Corporate Power And The Negation Of Democracy Essay, Research Paper

Corporate Power and the Negation of Democracy

Ottawa was recently host to the G-20 summit where the leaders of 20 nations assembled with their head financial officers, the governors of the World Bank and the IMF. Monetary issues discussed at this conference included: the world’s economic situation, third world poverty, debt and education. Most would consider these to be matters of multitudinal proportions, however it did not receive the media attention it deserved. Some of the key issues discussed were somewhat downplayed in the eye of the media and the conference was held in a disturbingly undemocratic manner. A truly democratic society would have allowed for more public input at the summit, instead the summit was held behind closed doors with many streets in the downtown area closed near to where the summit was to convene. Why were the streets cordoned off? The thousands of protesters who wished to voice their concerns to the power elite were viewed as a security threat by police. Those who attempted to breach the barricades to voice their concerns and have their inquiries answered were met with smoke canisters and rubber bullets, the consequence for being concerned with the affairs of the nation in a “democratic” society. This is an excellent example of the superficiality of democracy in our society and evinces the cold truth that those who harbour the all-important resources of money and power are the only true participants in our democratic system.

Modern organizations, particularly the state and corporate conglomerates, represent the historically unprecedented concentrations of power. According to Weber, these large-scale rational organizations influence democratic politics and debate over social policy objectives. They limit individual’s freedom while at the same time making people feel that they have choices, when in fact there is only the negation of choice. Noam Chomsky’s institutional analysis of mass media in Manufacturing Consent illustrates Weber’s concerns. Chomsky shows that the mass media ultimately served as a corporate tool to indoctrinate a population to believe that it was actually making real choices.

Max Weber analyzed the relationship between forms of authority, social organization, and the economic distributions rewards in everyday life. His conclusions made him pessimistic, since he found that the bureaucratic form of domination emerged. (Hadden, p.13) In his perspective, modern democratic societies were dominated by certain powerful interests. The growth of corporations was a significant element in this phenomenon, as conglomeration created the dynamic of powerful groups oppressing weaker.

Indeed, Weber saw authoritarian potential in rationality and bureaucracy. True, these realities allowed more efficiency, but they also ended up enslaving humanity and individual’s freedom. They restricted the real choices that people could make. (Hadden, p.127) Industrial capitalism ended up exploiting bureaucracy and rationality to coerce people to do what it wanted them to do, and to think what it wanted them to think. This is why, according to Weber, politics ended up meaning that the leadership of a state is defined as having a “monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” (Hadden p.128). In other words, the leadership of a state can coerce the people to support anything it wants to do.

Thus, this issue is about how people living in a supposed free society ended up legitimizing and giving approval to their own oppression and domination. Weber predicted that corporate power would help facilitate this development. Chomsky demonstrated how the particulars work in connection to the mass media.

Today, social reality in democratic-capitalist societies is as Weber feared, largely constructed according to the corporate agenda. This agenda, mostly controlled by American capital, utilizes mass media to perpetuate certain themes. These themes reinforce problems such as sexism, classism and racism in our society. Indeed there are certain messages constantly being projected through the images that media sends out. These images allow certain elite forces in our society to retain their power.

As depicted in the documentary Manufacturing Consent, mass media consistently constructs social reality. It tells its citizens how to think about certain things. This development is linked to how the corporate agenda works: a small part of the population shapes the desires and opinions of the majority. In a nutshell, this is about the issue of capitalism. Producers and advertisers have an interest in reinforcing certain ideologies, because, in their world, minorities, women and the poor should be relegated to certain spheres. This is therefore a political battle ? it is a class war. Economic elites retain their power by shaping and moulding social reality through the means of mass media.

Despite what appears to be progress on many of the issues connected to inequality, there continue to be problems in our society, and they are reflected well by the images we see in everyday life within the mass media. If you watch carefully, many shows and programs have hidden messages and assumptions that reveal certain bias against certain groups. Even the language that is used is based on certain premises that reveal transparent kinds of racism, classism and sexism. This is an essential task for the corporate agenda, because it shapes the values of society and achieves the objective of exclusion. By denying minorities, women and the poor the possibility of empowerment, the corporate agenda enables the patriarchal power structure to remain intact.

Thus, corporate sponsors, advertisers and programmers work together to keep themselves and other elites in power. The media strolls behind patriotically to serve the elite power in society. As Chomsky shows, the mass media is particularly interested in demonizing foreign powers. In that way it gets to legitimize defence spending and keeping itself in power. If this construction of social reality stopped, then there would be very serious changes in the structure of democratic capitalism. But those who oversee democratic capitalism, and are its main beneficiaries, would be hurt by any kind of fundamental change, therefore it is important to heavily indoctrinate the population. This is the job of the mass media, because it is owned and controlled by a small elite among the corporate class. (Hale, p.270). With recent mergers such as Time-Warner merging with AOL the relatively small amount of media machines out there becomes increasingly smaller further constricting the flow of information and increasing the control of the information that is put before us.

Thus, there appear to be several forces in capitalist society that structure news and other media outlets in a certain way. Within this reality there is often the perception that the viewer of the news is being exposed to “objective” reporting and that it is up to him or her to decide what he or she thinks. But, as Weber feared, mass organizations would take freedom away from the human being. Chomsky has shown how corporations that own mass media make sure to impose a certain structure of ideas. There appears to be freedom and choice, but actually there is a negation of freedom and choice.

The language of our mass media is very constrained. The parameters of debate are very narrow. Chomsky demonstrates how the marketplace and the economics of publishing try to shape the news we receive. They send out a message that attempts to constrain ways of thinking about things ? and to keep North America and its capitalist system in power. This is all about politics and economics, it is about the powerful trying to retain their power and keep the powerless locked in subordinate spheres. Thus, as Chomsky demonstrates, North American media employs a double standard in the way it treats and reports crimes committed by enemy countries and the crimes committed by friendly countries. Indeed, part of this story is the double standard with which North American news treats world issues. When America’s enemies perpetrate a crime, the news is ridden with stories about it. When the U.S. or American allies do something wrong, there is a strange silence in the media. Chomsky has done extensive work on this subject. His examples epitomize, better than anything else, how corporations have concentrated power and instilled a form of subtle totalitarianism into the society. Because the news media serves as corporate masters it influences certain interests in our society.

Author Daniel Hallin has done some interesting work on network news. In “We Keep America on Top of the World”, he shows us how television tries to distract us from the monumental significance of what is happening by making political journalism into a format of entertainment. (Hallin, pp.9-41).A salient example of this is the recent war declared on terrorism after the unfortunate events of September 11th. Many remained glued to their television sets intently tuned into CNN for weeks after the incident wating for any new developments. With millions of viewers watching the ?authority’ on breaking news the stage was set, in other words, politics and tragedy becomes show business. This way people are being and actually being distracted from what is really happening another example of this is the U.S. bombing Iraq during the Gulf War

Entertainment is fun. Entertainment keeps people thinking that they are being informed. But what are they really being told? They are given celebrity information when it is actually crucial to give important information. But for some reason this is hardly ever done. The network news has become so good in doing this that it has succeeded not only in helping to bolster American power and the American system, but also itself become part of American power and of the American system. In other words, the network news has made itself a quasi-branch of the American government (Hallin, p.11) It gets to hold the balance of power. By sending out the news, it gets to play a role in what the news will be and what will happen.

Thus, it only makes sense that if the news media has become part of American institutions, then it also has an interest keeping its power intact. this in turn, will obviously influence the kind of slant it will put on what is happening domestically and internationally. This is exactly, Hallin argues, why American television news prides itself in keeping “America on top of the World”. Everything is American, the whole world revolves around America and as we have seen in the aftermath of September 11th an attack on America is an “attack on democracy”. The message is clear: what would the world do without America?

And so how does the media do this? Hallin shows there are several tactics. The first is the morning news, which Hallin shows has become almost a parody of itself. It almost has nothing to do with news, but rather some kind of show business and entertainment. (Hallin, p.21-22). The real issues are overlooked. The network evening news, Hallin shows us, is more journalistic, yet more politicized toward certain ideologies. These are the ideologies of American society and values. Ratings have to remain high, so the network news makes sure to stay “slick” for us. When it accomplishes this, it makes sure not to question the serious ramifications of the American governments policies. All of the assumptions on which it were based are that the American government and society are the embodiment of all that is good in the world.

In other words, the news transmits the news and also shapes and defines it. It keeps it narrow. the American government does something, the news questions it on some superficial level, and then patriotically follows along. This is not really about democracy, therefore. It is actually quite anti-democratic when certain questions and issues are simply not raised. But it seems that there are they are.

This is where Noam Chomsky makes some of his very powerful arguments. He argues that, within the context of how this television news media works, that in fact we cannot really call our society democratic, unless democracy means something else than we think it means. If a democratic society means that the public has the opportunity to participate in some way in the discussion and management of its own affairs then yes, that is democracy. If the public has the right to see what is actually going on in its own country, that is democracy. But the book Manufacturing Consent clearly showed that American society cannot really be democratic because neither of these things are happening.

Chomsky shows that what is actually happening is that the public does not have a say in managing its own affairs and that the information is very much controlled by the government and other elite forces. He concentrates on media disinformation to prove his point. Chomsky’s thesis is that within our capitalist society there is such a process occurring which can be called the “Manufacturing of Consent”. This is the phrase journalist Walter Lippman used to describe how the government used propaganda to indoctrinate people in a democracy. (Chomsky, Manufacturing of Consent, p.6 )

Weber discussed how industrial capitalism would end exploiting bureaucracy and rationality, and that people would be coerced to approve their own brainwashing. (Hadden, pp. 127-128) This is what Chomsky demonstrates in the context of the present mass media. The government can bring the public into agreement with what it wants to do by certain techniques in propaganda and this can be achieved by manipulating the news. Chomsky uses Lippman’s own arguments to show that there is actually a small elite that knows what is going on, whose interest it is in to keep the public uninformed about what is really going on.

Lippman argued what democracy should be, which was that the elite and knowledgeable should control what is going on and once in a while let the “bewildered” classes lend support. In other words, democracy is letting in the masses for a second to support something and then getting rid of them again. Thus Chomsky argues, in order to keep the bewildered masses from disrupting things, the media and popular culture have to be effectively used to keep the public uninformed and, if anything, in consent with what the ruling class want to do. Now, because American society is more free and more democratic than a totalitarian society where you just shoot people, what you have to do is manufacture consent by other means. In this case, you have to do through propaganda. And Chomsky shows how efforts by the U.S. government have existed throughout this century.

It is very important , according to Chomsky, to distract and marginalize people, that way they cannot radicalize themselves. Everyday television does a great job in this. For decades, the mass media scared the people about the Russians. Now the Russians are gone, so the system has to replace them with someone else to fear and defend our selves against. So now its drug traffickers, international terrorists, and, of course Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. During all of this, the human rights abuses of enemy countries are highlighted, while the violations of U.S. allies against their against their own people are hardly ever mentioned in the media. Chomsky examines this issue in a chapter he calls “Worthy and Unworthy Victims” in his book Manufacturing Consent. ( Chomsky, “Worthy and Unworthy Victims, ” pp.36-86).

Chomsky uses the example of how the U.S. media played up many human rights abuses by communist countries but over looked the abuses of human rights in Central America. He uses the example of right-wing death squads in El Salvador. The military government was constantly killing its opposition members, but the U.S. media hardly paid any attention to this. On December 2, 1980, for instance, four U.S. churchwomen working were seized, raped and murdered by members of the Salvadoran National Guard. yet the media including the “New York Times,” gave very small coverage of this crime in comparison to the crimes perpetrated by communist regimes. (Chomsky, p.61) In other words, the U.S. media engages in selective indignation. When enemies of the American government commit crimes, this is to be hyped up. When friends do it, there has to be a double standard.

Chomsky provides the example of Pol Pot and East Timor. Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia was constantly in the news. But the media hardly discussed East Timor, a U.S. Indonesian client, that also engaged in atrocities that could merit comparison with Pol Pot. Interestingly, What happened? Chomsky tells us: “The mass media ? and the intellectual community generally? therefore channelled their benevolent impulses elsewhere to Cambodia, not Timor.” (Chomsky, p.302).

The issue of the Persian Gulf is an excellent example. Before Saddam Hussein became a problem, the U.S. media was hardly interested in his human rights abuses and his growing power. the public was not told about this monster. Then, all of a sudden, when Hussein suddenly started challenging American power and security, the American public is all of a sudden informed of what a great terror this madman poses. The News media very diligently and obediently follows along with what the American government’s agenda needs to be. This is very much connected to what Daniel Hallin discussed in how news networks try to keep America “on top of the world” (Hallin, pp. 9-41).

One of the most disturbing examples of all this is how the bombing of Iraq was not even necessary, but how the media never questioned it, and never questioned the legitimacy of the bombing in 1991. For Chomsky, this is an example of a “very well-run totalitarian culture. It shows that the manufacture of consent is working.”As we have seen from CNN’s 24 hour coverage of the “Attack on America” it can be argued that CNN is the mouthpiece of the American government

What Chomsky is discussing is central to the issue. The news media has its own agenda, and the agenda has nothing to do with real democracy or choice. It has to do with manufacturing public consent within the paramaters of national values and of the culture the elite seek to define and control.

Max Weber was correct in his prediction that bureaucratic arrangements would ultimately yield to domination. Powerful interests have emerged in modern democracies and led to rule in an authoritarian manner. Weber believed that the growth of corporations would make this possible. Rationality and bureaucracy would ultimately restrict real choices among the masses of the population. Chomsky’s institutional analysis of the media confirms those fears. Corporations ended up owning the media, and the purposes of both became the objective of allowing certain privileged groups to maintain power in society.

The Mass media appears to allow criticism and debate, and yet everyone stays within a certain consensus. there are specific boundaries of discussion. Who sets the boundaries? Max weber warned us who would set them a long time ago; his pessimistic analysis of the bureaucratization and conglomerates of corporate power told us who would set those boundaries.

It is now evident who truly holds the power when it comes to our everyday life, although we would like to believe we live in a free society we have seen that the corporate/power elite dictate the course of our everyday life.

362