According to Noam Chomsky, people often end up serving the interests of money-driven media power, hoping that foreign countries will reward them with wages for undermining choices and politics. While there is no denying the media’s ability to shape public opinion and even manipulate the masses, the public is also aware of its vulnerability to such influence. People recognize that the media has been effective in mobilizing those who were initially against war, turning them bloodthirsty through its portrayals.
The media’s role in today’s political landscape leads people to question what society and the world really want. Chomsky points out that one view of democracy is that it is a society where the public has much influence in governing its affairs. However, there is another view that suggests the system should stop the public from having that kind of control. It is a broad idea. Chomsky digs into the modern era, looking at how democracy developed and how media and disinformation mix with the concept of democracy.
If the educated classes support it without question, government propaganda can have a huge impact. Studies on the media in developing countries show how state power often dominates. In many cases, journalism is a tool for state propaganda used to maintain the ruler’s ideology and interests.
As a result, those in power have a strong reason to use the media as a political tool to push their goals. Because of this, the public often sees the media as an extension of state power. It includes individuals who work for the state, their closeness to state censorship and control, their understanding of how different parts of the media work, and their tendency to focus too much on the state.
The media is diverse and covers a wide range of political issues. As state power weakens worldwide, state censorship tends to decrease as well. Pharr compares the media to swindlers—a term he invented himself. These “swindlers” actively participate in politics and help build communities.
People often remember Adam Smith’s observations about policy formation in England. Back then, the “chief architects” of policy were merchants and factory owners who made sure the government prioritized the people’s interests, no matter how “painful” it was for others, including the British population. What Smith was most concerned about was the “barbaric injustice of the Europeans” that people faced, especially in India, which had been conquered. He was specifically talking about the mercantilist system, but his observations can be applied more broadly to both international relations and domestic affairs.
There are also interesting examples of state interests, including long-term strategic and economic concerns, trumping short-term worries about concentrating economic power, which often shapes state policy. Cuba and Iran are good examples of this.
According to Noam Chomsky, the behavior and power of the media often show inconsistent politics, hypocrisy, and ambiguity. In short, they can be deceptive and slippery. While society might see this as a good thing, it also has a destructive and harmful side. Pharr argues that fraudulent media do not represent one particular group, as different interests often trap the media in Southeast Asia. Deception does not come from something other than a lack of loyalty; it comes from the multiple loyalties, obligations, and religious factors of their stakeholders. These stakeholders have both strengths and weaknesses.
Media analysis from the West usually focuses on partisan relations in both informal and formal interactions between political parties and media organizations. However, in Southeast Asia, this definition does not need to be revised. Partisan relations are a broader set of relationships among practitioners, spanning politics and the media. Much of the media literature in developing countries highlights the dominance of state power, where journalism is used as a tool for state propaganda.
The term “democracy promotion” is often used, but the push for neoliberal democracy has led to the marginalization of the public and other forms of control. A good example of this is how the public relations industry manages election spectacles in the United States, which peaked during Obama’s election and earned him the title of “2008’s best marketer.”
Business executives have pointed out that Obama’s achievement was the most impressive example of turning candidates into consumer brands, a practice they first started 30 years ago with the Reagan campaign. However, this has been disastrous for the poor, small farmers, and workers, both at home and abroad.
One reason for the stark development gap between East Asia and Latin America over the past 50 years is that Latin America does not have control over flight capital, which often leads to crippling debt. Flight capital is regularly used as a weapon against reform and social democracy. On the other hand, during South Korea’s remarkable growth, the government not only banned capital flight but even imposed the death penalty for such offenses.
The idea of “the golden age of capitalism” can be challenged. It might be more accurate to call it “state capitalism.” The state sector played a significant role in innovation and development through various measures, including research and development, assurance, and procurement. In the US version, these policies mostly operated under the protection of the Pentagon at the forefront of advanced economies.
The results include satellites, the internet, computers, and most of today’s technological revolution. It also includes biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, advanced machine tools, civil aircraft, and many others. The state’s vital role in economic development should be kept in mind when the public hears warnings about government interference in the financial system, especially after private management causes yet another crisis—this time a very severe one that threatens the rich, not just the poor. Therefore, the crisis deserves special attention.
Legally, smart commentary and court decisions brought radical changes to how we think about human rights and democracy. Corporations, which were once seen as unentitled artificial entities, were given all the rights of people—and even more—because they are considered “eternal persons” with extraordinary power and wealth. The intellectual roots of giving such huge rights to corporate legal entities come from neo-Hegelian ideas that influenced both Bolshevism and fascism.
The idea is that these “organic entities” have rights that go beyond those of individuals. Conservative legal scholars strongly opposed these changes, realizing they weakened the traditional belief that rights belong to individuals and undermined market principles. However, new forms of authoritarian rule were established, along with the legitimacy of wage labor, which, for much of the 19th century, mainstream American thought considered no better than slavery—this was the view not just of the labor movement but also figures like Abraham Lincoln.
In modern times, political leaders communicate a lot with the public through the news media, which they cannot fully control. According to Noam Chomsky, the media’s power lies between politicians and their voters. Politicians talk to the media, and the media then share this information with the public. However, paying for advertising can help a presidential candidate circumvent some of these limitations, though it doesn’t eliminate the need for free media attention.
On the one hand, politicians try to create events that promote their campaign and image, which forces reporters to cover them as news. On the other hand, they try to avoid things like press conferences because it makes it hard to control what gets reported. Politicians clearly want coverage that associates them with competence, honesty, likability, and popular policies. This kind of ambiguity can make them more appealing to voters who feel distant from them, which can increase voter turnout for the party that seems more attractive.
In a two-party system, parties often try to be as vague as possible on controversial issues to appeal to a broader range of voters. When both parties decide it is time to stop being so vague, each one becomes more firm in its position.
Society is starting to realize that the economic and political principles in place today contradict what we have been told. People might also be skeptical of the idea that these principles are the future wave that will lead to a favorable outcome in history. We have heard confident claims about the “end of history” before, and they’ve always turned out to be wrong.
In advanced industrial countries, and often in other parts of the world, the struggles of the masses might be reaching a new stage with greater expectations than before. Noam Chomsky believed that international solidarity could take on new, more positive forms in politics and media power.
Most people also recognize that by working together, they can achieve their common interests. Skeptics who view these ideas as unrealistic and naive need only to look at what has transpired in recent years. They should witness what the human spirit is capable of and how far it can reach.
References
- Chomsky, N. (2002). Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda. Seven Stories Press.
- Chomsky, N. (2006). Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy. Metropolitan Books.
- Chomsky, N. (2017). Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power. Haymarket Books.
- Pharr, S. J. (2013). Media and the State in Southeast Asia: Political Influence and Media Manipulation. Harvard University Press.
- Smith, A. (1776). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. W. Strahan & T. Cadell.
- Stiglitz, J. E. (2002). Globalization and Its Discontents. W.W. Norton & Company.
- Turchin, P. (2016). A Historical Dynamics of Social Stability and Revolution. Springer.
