How to write analytical essays - News and the Media 3

Defining Democracy

With regard to the US news media, liberal journalists appear to be very similar to anarchist commentators in terms of what they say regarding the role of the news media in democratic societies, that is, to give people information to allow them to make up their own minds, and in doing so achieve a democratic society. On a superficial level it seems that both liberal journalists and anarchists are in favour of democracy. Yet, despite this apparent similarity in wanting democracy, anarchist commentators criticise liberal journalists vehemently. In particular, anarchist commentators such as Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky have argued that the supposedly-liberal US media are deliberately preventing people from making up their own minds by favouring some news over others, and thus blocking true democracy (1988, 1-2). Herman and Chomsky do not think that liberal journalists do what they claim they are doing, given that the declared aim of liberal journalism is “to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self-governing" (Kovach and Rosenstiel 2000, 17) and, by extension, to promote democracy. Hence, the question is: why is it that anarchist commentators criticise liberal journalists for subverting democracy, when they both appear to be in agreement regarding the role of the news media, namely to achieve democracy? It appears that there is some difference, leading to conflict between the two groups, regarding the definition of democracy, hence their acrimonious exchange over the media. Thus, the related question is: how do anarchist commentators differ from liberal journalists regarding the definition of democracy?

This paper will argue that the disagreements between anarchists and liberal journalists stem from a conflict of understanding of the definition of democracy, because the liberal view of democracy has a strong element of government and capitalism whereas the anarchist view has a strong element of freedom and is anti-government and anti-capitalism. I will first present a current working definition of democracy as liberal journalists understand it. I will then articulate a definition of democracy as anarchist commentators probably see it, given that there is no actual fixed definition of democracy for anarchists, and then a comparison and contrast will be made of the two definitions. This comparison and contrast enables us to solve the issue that despite writing in remarkably similar terms and possessing virtually the same idea of the problems facing the media today, anarchist commentators claim that liberal journalists are subverting democracy by not allowing the public to make up their own decisions. Finally, this paper will take Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model (1988) as a specific case study and analyse it in terms of the differences in the definitions of democracy to understand the conflict between liberal journalists and anarchist commentators.

First and foremost, it should be noted that democracy can be defined in many ways. It means different things to different groups of people and is notoriously difficult to define specifically. However, to attain a working definition of democracy according to liberals, let us consider the definition given by Chris Rohmann of a “liberal democracy”: a government characterised by “democratic institutions” and “democratic protections” (where democratic “protections” are generally taken to mean institutional safeguards of citizens’ individual rights, for instance, by enshrining those rights in law or the Constitution) typically maintaining “capitalist economies” and stressing “private property rights” (Rohmann 1999, 97). This key statement of the definition of democracy according to liberals strongly supports government in the form of state institutions to provide protection of the property rights of the people, and above all, mentions the important aspect of capitalism. Capitalism is commonly understood as an economic system that promotes private ownership of resources, which are the means of production, and via the production of goods and services resources are transformed into private wealth. Liberal democracy needs government involvement so as to protect the property rights and commercial agreements which are the cornerstones of the capitalist system. Regarding capitalism, Rohmann suggests that liberalism in “its modern incarnation favours state involvement in social welfare and economic policy while upholding personal liberty and opportunity” (1999, 231). More importantly, this means that while the government structures and institutions are there in large part to promote and uphold capitalism, the government also has the responsibility to take care of its citizens and ensure their economic welfare. In a related vein, according to Benjamin Page, the crucial points leading to democracy are “competition and diversity” in “the marketplace of ideas” (1996, 8). This reinforces Rohmann’s ideas that there is a very strong element of capitalism in the liberal conception of democracy, as competition and diversity are essential for capitalism. Thus it can be seen that in the liberal conception of democracy there is a very strong governmental and capitalist element.

In anarchist thought, however, there is a different vision of democracy. Strictly speaking, there is no definition of democracy for anarchists per se, in terms of a fixed and positive statement that clearly states their definition of democracy. Hence, I will construct their definition of democracy from the various important strands of anarchist thought relating to politics and democracy, fashioning various key ideas into a working definition.

John Morrow claims that the key to anarchist thought is that there is a rejection of the State due to a belief that the State harms human liberty (1998, 94). The main belief of anarchists is in “human liberty”, and this affects the way they view the kind of democracy that they may hope to achieve. To anarchists, it can be said that “liberty” refers to the autonomy and independence of every individual human being (Morrow 1998, 94). Thus, more pertinently, to anarchists “human liberty” above all means freedom from the “repression of the State and legislation” (Bakunin, mentioned in Morrow 1998, 97), and that means in political terms the removal of the State and the State apparatus. Thus, to them, true democracy would rightfully entail the substitution of the State with many “small and intimate communities where individuals would be subjected only to the rational and non-coercive influences of their neighbour’s arguments” (Godwin 1969, cited in Morrow 1998, 95). This clearly shows that the anarchist conceptions of democracy would be vastly different from the liberal conception as their ideas on “small and intimate communities”, suggesting that political life should revolve around small neighbourhoods and local communities, would directly contradict the overarching government institutions that liberals believe in. Furthermore, this point regarding this contradiction is reinforced by the statement that “The authority of the state … is counter-productive; it produces conflicts and injustices that would not exist in a stateless, free environment” (Morrow 1998, 98). Clearly in anarchist thought democracy would not have a State-based overarching control of institutions but would have “small and intimate communities” instead. In addition to rejecting the state, it appears that anarchists also reject capitalism. Morrow states that “large-scale industrial enterprises would be controlled by working men’s associations made up of those involved in them” (1998, 96). This shows that the anarchist idea of rejecting the State as an overarching authority extends to capitalism, where instead of having privately-owned businesses, where ownership is distinct from the day-to-day ground operations of the firms, democracy according to anarchists would have instead enterprises controlled by the workers. This creation of small self-governing working communities is clearly a rejection of capitalism as the liberals understand it. To sum up, a working definition for the anarchist definition of democracy in this paper will thus be: a political system of “small and intimate communities” free from the “repression of the State” and its institutions and free from capitalism, as this definition combines the two elements of the rejection of the State and the similar rejection of capitalism.

With the two definitions in mind, let us examine the Propaganda Model put forth by Herman and Chomsky. It is an illuminating case study of why liberal journalists do not see themselves as deliberately misleading the public yet they are strongly criticised as doing just that by Herman and Chomsky. In brief, the main argument that Herman and Chomsky make is that the “democratic postulate is that the media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the truth” and that this assumption is at odds with the truth that “the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse” (1988, xi). The Propaganda Model suggested by Herman and Chomsky shows how “the government and dominant private interests … get their messages across to the public”, filtering out the “news fit to print” and marginalising dissent, using five filters, which are the ways in which the rich and the powerful are alleged to be able to carry out the deed: “profit-orientation of the dominant mass-media firms”, “advertising”, “reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and ‘experts’”, “flak” as a means of media control, and “anticommunism as a national religion and control mechanism” (Herman and Chomsky 1988, 2). While “anticommunism as a national religion and control mechanism” is no longer applicable due to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, let us consider the other four filters to see how they reflect our working definition of anarchist democracy.

It is immediately apparent that the definition of democracy according to anarchists proves to be their main source of contention vis-à-vis liberal journalists. For instance, the first two parts of the Propaganda Model regarding the “dominance of the mass-media firms” and “advertising”, which Herman and Chomsky strongly reject as blocking democracy, are related to the aspect of capitalism in the definition. We can consider these two filters as essentially related to capitalism (or to put it another way, commercialism) and as such consider the two filters as one major argument. According to our working definition of democracy from the viewpoint of anarchists, we can see that anarchists strongly reject capitalism, and yet it is clear that in the modern media today, commercialism and, its corollary, advertising play a big part. As Paul Starr states succinctly, “Our public life is a hybrid of capitalism and democracy, and we are the better off for it, as long as the democratic side keeps the balance” (2004, 402). Hence, in the liberal definition of democracy, there is support for capitalism. As there is support for democracy, it does not appear wrong to liberals at all that there should be a strong capitalist focus for the media. According to Starr, “the power of the media … has its roots not only in legal rights but also in commercial success” (2004, 392) and he goes on to claim that American communications had taken a “private, advertising-supported, and competitively driven broadcasting system” (Starr 2004, 395). These ideas about the US media are strongly reflected in the liberal definition of democracy because they reflect the role that capitalism played in forming the power of the media. While Starr acknowledges that commerce may sometimes distort the media, it creates incentives to engage “new groups in public debate” and historically “advertising revenue also enabled papers to field far more reporters and provide a wider range of news independent of political subsidy” (Starr 2004, 395). Nonetheless the point remains: US liberal representatives of the media define democracy partly in terms of capitalism and are not ashamed that capitalism is part of the media today, compared to anarchists, who reject capitalism resolutely and unequivocally in their definition of democracy.

Furthermore, according to Chomsky, the State is an important source of political news and it indirectly controls the media by fixing the premises of discourse. It can fix the premises of discourse precisely because it is a major provider of political news and the media need to rely on the government for their supply of political news. Indeed, government agencies tend to be credible sources for news and in conjunction with private corporations actually do provide news for the media (Herman and Chomsky 1988, 18-22). The point that the media has to rely on the State as a reliable source of news is reinforced by Calvin Exoo’s enumeration of the problems facing a newsman: Filling a “newshole” that can carry enough advertising weight, without much staff and “under a deadline” (Exoo 1994, 102). He argues that such simple limits, corporate cost-cutting and even the limits facing camera crews combine to make the media turn to established sources of news (Exoo 1994, 103). These same restrictions are also stated by Herman and Chomsky (1988, 19). In a nutshell, the point is that due to these limitations on the media, they have to turn to the State as a provider of information out of necessity. The logistical and practical limitations, such as deadlines to meet and commercial limitations of staff and crew, force the media to turn to the State because it provides reliable and steady information to them, and is hence very attractive as a source to news organisations. According to the anarchist definition of democracy, there is a rejection of the State and hence if the State provides information for the media, that is regarded as blocking democracy, as the information may not be reliable and may be used to manipulate the public. However, regarding the influence that the State has over the media, on the contrary, most liberal representatives of the media do not take that to be necessarily a repudiation of democracy, if we apply the definition of democracy where liberals generally accept State involvement and institutions.

Further, Herman and Chomsky argue that “negative responses to a media statement or program” (flak) aim to control and subdue the media, as flak is “both uncomfortable and costly to the media” (1988, 26). According to Herman and Chomsky, both politicians and “the corporate community” can produce flak (1988, 27), and it can be argued once again that this stems from the difference in the definition of democracy. Using the definitions as a framework, having the State and “the corporate community” form institutions to research and check on the media would correspond to a liberal’s model of democracy, as a liberal democracy involves both having an overarching State with its institutions and capitalism. However, to take a point further, “the corporate community” can be interpreted as a large group or perhaps even a monolithic, homogeneous group of powerful companies. This is in direct contrast with the anarchist definition of democracy, where politicians and “the corporate community” should not interfere with human liberty and hence the anarchist version of democracy, small communities where “the corporate community” has been replaced with small working communities run by the workers. Hence, it is clear that the differing definitions of democracy lead to a conflict of interpretation.

In conclusion, this paper has demonstrated that with an understanding of the two different definitions of democracy, the key issue that both anarchists and liberals want democracy but yet criticise each other acrimoniously can be better understood. Liberal journalists and supporters of the US media have a definition of democracy that supports government, and in particular, supports government in the protection and promotion of capitalism, involving property rights and business agreements. Anarchists, on the other hand, have different ideas on how democracy should operate, and based on extrapolation from their political ideas, I have constructed a working definition of democracy from an anarchist point of view. As anarchists are opposed to governmental control and institutions and are strongly against capitalism, their idea of democracy suggests small and intimate communities of people working together. This definition strongly counteracts the belief in the overarching State and capitalism inherent in the liberal definition of democracy. Hence, it is clear why Herman and Chomsky criticise the media strongly while liberals do not see themselves as deliberately blocking democracy despite acknowledging certain aspects of the Propaganda Model as true. Yet it should be noted that this issue is a very controversial one, and that there has been no final resolution to the debates over the link between democracy and the media today. Perhaps, I would suggest, further analysis and more research should be done with regard to the question of the extent of the media’s role, or even success, in the propagation of democracy itself.

English Language Resources Online