Chapter 4

Footnotes

Newer, satellite digital systems are available in some areas offering subscribers as many as 175 channels.
Graham Murdock, "Large Corporations and the Control of the Communications Industries," Culture, Society and the Media, Michael Gurevitch, Tony Bennett, James Curran and Janet Woollacott, eds., (London and New York: Methuen, 1983) 118-122.
Graham Murdock, "Large Corporations and the Control of the Communications Industries," 118-122.
Martin Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1980) 72-74.
Some mention should be made of another of Rupert Murdoch's many media endeavors, Sky Channel, based in the U.K., which has been expanding into new areas of broadcasting, including direct satellite broadcasting, and, at this writing, is planning to compete head-on with CNN by globalizing Sky's all-news operations, currently available only in Europe.
There is substantiated evidence of control in the print media as well. According to the January 16, 1993 edition of Editor & Publisher, virtually all 150 newspaper editors in a 1992 Marquette University study acknowledged interference by advertisers. 93% of editors said advertisers tried to influence the content of their newspaper articles. 71% of editors said advertisers tried to kill certain stories outright. And 37% of editors were honest enough to admit that they actually had succumbed to this advertiser pressure. More than half (55.1%) said there was pressure from within their own newspaper to write or tailor news stories to please advertisers. (Cited by Federal information News Syndicate, Vigdor Schreibman, Editor & Publisher,Vol III, Issue No. 8, April, 24, 1995, fins@access.digex.net).
Graham Murdock, "Large Corporations and the Control of the Communications Industries," 118-122.
Jib Fowles, Why Viewers Watch: A Reappraisal of Television's Effects (Newbury Park: Sage Publishers, 1992) 100.
Graham Murdock, "Large Corporations and the Control of the Communications Industries," 118-122.
See Graham Murdock, "Large Corporations and the Control of the Communications Industries," 118-149 and Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (New York: The Free Press, 1960).
Stuart Hall, "The Rediscovery of 'Ideology': Return of the Repressed in Media Studies," Michael Gurevitch, Tony Bennett, James Curran and Janet Woollacott (eds.), Culture, Society and the Media (London and New York: Methuen, 1983) 86-87.

See Stuart Hall, "The Rediscovery of 'Ideology,'" 88:

When in phrasing a question, in the era of monetarism, a broadcasting interviewer simply takes it for granted that rising wage demands are the sole cause of inflation, he is both 'freely formulating a question' on behalf of the public and establishing a logic which is compatible with the dominant interests in society.


To be impartial and independent in their daily operations, they cannot be seen to take directives from the powerful, or consciously to be bending their accounts of the world to square with dominant definitions.
Stuart Hall, "The Rediscovery of 'Ideology,'" 87.
Stuart Hall, "The Rediscovery of 'Ideology,'" 87.
Stuart Hall, "The Rediscovery of 'Ideology,'" 87.
Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 235-239.
John Pilger, "Information is Power: Control of the World Media Keeps the Poor in Their Place," The New Statesman, November 15, 1991, 10-11.
John Pilger, "Information is Power," 11.
John Pilger, "Information is Power," 10-ll.
John Pilger, "Information is Power," 10-11.
John Merrill and Ralph Lowenstein, Media Message and Men: New Perspectives in Communication (New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1971) 234.
Alan Bell, The Language of News Media, (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991) 34, 40.
Alan Bell, The Language of News Media, 41.
Alan Bell, The Language of News Media,, 48-50.
Daniel C. Hallin, The Uncensored War: the media and Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986, 63-72.
Daniel C. Hallin, The Uncensored War, 63-72.
Daniel C. Hallin, The Uncensored War, 63-72. According to Jeff Cohen, Executive Director of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) writing in Propaganda Review, online edition from the propaganda.rev conference on the IGC computer network, Television programmers "believe themselves to be majoritarian, [programming] what the viewers want."
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 37-86. "Propaganda campaigns," say Herman and Chomsky, "have been closely attuned to elite interests," 32.
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, 33-32.
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, 9-10.
Martin Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources, 76.
Compare Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990) in Chapter 1, "The Endless Chain," 3-26, where he writes: "The highest levels of world finance have become intertwined with the highest levels of mass media ownership, with the result of tighter control over the systems on which most of the public depends for its news and information."
Reagan worked for GE as television host of the General Electric Theater and toured the country making speeches against Communism.
Some consider television broadcasters, in association with the media corporation and its owner, the multinational corporation, to be purveyors of ideological and political persuasion. According to Alan Bell (The Language of News Media), however, a clearly definable relation between any given linguistic choice, broadcast within the news message, and a specific ideology, is very difficult to prove. Still, does the fact that GE owns the companies which own NBC News actually influence the "linguistic choice" within the news messages broadcast on its news programs? Lee and Soloman think it does, and they cite references to GE where certain segments were "surgically removed" from the Today show on November 30, 1989, a report on substandard products in planes, bridges, nuclear missile silos and the space program. Another example which they cite took place in March of 1987 when NBC News broadcast an "upbeat" documentary on nuclear power which was very pro-nuclear and also won first prize for science journalism in a competition sponsored by the Westinghouse Foundation. See Martin Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources, 77-78.
The following is an excerpt from a computer-distributed report on NBC entitled The FCC's Priorities, by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting <fair@igc.apc.org>

The FCC allowed GE to take over NBC in part because it accepted "GE's assurance that NBC News will operate autonomously, without interference by the new bosses." (Advertising Age, 6/16/86) But there is considerable evidence this has not been the case. [Lawrence] Grossman [former NBC News President] ...reported that Welch [Chairman of General Electric] gave him specific criticism, like telling him that "NBC's reporters should stay away from using depressing phrases like 'Black Monday'" to refer to the 1987 stock market crash. Welch even insisted that the Today show's weather forecaster Willard Scott continue to mention GE light bulbs on the air. "It was one of the perks of owning a network," Grossman said. "You get your light bulbs mentioned on the air.... People want to please the owners." Grossman, who was fired in 1988, says he also got pressure from NBC head Robert Wright (who had come from GE Financial Services) when NBC News aired reports critical of CA/Universal, whose TV arm supplied fare to NBC. "The vibrations or message that was being communicated (by Mr. Wright) was 'We're losing money and you guys are risking even more when you put on these reports,'" Grossman told Electronic Media (11/11/91). Grossman's revelations were shrugged off by the FCC. William Johnson, deputy chief of the Mass Media Bureau, said: "If the owner has an opinion, he's entitled to say that to his employees. It's hard for me to see what's wrong with that." (Electronic Media 11/11/91).

Silence about important issues, presuppositions in the text as well as purposeful use of "upbeat" language are all criteria which are today recognized as legitimate elements of discourse and communication. See Ferdinand Poyatos, Cross-Cultural Perspectives in Nonverbal Communication (Toronto: Hogrefe, 1988) and Teun van Dijk, Racism and the Press, (London: Routledge, 1991), Chapter 7, "Meanings and Ideologies," as well as the discussion on this subject in subsequent chapters, especially Chapter 5.
Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), 23.
See Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders, (New York: Pocket Books, 1981).
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, 14.
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, 14.
Jeff Greenfield, Television: The First Fifty Years (New York: Crescent Books, 1981) 30.
Martin Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources, 49, report that:

National Public Radio's All Things Considered once did a segment on the different kinds of music that set the tone for its news coverage. There were bouncy tunes for funny stories and cerebral sounds for serious reports. A gloomy melody served as mood music for "sad stories" about life in Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe--but not in reports about poverty-stricken Third World countries allied geopolitically with the U.S.

Martin Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources, 49.
Martin Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources, 49.
Martin Lee and Norman Solomon, Unreliable Sources, 10-13.
Jeff Greenfield, Television: The First Fifty Years, 28.
Jeff Greenfield, Television: The First Fifty Years, 28.
James N. Rosse, "Mass Media and Their Environments," What's News, ed. Elie Abel, (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1981) 40.
Within the context of this question, it is important to remember Barthes' observation that "The important thing is to see that the unity of an explanation cannot be based on the amputation of one or other of its approaches..." Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 112.
According to James Rosse, "The principal reason why daily newspapers are sold, for example, rather than given away, appears to be so that paid circulation can serve as evidence to advertisers that the newspaper's subscriber base consists of people who actually read the paper; free distribution often would be less costly than paid distribution."
James N. Rosse, "Mass Media and Their Environments,", 41.
By "type," we mean the readership to whom the newspaper is pitched.
Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 14-21.
Interactive television will make it much easier for marketers to know their audiences. With interactive television, every viewer can be directly solicited for such information.
A report from Reuters of May 6, 1994 states: "Jones Naughton Inc. ...a producer of "infomercials," ...said Friday it plans to begin production later this month of the nation's first interactive television network... Production is expected to begin May 27. The service will be available to larger subscribers for $375 per month, per site, and to smaller subscribers for about $195, Jones said. The network will offer professional training ... available only at off-site seminars."
Jeremy Allaire, writing in Usenet (alt.politics.datahighway), explains, however, that "interactive television," or as he calls it, "interactive forms of information," pose the "threat" to advertisers that the "reader/viewer" may turn away from the advertisement, "because the cold stark fact" is that most audiences "prefer the entertainment/information over the advertisements. And, in a world where more control is offered to the user, that could cause some problems" (for advertisers).
Alternatives for advertisers, however, are being considered. Besides the trick of "turning advertisements into interactive game shows where you win what are essentially coupons... new strategies for controlling the reader/viewer in the interactive age..." are being developed. "...while computers do allow for refined choices by the consumer, they also allow for refined choices by the advertisers.
Major Telco/Cable folks are dying to make deals with credit card companies and banks to get purchasing behavior data with which they may "program" ... your set-top box or PC data flow.
James N. Rosse, "Mass Media and Their Environments,", 40-42.
Jib Fowles, Why Viewers Watch, 78.
Jib Fowles, Why Viewers Watch, 85.
Excellent graphical interfaces can be purchased, allowing users to integrate the supplied data with their specific needs.
The actual effects of this "real world view," of course, is exceedingly difficult to measure and predict. Teun A. van Dijk has developed a "schema of the relations between ideology, society, cognition and discourse," in which the source of information (the text/discourse as reference) is strategically processed (decoded) in terms of the individual's own system of cognition (including "personal memory" and "social memory"). Van Dijk has determined that knowledge is gathered from one's social-cultural surroundings and the interpretation of discourse depends greatly on one's own personal ideology, which itself develops from a complex combination of factors.
Teun A. van Dijk, from lecture notes taken at the University of Jyväskylä, December 7, 1994.
Michael Parenti, Propaganda Review, No. 10, 1993, 32-34, from his book, Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992).
Michael Parenti, Propaganda Review, No. 10, 1993, 32-34.
Michael Parenti, Propaganda Review, No. 10, 1993, 32-34.
Michael Parenti, Propaganda Review, No. 10, 1993, 32-34.
Michael Parenti, Propaganda Review, No. 10, 1993, 32-34.
Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time, 222-223. Gans uses statistics gathered by Simmons, Selective Markets (1975).
Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time, 234-235.
George Orwell, Inside the Whale and Other Essays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957).
George Orwell, Inside the Whale and Other Essays, 47-48.
George Orwell, Inside the Whale and Other Essays, 47-48.
See A. Lebedew, "Kunst fuer den Massenbedarf," Sowjetwissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur, 4, 1965, 339, for a discussion of Antonio Gramsci's "Briefe aus dem Kerker."
See Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 91-119.
A. Lebedew, "Kunst fuer den Massenbedarf," Sowjetwissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur, 4, 1965, 339.
See also: Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds. and translators (New York: International Publishers, 1978), 175, footnote 75:

One imagines that something has happened to upset the mechanism of necessity. One's own initiative has become free. Everything is easy. One can do whatever one wants, and one wants a whole series of things which at present one lacks... Everything repressed is unleashed. ...it is necessary to direct one's attention violently towards the present as it is, if one wishes to transform it. Pessimism of the intelligence, optimism of the will.

George Gerbner, "About Violence: Road Runner Begets Rambo," New York Newsday, Feb. 26, 1993.
Gramsci's idea was also expressed by Engels, when he wrote:

We want to do away with everything which presents itself as supernatural and superhuman, and in that way remove the untruth... [In art] one only has to recognize oneself, measure all relationships in life with oneself, to judge the world according to one's own existence...

Friedrich Engels, Marx-Engels-Werke (Berlin: Dietz-Verlag, 1968), Vol. 1, 545-546, 548.
Daniel Schorr once wrote the following about his coverage of a press conference with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

...I came to this news conference with a CBS camera crew prepared to do what TV reporters do -- get the most threatening sound bite I could in order to ensure a place on the evening news lineup. I succeeded in eliciting from him phrases on the possibility of "disruptive protest" directed at the Johnson administration and Congress. As I waited for my camera crew to pack up, I noticed that Dr. King remained seated behind a table in an almost empty room, looking depressed. Approaching him, I asked why he seemed so morose.
"Because of you", he said, "and because of your colleagues in television. You try to provoke me to threaten violence, and if I don't, then you will put on television those who do. And by putting them on television, you will elect them our leaders. And if there is violence, will you think of your part in bringing it about?"
I never saw Dr. King again. Less than two months later he was assassinated.

G. Gerbner, L. Gross, M. Morgan, and N. Signorielli, "The 'Mainstreaming' of America: Violence Profile No. 11", Journal of Communication,1980, 30(3), 10-29.
Gerbner, "About Violence: Road Runner Begets Rambo."