The Interplay Between Politics and Media: 'Manufacturing Consent'

An essay on the working of the media and how it is influenced by politics and power (based on the book 'Manufacturing Consent' by Edward S. Horman and Noam Chomsky), through the lens of Indian politics as well as Israel's genocide on Palestine

It is no surprise that politics and the media are now ridiculously interwoven. While it is said that several traditional news channels are now bought out, we still find ourselves stuck between a steady stream of political content on social media and (thankfully) some of its independent news organisations. 

Everyone is loud, and we are enveloped by opinions and ideologies. And, not to mention, memes - be it the #Melodi trend or viral deep fakes of the PM singing (because, come on, if there’s one thing our generation can do, it’s add humour to something even as serious as politics). 

But being given so much information at the tip of our fingers is… fragile, to say the least. The ‘free press’ is no longer as free as we’d like it to be. Democracy is slowly dying (even though it is projected to be alive and well because of the way ‘free speech’ is exercised on social media). 

Whichever political side of the media we find ourselves in the midst of, we are constantly being pulled in various directions. Being told what is right and what is wrong, instead of taking on the task of deciding for ourselves. Which is terribly, dangerously lazy, on our part. 

And so, if we cannot stop ourselves from consuming content, then, at the very least, we must know exactly what is fed to us - what is thrown and churned in, what is filtered out, who stirs the pot, and, most importantly, what remains of the truth.

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In their book ‘Manufacturing Consent’, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky bring to light the ways in which the media promotes and aids in an unequal and unfair society.

“The pressures which compel the mass media to publish propaganda for the upper echelons of the social hierarchy can be best explained with a ‘propaganda model.’ The model contains various filters through which information must pass before it is ‘clean’ enough to become news. These filters can consist of financial incentives, such as the need to be profitable or to appease owners or advertisers.”

While considering a propaganda model, we may look at the state of the Indian media today. It has become more and more common to see a right-wing political agenda of ‘Hindutva’ streamlined into the media - be it through news channels or WhatsApp forwards.

As a New York Times article states,

“Senior government officials have pressed news outlets — berating editors, cutting off advertising, ordering tax investigations — to ignore the uglier side of the party’s campaign to transform India from a tolerant, religiously diverse country into an assertively Hindu one.”

Moreover, the media is often forced to rely on government organisations and large corporations to maintain regular material. 

“The reasons the media use these sources - state institutions, such as the police and government agencies, or the press departments of large corporations - are obvious. Their sheer size enables them to provide regular material, and in addition they are regarded as reliable and objective, meaning that the media are able to treat information as fact without the expense of having to check it. But the overreliance on these bodies enables the ruling elites to control and ‘manage’ the media.”

Another striking feature of Indian politics is how the public has begun to compare the PM to their gods. How can idolism, worship and religious political ideologies possibly find their place in the world’s biggest democracy - except, perhaps, with a helping hand from an often biased media? 

However, thankfully, a number of independent news organisations and individuals continue to post unbrainwashed content using channels like YouTube and Instagram. As I said, all the information is at the tip of our fingers. We just need to decide for ourselves what to believe in, instead of letting anyone else tell us. 

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One of the most recent examples of distortion of news and gradual abolishment of free press has been the Israel-Palestine conflict. Israel has disregarded the safety of journalists and has even gone so far as to kill (at least) more than 100 journalists and media workers - and, on top of that, warp the facts around the killings of journalists. 

Journalists covering the conflict are being harassed, arrested, and censored in Israel and the West Bank. Media workers from international news organisations such as CNN, the New York Times, NBC, etc. are not permitted to move unaccompanied in Gaza, and have to submit all gathered materials and footage to the Israeli military for review before publishing.

Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said, of Al Jazeera, that the organisation “distorted facts in a way which incited masses of people to riot.”  (See also: 'Israel’s wartime assault on the free press' by Vox)

This only accentuates the point that the news and propaganda spread by the ruling government in this case “protects the rights and privileges of the ruling elites by reporting events through a narrow, biased lens.” 'Manufacturing Consent' further states that the elite punish critical media by generating 'flak':

“If the media report the news in a way that offends the interests of the ruling social groups, they can find themselves facing a backlash. The criticism thrown back at the media by the elite is known as ‘flak.’

The aim of flak is to put free-thinking media on the defensive, fostering an image of an unfairly critical media with a ‘liberal bias.’ Well-directed and funded flak generates fear in media companies, creating another important filter in the propaganda model.”

One of the more bone-chilling aspects of the genocide has been the killing of children and the subsequent pattern of racialized 'adultification' - which is used to ‘rationalize’ violence perpetrated against them. Here’s what the Swaddle says about this:

“The word ‘child’ is never used in military announcements: they refer to either an infant or a youth, but never a child. So a ten-year old boy shot by the military forces is reported to be a ‘young man of ten’,” noted Anton Shammas, in the New York Review of Books. The media is complicit in this framing too. Recently, a Sky News reporter referred to the killing of a toddler as that of a ‘3 or 4-year-old young lady.’”

All of this is part of the propaganda model as explained in 'Manufacturing Consent': 

“The mass media view some people’s lives as more worthy than others depending on what message their deaths send.”

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The interplay between politics and mass media is clearly dangerous, and unfairly so. Those in power keep exploiting their position, while the ones who seek to spread news - instead of propaganda - seemingly struggle to climb the ladder. We find ourselves, all of us, inching towards a more intolerant perspective of the political society - no matter which side we’re on. What is, by nature, grey - ideology - is now seen as either black or white. 

To sum it up, here’s what I think ‘Manufacturing Consent’ was trying to tell us:

We are force-fed so much information, and in the midst of all the listening that we do (considering how loud the media is), perhaps we forget to question. To second-guess. To think and feel and then act, instead of believing everything we’re told. 

And that is one thing we must really, truly learn to do - in a digital world that is trying to do it for us.