Michael Parenti on Media Manipulation

Award-winning author, historian and political scientist Michael Parenti gave an engaging speech at the Scripps College Garrison Theater earlier this evening entitled Methods of Media Manipulation.

"What can we say about the media?" asked Parenti, who alleged that the mainstream media offers a very limited spectrum of viewpoints, and suggested that it ranged from "far right to right center." Because the mainstream media has the crucial role of molding public opinion and controlling opinion visibility, he viewed this as a very significant social issue. "A multiplicity of news outlets does not necessarily translate into diversity of viewpoints," Parenti explained, claiming that the "whole left portion of the political spectrum is not represented in the 'leftist media'". He went on to talk about his views of the reasons behind this, and the numerous manipulation tactics employed by the media.

Parenti considered the structural pre-configuration of the media as corporate conglomerates to be a big part of the problem. The interests of corporate ownership and corporate advertising limit the range of issues that media outlets are willing to engage in. Journalists and commentators are restricted in the range of stories they are able to cover and the diversity of opinions they are able to put forth. "You can say what you like as long as they like what you say," he jested.

He criticized the media for often "denying causality," or not being proactive enough in asking why things happen, and alleged that the media tends to accept as given what needs to be critically examined. It's not that journalists and reporters are not smart enough to critically analyze; it's that they're too smart and learn to adapt their reporting to what is acceptable to the individuals running the enterprises. They develop a "trained incapacity to think too critically." Parenti then alluded to the proverb "it's hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his misunderstanding it," in his effort to explain his view of why journalists often avoid digging too deep into stories. As a result, he claimed that we're "left seeing the word as the mainstream pundits do."

Another manipulation tactic Parenti spoke of was what he called "false balancing," or the dishonest claim of being balanced. He invoked the example of the Fox News slogan "fair and balanced," suggesting on the contrary that the network offers "ideological uniformity" and a very narrow range of perspectives. "Suppression by omission" is another method of media manipulation. One example Parenti offered to illustrate this was the limited story presented by the media on the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Journalists and commentators have portrayed Saddam as a brutal, murderous tyrant - which he certainly was by any standard - but virtually none mentioned that the U.S. offered significant support to Saddam Hussein during the Reagan-Bush I administrations, even while he committed his worst crimes.

Another of Parenti's method of media manipulation was "labeling," or the undermining of certain perspectives or viewpoints by prefiguring them with unpleasant words phrases such as "anti-American" or "communist." Parenti claimed that the many commentators have the ridiculous habit of casting off those critical of U.S. foreign policy as "anti-American," an accusation Parenti claims to have received several times. He furthermore alleged that right-wing commentators and elected officials often complain about the "liberal" or "leftist" press, hammering the notion into the public consciousness that the press employs a liberal bias. Parenti claimed that "by constantly calling the media liberal, your put them on the defensive," which forces them to consciously lean rightward on the political spectrum rather than think critically and arrive at the most informed conclusion. This, Parenti claimed, is done to preempt substantive debate and analysis.

Parenti ended by suggesting that perhaps "reality is radical." He pointed out that in today United States, poverty is increasing, wages are declining and inequality is surging, and he urged us to ask ourselves who is benefiting from this. The reason that important issues like these are rarely discussed in the media, Parenti claimed, is because they makes certain individuals uncomfortable; the same individuals that have the power to limit the presence of those viewpoints in the mainstream debate.