto take power in 1965 in one ofthe great bloodbaths ofthe twentieth century,30 and after supporting his dictatorship for thirty-two years, also gave him crucial military and diplomatic aid when he invaded and occupied East Timor from 1975.31 In 1999, as Indonesia attempted to prevent the independence referendum in East Timor by violence, the United States maintained its military aid programs and refused to intervene to stop the killing, on the ground that what is happening “is the responsibility ofthe government ofIndonesia, and we don’t want to take that responsibility away from them” (as stated by Defense Secretary William Cohen in a press conference ofSeptember 8, 1999). This was long after Indonesia had killed thousands and destroyed much ofEast Timor. Shortly thereafter, under considerable international pressure, the United States invited Indonesia to leave the devastated country.

We have shown elsewhere that in 1975 and later the U.S. media treated the East Timorese as unworthy victims, saving their attention and indignation for the almost simultaneous killings under Pol Pot in Cambodia. The victims ofPol Pot, a Communist leader, were worthy, although after he was ousted by the Vietnamese in 1978, Cambodians ceased to be worthy, as U.S. policy shifted toward support ofPol Pot in exile.32 The East Timorese remained unworthy in the 1990s, as the table suggests.

As the leader ofthe faction insisting on harsh sanctions against Iraq following the 1991 Persian GulfWar, the United States itselfwas responsible for a very large number ofIraqi civilians deaths in the 1990s. John and Karl Mueller assert that these “sanctions ofmass destruction” have caused the deaths of“more people in Iraq than have been slain by all socalled weapons ofmass destruction [nuclear and chemical] throughout all history.”33 A large fraction ofthe million or more killed by sanctions were young children; UNICEFExecutive Director Carol Bellamy pointed out that “ifthe substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been halfa million fewer deaths ofchildren under five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998.”34 However, as these deaths resulted from U.S. policy, and Secretary ofState Madeleine Albright declared on national television that these 500,000 child deaths were “worth it,”35 we would expect the U.S. media to find these victims unworthy, to give them little attention and less indignation, and to find the word “genocide” inapplicable to this case. The table shows that this expectation was realized in media practice.

The case for severe media bias suggested by the usage ofgenocide shown in the table is strengthened by the fact that, despite the great media attention

to and indignation over the abuse ofthe Kosovo Albanians by the Serbs in 1998–1999, this mistreatment was almost certainly less severe than that meted out to the Kurds in Turkey in the 1990s and to the East Timorese by the Indonesian army and paramilitary forces in East Timor in 1999. Deaths in Kosovo on all sides in the year before the NATObombing were estimated by U.S. and other Western sources to number no more than 2,000, and the Serb assault and expulsions that followed and accompanied the NATObombing campaign also appear to have resulted in deaths in the low thousands (an intensive postwar search for graves had yielded some 3,000 bodies by August 2000, not all ofthem Albanian civilians or necessarily victims ofthe Serbs).36

Deaths in the Turkish war on the Kurds in the 1990s were estimated to be 30,000 or more, a large fraction Kurdish civilians, with refugee numbers running to 2–3 million. In East Timor, where the Indonesian military organized and collaborated with a paramilitary opposition to a U.N.-sponsored independence referendum held on August 30, 1999, an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 East Timorese civilians were slaughtered even before the referendum vote that rejected Indonesian rule, which unleashed a furious Indonesian army–paramilitary assault on East Timorese.37

The double standard reflected in the politicized use of“genocide” is applicable to the treatment ofnews events more broadly, with the media regularly focusing on the abuse ofworthy victims and playing down or neglecting altogether the plight ofunworthy victims. As an illustration, we may consider the contrasting media treatment ofthe alleged killing ofsome forty Albanians by the Serbs at Racak, Kosovo, on January 15, 1999, and the Indonesian army-militia killing of“up to 200” East Timorese at Liquica in East Timor on April 6, 1999.38 The former was seen as useful by U.S. officials,39 who were trying to ready the U.S. and Western publics for an imminent NATO attack on Yugoslavia. Although the facts in the Racak killings, which occurred in the course offighting between the Serbian military and Kosovo Liberation Army insurgents within Yugoslavia, were and remain in dispute—and recent evidence raises further doubts about the NATO-KLAaccount ofevents there40—the deaths were immediately denounced and featured by U.S. and NATOofficials as an intolerable “massacre.” The U.S. mainstream media did the same and gave this reported massacre heavy and uncritical attention.41 This helped create the moral basis for the NATObombing of Yugoslavia that began on March 24, 1999.

The Liquica killings ofEast Timorese seeking refuge in a Catholic church by Indonesian-organized militia forces were indisputably a “massacre,” apparently involved many more victims than at Racak, and it took place in a territory illegally occupied by a foreign state (Indonesia). It was also neither a unique event nor was it connected to any warfare, as in Kosovo—it was

a straightforward slaughter ofcivilians. But U.S. officials did not denounce this massacre—in fact, active U.S. support ofthe Indonesian military continued throughout this period and up to a week after the referendum, by which time 85 percent ofthe population had been driven from their homes and well over 6,000 civilians had been slaughtered. The U.S. mainstream media followed the official lead. For a twelve-month period following the date ofeach event, the mentions ofRacak by the five media entities cited in the table exceeded mentions ofLiquica by 4.1 to 1, and mentions of “massacre” at the two sites was in a ratio of6.7 to 1. The greater length of accounts ofthe Racak event elevates the ratio to 14 to 1 as measured by word count. Newsweek, which mentioned Racak and its “massacre” nine times, failed to mention Liquica once.

Thus, with the cooperation ofthe media, the Racak killings were effectively used by U.S. officials to ready the public for war, not only by their intensive coverage but also by their taking the official allegations ofmassacre at face value. In the same time frame, the media’s treatment ofthe indisputable massacre at Liquica was insufficient in volume or indignation to mobilize the public, in accord with the U.S. policy ofleaving the management ofevents in East Timor to the U.S. ally Indonesia.

LEGITIMATING VERSUS MEANINGLESSTHIRD WORLD ELECTIONS

In chapter 3 we show that the mainstream media have followed a government agenda in treating elections in client and disfavored states. In El Salvador in the 1980s, the U.S. government sponsored several elections to demonstrate to the U.S. public that our intervention there was approved by the local population; whereas when Nicaragua held an election in 1984, the Reagan administration tried to discredit it to prevent legitimation ofa government the administration was trying to overthrow. The mainstream media cooperated, finding the Salvadoran election a “step toward democracy” and the Nicaraguan election a “sham,” despite the fact that electoral conditions were far more compatible with an honest election in Nicaragua than in El Salvador. We demonstrate that the media applied a remarkable dual standard to the two elections in accord with the government’s propaganda needs.

This same bias is apparent in the press treatment ofmore recent elections in Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Kenya, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, and Uruguay. Cambodia and Yugoslavia were the only two ofthese seven ruled by a party strongly objectionable to U.S. policy-makers, and it is in these cases that the New York Times warned ofserious problems: As regards Cambodia, it asserted that “flawed elections are worse than none,” and that “the international community must proceed cautiously, lest a rigged election give Mr.

Hun Sen a veneer oflegitimacy.”42 In reporting on the Yugoslavian election ofSeptember 2000, in which U.S. officials intervened openly to prevent the re-election ofSlobodan Milosevic, the Times and media in general repeatedly warned ofthe possibility offraud and a rigged election.43 In the case ofKenya, where U.S. policy toward the ruling government was ambivalent, here also the Times was skeptical ofelection quality, noting that “holding elections is not enough to assure democratic government” and stressing the need for “an independent electoral commission less bound to political parties” and “independent broadcast media, allowing opposition voices to be heard outside election periods.”44

But in the other four elections, organized and won by governments strongly favored by the U.S. State Department, there were no suggestions that “flawed elections are worse than none” and no featuring ofthe threat offraud; the importance ofan independent electoral commission and broadcast media was not pressed, and in each case the election was found to be a step toward democracy and hence legitimizing.

In the case ofMexico, long subject to one party (PRI) rule, but supported by the U.S. government over the past several decades, the Times has regularly found the Mexican elections encouraging, in contrast with past fraudulent ones which, at the time, the editors also contrasted favorably with those in the more distant past! It has featured expressions ofbenevolent intent and downplayed structural defects and abuses. Thus, in its first editorial on the 1988 election that brought Carlos Salinas de Gortari to power, the Times noted that prior elections were corrupt (the PRI“manipulated patronage, the news media and the ballot box”), but it stressed that PRIcandidate Salinas “contends” that political reform is urgent and “calls for clean elections.”45 The editors questioned whether “his party” will “heed his pleas,” a process ofdistancing the favored candidate from responsibility for any abuses to come. In the editorials that followed, the Times did not suggest possible ongoing electoral fraud, “manipulated patronage,” or media controls and bias, although this election was famous for a convenient “computer breakdown” in the election aftermath, which turned Carlos Salinas from an expected loser into a winner. Just three years later, however, at the time ofthe 1991 election, the editors stated that “as long as anyone can remember, Mexican elections have been massively fraudulent” as it prepared readers for new promises ofa cleanup.46 But all through this period and later, the Times (and its media rivals) did not focus on fraud or call these elections rigged; in both news stories and editorials they portrayed these deeply flawed elections as steps toward democracy and legitimizing.

In the 1983 Turkish election, held under military rule, with harsh censorship and only three parties “led by politicians sympathetic to the military

government” allowed to run, the Times found that “Turkey Approaches Democracy.”47 Similarly, in Uruguay’s 1984 election, under another military regime that jailed the leading opposition candidate and also refused to allow a second major candidate to run, but organized by a government approved by the U.S. State Department, the Times once again found that “Uruguay is resuming its democratic vocation... the generals are yielding to the infectious resurgence ofdemocracy in much ofLatin America.”48

The Russian election of1996 was important to the United States and its allies, as Boris Yeltsin, the ruler who was carrying out their favored policies ofprivatization and the integration ofRussia into the global financial system, was seriously threatened with defeat. The Yeltsin government had presided over a 50 percent fall in national output and large income declines for 90 percent ofthe population, while the hugely corrupt privatization process provided windfalls to a small minority, including an important criminal class. The social welfare and health care systems had disintegrated under Yeltsin’s rule, contributing to a startling rise in infectious diseases and mortality rates. Just before the 1996 election campaign, Yeltsin’s popularity rating was 8 percent. That he could win re-election in such circumstances suggests— and reflects—a seriously flawed election.

However, with the Yeltsin regime strongly backed by the U.S. government and its Western allies, the New York Times once again found this election “A Victory for Russian Democracy,” and so did the U.S. mainstream media in general. For that paper ofrecord, electoral flaws were slighted or ignored, and its editors declared the very fact ofholding an “imperfect” election “a remarkable achievement.”49 The same bias was evident in reporting on the March 2000 Russian election, won by Yeltsin’s anointed heir and former KGBoperative Vladimir Putin. Putin had built his popularity by conducting a brutal counterinsurgency war against Chechnya, and his electoral success rested heavily on the fact that the powerful state TVand radio stations campaigned furiously on his behalf and denigrated and gave no broadcasting time to his opponents. A September 2000 exposé ofthe Putin election campaign by the expatriate Moscow Times, based on a six-month investigative effort, uncovered compelling evidence ofelection fraud, including ballot stuffing, ballot destruction, and the creation of1.3 million “dead souls” inflating the election rolls.50 The U.S. mainstream media, however, never found any evidence offraud at the time ofthe election, and they have been reluctant to report the findings ofthe Moscow Times study.51 Putin is another “reformer,” like Yeltsin, supported by the West, so that it follows once again that for the mainstream media a flawed election—hardly admitted to be flawed—remains better than none.52

THE KGB-BULGARIAN PLOT TOASSASSINATE

THE POPE

During the Reagan era (1981–88), there was a concerted effort to demonize the Soviet Union, in order to support a major arms buildup and a new, more aggressive policy in the Third World and globally. The Soviet Union was described as an “Evil Empire” and accused ofsponsoring international terrorism as well as abusing its own and client-nation peoples.53 When the would-be assassin Mehmet Ali Agca shot Pope John Paul IIin Rome in May 1981, this provided the basis for one ofthe most successful propaganda campaigns ofthe Cold War era.

Although the pope’s assailant was a Turkish fascist and member ofa violently anti-left party in Turkey, after a seventeen-month stint in an Italian prison Agca “confessed” that he had been hired by the KGBand Bulgarians. This confession was convenient, fitting well the interests ofthe dominant Italian parties anxious to discredit the powerful Italian Communist party as well as the Reagan administration’s “Evil Empire” campaign. It was extremely suspicious for other reasons, coming so belatedly, and after numerous visits to Agca by Italian secret service representatives, judges, and papal agents, all with a political ax to grind, and with the secret service notorious for ideological extremism and willingness to doctor evidence.54

But the mainstream media accepted this story with astonishing gullibility—the possibility ofcoaching and pressure on Agca to name the KGB and Bulgarians, much discussed in the Italian media, was almost never mentioned as even a theoretical possibility. And the weakness ofthe alleged Soviet motive, the sheer stupidity ofthe enterprise ifSoviet-based, and the complete lack ofconfirmatory evidence was almost entirely ignored by the media (as described in chapter 4). When the case was lost in an Italian court in 1986, despite a substantial Italian government investment and effort, for the U.S. mainstream media this merely reflected the peculiarities ofthe Italian system ofjustice; the continued absence ofhard evidence led to no reassessment ofthe case or reflections on their own role.

In the years that followed, two developments threw some light on the case. One is that the Soviet and Bulgarian archives were opened up, and Allen Weinstein ofthe Center for Democracy gained permission from Bulgarian authorities in 1991 for members ofhis investigative commission to look at the Bulgarian Interior Ministry’s secret service files. After a stint in Bulgaria, Weinstein returned home having failed to locate any confirmatory evidence ofBulgarian or KGBinvolvement. The Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, and Time, each ofwhich had reported Weinstein’s initiative and impending trip to Bulgaria in 1991, all failed to inform their readers ofhis negative findings.55

Later in 1991, at Senate hearings on the confirmation ofRobert Gates as head ofthe CIA, former CIAofficers Melvin Goodman and Harold Ford testified that the CIA’s analysis ofthe Bulgarian Connection had been seriously compromised and politicized in support ofthe Reagan era anti-Soviet propaganda campaign. Goodman testified that not only had the CIAfound no evidence ofSoviet or Bulgarian involvement in the shooting, but that based on the CIA’s “very good penetration ofthe Bulgarian secret services” its professionals had concluded that a Bulgarian Connection did not exist.56

This testimony, which was a brutal coup de grâce to the claims ofa connection, put the media on the spot. It was now clear that in their enthusiastic support ofthe plot they had seriously misled their readers and performed badly as news purveyors and analysts, although serving well the propaganda needs oftheir government. But as in 1986, after the case against the Bulgarians was dismissed in an Italian court for insufficient evidence, none ofthem felt any obligation to explain their failures and apologize to their readers. They reported the CIArevelations tersely, with some still claiming that while the connection had not been proved it had not been disproved either (ignoring the frequent impossibility ofproving a negative).57 But in general the mainstream media moved quickly on without reassessing their performance or the fact that they and their media colleagues had been agents ofpropaganda.

The New York Times, which had been consistently supportive ofthe connection in both news and editorials, not only failed to report Weinstein’s negative findings from the search ofthe Bulgarian files, it also excluded Goodman’s statement on the CIA’s penetration ofthe Bulgarian secret services from their excerpts from his testimony. The Times had long maintained that the CIAand the Reagan administration “recoiled from the devastating implication that Bulgaria’s agents were bound to have acted only on a signal from Moscow.” 58 But Goodman’s and Ford’s testimony showed that this was the reverse ofthe truth, and that CIAheads William Casey and Robert Gates overrode the views ofCIAprofessionals and falsified evidence to support a Soviet linkage. The Times was not alone in following a misleading party line, but it is notable that this paper ofrecord has yet to acknowledge its exceptional gullibility and propaganda service.

VIETNAM, LAOS, AND CAMBODIA

VIETNAM: WAS THE UNITED STATES A VICTIM OR AN AGGRESSOR?

In chapters 5 through 7, we show that media coverage ofthe Indochina wars fits the propaganda model very well. The United States first intervened in

Indochina immediately after World War IIin support ofFrench recolonization, after which it carried out a twenty-one-year effort (1954–75) to impose a government in the southern halfofVietnam that U.S. officials and analysts consistently recognized as lacking any substantial indigenous support, and in opposition to local nationalist—though Communist—forces that were understood to have a mass base. U.S. leaders operated on the beliefthat their overwhelming military might would not only enable them, but entitled them, to force submission to a minority government ofU.S. choice.

By normal word usage this would make the U.S. effort in Vietnam a case of“aggression.” The mainstream media, however, rarely ifever found U.S. policy there to be other than highly moral and well intentioned, even ifbased on miscalculation ofits costs—to us (see chapter 5). The media readily accepted that we were protecting “South Vietnam”—a U.S. creation ruled by a dictator imported directly from the United States—against somebody else’s aggression, vacillating in their identification ofthe aggressor between North Vietnam, the Soviet Union, China, or the resistance in South Vietnam engaging in “internal aggression”! It is compelling evidence ofthe propaganda service of the mainstream media that throughout the war they accepted this basic propaganda assumption ofthe war managers, and from that era up to today, we have never found a mainstream editorial or news report that characterized the U.S. war against Vietnam, and then all ofIndochina, as a case ofaggression.

After the United States terminated the military phase ofthe war in 1975, it maintained and enforced an eighteen-year boycott ofthe country that it had virtually destroyed. According to Vietnamese estimates, the war had cost them 3 million killed, 300,000 missing, 4.4 million wounded, and 2 million harmed by toxic chemicals; and its land was left ravaged by bombs and Rome plows as well as chemical weapons. With 58,000 killed, the U.S. death toll from the war was under one-tenth of1 percent ofits population; Vietnam’s death toll was 17 percent ofits population, and only Vietnam’s people were attacked by chemical warfare and had their countryside devastated.

Nevertheless, U.S. officials and the mainstream media continued to view the U.S. role in the war as creditable, the United States as the victim. President George Bush stated in 1992 that “Hanoi knows today that we seek only answers without the threat ofretribution for the past.”59 That is, the Vietnamese had done things to us that might justify retribution on our part, but we only seek answers regarding our men missing in action.60 New York Times foreign affairs commentator Leslie Gelb justified classifying Vietnam an “outlaw” on the grounds that “they had killed Americans.”61 This reflects the common establishment view, implicit in Bush’s comment, that nobody has a right ofself-defense against this country, even ifit intervenes across the ocean to impose by force a government that the people ofthat country reject.

U.S. CHEMICAL WARFARE IN INDOCHINA

It is also ofinterest how the media have treated the massive use ofchemicals during the Vietnam War and the horrifying aftermath for the victim country. In 1961 and 1962 the Kennedy administration authorized the use ofchemicals to destroy rice crops in South Vietnam—in violation ofa U.S. tradition as well as international law (Admiral William Leahy, in response to a proposal to destroy Japanese rice crops in 1944, stated that this would “violate every Christian ethic I have ever heard ofand all known laws ofwar”).62 Between 1961 and 1971, however, the U.S. Air Force sprayed 20 million gallons of concentrated arsenic-based and dioxin-laden herbicides (mainly Agent Orange) on 6 million acres ofcrops and trees, besides using large quantities ofthe “super tear gas” CSand vast amounts ofnapalm and phosphorus bombs.63 An estimated 13 percent ofSouth Vietnam’s land was subjected to chemical attacks. This included 30 percent ofits rubber plantations and 36 percent of its mangrove forests, along with other large forest areas, destroyed by toxic chemicals in programs that included multiple “large-scale intentional effort[s] combining defoliation with incendiaries to produce a forest fire in South Vietnam.”64 A 1967 study prepared by the head ofthe Agronomy Section of the Japanese Science Council concluded that U.S. anticrop warfare had already ruined more than 3.8 million acres ofarable land in South Vietnam, killing almost 1,000 peasants and over 13,000 livestock.65 This policy ofattempting to force enemy capitulation by destroying its food supply was not only contrary to the rules ofwar,66 it was notable in that it “first and overwhelmingly affected small children.”67

Laos was also subjected to chemical attacks in 1966 and 1969, directed at both crops, and vegetation along communication routes. And in Cambodia, some 173,000 acres ofrubber plantations, crops and forests were heavily sprayed with Agent Orange in the spring of1969.68 The Cambodian government complained bitterly at the violation ofits neutrality by this inhumane and illegal action, but Cambodia was too small and weak for its voice to be heard or for it to be able to mobilize a legal or other defense. Although the U.N. General Assembly did strongly condemn the use ofchemical agents as contrary to international law by an 83-to-3 vote in 1969,69 it was powerless to act against the United States, and there was no “international community” mobilization to halt its use ofchemical warfare in Cambodia or elsewhere in Indochina.

During the Vietnam war, the use ofchemicals was reported and criticized in the U.S. media when first disclosed in 1966, but the subject was quickly dropped. The illegality ofchemical warfare and a policy ofstarvation, and their effects on the victim population, were virtually unreported.

nine articles acknowledged the targeting of food crops (thirty-nine mentioned

There were exceptions, such as Orville Schell, Jr.’s 1971 Look magazine article “Silent Vietnam: How we invented ecocide and killed a country,” but they were rare indeed. After the war, because ofthe effects ofAgent Orange on U.S. soldiers, there was some coverage ofthis chemical warfare campaign; but the vastly greater impact on the direct targets ofthis warfare in South Vietnam remained close to invisible. Of522 articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and Time during the 1990s that mentioned Agent Orange and Vietnam together, the vast majority focused on the harm done to U.S. service personnel; only nine articles acknowledged the targeting offood crops (thiry-nine mentioned forest cover alone as the target); only eleven discussed in any detail the impact on Vietnamese and the Vietnamese environment; only three characterized the use ofAgent Orange as a “chemical weapon” or “chemical warfare;” and in only two articles was it suggested that its use might constitute a war crime.

The Wall Street Journal did have a lead story on this topic in February 1997, reporting that as many as 500,000 children may have been born with dioxin-related deformities and that birth defects in the South were four times those in the North.70 The article did acknowledge U.S. responsibility for this disaster but contended that “the United States, emotionally spent after losing the war, paid no heed.” But the United States did pay heed to the flight of the “boat people” and was not too exhausted to enforce a vigorous boycott ofthe target ofits aggression, even ifit took no responsibility whatever for the condition ofits victims.

The large-scale application ofchemical weapons, and napalm, in Vietnam was confined to the South. One reason for this was that North Vietnam had a government with links to other countries, so that the use ofthese barbarous and illegal weapons against it would have been widely publicized. South Vietnam was occupied by the United States and its client regime, so that the victimized people ofthe South were voiceless and could be treated with unlimited savagery. This ofcourse contradicted the claim that we were protecting them against aggression, but the media not only underplayed the savagery, they failed to call attention to the contradiction and its significance. New York Times journalist Barbara Crossette did report that the U.S. failure to get involved in studying the effects ofchemical warfare in Vietnam had been unfortunate, because as this country had used it heavily in the South but not in the North, this made Vietnam a controlled experiment in the effects ofdioxin on humans from which much could be learned ofbenefit to ourselves.71 But neither Crossette nor any other mainstream reporter had anything to say about the fact that the United States had used dioxin only on the ones it was allegedly protecting against aggression, nor did they

suggest that this constituted a serious war crime, or that this country might have an obligation to help those it had victimized.

During the 1980s, the Reagan administration mounted a major propaganda campaign over alleged victims of“Yellow Rain” in Cambodia and Laos, claiming that chemical warfare had been employed there by the Soviet Union through its Vietnam proxy. This propaganda effort eventually collapsed following the U.S. Army’s own inability to confirm this warfare and, more important, the finding that the alleged Yellow Rain was bee feces, not chemicals.72 Nevertheless, this campaign received vastly more publicity than the real and large-scale chemical warfare carried out by the United States in Indochina. The Wall Street Journal, which had heavily featured Yellow Rain and expressed the greatest indignation at this display ofCommunist evil, never mentioned the U.S. employment ofchemicals in that area during its Yellow Rain campaign. The Journal ’s publisher, Peter Kann, eventually wrote that the Vietnam war record had clarified “who were the good guys and who were the bad guys,” definitively shown by “the poisoned fields ofLaos” (his euphemism for Yellow Rain).73 In short, Kann places the massive real-world use ofchemical warfare by the United States in Orwell’s black hole and demonstrates Communist evil by putting forward the discredited claim of Yellow Rain that his paper has still not admitted to be fraudulent.

But the more important facts are these: that with the help ofthe media, the Soviet Union was effectively linked to the use ofthis ugly weapon, based on false evidence; while by treating the real and large-scale use ofchemical weapons in Indochina by the United States in very low key up to this very day, the media have helped convey the impression that this country is a moral force on this issue and opposes use ofthis terrible weaponry. U.S. leaders have opposed the use ofchemical warfare—by enemy states—but it is a different matter when they choose to use such weaponry themselves, or when a client state does the same.74

REWRITING VIETNAM WAR HISTORY

There have been thousands ofbooks written on the Vietnam War,75 and that war has been a brooding omnipresence in the U.S. culture since its end in 1975. For the dominant elite the war represents an era in which resistance to national policy and the associated rise offormerly apathetic sectors of society caused a “crisis ofdemocracy.”76 Those unruly sectors and the dissidents are seen as having damaged the cultural and political framework and imposed unreasonable impediments to the use offorce, the latter referred to as the “Vietnam syndrome.” Within the unruly sectors and among the dissidents, ofcourse, the “Sixties” are viewed as an era ofliberation, of

cultural and moral advance, and a temporary surge ofdemocratization.

The propaganda model would lead us to expect mainstream media retrospectives on the war to reflect elite perspectives, portraying the 1960s as a dark age and the U.S. role in the war as, at worst, a case ofgood intentions gone awry. Focusing here on their treatment ofthe war over the past decade, we see that the media have mainly repeated and elaborated several apologetic themes already entrenched by the end ofthe war.

One theme has been that the U.S. intervention was justified by the fact of“communism on the march” (editorial, Washington Post, April 30, 2000). It was argued from the beginning that the Communist advance in Vietnam was part ofa global communist conspiracy, a position maintained in the face ofthe split and hostility between China and the Soviet Union, tension between China and North Vietnam, and the absence ofany evidence that North Vietnam was anybody’s tool. In his book In Retrospect, 77 former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara admits that he and his colleagues made a serious error on this point. But neither he nor the other establishment figures who have used this argument have ever questioned the U.S. right to intervene by force to stop the “march ofcommunism” in a country where the Communists had led a nationalist revolution, were recognized by all official and nonofficial authorities to command the support ofa large majority ofthe population, and where their defeat would require open aggression, mass killing, and the virtual destruction ofa distant society.

Closely related was the theme that we were protecting “South Vietnam” and the “South Vietnamese,” who “let the Americans take over the fighting” (editorial, Washington Post, April 30, 1995). A subtheme ofthis line is that we “let down” the South Vietnamese. But as noted earlier, South Vietnam as a political entity was a U.S. concoction and the U.S. war managers recognized that most ofthe southern population supported the side the United States was fighting. This explains why the main thrust ofU.S. violence was directed to the South, where napalm, B-52 bombing raids, chemical warfare, the institutionalized killing ofcivilians, and a scorched-earth policy were used to destroy the base ofthe popular movement.78 We also noted earlier that this ferocious U.S. assault on the South—which contradicted the claim that we were protecting South Vietnamese—remains invisible in the U.S. media.

Another important theme in the mainstream media for many years has been the notion that the United States was the victim in the Vietnam war, the Vietnamese the cruel villains. This remarkable inversion ofreality has been accomplished by two processes: first, by a massive suppression ofevidence on the consequences ofthe war for the Vietnamese; and second, by demonizing the victims, based in large measure on “the national beatification of

POWs [prisoners ofwar] and the myth ofPOWs as martyrs still being tortured by Vietnam.”79

The only Vietnamese allowed modest attention in the media have been those mobilized to fight the U.S. war and who were “let down”;80 the vast numbers killed or damaged by the U.S. assault have been treated as “unworthy victims.” The overwhelming preoccupation ofofficials, journalists, pundits, and intellectuals with media outreach has been on U.S. victims and the effects ofthe war on this country. Robert McNamara’s widely publicized book, supposedly a mea culpa and moral tract, is notable for the fact that his notion ofthe war’s “high costs,” and the error and guilt he feels, extend only to U.S. lives and the effects ofthe war on “the political unity ofour society.”81 He offers neither regrets, moral reflections, nor apologies for his country having invaded, mercilessly bombed, ravaged the land, and killed and wounded millions ofinnocent people in a small distant peasant society in pursuit ofits own political ends.

In a remarkable cultural process, also, the victims have been turned into the villains. As we describe in chapter 5, in an attempt to prolong the war President Richard Nixon seized on the question ofthe adequacy of Vietnamese accounting for our military personnel who were captured (POWs) and those missing in action (MIAs). He succeeded in keeping the war going, and some 16,000 more U.S. soldiers and untold numbers of Vietnamese died in the further fighting in the purported interest ofmissing POWs. But although there has never been any credible evidence that a single POWwas hidden by the North Vietnamese, this claim became an article of faith and cult that dominated U.S. policy toward Vietnam for many years.82

The myth also became the basis ofpopular culture accounts in movies such as The Deer Hunter, Uncommon Valor, P.O.W.: The Escape, and Missing in Action, in which Rambo-like heroes slaughter evil Vietnamese as they save our betrayed and tormented POWs. These movies turned history on its head. As Vietnam war historian H. Bruce Franklin points out, “America’s vision ofthe war was being transformed. The actual photographs and TV footage ofmassacred villagers, napalmed children, Vietnamese prisoners being tortured and murdered, wounded GI’s screaming in agony, and body bags being loaded by the dozen for shipment back home were being replaced by simulated images ofAmerican POWs in the savage hands ofAsian communists.”83 The powerful cultural myth ofabused POWs as the central feature ofthe Vietnam war not only allowed the war to be extended, it helped justify the U.S. failure to aid its victim in accord with end-of-war promises and it provided the basis for an eighteen-year economic war against the victim country. It also functioned as a potent agent ofmilitarization and force weakening the “Vietnam syndrome.”

In his recent book Vietnam and Other American Fantasies , H. Bruce Franklin, who had previously exposed the fallacies and cult qualities ofthe POW-MIAmyth, addressed this issue once again, as well as other fantasies (such as the claim that the antiwar activists often spit at returning veterans).84 Franklin’s book was reviewed in the Los Angeles Times but was otherwise only twice mentioned in passing in the U.S. mainstream press. On the other hand, a book by Michael Lind, Vietnam; The Necessary War, 85 which explains that the war was justifiable because communism was on the march, U.S. “credibility” was at stake, and the Vietnamese communists were cruel and ruthless—demonstrated in part by their refusal to surrender and consequent responsibility for those killed by U.S. bombs!—was treated differently. It received forty-four reviews and was mentioned twenty-seven other times in the mainstream media, and Lind was given Op-Ed space in both the New York Times and the Washington Post, among other opportunities.

In his review ofLind’s book, Vietnam War historian Lloyd Gardner noted that any U.S. “credibility” problem that arose in connection with the Vietnam war was a creation ofthe war managers themselves and flowed from their own decisions; and Gardner also comments, after analyzing a series ofLind arguments in defense ofthe war, that “the evidence simply washes away his positions like a sand castle on the beach.”86 But Lind was saying what the elite wants said, and Franklin was not, so that mainstream media treatment followed accordingly.

LAOS

Laos’s Plain ofJars was subjected to some ofthe heaviest bombings of civilian targets in history, especially after 1968, when Washington was compelled under domestic pressure to enter negotiations with North Vietnam and had to terminate its bombing there. It turned to Laos, although that small peasant country was a marginal factor in the wars; but Nixon and Kissinger could hardly leave U.S. bombers inactive. Overall, some 2 million tons ofbombs were dropped on Laos. These raids wiped out 353 villages and killed thousands ofcivilians, and they continue to kill now, as the Plain was saturated with hundreds ofmillions of“bombies”—tiny antipersonnel weapons specifically designed to kill and maim. With their 20-to-30 percent failure-to-explode rate, they remained as potential killers, and their casualty rate is still high, estimates running from hundreds to 20,000 or more per year, halfofthem deaths and halfofthe victims children.87

There have been efforts to deal with this humanitarian catastrophe. The British-based Mines Advisory Group (MAG) has been trying to remove the lethal objects, but the British press reports that the United States is

“conspicuously missing from the handful ofwestern organizations that have followed MAG,” though it has finally agreed to train some Laotian civilians.88 The British press also reports, with some annoyance, that the United States has refused to provide MAGspecialists with “render harmless procedures,” still treated as a state secret for weapons three decades old.89 The U.S. mainstream media have treated in very low key the continuing human toll suffered in Laos and have maintained almost complete silence concerning the U.S. non-cooperativeness in attempts to alleviate a crisis dating back to the “secret war” against Laos, which again was “secret” only by tacit propaganda service ofthe mainstream media (see chapter 6).

CAMBODIA

Important changes have occurred in Cambodia since 1988, including Vietnam’s withdrawal from that country, elections held under UNauspices, and the death ofPol Pot. We noted in chapter 7 that, after the Vietnamese had ousted Pol Pot in December 1978, although the United States and its allies had denounced Pol Pot as “another Hitler” committing “genocide,” they quickly became his supporter, allowing him to retain Cambodia’s U.N. seat and otherwise aiding and protecting him in his Thailand refuge. Vietnam was severely punished—by harsh sanctions and by U.S. support for a Chinese invasion to teach Vietnam a lesson—for having terminated Pol Pot’s atrocities! President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated in 1979 that “I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. I encouraged the Thai to help D.K. [Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot’s forces]. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him but China could.”90 In the late 1980s and early 1990s, as the Vietnamese sought to end their isolation by exiting from Cambodia, but insisted as a condition for withdrawal that Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge be excluded from returning to power, the United States objected, and insisted, with eventual success, that the Khmer Rouge be included as a contestant party in the post-occupation settlement.91

What dominated U.S. policy and led to its support ofPol Pot was the classic rule that the enemy ofmy enemy (Vietnam) is my friend, and perhaps also the new tilt toward China, also hostile toward Vietnam. The support ofPol Pot was awkward, given the prior denunciations ofhis policies, but the mainstream media handled it with aplomb, and the U.S. public was almost surely completely unaware that the United States had become his ally and supporter. (The explicit statement ofsupport by Brzezinski quoted above was never mentioned in the New York Times , the Washington Post , or Newsweek; it was quoted once in both the Los Angeles Times and Time.)

However, in the late 1990s, after Vietnam had left Cambodia and U.S. officials’ anti-Vietnam passions had subsided, and Pol Pot was no longer a useful instrument ofanti-Vietnam policy, U.S. officials and pundits rediscovered Pol Pot’s and the Khmer Rouge’s villainy and candidacy for war crimes trials. The media handled the previous “tilt” toward Pol Pot mainly by evasion, essentially blacking out the years 1979–95, or vaguely intimating that the U.S. had supported him for reasons of“realpolitik ,” but avoiding both details on the nature and magnitude ofsupport as well as any reflections on the morality ofbacking “another Hitler.” The New York Times’s summary of“Pol Pot’s Rise and Fall” (April 17, 1998) lists for “1979–1990: Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge are given refuge at Thai border where they fight back against the Vietnamese.” “Given refuge” is misleading: they were given economic and military aid and political support by the United States and its allies. The Times’s main reporter on Cambodia in early 1998, Seth Mydans, repeatedly blacked out mention ofU.S. support, referring to “the decade-long civil war that followed” Pol Pot’s ouster (April 13), and a nineteen-year “guerilla insurgency in the jungles of western and northern Cambodia” (April 17).

The Boston Globe, New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, editorializing on the death ofPol Pot on April 17, 1998, were uniformly indignant over his crimes and regretful at his escape from justice, but all avoided mentioning the long U.S. support ofthe criminal—as well as the U.S. contribution to the first phase ofa “Decade ofGenocide.”92 The Washington Post blacked out the inconvenient fifteen-year period ofsupport ofPol Pot with this summary: “After the nightmare ofKhmer Rouge rule and genocide, the United States and its allies pumped millions ofdollars into Cambodia to help rebuild and to hold elections.”93

It is enlightening to compare the media’s treatment ofPol Pot and Indonesian leader Suharto, who was also in the news in 1998, as Indonesia suffered a financial crisis that—along with popular resistance to the dictatorship—eventually led to his ouster. Pol Pot was described in the editorials and news columns ofApril 1998 as “crazed,” a “killer,” “war criminal,” “mass murderer,” “blood-soaked,” and as having engineered a “reign of terror” and “genocide.” But in 1998 and 1999, and in earlier years as well, while Suharto was occasionally referred to as a “dictator” and running an “authoritarian” regime, he was never a “killer” or “mass murderer” or one responsible for “genocide.” The terminological double standard is maintained reliably throughout the mainstream media.94

Less obvious but equally interesting is the difference in willingness to identify the responsible parties for the killings ofPol Pot and Suharto. In the case ofPol Pot, there is no uncertainty or complexity: editorials and

news articles uniformly make him and the Khmer Rouge leadership clearly and unambiguously responsible for all deaths in Cambodia during the period 1975–78. He was the “man who slaughtered two million” ( USAToday), “the executioner” (Boston Globe) who “presided over the deaths” ofhis victims (Washington Post), “the man who drove Cambodia to ruin” (New York Times).

But in Suharto’s case, we move to an ambiguous responsibility, which means none at all: in the New York Times, for example, “a 1965 coup led to the massacres ofhundreds ofthousands ofsupposed communists” (editorial, Aug. 23, 1996), where we have no agent doing the killing; or “a wave ofviolence that took up to 500,000 lives and led Suharto to seize power from Sukarno in a military coup” (Seth Mydans, Aug. 7, 1996), where the massacre not only has no agent, but is falsely situated before the takeover ofpower by Suharto. In a later piece, Mydans states that “more than 500,000 Indonesians are estimated to have died in a purge ofleftists in 1965, the year Mr. Suharto came to power” (April 8, 1997). Note the passive voice, never used in connection with Pol Pot, the word “purge” instead of“slaughter” or “massacre,” and the continued failure to identify the agent.

In the case ofEast Timor, also, the Times is uncertain about the source ofthe killing: “This is one ofthe world’s sadder places, where 100,000 to 200,000 people died from 1974 in a brutal civil war and the consequent invasion through combat, execution, disease and starvation...” (Steven Erlanger, Oct. 21, 1990). In addition to the lack ofa clear agent, this sentence seriously misrepresents the facts—the civil war was short and left small numbers dead; and the invasion was not “consequent” to a brutal civil war, except in Indonesian propaganda.

Another important difference in the treatment ofthe “worthy” victims ofPol Pot and the “unworthy” victims ofSuharto is in the willingness to explain away the killings. With Pol Pot, as we describe in chapter 7, the background ofthe first phase ofthe genocide was completely blacked out in the mainstream account—there is no qualification to Pol Pot’s responsibility as a killer because his forces had undergone terrible damage and sought vengeance for the crimes they had suffered; nor are any deaths in Pol Pot’s years ofrule to be explained by the starvation and disease already pervasive in April 1975. No, the only mentionable background is his Paris training and Communist fanaticism.

But with Suharto we encounter a whole new world ofcontextualized apologetics. For many years the main protective formula was that the 1965–66 killings were “a result ofa failed coup,” which “touched offa wave of violence,” or followed an “onslaught from the left.”95 This formula, invoked repeatedly, suggests that the mass killings were provoked and thus maybe

justified by a prior “onslaught.” The writers never explain why a failed coup could possibly justify a large-scale slaughter, but the hint is left hanging. In more recent years, usually in connection with the explanation and rationalization ofthe continuation ofa dictatorship, the media regularly juxtaposed political repression with “stability” and “growth”: “the signs ofhis success are everywhere,” although Suharto has brought these gains “by maintaining a tight grip on power and suppressing public criticism and political opposition.”96 These statements, from the New York Times, offer a kind ofcontext that the paper never gives to Castro, let alone a Pol Pot, and it shows an apologetic that runs deep.

This apologetic extends to the Suharto invasion and occupation ofEast Timor. For years. New York Times reporters have claimed that Indonesia invaded in the midst ofa civil war,97 when in fact that civil war was over well before the invasion. The paper’s news coverage ofEast Timor actually fell to zero as the Indonesian attacks and killings in East Timor reached a deadly peak in 1977–78, a slaughter that elsewhere would be called “genocidal.” And although Indonesia occupied East Timor in violation ofstanding U.N. rulings till its induced exit in 1999, the paper’s reporters repeatedly referred to East Timor as a “disputed province” and East Timorese resistance as “separatist,” thereby internalizing and explicitly legitimizing the aggression and occupation.98

The bias and gentle treatment ofSuharto and the Indonesian government in the media is once again correlated with U.S. policy support that dates back to the military coup and slaughters of1965. These were greeted with enthusiasm by U.S. officials—then Secretary ofDefense Robert McNamara referred to the events as one ofthe “dividends” ofU.S. support for the Indonesian military—and the “boiling bloodbath” (Time) and “staggering mass slaughter” (New York Times) were also seen in the media as a “gleam oflight” (James Reston in the New York Times).99 U.S. military and economic aid and diplomatic protection continued throughout the years of the Suharto dictatorship, and the media’s finding him a good genocidist followed accordingly.

New York Times reporter David Sanger differentiated Suharto and post1990 Saddam Hussein—before 1990 he was a U.S. ally—saying “Mr. Suharto is not hoarding anthrax or threatening to invade Australia.”100 That is, Suharto’s invasion, mass killing, and long illegal occupation ofEast Timor is given zero weight, and his slaughter ofsomewhere between 500,000 and 2 million people within Indonesia some years back is also not mentioned. This tells us all we need to know about how good and bad genocidists fare in the Western propaganda system.

FURTHER APPLICATIONS

In his book Golden Rule, political scientist Thomas Ferguson argues that where the major investors in political parties and elections agree on an issue, the parties will not compete on that issue, no matter how strongly the public might want an alternative. He contends that for ordinary voters to influence electoral choices they would have to have “strong channels that directly facilitate mass deliberation and expression.”101 These would include unions and other intermediate organizations that might, through their collective power, cause the interests ofordinary voters to be given greater weight in the political system.

The propaganda model, and the institutional arrangements that it reflects, suggests that the same forces that preclude competition among the parties on issues on which the major investors agree, will also dominate media choices and rule out “mass deliberation and expression” on those issues. For example, polls regularly indicate that, except in periods ofwar and intense war propaganda, the public wants a smaller defense budget and favors a spending shift from defense to education and other civil functions.102 But because the major investors agree that a large defense budget is desirable, the two dominant parties compete only on whether the one or the other is stinting on military expenditures, with both promising to enlarge it (as both George W. Bush and Al Gore did in the presidential election campaign of2000). And the mainstream media do the same, limiting debate to the terms defined by the two parties and excluding deliberation and expression ofthe position that large cuts are desirable. The alternative presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, called for such cuts, but the media denied him a voice on the issues, some ofthem explicitly defending his exclusion from the presidential debates on the grounds that the options afforded by the two parties sufficed.103

The U.S. corporate community has favored an immense defense budget— currently more than five times the size ofthat ofa steadily weakening Russia, the second biggest spender—because ofthe great benefits its members derive from military spending. These include weapons and other contracting business, direct and indirect subsidies in research,104 and the role played by military power in supporting the global economic expansion in which many U.S. transnational corporations are active participants and beneficiaries. Business also benefits from the market-opening actions oftrade agreements and from the supportive operations ofthe WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF. But these trade agreements and the activities ofthe international financial institutions have generated controversy and political struggle, because while their benefits to business are clear, their costs are borne heavily by workers forced to compete in a global job market.

Furthermore, globalization and trade agreements strengthen the political as well as the economic power ofthe corporate community, in part because they shift decision-making authority from democratic polities to bankers and technocrats who more reliably serve the transnational corporate interest. Here also, as in the case ofdefense-versus civilian-oriented budgets, polls show a sharp dichotomy between corporate and public preferences, with the latter generally hostile to the agreements and institutional arrangements favored by business.105

The propaganda model fits well the media’s treatment ofthis range of issues. Consider, for example, their coverage ofthe passage ofthe North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the subsequent Mexican financial crisis and meltdown of1994–95. Polls taken before its enactment consistently showed substantial majorities opposed to NAFTA—and later to the bailout ofinvestors in Mexican securities—but the elite in favor. Media editorials, news coverage, and selection of“experts” in opinion columns were heavily skewed toward the elite preference; their judgment was that the benefits ofNAFTAwere obvious, were agreed to by all qualified authorities, and that only demagogues and “special interests” were opposed.106 The “special interests” who might be the “losers” included women, minorities, and a majority ofthe work-force.107 The media dealt with the awkward fact that polls showed steady majority opposition to the agreement mainly by ignoring it, but occasionally they suggested that the public was uninformed and didn’t recognize its own true interests.108 The effort oflabor to influence the outcome ofthe NAFTAdebates was sharply attacked in both the New York Times and the Washington Post, with no comparable criticism of corporate or governmental (U.S. and Mexican) lobbying and propaganda. And while labor was attacked for its alleged position on these issues, the press refused to allow the actual position to be expressed.109

In December 1994, only eleven months after NAFTAwent into effect, Mexico suffered a major financial crisis, including a massive flight ofcapital, a devaluation ofthe currency, and a subsequent bailout by the IMFthat required Mexico to carry out painful deflationary measures. Despite the fact that the meltdown occurred within a year ofthe introduction of NAFTA, which the media had portrayed as ushering in a prospective golden age ofeconomic advance, they were unanimous that NAFTAwas not to blame. And in virtual lock-step they supported the Mexican (investor) bailout, despite poll reports ofgeneral public opposition in the United States. Experts and media pundits and editorialists repeatedly explained that one great merit ofNAFTAwas that it had “locked Mexico in” so that it couldn’t alter its overall policy direction or resort to controls to protect itselffrom severe deflation and unemployment. They were oblivious to

the profoundly undemocratic nature ofthis lock-in, made more questionable by the fact that it had been negotiated by a Mexican government that ruled as a result ofelectoral fraud. 110

More recently, when the growing global opposition to the policies ofthe WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank led to mass protests at the WTO conference in Seattle in November and December 1999, and then at the annual meeting ofthe IMFand the World Bank in Washington, D.C., in April 2000, media coverage ofthese events was derisive and hostile to the protesters and almost uniformly failed to deal with the substantive issues that drove the protests. The media portrayed the Seattle protesters as “allpurpose agitators” (U.S. News & World Report), “terminally aggrieved” (Philadelphia Inquirer), simply “against world trade” (ABCNews), and making “much ado about nothing” (CNN), but the bases ofthe protesters’ grievances were almost entirely unexplored.111 Similarly, in the case ofthe Washington, D.C., protests, the media repeatedly reported on activists’ attire, looks, body odors, fadism, and claimed a lack of“anything that can coherently be called a cause” (Michael Kelly, journalist, Washington Post), and they continued their refusal to address issues.112 There were many informed protesters with coherent agendas at Seattle and Washington—including reputable economists, social theorists, and veteran organizers from around the world113—but the media did not seek them out, preferring to stereotype antiglobalization activists as ignorant troublemakers. On op-ed pages, there was a major imbalance hostile to the protesters. TVbias was at least as great, and often misleading on the facts. In his November 29,1999, backgrounder on the WTO, Dan Rather explained that the organization had ruled on many environmental issues, implying that those rulings were protective ofthe environment when in fact they generally privileged trade rights over environmental needs.

Another notable feature ofmedia reporting on both the Seattle and Washington, D.C., protests, and a throwback to their biased treatment of the protests ofthe Vietnam War era (1965–75),114 was their exaggeration of protester violence, their downplaying ofpolice provocations and violence, and their complaisance at illegal police tactics designed to limit all protestor actions, peaceable or otherwise.115 Although the Seattle police resorted to force and used chemical agents against many nonviolent protesters well before a handful ofindividuals began breaking windows, both then and later the media reversed this chronology, stating that the police violence was a response to protester violence. In fact, the vandals were largely ignored by the police, while peaceful protesters were targeted for beatings, tear gas, torture with pepper spray, and arrest.116 One New York Times article went so far as to claim that the Seattle protesters had thrown excrement, rocks, and Molotov

cocktails at delegates and police officers; the Times later issued a correction acknowledging that these claims were false.117 Dan Rather, who had falsely alleged that the protesters had “brought on today’s crackdown” at Seattle, later suggested that the Washington protesters were possibly “hoping for a replay oflast year’s violence in Seattle,” setting this offagainst “those charged with keeping the peace” who “have other ideas.”118

In their eighty-seven-page report, Out ofControl: Seattle’s Flawed Response to Protests Against the World Trade Organization, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated that “demonstrators [in Seattle] were overwhelmingly peaceful. Not so the police.” The response ofthe Seattle police to the protests was characterized by “draconian” violations ofcivil liberties, including widespread use of“chemical weapons, rubber bullets and clubs against peaceful protesters and bystanders alike.” But NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and the New York Times and Washington Post all ignored the release ofthe ACLU’s findings, which ran counter to their own uniformly pro-police and anti-protester line.

The media’s reversal ofchronology and inflation ofthe threat ofactivist violence, and their low-keyed treatment ofnumerous illegal police actions designed to instill fear in those wanting to protest peaceably,119 provided the enabling ground for both police violence and serious restrictions on free speech. These increased in scope and sophistication between Seattle and Washington, and were then applied to squelch protest at the Republican and Democratic conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles in July and August 2000.120 The corporate media’s hostility to the goals ofthe protests, closely aligned with that ofthe rest ofthe corporate establishment, caused their devotion to the First Amendment to flag in a way it never has when their own rights and privileges have been at stake.

As is suggested by the media’s treatment ofNAFTAand oflabor’s right to participate in its debates, as well as the media coverage ofWatergate, COINTELPRO, and major events in the earlier history oflabor-management conflict (the Haymarket affair, the Homestead strike, the post-World War I “red scare”),121 the propaganda model applies to domestic as well as foreign policy issues. Labor has been under renewed siege in the United States for the past several decades, its condition adversely affected by the deflationary policies ofthe early 1980s, corporate downsizing, globalization, a vigorous business campaign to defeat unions, and government support of, or indifference to, the damage being inflicted on unions and workers. There was a major drop in union membership from the beginning ofthe Reagan era, with union density falling from 25 percent in 1980 to 14.5 percent in 1996 (and only 10.2 percent in the private sector). This reflected weakened labor bargaining power and was accompanied by significant concessions in