Alan
MacLeod looks at the role of the media in the regime change operation
in Venezuela
by
Alan MacLeod
Part
2 - A seminal study inspires
To study
the 2018 elections, I used the propaganda model media scholars Edward
Herman and Noam Chomsky outlined in their book Manufacturing
Consent. Their propaganda model contends that mainstream,
corporate media is not a neutral venue for truth. Instead, it is a
vehicle that advances the interests of media owners and their
advertisers.
The
authors argue that, in contrast to the top-down censorship of
authoritarian states, these outlets achieve uniform opinions through
the pre-selection of "right-thinking" editors and reporters
who have been trained at the "right" schools. They then
disseminate information – or, at the very least, self-censor – in
a way that protects or advances the ideology of ownership,
advertisers and official sources.
Herman
and Chomsky highlight this phenomenon through coverage of elections
in three countries: Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
The
Guatemalan presidential election of 1982 and the Honduran
presidential election of 1984 to 1985 were held under what Herman and
Chomsky describe as "conditions of severe, ongoing state
terror against the civilian population." They show how the
U.S. media ignored the enormous waves of violence inundating these
two elections. CBS' Dan Rather, for example, described the events in
Guatemala as "heartening."
Meanwhile,
Herman and Chomsky explain that the 1984 Nicaraguan elections were
won by the Marxist sandinistas in a "model of probity and
fairness by Latin American standards." Yet American media
coverage portrayed this election with a relentless tone of
negativity. Time Magazine reported that the election mood was
"one of indifference," with voters "too
apathetic to go to the polls" and that "the outcome
was never in doubt," suggesting a rigged system, while many
articles discussed the "fear" of Nicaraguan voters.
Mainstream
media coverage, they concluded, manufactured a reality that was
conducive to the interests of the U.S. government – which sought to
prop up their client states and demonize Nicaragua – and
multinational corporations, who were eager to work with sympathetic
right-wing governments to increase their foothold in Central America.
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