On the very same matter that made up the core of our readings this week. Very fresh: published today...
Richard Grenell, director of communications and public diplomacy for the US permanent representative to the UN in the Bush administration, in an AJE interview.
"Like it or not, the most popular network in the Arab World is Al Jazeera and we have a golden opportunity to speak directly to 200 million Arab households through Al Jazeera.
I don't think that this conversation should be just one interview by the Obama administration or by President Obama; I think it needs to be the beginning of a constant flow of information both ways so that the 200 million Arab households who watch Al Jazeera on a regular basis can hear a variety of US policy goals."
Yes, the Berlin Wall fell. Some of the countries that used to be on the other side are EU members now. And yet, freedom, and especially media freedom, is something much more difficult to achieve: certainly requires more time and CONSTANT re-invigoration (just as the cases of Italy and France show).
Another great piece from The Listening Post, and yet, far from being comprehensive...
Just last week two bloggers were given 2.5-year prison terms in Azerbaijan for criticizing the government. Read more on the case from Reporters Sans Frontièreshere.
“And I call upon the Iraqi people to reject violence, band together to insist that the country move toward a peaceful tomorrow. Iraq is changing for the better. I mean, look at the soccer team.”
Ethos. Pathos. Logos: the three Aristotelian pillars of successful argument still very much relevant today, but, for some reason, also very much neglected by several major states in their international affairs.
Modern-day conduct of foreign affairs heavily depends on communication, especially when it comes to public diplomacy and non-traditional warfare. After all, it’s about perception management and “manufacturing consent,” be it domestic, or within a foreign public: control over info. That’s the key.
A government cannot purge all unfavorable discourse from the public, excommunicate all “unorthodox” thinkers, or, for that matter, hunt down and burn all their writings: fortunately we have been out of the Middle Ages for a while, now. Yet, governments still get entangled in their attempts to literally control information, spin it to work in their interest, or improve their “international ranking” in terms of appeal. This is especially true when the government is also desperately trying to win a war of ideas, which essentially constitutes multiple communication battles.
To continue with the over-abused example of the American “War on Terror”… It indeed has a major ideological component. Yet, again, the US ended up in a situation where it had to learn the hard way. You cannot bomb ideas. You have to bend them, or you might even have to disprove them altogether. To do that, you need persuasion. Persuasion requires argument; cohesive argument. The US has been trying to persuade the Middle Eastern public for most of the last decade, and yet, its persuasion tactics have been far from even resembling a true Aristotelian argument (rather, they involved military invasions, consequent humanitarian crises, attempts to clamp down on the local media, and disaster cases such as the corruption in the “Oil for food” program or the Abu Ghraib controversy). So what is wrong, exactly?
Ethos: the ethical appeal, i.e. credibility. - The Western arrogance towards the region, and the invasion already established a “bad name” back in 2001. The outburst against Al Jazeera (and other “uncensored” media, which freely covered the TRUE nature of the war) and the support of corrupt local regimes provided further proof that the US was unable to practice what it preached. Not to mention the constant negative framing of the Muslims and their culture by Western media – at least as perceived by the Muslims themselves. There goes credibility, down the drain.
Pathos: the emotional appeal, i.e. sympathy and compassion. - I don’t think it is fair to expect many people in the Islamic world to feel enough compassion towards any of the coalition forces in light of the Afghanistan or Iraq invasions, and the events that followed. The local media – successfully providing counter-frames that worked – undermined all American effort to make a “sweeping victory” over the hearts and minds of the population.
Logos: the reasoning of the argument, including cohesiveness and supporting evidence. - In this case, the initial rhetoric was that of hostility, and although it changed later on, it was far from being cohesive. As in the case of ethos, the US and its coalition partners showed, time and again, that they were unable (or were simply unprepared) to follow the very principles they were supposedly promoting, giving rise to many alternative explanations, that (at least seemingly) made more sense, especially to the local public.
This all in light of an incompetent speaker as president and a new media environment, where there is an abundance of alternative sources of information, as well as multiple channels of access to it. The US had apparently forgotten to take good note of that, and assumed that just like in the good-ol’ Cold War times the people would unquestioningly internalize whatever they were told, as long as it was coming from America. The flowers and cheers for the “liberators” were not there for the American troops. Did the US fall victim to its own rhetoric and information campaign?
Whatever the root causes and the real reasons behind the “War on Terror,” it is certainly not perceived as a war of “liberation” by the ordinary Iraqis or Afghans, or by most of the people in the region. The US attempts to promote the “democratization” rhetoric have fallen short of actual evidence to support it, while political and economic dealings get increasingly more dirty in both, Iraq and Afghanistan (and the US is conspicuously involved in most of these cases). And certainly, the most prominent example of the US not keeping to its own values is its very attempt to overtly control the flow of information: bashing of “unorthodox” (in American view) media, embedding reporters in the military (thus successfully hampering their chances of some true reporting), and sometimes even preventing journalists from reporting altogether (references can be found in all of this week's readings).
Basically, the Americans have failed to deliver; and even where they have, the means to these achievements were largely disastrous. Given the situation as well as the context, the US might not have many options left. The most promising one, however, remains true understanding of and sensitivity to the local cultures (and figuring out what is that they really value at the time, unlike "soccer," for example), as well as a better demonstration of the true American values through more effective communication and palpable evidence. Yes, openness and true freedom of choice for the people of the region might mean that in the short run the “coalition” might not see friendly governments there (but that’s just the way a true democracy works, right?). And yet, the picture might be different in the longer run, if these governments are engaged and better integrated in an international cooperation system. In the end of the day, despite the importance of communication, it’s not only about words, but deeds as well.
As Aldous Huxley very rightly put in his Brave New World: “Words can be like X-rays. If you use them properly, they'll go through anything.” I find this a fair illustration of the significant role that language plays in the transfer of ideas and in shaping the society, the culture, and… the entire world we live in. So, should an unregulated flow of words and media products – ultimately, ideas – be allowed, given all their power and influence over people, who then (attempt to) decide how things function? This question becomes even more significant when put into the modern-world context: we see a “chicken or the egg”-type debate about media content and gradually shifting patterns of demand.
Siochrú and Girard point out that media products are special because they are essentially the tools of “society production.” In order not to get back to the discussion of the media shaping identities, suffice it to say that their statement is in itself a powerful argument for a cautious regulation of the media market, especially as it is increasingly privatized and taken over by commercial interests.
A free media market essentially implies equilibrium. This can work perfectly well… in theory. In reality, many times people forget to ask about how that market demand is created. A second question that needs to be urgently addressed is whether, given the above-mentioned special status of the media products, the mega-corporations should be given the unlimited freedom to create that demand. I see the matter as an ethical issue (especially when it comes to news reporting and journalism), unless, of course, the sole acceptable morality is that of profit-maximization and instant gratification.
The traditional “mainstream” approach in the US seems to have been very critical of the European (as well as other governments’) attempts to regulate or, at least, carefully monitor the media market. Well, perhaps justly so. After all, a true democracy cannot function without freedom of speech and a free flow of information. However, I still find it hard to understand how a system that took such great care to create a meticulous structure of checks and balances can be inclined to completely overlook a fundamental threat to its very existence. With the increasing trend of privatization and liberalization of the media markets, which gave way to the rise of the large transnational media empires, the very democracy that freedom is supposed to facilitate is being jeopardized, as the corporations start to acquire and exert political influence.
Yet, their influence – acquired through large profits channeled into active lobbying and “support” campaigns, in expectation of favorable policies and treatment – is not limited to the political sphere. It is no secret that media ownership affects content and that through carefully directed programming, media companies can potentially cultivate the demand for specific “products”, create and promote ideas and social movements, and even kick-start revolutions. The first example that jumps to the mind is the claim made by the Iranian regime about the June presidential election. However, why go there? Let’s look at the US and Obama’s healthcare plan debacle.
Freedom of speech and information, whether in the national realm or in the global sphere, was meant to serve as a vehicle to ensure plurality and diversity of opinions, as well as best possible access to the best possible information. Being fundamental to democracy, these were also supposed to improve governance AND effectively check the government’s power. Thus, the media were meant to be the “domain of information” and supposedly assumed the responsibility to act as the fourth estate, in the public’s best interest. And yet, the recent trends of conglomeration, privatization, and deregulation have resulted in a situation of decreased competition and domination by aggressively profit-driven corporations that gradually become the very power that was meant to be contained. And so it happens that by “using the words properly” the transnational media corporations are spinning the idea of freedom to serve their own ends, defeating the very purpose of the much-cherished First Amendment.
How about the statement: “The US is the empire of our times”? Well, for some (surprisingly) it might be a shocker; for others, it’s already become a cliché. Let me play the devil’s advocate now, and try to look at the above-mentioned observation from the SIS 640 perspective.
Thussu refers to communication as a key tool for control and authority-maintenance. It was true at the time of Darius (5th century BC), Julius Ceasar (1st century BC), the Catholic Church in medieval Europe, the British Empire, the Communists in the USSR and Eastern Europe, and… the list can go on forever, but let’s turn to the United States today.
It is an undeniable fact that the Cold War necessitated the propaganda war, but I believe it is important to look at the core reason for the need of propaganda, in the first place. The entire “ideological rivalry” was nothing more than a strategic battle of two superpowers for global domination, while all the shimmering wording was a mere act of public diplomacy, trying to cloak the reality in a well-packaged and easy-to-internalize demagogy. Of course, the superpower battle was waged at many different levels and was manifested in various forms; and yet, its “public face” did not alter the essence of it.
VOA and RFE/RL immediately jump to mind. References have also been made to a state body – IIC – to implement the “international informational activities in support of the US national security policies and interests,” Project Truth being a part of it. (How much more explicit can it get? I bet Orwell was turning in his grave in 1981.) It all seemed to become obsolete by the early 1990s, as supposedly the other superpower was defeated never to rise again. But, as we can see now with the benefit of hindsight, the “end of history” is not that easy to bring about, and there is always an “enemy” to fight out there, especially when you need to maintain internal coherence and unity (hail Orwell and Leo Strauss!). So, the “information war” never stopped, be it against Saddam, Al Qaeda, Ahmadinejad, or even Putin.
Yes, we are all familiar, especially after this week’s readings, with the fact that the culture of independent and private media is very strong in the US, and that it figures as one of the basic principles the American people hold so dear. But then, unlike the majority of other states, the US government is also a true representative of its people and, particularly, its major businesses and other interest groups. The power dynamic is two-way and should be viewed as a cycle: all parties affecting each other. Military and political actions follow certain interests, even if well-cloaked in demagogy (freedom, democracy, human rights, etc…). And even if not directly owned or controlled by the state, the media cannot really counter these interests. After all, given the commercial nature of these organizations, none of the American media would want to be stigmatized as unpatriotic (the gravest of all sins) or to have to deal with the Pentagon. News media, such as the BBC and – especially – Al Jazeera, are largely despised for not playing into the overall American message, and have become targets of the information war themselves (I highly recommend watching the documentary “Control Room” made by an Egyptian-American director, who explores the Pentagon-Al Jazeera tension in 2003-2004). Of course, it is not just the major foreign networks, but at least the DoD can be sure that the strongest patriotic ethos, as well as the supposed “ethical considerations” are resonating among the local media. This, however, cannot be guaranteed among the foreign media, especially if they are owned, controlled, or strongly influenced by their respective governments. Having them privatized (i.e. commercialized), would give the US the opportunity to indirectly influence their message as well, by playing into their commercial interests, which, in its turn, would help to exert political influence.
Yes, the neo-imperialism claim might be a little over-stretched. But having in mind the current political situation around the world and the need to maintain thorough control of its “spheres of influence,” the US cannot afford allowing uncontrolled freedom to any news media, wherever it be located. At least, that is the attempt.
