mass-communication-theory

toward propagandists’ support of the status quo is the media’s “belief in the ‘miracle
of the market.’ There is now an almost religious faith in the market, at least
among the elite, so that regardless of the evidence, markets are assumed benevolent
and non-market mechanisms are suspect” (p. 125). These themes, as you will see in
Chapters 8 and 11, accurately mirror many of the core assumptions of critical cultural
theory.
Behaviorists Richard Laitinen and Richard Rakos (1997) offer another critical
view of contemporary propaganda. They argue that modern propaganda—in their
definition, “the control of behavior by media manipulation” (p. 237)—is facilitated
by three factors: an audience “that is enmeshed and engulfed in a harried lifestyle,
less well-informed, and less politically involved, . . . the use of sophisticated polling
and survey procedures, whose results are used by the propagandists to increase
their influence, . . . [and] the incorporation of media companies into megaconglomerates”
(pp. 238–239). These factors combine to put untold influence in the
hands of powerful business and governmental elites without the public’s awareness.
Laitinen and Rakos wrote:
In contemporary democracies, the absence of oppressive government control of information
is typically considered a fundamental characteristic of a “free society.” However,
the lack of aversive control does not mean that information is “free” of
controlling functions. On the contrary, current mechanisms of influence, through direct
economic and indirect political contingencies, pose an even greater threat to behavioral
diversity than do historically tyrannical forms. Information today is more systematic,
continuous, consistent, unobtrusive, and ultimately powerful. (1997, p. 237)
There is also renewed interest in propaganda theory from the political Right.
This conservative interest in propaganda takes the form of a critique of liberal media
bias (see, for example, Coulter, 2002, 2006; Goldberg, 2002, 2003, 2009;
Morris and McGann, 2008). Other than surveys indicating that a majority of journalists
vote Democratic, there is little serious scholarship behind this assertion. In
fact, what research there is tends to negate the liberal media bias thesis, as the large
majority of media outlet managers and owners tend to vote Republican, the majority
of the country’s syndicated newspaper columnists write with a conservative
bent, and the majority of “newsmakers” on network and cable public affairs talk
shows are politically right-of-center (Alterman, 2003). McChesney commented:
LIBERTARIANISM REBORN
Chapter 4 The Rise of Media Theory in the Age of Propaganda 93
The fundamental error in the conservative notion of the “liberal” media [is] it posits
that editors and journalists have almost complete control over what goes into
news. . . . In conservative “analysis,” the institutional factors of corporate ownership,
profit-motivation, and advertising support have no effect on media content. . . . The
notion that journalism can regularly produce a product that violates the fundamental
interests of media owners and advertisers and do so with impunity simply has no evidence
behind it. (1997, p. 60)
By the end of the 1930s, pessimism about the future of democracy was widespread.
Most members of the old-line elites were convinced that totalitarianism couldn’t be
stopped. They pointed to theories like those of Lasswell and Lippmann as proof
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