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this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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Its manufacturing consent .
The US state department picked a side in this conflict over 3 decades ago. The state-run media like PBS and NPR pick up the propaganda lines naturally. The national media such as NYT and NBC value their state dept contacts and armed forces advertisement dollars more than they value journalistic integrity.
After 30 years of the manufacturing consent feedback loop, here in the US we end up with a national media ecosystem that is more sycophantic to Israel than even the Israeli media. Haaretz features dissenting opinions that you can't find in national US media.
This metaphorical frog started boiling decades ago, finally most of the water is boiling off and it's really starting to stink.
I'm familiar with the notion of Manufactured Consent and to be clear I agree with much of what you say. Though I think it should be noted that neither NPR nor PBS are state-run. At least, nowhere near comparable to something like RT or even BBC or Al Jazeera.
A majority if their support comes from viewers. However, that being said, some of the larger donors and sponsors to both of these news outlets originate from a specific ethnicity, which I believe may put the reporters and columnists in a bind.
Ultimately it's risky business to go against the pro-Israeli sympathetic sentiment right now. Journalists risk being shunned or worse, accused of being antisemitic or sympathetic to terrorists.
Take a look at the breakdown of PBS funding for example.
31% comes from government, which makes it nearly impossible for PBS to have substantive dissent against state department propaganda.
30% comes from businesses and think tanks. These type of organizations do not give out of the kindness of their hearts, so what exactly are they buying? It is no surprise that, for example, their coverage of the green new deal is so negative when fossil fuel companies are giving millions.
And 31% comes from "individuals". Note that individuals is not the same as viewers, it is a black box that probably includes a few individual wealthy megadonors as well as many kindhearted viewers.
So yes, I stand by my assertion that PBS is state run media. If you think an uncoordinated bloc of individual donors is PBS' main constituency then you are being duped.
(Also note: the ethnicity of the donors does not matter, it is their ideology that is the driving force)
To include local state and municipalities in that to suggest some big bad state has a say in what is being run, versus the direct control of true state media like RT, for me, requires a MASSIVE amount of ink to connect those dots and make such a false equivalence comparison. Despite my grievances with our government, we are not the Kremlin. We are not an authoritarian state that is dictating what PBS member stations run or informing their journalists. If you have any direct evidence of this whatsoever, then I'll reconsider.
Moreover, PBS and NPR tend to have some of the most objectively accurate reporting and educated, critical listeners among literally any media outlet. Even if we entertain it being state-run, then overall I'd say it's working as best as could be expected for any institution to run.
Being generous, that total isn't even a plurality of total funding; in spite of foundations and corporate givings, those are ostensibly not government entities either. Often they're non-profits like CPB.
As such I'll generally remain where I was in saying that, yes, PBS is certainly considering its big donor sources in what it broadcasts; but to equate it to full-on state run or propaganda is a non-sequitur.
Your first paragraph suggests that either you do not understand how manufacturing consent works, or you are in disagreement that it is a valid theory of media. There is no false equivalence, no non-sequitur, just different methodology.
The comparison to the Kremlin and RT is an important one, because propaganda from PBS is so much more effective than RT. Polls consistantly show that the vast majority of Russians do not trust their state-run media. In contrast, polls show an overwhelming trust in PBS. RT lies much more often, but PBS lies much more effectively.
I agree that PBS and NPR do lots of good work, much better than most of the alternatives. They produce well-informed, well-intentioned neoliberals with built-in blind spots. My whole thesis here is that these blind spots do exist and they are intentional.
The current media blitz in the US feels so much like the post 9/11 lead up to the war on terror. It is scary. And PBS is playing the same role, manufacturing consent now just like it did back then.
The problem is that you haven't substantially elucidated what "propaganda" PBS is broadcasting in the first place; mere vague examples or one-off biases such as in the case of Israel is not proof of some grand scheme of strings pulled by government, direct or indirect. For example, I feel you're playing loose with accusations of lying by PBS or NPR, but if I ask for evidence thereof, you may only be able to at best evidence falsehoods — which again, does not prove intent to deceive in the case of a lie.
The reality is that there quite literally no single perfect source for news; though with that being said, there is certainly a gradient of quality across news media outlets, for which you yourself admit PBS/NPR consistently perform at the top. So I struggle to see the overarching point you're trying to make here. Yes, I was critical of PBS and how they covered these recent events in a knee-jerk reactive fashion (though I will say their special report the other night was far more objective), but that doesn't mean I'm willing to take it down as some propagandized "state media," when it's ostensibly not state-run nor even state-funded by plurality.
The thing with Russia and RT is that they've effectively eliminated all other independent sources of journalism, and so what remains are only Kremlin-backed media outlets. Regardless of peoples' alleged trust in RT (I'm interested in seeing these studies), the entire mediasphere in Russia is pushing one single narrative, and over time that will become the new reality.
I definitely do see some of this. What's even more amusing is that David Brooks made a comment during his segment the other night saying something along the lines of, "I had thought we had a lot of good reasons to go into the middle east after 9/11, but then I was proven wrong," — then he basically doubles-down on supporting Israel. Not even considering the root causes for this rise in radicalization that are abundantly obvious.
Journalists have a narrow line to tread between recognizing the rise of right-wing extremist and antisemitism in the world, being told to point to it as terrorism, and then turn around and watch as Jewish civilians are attacked and then weave a thread between terrorism and a humanitarian crisis. I don't envy them when the viewers are completely uninformed or firmly in one camp over another; for there isn't much more controversial the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
So far within western media I've only seen certain segments of the BBC and Amna Nawaz of PBS give fair coverage.