Filling the threat vacuum : news objectivity in the transformation of the ideology of world order
Date
1993
Authors
Hrynyshyn, Derek
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Abstract
This thesis explores popular understandings of world politics through an analysis of mass media news coverage of three recent events: the 1986 bombing of Libya, the 1989 invasion of Panama, and the 1991 war against Iraq. These events are situated in an historical materialist theory of politics and ideology, and this framework is used to explain the ways in which news coverage is conditioned by economic and political power.
By examining these three events, important features of the media industry can be observed. These events represent the first military actions by the U.S. against third world states which were not described in popular understandings as attempts to contain Communist expansion. With the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the traditional role of the U.S. military as a global enforcer of capitalism required new justifications; the construction of these new justifications provides an opportunity to observe the process of ideological control in operation.
The survey of the coverage of these events reveals that the claims made by the state about its actions, about the actions of the states identified as enemies, and about the consequences of its acts, are rarely criticized. Information that might lead the audience to understand these events other than as the response by the U.S. to a dangerous threat was usually treated as less important than claims of the U.S. demonstrating the existence of that threat . Analysis of the events almost universally accepted the importance of these threats to Western interests.
Having examined this coverage, some well-known explanations of the ideological function of the mass media are considered. While most of these theories possess some validity, it is suggested that an adequate understanding of the media requires a synthesis of various theoretical devices, which can be united around the central requirement of news, the demand for "objectivity."
The thesis argues that this economic structure of the media industry, and leads the media criterion arises from the as a monopoly capitalist to adopt an essentially uncritical stance toward the state as a source of information. Because of this stance, information and analysis that would support an understanding critical of the objectives of the capitalist state are routinely marginalized, reinforcing the dominant ideology of the world order.