Downloaded 18 times
Uploaded byVivie Chabie
Media and the Manufacture of consent
The document discusses several ways in which democracy and media can fail, including the manufacture of consent, the absence of genuine political choices, and pseudo events created by media for news coverage. It argues that true objectivity is impossible for media and their political reporting is inherently subjective. Media plays a large role in modern democracies but faces challenges in balancing democratic ideals with commercial interests as an influential institution. Overall, the passage examines several potential downfalls of both democracy and media that can undermine public participation in decision making.
More Related Content
Similar to Media and the Manufacture of consent
Media and the Manufacture of consent
- 2. Democracy and Media Whatis Democracy? ............................... Is media crucial in a democratic society? Why? ................................ It is because democracy presumes ‘an open state in which people are allowed to participate in decision-making, and are given access to the media, and other information networks through which advocacy occurs’ (Hauser cited in Cooper 1991: 42).
- 3. The questions are: 1.Do we really participate
- 4. The Failure ofDemocratic System Why those incidents happen?
- 5. The Failure ofDemocratic System 1. The failure of democratic system 2. The absent of choices 3. Manufacture of consent 4. Pseudo events 5. The limitation of objectivity
- 6. The Failure ofDemocratic System Democracy people decide Who are ‘the people’ the majority as reflected through the result of General Elections How if the majority of eligible voters do not use their right to vote? Are the ones chosen in General Election reflected the choice of majority of the people?
- 7. The Failure ofDemocratic System Elections Turnout Trend Niemi and Weisberg 2001: 31
- 8. Do they really different?
- 9. The Absent ofChoices JK Nilai Rakyat sudah mahmud syaltout Semua Parpol tidak tahan lagi @syaltout 17 Jun Sama, Tak dengan bau Klo lihat TV, tampaknya Masalah busuk partai semua parpol busuk, kelibet politik kasus korupsi... Dari Neneng Pindah Partai (http://antipartaidemokr sampai Nunun... Masihkah Tegar Arief Fadly at.blogspot.com/2012/09 calon dari Parpol dpt /rakyat-sudah-tidak- dipercaya? Okezone tahan-lagi-dengan.html) Senin, 30 Juli 2012 Wednesday, 11 July 2012 JAKARTA, (TubasMedia.Com) – Indonesian Saling bongkar Corruption Watch (ICW) menilai sembilan partai politik (parpol) pemenang Pemilu 2009 kasus, citra parpol cenderung berperilaku koruptif. Indikasi itu tercermin dari buruknya pelaporan penggunaan "busuk“ dana subsidi APBN 2010 yang diterima parpol. WASPADA ONLINE
- 10. The Absent ofChoices A further limitation on democracy is the absence of genuine choice or pluralism. Many parties, however they are hardly different “ Even in Britain, where the Labour and Conservative parties have traditionally been distinct ideologically, the 1990s saw a coming together of agendas and q policies on many social, economic and foreign policy matters. In the 1997 general election, ‘New Labour’ unashamedly adopted many of what had previously been viewed (including by most members of the Labour Party itself) as right-wing Conservative policies, such as privatisation of the air traffic control system. In doing so, New Labour proclaimed itself at the ‘radical centre’ of British politics, emulating the Clinton administration’s 1996 re-election strategy of ideological ‘triangulation’ (Morris,1997 cited in McNair 2003: 24). Triangulation in the US, like Labour’s radical centrism, meant taking what was popular and common-sensical from the freemarket right (such as the reduction of ‘big government’), while adhering to the core social democratic values of social justice and equality of opportunity.
- 11. Manufacture of Consent Despitethe failure of democratic system and the absent of choices, there are also media-related downfall, namely the manufacture of consent (Walter Lippmann1954: 245). Remember: The legitimacy of liberal democratic government is founded on the consent of the governed (the people). The problem is that the consent of the governed is not the original consent of the people, but the manufactured one. Who manufacture people’s consent? Mostly Media
- 12. Manufacture of Consent Politicianscombined the techniques of social psychology with the immense reach of mass media. Persuasion or Manipulation? To inform or to direct?
- 13. Pseudo-Events Pseudo-events (coined byDaniel Boorstin in 1962) the increasing tendency of news and journalistic media to cover ‘unreal’, unauthentic ‘happenings’. (Unauthentic events which deliberately created/managed in order to convey a certain message and/or to reach a specific goal) This tendency, he argued, was associated with the rise from the nineteenth century onwards of the popular press and a correspondingly dramatic increase in the demand for news material. ‘As the costs of printing and then broadcasting increased, it became financially necessary to keep the presses always at work and the TV screen always busy. Pressures towards the making of pseudo-events became ever stronger. Newsgathering turned into news making’ (Boorstin 1962: 14).
- 14. Pseudo-Events “In a democraticsociety . . . freedom of speech and of the press and of broadcasting includes freedom to create pseudo-events. Competing politicians, newsmen and news media contest in this creation. They vie with each other in offering attractive, ‘informative’ accounts and images of the world. They are free to speculate on the facts, to bring new facts into being, to demand answers to their own contrived questions. Our ‘free market of ideas’ is a place where people are confronted by competing pseudo-events and are allowed to judge among them. When we speak of ‘informing’ the people this is what we really mean.” (Boorstin 1962: 35) Triggers: 1) The lazyness of reporters Talking news 2) The realm of media capitalism
- 15. The Limitation ofObjectivity A further criticism of the media’s democratic role focuses on the professional journalistic ethic of objectivity. This ethic developed with the mass media in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and has been assailed ever since as fundamentally unattainable (McNair 2003). For a variety of reasons, it is argued, the media’s political reportage is biased and flawed – subjective, as opposed to objective; partisan, rather than impartial. As Lippmann put it in 1922, “every newspaper when it reaches the reader is the result of a whole series of selections as to what items shall be printed, in what position they shall be printed, how much space each shall occupy, what emphasis each should have. There are no objective standards here. There are conventions” (1954: 354).
- 16. The Flow ofPolitical Interests and Influence in Democratic Landscape (Achmad Supardi) Interest Groups ------------------Spheres of Influence-----------Target of Influence Media Pressure Groups Structural Political (NGOs, Associations) Representatives (Parliament) Lobby groups Media Citizens Political Party Political Party Politicians Feedback (Input Feedback and Vote) (Input)
- 17. cccc Lippmann 1954 McNair 2003 Niemi,Richard G. and Herbert F. Weisberg. eds. Controversies in Voting Behavior. Washington, D.C: CQ Press, 2001.
- 18.
- 19. What trigger theemergence of individual broadcasters? What are the impacts of individual broadcasters for political campaign? What are the effects of individual broadcasters for government/policy- makers, media, industry, and interest groups?
- 20. The Failure ofDemocratic System Colin Seymour-Ure Television has become an ‘integral part of the environment within which political life takes place’ (1989: 308) As a really powerful actor, can media do their role in a balance to the rights allocated to them in a democratic society? The need to observe both ‘the democracy” and “the media”