The invasion and occupation of Iraq since 2003 is a classic example of the power and effectiveness of propaganda campaigns. For some people, subsequent revelations about the lack of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) might have come as a surprise. But even before the invasion took place, many people across the world (including Americans) took part in mass protestations against what they sensed to be an illegitimate war carried out for unjust reasons. This is a reflection of the general public disillusionment with the functioning of government institutions. More importantly, it is an indication of the distrust of mainstream media sources and the information (misinformation) being generated by them. Sadly, though, such expressions of disagreement and distrust only account for a politically aware minority, whilst a large majority of the population are subject to government propganda, orchestrated and implemented by major media institutions. Indeed, the ruthlessness and brazenness with which the Bush Administration went about achieving its strategic goals can be learnt from the following quote:
“The issue of whether the Pentagon was waging an orchestrated domestic propaganda campaign was first openly acknowledged in the fall of 2002. Donald Rumsfeld was asked whether the Pentagon was engaged in propagandizing through the Defense Department’s Office of Strategic Influence (strategic influence is military jargon for propaganda). Military officials said they might release false news stories to the foreign press, but they had to retract that when news organizations expressed concern that the bogus stories could be picked up in the domestic press. Mocking concerns about propaganda blowback, Rumsfeld informed the media on November 18, 2002, that he would eliminate the program in name only. (Goodman & Goodman, 2004, p.253)
One might wonder why such a nexus between apparently two different kinds of institutions should exist and what benefits would its leaders attain in the process. There are a few sociological and political economic theories of news production that attempt to answer this most pressing question of modern democratic societies. The rest of this essay will try to encapsulate the essence of such theories and find out if they resonate in the case of the Iraq War.
One of the major contributions to the subject of government-media propaganda is made by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. Their seminal work titled Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media is perhaps the most illuminating work on this subject, alongside Ben H. Bagdikian’s another path-breaking work ‘Media Monopoly’. In Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky and Herman layout a template for how propaganda works. This they called the Propaganda Model. In it they identify a set of five key factors that contribute to the functioning of propaganda machinery. These are: 1. Ownership of the medium 2. Medium’s funding sources 3. Sourcing 4. Flak and 5. Anti-Communist Ideology. (Mcchesney, 1989, p.36) It should be remembered that during the time of the book’s publication, Soviet Union was still in existence and Anti-Communist ideology comprised the dominant American foreign policy paradigm. In the context of the ongoing occupation of Iraq, one could replace it with such contrived fears as Terrorism and Islamophobia. (Edgley, 2000) What follows is a brief overview of these five factors that helped propaganda efforts in the lead-up to the Iraq war to be successful.
First, mainstream media outlets in the United States (a fact that is equally applicable to most capitalist countries) is largely privately owned. Let us take the case of Television news. The facade of diversity created by hundreds of news channels breaks down with the realization that most channels are owned by a few major media houses such as CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox. These television networks are in turn owned by bigger business corporations such as General Electric, Time Warner, AOL, etc. Some of these major business corporations also have sister concerns that serve directly or indirectly as military contractors to the American government. The massive deployment of military weaponry and equipment had undoubtedly resulted in windfall profits for these companies (even as the economy was reeling under an acute recession). In the case of the Bush presidency, his Administration had several former energy company employees such as Dick Cheney and Condaleeza Rice, whose loyalties were stronger with former employers than with majority of American citizens. Also, for media conglomerates such as NBC, CBS, etc, bolstering their bottom lines is of primary importance, for after-all they are privately owned and are driven by the profit motive. (Leahey, 2004, p.281) In this framework, it is easy to see why their editorial policies and news selection guidelines would relfect these imperatives and preoccupations. This analytic framework makes it easy to see how major media companies in the country implicitly aided (if not prompted) the government to invade Iraq and take control of its energy resources. As a result of this inherent advantage, a list of misconceptions were perpetrated by the Bush Administration during the war. For example,
“The administration encouraged the public to believe Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and forged a rhetorical link between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist group. Much of the public and press accepted these false assertions and utilized these “facts” as justifications for war…Ideally, news media act as a filter, sifting and sorting information in a manner that ensures a reliable and accurate source from which citizens can base judgments about war. The news media fell far short of this ideal and exacerbated the spread of misinformation about Iraq. Major television news coverage of Iraq was overwhelmingly pro-war. Indeed, leading news organizations emphasized. Administration information over contrary information to the extent that two prestigious newspapers later apologized to their readers because they “lost focus on other voices.” The news media did not do their job protecting the public against political propaganda.” (Johansen & Joslyn, 2008, p.591)
Coming to media’s funding sources, we see that major advertisers are themselves business corporations whose profit-motive makes little allowance for issues of propriety and justice. This is why the business community largely remained silent in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Sourcing of news content is another key filter that aids propaganda efforts. Since the misinformation campaign about the presence of WMD in Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq was hosted by Bush Administration officials, the permanent presence of correspondents and reports in government offices like the White House, Capitol Hill and the Pentagon made it difficult for alternative views to be presented to the citizenry. (Kampfner, 2003, p.12) For example, while all major newsmedia outlets gave extensive coverage to the utterances of Bush Administration members such as Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, etc, none of them gave an iota of newstime to dissident views such as those offered by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Robert Fisk, John Pilger, Amy Goodman, etc. From news production point of view, it is cost-efficient and less cumbersome to station correspondents in major government centers as opposed to places like academic departments and public squares. More importantly, getting information from such obscure places is not going to serve the interests of the government or media corporations; and hence editors reflexively avoid alternative or dissident points of view. (Edgley, 2000, p.78) It should also be observed that once myths and lies are established as noble truths, no amount of dissident activitism can eradicate its unsavoury effects. The power and lasting impact of initial impressions are nowhere more clearly evident than in those directly involved in the war, as they have emotionally invested in the justifications for the war. Even those who are only tangentially involved in the war become glued to the contexts in which they first assented to the war proposal. In other words,
“The efficiency of the myth and malevolence of the mythmakers become apparent when we consider the impact on those rendered most vulnerable by war: members of the military, veterans, and the families who have lost loved ones. After having experienced the moral ambiguity of guerilla or counterinsurgency warfare–in their efforts to maintain their moral integrity, self-esteem, and to recover from the trauma of war–many veterans feel compelled to staunchly defend the Iraq war. They find comfort in it and embrace the myth because of a dread, perhaps unconscious, that unless the war they fought be remembered as just, and the threat as real, readjustment-living with the memories of the horrors of combat–would be even more unendurable. Consequently, history must be changed to record the invasion of Iraq as a justifiable response to the attacks of 9/11. And this revisionism is as integral to the war against global terrorism and, of late, to the freedom and democracy of the Iraqi people.” (Bica, 2006, p.20)
This brings us to the manifestation of the notion of ‘flak’ in the build up to the Iraq War. Those criticising the government initiative were either branded as unpatriotic or trecherous or siding with the evil. This includes dissident intellectuals mentioned above. But prominent popular cultural icons are not excepted either, as the case of the shunning of Dixie Chicks clearly shows. Immediately after their open criticism of Bush Administration’s imperialist policy, Dixie Chicks band was ostracized and outcast in most of the radio and television stations; so much so that their music careers have been derailed in the process with little scope for a comeback. By making such outspoken icons into scapegoats, the government-media nexus deters such tendencies among prominent celebrities and intellectuals. So flak had proved to be a major disincentive for those who disapproved of the Iraq war. Consequently, the government was able to proceed with its plan to secure oil resources in Iraq at the cost of tax-payer funding and the cost of innocent civilian lives in Iraq. (Casey, 2010, p.565)
Further, since the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Anti-Communist ideology has lost relevance and is substituted by the threat of Islamic terrorism. A key strategy of the Iraq war propaganda campaign is to ramp up perceived dangers of Islamic fundamentalism, especially that present in the Middle East and to project American intervention in the region as a ‘counter-terror’ operation. Although such an attitude is revealed to be hypocritical to the scrupulous observer, a majority of the population, due to lack of alternative sources of information, is brainwashed with such false claims. In the context of media propaganda to link Iraq and Islamic radicalism, one is reminded of the concept of Orientalism coined by Edward Said. Said noted that the Orient (which includes the Middle East and Asia) is used as a perpetual ‘other’ by the Occident, for purposes that are seldom noble. The Orient is portrayed as a timeless, unchanging, exotic and backward place full of mystery and chaos. Such as conception perfectly suits American political agenda in the region, as these adjectives could be propagated with negative political connotations. This is especially true with regard to American invasion of Iraq and also America’s continued support to Israel despite overwhelming international opposition. (Veer & Munshi, 2004, p.55)
One of the key instights that Chomsky and Herman provide pertain to the conceptualization of the media product. It is easy and intuitive for people to assume that news-content is the product that is being sold to a readership. But in reality, the product being sold is a community of captive audience; and this product is purchased by advertisers. In this scenario, one can understand why media-content turns out to be what it is – namely, a compilation of reports, editorials and analyses that benefits the advertisers and their intended audience (elites with power to consume high-end products). Another related media theory that explains how the general public was so easily manipulated by the government is the Framing theory. The Framing theory can exaplin how readers think about certain common issues such as public support for war. For instance, journalists can decide the frame in which the war gets covered. During this stage, reporters and correspondents can give attention to some stories and issues more than others. They can also deliberately downplay counter perspectives. While it would be far-fetched to claim that journalists deliberately chose frameworks that were favorable to the American government, evidence gathered from major newspapers in the country do point to some sort of association. It is also likely that during the Iraq war, the imperative to attract and retain readership played a role in keeping certain frames while eliminating others. (Schwalbe, 2008, p.448) The following scholarly analysis reveals how choice of frames in Iraq war coverage aided propaganda and misinformation efforts on part of the government and at a high cost to Iraqi civilian and American military personnel:
“Dimitrova and Stromback’s content analysis of the official war/invasion period (March 20, 2003-May 1, 2003) revealed that the New York Times was more likely to use the military conflict frame, while a Swedish newspaper was more likely to use the antiwar protest frame. Dimitrova found that the violence of war and military conflict frames dominated early coverage on the home pages of the New York Times. They also found that the U.S. news media used the military conflict (99%) and human interest (82%) frames often, while neglecting the responsibility frame (15%). Research conducted on coverage before the war concluded that journalists framed individuals opposing the war as deviants, while those involved in pro-war demonstrations were framed as representing the norm.” (Carpenter, 2007, p.761)
The Chomsky-Herman thesis as well as Bagdikian’s Media Monopoly thesis are largely confined to political-economic aspects of the war. And they both find ample application in the case of the Iraq war. But they do not account properly for the sociological basis for the war. For this, we need to turn to such theories as ‘Orientalism’ by Edward Said and ‘Clash of Civilizations’ by Samuel Huntington. While is former deals with age-old conceptions (and misconceptions) of the Orient by the Occident, the latter narrows its scope to specific cultural differences between the two regions and how it causes geo-political conflicts. Samuel Huntington’s much reviewed work of the same name is often quoted in reference to the justifications for the Iraq invasion. While this tendency was muted in the lead-up to the war, it was hyped up as credibility of WMD threats started crumbling. When presence of WMD became no longer a plausible claim, government agencies rode on the cultural/religious differences between America and Iraq as a way of propping up public support. For example, militant groups within Iraq were portrayed as Islamic fundamentalist groups and were thoroughly demonized in American media. That they were also waging a political battle to uphold their nation’s sovereignty is a point often ignored my media commentators. (Weiss, et. al., 2004, p.221)
Even erstwhile secular public intellectuals such as Christopher Hitchens joined the propaganda bandwagon in portraying Islamic terrorism as the instigating factor in America’s continued occupation of Iraq. Only a handful of radical commentators (who are hardly given any attention in mainstream media outlets) correctly pointed out that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq and other sections of the Arab world is a ‘consequence’ and not the ’cause’ of American involvement in the region. So by hyping up socio-cultural differences between the West and the Arab world, American media was able to maintain reasonable support for its continued military aggression in the region. It should also be noted that since the flowering of the Internet, alternative voices, views and opinions have found a stage and an audience. As a result of this news stations and websites with alternative editorial guidelines to that of mainstream media have cropped up. Largely listener-supported and not-for-profit organizations, these fledgling media houses were able to create an awareness among the general population that is consistent with ground realities of the situation. Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now station is a prime example of this movement. Here, the attempt is to take media ethics back to its founding principles, namely those rooted on the notion of its function as the Fourth Estate. Objectivity, neutrality and justice being its keywords, alternative and online news media sources have been able to mitigate the propaganda aims of governments across the world.
The positive effects of alternative media sources were seen during the Iraq war as well. For example, the popularity of President Bush at the time of his leaving office was at an all-time low, hovering around the 30 percent mark. American government’s plans to bring about political transformation in Iraq’s neighbor Iran was also stifled because of growing public unrest. (Ricchiardi, 2008, p.34) Also, there have been significant cut backs in the military expenditure and personnel deployment in Iraq because of backlash from citizens. This trend gives hope to the people, in that there are ways in which entrenched propaganda channels can be circumvented and marginalized with concerted effort on part of news consumers. It is a highly challenging proposition to bring about such a change in a short span of time. But with the help of Internet activism and grass-roots organization, the mainstream media’s monopoly on information (as well as misinformation) can be dismantled and the public can then have access to objective truth. This in turn will help them make informed choices about electing, ratifying or petitioning public officials; which in turn will bring international politics under the purview of fairness and justice. (Eaton, 2004, p.190)
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