We are accustomed to being bombarded by images from the reality industry constructed to persuade us to purchase a product, recognize a brand, vote for a candidate, support a particular public policy, or think a certain way. But what is to be done when some use the reality industry’s communications capacity to lie, distort or otherwise assert what will accomplish their goals which may be the death of you, your family, and all you love? What if our free information systems are used by our enemies to transmit terror, sow sedition, and propagandize for their enemy cause? How should a free people respond to protect themselves and defend their freedom?
As described in Part 2, since World War One our free market economy has become dominated by marketing organizations which call attention to and sell products, candidates and ideas by brands, or to create a favorable public image for a corporate entity. Some of this reality is narrowly targeted to sell a product or encourage a vote or to entertain, but much of it is designed to be reported for purposes that aren’t always clearly stated. This reality industry draws its professional talents and technology from the modern communications, advertising, journalistic and TV, film and entertainment industries. These crafts use the talents and techniques of their trades to create images which are then distributed in print, video, film, music, audio over radio, television, newspapers and magazines, and lately the internet all available on the 24-7 global media - in effect engineering a new reality. Much of this is financed by a blend of advertising, subscriptions, use and other direct fees. However, much of it is done as a business expense to the producer and supplied free of charge. It is all lumped together as part of the “free press.”
As Daniel Boorstin, wrote in his 1962 study, the image manufacturing process is planned, not spontaneous, and done primarily for the immediate purpose of being reported or reproduced and seen by others. Such events or actions are intended to reinforce pre-existing stereotypes and statements and therefore be self-fulfilling prophecies. In fact, the relationship of these manufactured images to the underlying reality of the situation may be ambiguous; or said another way, the event will be calculated for effects that aren't always directly obvious to the witnesses. The making of illusions – advertising, mass marketing, pop culture entertainment, broadcast journalism -- has become big business, making executives and shareholders rich and turning the people in front of the audience into stars. The mass audience, the target to which all this deliberate focusing of images, has become very accustomed to receiving images.
To a significant segment of the audience, the story of how the images come to exist has become a regular feature of news, jokes and entertainment. How information and experience is transmitted via media has become among the most fascinating elements in our popular culture. Some of the most insightful journalistic analysis, Frank Rich of the NYT for example, deals with the blending of these story telling threads of politics, culture, marketing, movie making, news. Indeed, to many, particuarly the hip, the well-educated, the critics, the story about the making of illusions - the news behind the news - and the principles involved has become the most appealing news in the world.
In this new jouralistic environment, news isn’t treated as “news” until the information is positioned as being disclosed or “leaked” in secret to a reporter or learned in an “investigation.” Often the reporter isn’t even aware they are being played as suckers by their “sources.” This enables the journalists involved to present this story as the “real” information behind the news. Often the content of what is said is not even reported by news outlets as the primary point of the news account. Rather what is reported as the topic to focus on are the style, lighting, stagecraft and theatrical skills of the presenter, or what his adversaries or critics say. The content of the information imparted isn’t the value, it is the presentation and the audience reaction. Our news culture focuses on style of presentation and treats news and information as if it were a fashion or theatrical production to be judged as one would a performance.
It is no surprise that a significant portion of every audience remain skeptical and refuse to be persuaded by this obvious manipulation. People can smell a con. This taints all information in Media-ville, poisoning the environment for truth. It also places a premium on the image makers to come up with new methods of persuasion that aren’t immediately obvious or are more subtle and will not be detected. Still, there is a market for every form of information. In fact, in our culture, a significant market exists for the bizarre and perverse: 5% of the population believes Elvis lives; that they were abducted by aliens; that hidden dark forces (Masons, UN, capitalists, Papists, Zionists, Reds et al – take your pick) secretly control the world and so on. Not all sectors of the mass audience are so forbidding. In fact, a significant segment of our pop culture has become a so hip, if not jaded or cynical, about the entire process, that’s its all a big joke. One show, Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, a fake news show, pokes great fun at the entire absurd pomposity of the merging of fact and fiction in Media-ville.
An early study of the dark side of this phenomenon was a book published in 1990 titled, The Unreality Industry - the deliberate manufacturing of falsehood and what is is doing to our lives, by Ian I Mitroff & Warren Bennis. Since World War Two, these authors argue, our modern media environment has been highlighted by:
- The increasing complexity of an economically interdependent world, interconnected now by electronic instantaneous mass media, and
- The proliferation of endless amounts of "mindless" entertainment in society, in teaching, politics, and commerce as a result of the demand for information by the 24-7 global media.
These two features are supplemented by:
- Journalism of moral conflict - news is now defined as little morality plays - too often a dramatic conflict where good and evil struggle.
- Journalism of celebrity - manufactured personalities in the film, TV, journalism and political industries represent "issues" and are used to act out in these morality plays.
- Politics by celebrity and moral conflict – Political candidate as Actor or Lead character: The candidates are sold through a blend of policy, image enhancement and positioning by stereotype, or blend of stereotypes according to the pre-tested desires of the constituents. The candidate who can manipulate themselves, their images and popular myths best to this audience, usually on television, win.
Public life in our modern world has become a kind of 24-hour TV entertainment show. Mitroff and Bennis in fact talk about "boundary warping" - or the deliberate distortion of what is presented as news, as analysis, as fiction, or as entertainment in order to enhance the performance's impact. As citizens consuming public information in today's communications world we have become like audience members going from one media event to another. It is instantaneous and it is all the time. Much of our daily journalism is criticism, critiques and analysis of the various "shows" in Media-ville. Obviously much of this is harmless fluff and no more significant that the differences between Coke or Pepsi, Chevy or Ford, Burger King or McDonalds, or having Larry King of CNN play himself in a movie about invading aliens. And it is not necessarily all bad. The inability of communism to hide or function in this world helped end the Cold War.
Though this reality industry is having an increasingly important impact on every aspect of our lives, its nature is not widely understood or even acknowledged by its principles. To control obvious excess, there are calls for parental controls, V-chips, movie ratings. There are debates about the impact of media images on violence, morality etc. Worrying is the modern market fashion of having many of the profit making components of this reality industry housed within only a few giant media corporations whose primary duty is one as a financial fiduciary to shareholders who buy and sell shares in the entire enterprise daily. The management behavior of these enterprises, and journalistic implications of these corporation's financial relationships or responsiblities are left largely unexplored, though their failures and dysfunctions are obvious to all. The collapse of trust in journalism, the declines in market share, circulation, subscriptions, the unhappiness of customers and challenges to editorial decisions continue. The larger questions about what this is doing to our political culture, our society and any possibility this may all threaten our freedom are left unasked. Mostly, we simply go about our daily lives and react to what we see with not much reflection about the consequences, content to simply let the market place manage what we tolerate, and letting the principle of freedom of speech enshrined in the First Amendment be the only guide. Until Sept 11, 2001 the consequences of how this reality industry operated didn’t matter that much; it was merely a phenomenon of our time. Now, after Sept 11, I believe it does. Stay tuned… Part 4
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