Follow up to my "Documenting Facts?" lecture looking at the ways in which documentaries have sought to expose the limitations of news when dealing with the 'war on terror' (focussing on Israel/Gaza). There's an accompanying video playlist here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRCHqijqFjGtbN0T8TSizGvuDA0NmEPk9

1. Propaganda vs. plurality?
#mac201
robert.jewitt@sunderland.ac.uk
YouTube playlist
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2. Global media
 We live in the global age. We live in a world that has
become radically interconnected, interdependent and
communicated in the flows of information and culture –
including, importantly, news journalism.
 Simon Cottle, 2009: 1
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3. Global media
 “we have a consciousness of the world, as a whole. That
is a bounded, holistic and finite place.” (emphasis
added)
 Cottle, 2009: 1
3

4. Ideology
 In exercising their symbolic and communicative
power, the media today can variously exert pressure and
influence on processes of public understanding and
political response or, equally, serve to dissimulate and
distance the nature of the threats that confront us and
dampen down pressures for change. In such
ways, global crises become variously constituted within
the news media as much as communicated by them
 Cottle, 2009: 2
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5. 5

6. 6

7. Immigration
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8. 8

9. Public perception: benefit fraud
% of welfare budget lost to fraud
30
25
20
27
15
10
5
0.7
0
Belief
Actual
Source: TUC, 2013
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10. Immigration
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11. „Unpeople‟
 „The great moral citadels in London and Washington
offer merely silent approval of the violence and tragedy.
No appeals are heard in the United Nations from them…
The distant voices from there should be heard, urgently‟
 (Pilger, 2009)
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12. Channel 4 (2011)
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13. Ideology
 In recent years a substantial amount of research has
been carried out by various organisations in order to
discover what the British public thinks about immigration
and asylum. Most of this research has discovered that
public opinion tends to be significantly hostile towards
asylum seekers. For example, a MORI poll conducted in
2001 found that 44% of people agreed that Britain should
not take any more asylum seekers. The same poll also
estimated that 74% of people believed that refugees
came to the country because they thought Britain was a
„soft touch‟ (http://www.icar.org.uk/?lid=5054).
 Saeed, 2007: 182
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14. Propaganda
 Propaganda is mainly perceived in the
West as an aspect of Communist, Fascist
or totalitarian regimes where the media is
controlled by the state. It is assumed that
in the West, where much of the media is
in the hands of private enterprise, that
formal propaganda is absent.
 Saeed and Laverty (2006)
 On Sunspace
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15. The American Dream?
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16. The American Dream?
 We're the America that sends out Peace Corps volunteers to teach
village children. We're the America that sends out missionaries and
doctors to raise up the poor and the sick. We're the America that
gives more than any other country, to fight aids in Africa and the
developing world. And we're the America that fights not for
imperialism but for human rights and democracy. …
 My fellow Americans I want you to know that I believe with all my
heart that America remains "the great idea" that inspires the world.
It's a privilege to be born here. It's an honor to become a citizen
here. It's a gift to raise your family here to vote here and to live
here…
 Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican National
Convention 31/08/04
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17. Military expenditure
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18. Media power?
 McQuail describes the mass media as “the
means of communication that operates on a
large scale, reaching virtually everyone in a
society to a greater or lesser degree" (2000:4).
 According to Allan, "journalists […] news
accounts shape […] our perceptions of the
'world out there' beyond our immediate
experience" (2010:94)
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19. Primary definers
 Stuart Hall (1978) considers that the primary
definers of what is „important news‟ and
what the „correct‟ perspective on what news
should be (such as from politicians, business
leaders etc.) are in fact very important.
 The ideas of such people have hegemonic
value in society and in the media, the latter
because their ideas become integrated into
concepts of news values, and professional
journalism and so on.
 See Saeed (2007: 7)
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20. Machinery of representation
 „what and who gets represented and what
and who routinely gets left out (and) how
things, people, events, relationships get
represented ... the structure of access to the
media is systematically skewed towards
certain social categories‟
 Hall (1978: 95)
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21. Media and the public sphere
 Who gets access?
 How do news sources influence the news agenda, which
in turn can influence public opinion
 (video to follow: Unseen Gaza and Reuters)
 The news media, both press and broadcasting, are said
routinely to privilege the voices of the powerful and
marginalize those of the powerless
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22. Representations of social groups
 How social groups and interests are defined is also part
and parcel of factual content production.
 For example whether social groups are representationally
legitimized or symbolically positioned as “other” or
deviant can have far reaching consequences.
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23. Representations of social groups
 In recent years and in specific contexts we
could observe the emergence of
„information wars‟ or „media wars‟, a
situation where news media becomes a
battleground of images where the
information flow is often controlled and spun
by the states in power
 (see Cottle, 2006; Miller, 2004)
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24. Agenda Setting: PR
 Moloney (2006) notes that „manipulative
activities‟ have been a part of the public
relations history
 Philips and Young (2009: 227) “telling partial
truths is inherent to PR practice”
 Stauber and Rampton (1995: 2) argue that
“the best PR is never noticed”
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25. Agenda Setting: PR
 Wilcox (2003) refers to this as the „technician‟s
mentality‟, which means that PR practitioners are solely
concerned about how the message is
communicated, and not about the content of the
messages. This argument can be supported by a survey
published in the PR Week in May 2000. The findings
showed that 25% of PR executives admitted lying, 39%
said they exaggerated the truth, 44% was unsure about
the ethics of tasks they would be asked to perform and
62% believed they compromised in their work
 http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2000Q2/liars.html
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26. Third Party Technique
 Involves placing pre-formed message in the hands of the
media:
 Hiring of journalists or bloggers to write favourable copy
 Using in-house scientists to dispute studies
 Industry sponsored front groups
 Astroturfing
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27. Torches of freedom?
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28. The „War on Terror‟
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29. „Occupied‟ Palestine
 According to Philo and Berry (2004), there is a strong
tendency in the media to report the conflict from the
Israeli perspective and to omit the historical context of
the events.
 Likewise Thussu and Freedman (2003) suggest that the
news as the power to make the viewer take sides in
conflict through news journalistic representation.
 Moreover it could be argued, Israel is also supported
ideologically, particularly by the Orientalism discourse
that constructs Palestinians as a foreign „other‟.
29

30. Dispatches: Unseen Gaza
(Channel 4, 2009)
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31. Gaza, 2008/9
 3RD party Technique
 Organisations such as BICOM invited and
funded journalists to Israel for “fact finding”
trips.
 Philo and Berry (2009) note that during the
Gaza war the Israeli National Information
Directorate made sure that everyone
“spoke the same message with the same
words”.
31

32. Gaza Flotilla, 2010
The War You Don‟t See (2010)
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33. Consequences?
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34. Consequences?
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35. Tony Benn fights back
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36. Social media
 Israel government recruited 1,000 volunteers with the
objective of flooding news websites and blogs that the
ministry term as anti-Israeli with pro-Israeli opinions.
 Israel government held a World Citizens Press Conference
via Twitter only 4 days after the initial onslaught
(Chomsky, 2009).
 Silverstein suggests that there has been a concerted
effort on Israel‟s part to flood the web and news media
with crafted materials in an attempt to turn public
opinion toward Israel (Silverstein, 2009: 1).
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37. How to make sense of this?
 Factual media, despite claims to truth, are a
battleground for ideological warfare
 Documentary film-makers and news outlets are implicitly
involved in shaping and re-shaping public understanding
of events
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38. 3 paradigms
1.
Manufacturing consent
•
2.
(Herman & Chomsky, 1988)
Media of contest
•
3.
(Wolfsfeld, 1997)
Media culture
•
(Kellner, 2003)
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39. 39
39

40. 1 - Manufacturing Consent
Five news “filters”:
 1. Ownership and profit orientation
 2. Funding via advertising
 3. Over-reliance on „official‟ sources
 4. “Flak” targeting the media
 5. The need to engage a „common enemy‟ (via anti-ideologies)
40

41. 2 - Media of contest
1.
Political protest more influential than media but there is giveand-take
2.
Political voices do not always maintain dominance
3.
The power of the media/politics fluctuates
4.
News is framed in cultural contexts and „read‟ differently
5.
Dissidents can combat unequal resources and use news
media as a tool for political influence
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42. 3 - Media culture
 Media permeates all aspects of popular culture and
impacts upon identity formation
 Local engagement/reception of media spectacles
 „Social and political conflicts are increasingly played out
upon the screens of media cultures‟ (Kellner, 2003:1)
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43. Media as cultural industries
manufacturing consent in support
of dominant interests
Media as multi-purpose arenas
in which strategic and symbolic
conflicts are waged
Media culture as pervasive, meaningful and
contested, and constitutive of identities
43
43

44. Media as cultural industries
manufacturing consent in support
of dominant interests
Media as multi-purpose arenas
in which strategic and symbolic
conflicts are waged
Mainstream media
Public sphere(s)
Minority and Alt. media
„public spheracules‟
New media
„counter public spheres‟
Public Screens
Media culture as pervasive, meaningful and
contested, and constitutive of identities
44
44

45. Deportation halted
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46. Questions to consider:
 To what extent can documentaries expose the „truth‟ or
combat propaganda?
 To what extent are they able (or not) to go beyond the
limitations of mainstream news?
 Consider pressures of: funding; time; scheduling; scale; risk
 How might documentaries be critiqued as ideological?
 Are all formats as culpable as each other in offering
specific versions of reality?
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