The Night I learned the Mechanics of Media Bias
The Powerful Process of Forming Groupthink in the Media
I learned about media bias in a small soup kitchen in Boston.
On a regular basis — Haley House — a Catholic Worker facility and one of the earliest in the movement, offered Clarification of Thought talks open to the public. This guest speaker series was the brainchild of Peter Maurin co-founder of the movement with Dorothy Day.
The object is to educate people about a social or even theological issue of the day. The talk, although in a Catholic venue, may or may not be Catholic related or even within the scope of everyday Catholicism.
This particular night the guest speaker was someone who seemed to have a great reputation for what he had to say, but I never heard of him. I was about to hear him speak for the first time. His name: Noam Chomsky.
The point of his talk was media bias. This was in the early 1990’s. I should add that if you read some of my articles, you know that I am the son of a Boston Globe reporter. My father worked for the newspaper from 1940’s to his death in 1985 at 60, except for when he was in the Army during World War II. He worked for the Taylor’s Boston Globe and never lived to see the New York Times take it over.
I grew up around the profession of journalism by gumshoe reporters who went to the scene even in danger. They gathered the facts to write the most objective report possible.
I still remember my father telling me how much he hated when reporters misspelled words. “One misspelled word,” he would say, “and the reader will doubt the veracity of the whole story.”
He also hated when he interviewed an eyewitness to a major calamity such as a plane crash or an explosion and the person described the sound of the event “like an atom bomb going off.”
“Have you ever heard an atom bomb going off?” He would respond.
“No,”
“Then what did it sound like?”
So, I grew up with a strict sense of journalism from an old style reporter who died back when people still had landlines. He did not have a master’s degree or higher. Now I hear someone whom I never heard of tell me about news bias. That was a challenge.
Noam Chomsky began his talk explaining that in a dictatorship the people have to fall in line, but in a democracy, leaders have to create consensus exploiting other means. Using the media to steer the direction of the electorate, he called manufacturing consent. It was also the title of one of his books and a documentary of the same subject. He said that media bias is all about getting the readers/viewers to think the way the powers want them to think.
He basically formatted the evening as answers to questions from the small audience. Explaining news bias, he also demonstrated it, as he was known to do, in the atrocities of Cambodia covered extensively by the US media. However, similar atrocities happened relatively at the same time when Indonesia invaded East Timor, the media ignored that latter situation. He explained that the two situations were identical, but that Indonesia was an ally, so, it was not covered much.
You can see a highlight and more comprehensive explanation of what he explained to me here: (Warning graphic images and descriptions)
Coming from my history, I stood up and asked him: “You mean to tell me that people sit in rooms with the editor and say: ‘We will tell the people this, but we will not tell the people that?’ “
“No,” He responded. He then explained to me something that led me to understand not only media bias but corporate structure that I never forgot.
He explained that the higher one goes up in a company, the more the person buys the company line. So that by the time you are deciding what news will be on the front page or even what will be on the evening broadcast, you are formed by the company to think the way the corporate structure wants you to think. Therefore, the people in these editorial meetings are already making decisions within the company mindset.
He explained that the higher one goes up in a company, the more the person buys the company line.
Then I began to understand how their decisions will match their corporation’s groupthink otherwise they would have never made it so high in the company. Indeed, you often see people who make decisions outside of that mindset end up leaving the company in a huff, or be shown the door by corporate elites.
That description immediately changed my way of thinking of not only the media but also corporations.
Those who do not make it up the corporate ladder may be resistant to the corporate groupthink. My father, for example, was a reporter all his life. He never wanted to be anything else and that is what he enjoyed. He never became an editor nor did he want to be one. So, by default, he never was lost in the corporate mindset.
Today, Noam Chomsky’s words ring true in every major media outlet. He would point out that you do not watch the news for what is going on in the world, but what the corporations want you to understand of what is going on in the world.
Chomsky always advocates seeking alternative news sources and I have most of my life. I rarely watch the American corporate media, but I do watch reporters from other sources that have either not made it up the corporate media ladder or were well up there and made that mistake that led them back down and out the door.
I will watch Rick Sanchez and Chris Hedges on RT before I watch the American or British networks. Some people may gag at that thought. However, I do not accept being spoon fed my news. I hear it, watch it and then decide on what the true angle is.
In fact, much of the American media has no credibility with me.
For example: one the most shocking facts I learned through following Chris Hedges is that he cites one well known world class atheist who supports nuclear first strikes, using torture for interrogation and other disturbing trends in the name of his utopian vision. I never knew that until I started reading and following Hedges. (Cf Hedges, Chris When Atheism Becomes Religion: America’s New Fundamentalists, 2008 New York, Free Press, p. 35)
I once confronted an editor to a major daily. His reporter wrote a story about Hispanic workers that I thought was unfair to them. I was working and living in a Massachusetts city that was about 92% Hispanic. Further, some of her details were wrong. The article’s audience was the daily’s upper middle class economically established readers. The subjects of the article: Hispanics in their midst. Many did not speak English, did not read the newspaper and had no idea that the reporter described where they meet for coffee in the morning, where they get transportation to their jobs, etc.
I complained to the leaders in the Latino community saying: “Why didn’t she just give out their phone numbers?” She did virtually everything else. Not all her information was correct. Many, represented by the subjects in the article had no idea she described their virtually every move before they go to work, where they go to church and what they do other times of the day.
The editor was literally the poster person for moving to the upper-middle class suburb where he undoubtedly lived. I remember him standing up in front of the leaders of the Latino community and myself and saying to us all: “The article looked fine to me.” Instead of what made more sense: “What was wrong with the article from your perspective?”
Here was the model of the editorial perspective from this daily newspaper speaking to leaders of the community and standing upon his expertise rejecting their experience. That is the definition of media bias.
I learned a lot from Noam Chomsky that night and I never forgot it. The next time you hear Donald Trump describe fake news, remember that concept is older than Woodstock. Hillary Clinton used it before he did and Noam Chomsky warned about it long, long ago, even before Indonesia invaded East Timor.