What caused the shift of America's political "center"?

[Octafish]

4. A corrupted news media designed to propagandize the interests of the Ownership Class

From DUer ClaraT:

The Seminal Work on This-Propaganda by Alex Carey

Review of Alex Carey, Taking the Risk out of Democracy: Propaganda in the US and Australia

(University of NSW Press, 1995. 214 pp., $19.95)

Reviewed by Alex McCutcheon in Green Left Weekly

As Alex Carey sees it, "The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy''.

Throughout this book of collected essays with its unified theme, Carey succeeds in showing the reader that far from being a natural outcome of "market forces'' or some natural "law of nature'', the present hegemony that corporations enjoy has been the result of a consciously pursued goal whose origins lie within corporate America.

Carey makes the crucial (and often forgotten) point that in a technologically advanced democracy, "the maintenance of the existing power and privileges are vulnerable to popular opinion'' in a way that is not true in authoritarian societies. Therefore elite propaganda must assume a "more covert and sophisticated role''.

In the US, corporate propaganda has played upon the high level of religious beliefs in the community, beliefs which leave its citizens predisposed to see the world in "Manichean terms''. This outlook leads towards a preference for action over reflection, a "pragmatic orientation'' that is perfectly suited to the corporate aim of identifying positive symbols with business, while assigning negative values to those that oppose them, such as labour unions and welfare provisions.

The organised dissemination of these symbols had its initial impetus in groups such as the National Americanization Committee, which succeeded in manipulating nationalist and patriotic symbols during World War I to associate corporate values with the "American way of life''. The psychological power of this association cannot be discounted: it has proved to be an enduring feature of the political climate in the US today.

Since then the corporate agenda has embraced all areas of society - media, schools, academia and the workplace - with focuses on different levels from "grassroots'' to "tree-tops''. It has succeeded via the mass media in identifying capitalism with democracy and in portraying any challenge to corporate elites as either "subversive'' or "extremist''.

This campaign to vilify those who do not adhere to the desired apathy is exemplified by the shameful way in which some industrial psychologists portray economic interests of employees to be somehow neurotic or dysfunctional. Their shabby efforts to lend an air of science to this field are put under the spotlight by Carey and found severely wanting.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/25/006.html

More on Mr. Carey:

Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda
The Attack on Democracy

The 20th century, said Carey, is marked by three historic developments: the growth of democracy via the expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy. Carey wrote that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. And, in his manuscript, unpublished during his life time, he described that history, going back to World War I and ending with the Reagan era. Carey covers the little known role of the US Chamber of Commerce in the McCarthy witch hunts of post WWII and shows how the continued campaign against "Big Government" plays an important role in bringing Reagan to power.

John Pilger called Carey "a second Orwell", Noam Chomsky dedicated his book, Manufacturing Consent, to him. And even though TUC Radio runs our documentary based on Carey's manuscript at least every two years and draws a huge response each time, Alex Carey is still unknown.

Given today's spotlight on corporations that may change. It is not only the Occupy movement that inspired me to present this program again at this time. By an amazing historic coincidence Bill Moyers and Charlie Cray of Greenpeace have just added the missing chapter to Carey's analysis. Carey's manuscript ends in 1988 when he committed suicide. Moyers and Cray begin with 1971 and bring the corporate propaganda project up to date.

This is a fairly complex production with many voices, historic sound clips, and source material. The program has been used by writers and students of history and propaganda. Alex Carey: Taking the Risk out of Democracy, Corporate Propaganda VS Freedom and Liberty with a foreword by Noam Chomsky was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1995.

SOURCE: http://tucradio.org/new.html

Then, there's Michael Parenti:

Propaganda and Class Structure

Michael Parenti, 1988

excerpted from the book Stenographers to Power

p43
MP: I would define propaganda as the mobilization of information and arguments with the intent to bring people to a particular viewpoint. In that sense there could be false and deceptive propaganda, and there could be propaganda that has a real educational value. You can after all inform people and mobilize them toward truth. In the United States the word "propaganda" is unrelievedly negative. In certain other countries, propaganda has a more neutral implication.

p44
MP: The first premise of propaganda in the United States today is at doesn't exist, that there is no propaganda from the established media and from the government and that we have only "information." Propaganda is something that other people do. That's reflected in that definition of a doctrine. And nobody in the United States says they're selling or pushing a doctrine; they all say they're just reporting it like it is. That's the first premise: the denial that there is propaganda. The second quality of propaganda in the United States is that it operates all the time and its major dedication is to avoid any kind of confrontation regarding class struggle in the United States. It denies any recognition that there is exploitation of labor, that the rich exploit the poor, that we exploit the third world, etc. We've now reached the point where you can talk about racism and sexism, but you cannot really talk about class power in America, and if you do, you are said to be engaging in propaganda.

p46
It's no secret. The Council on Foreign Relations was formed in 1922 by John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Nelson Aldridge and by J.P. Morgan. It's a council whose personnel are drawn from the corporate elite, with some college presidents, academics, news media people, and political leaders thrown in. The Council on Foreign Relations, the Committee on Economic Development, the Trilateral Commission are all organizations that have been formed, financed and staffed by these corporate elites. They provide the personnel who then serve in various administrations. The Council on Foreign Relations has placed its members as Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense in every administration, whether its Republican or Democratic.

Jimmy Carter had 12 members of the Trilateral Commission in his cabinet, including himself and Walter Mondale. The Trilateral Commission was started by David Rockefeller. These elites have a capacity to place their members in the top decision-making positions unequalled by any other interest group in America. There's no labor union, no farmers' group, no teachers' group, there's no pro-abortion or anti-abortion group that could hope to place their leaders the way these people do. Their role is not to pursue the interests of any one particular corporation. Their role in these councils is to look at what are the common interests of all the various multinational corporations, what is the common interest, what is the common interest of the financial class.

p47
MP: You can't talk about these kinds of things in the mainstream media because the media are owned by the very same people who staff these councils and staff our top decision-making positions. Capitalism is not only an economic system, it's an entire social order. Its function is not just to produce cars and refrigerators and make a profit for its owners. It also produces a whole communication universe, a symbolic field, a culture, a control over various social institutions like universities, museums and churches. Those of us who have a view which is anti-capitalist are frozen out, or we are consigned to small publications. You can say, well, you're consigned to small publications because you don't have that much to say or people don't care about what you're saying. It's not true. People would be interested in our message if they'd get a chance to hear it. And in any case, why not give them a chance to reject it? Why don't we get a chance to get on networks? Why don't we get the syndicated columns that appear in 300 newspapers? Why don't we get space in the mass-circulation magazines, in Time and Newsweek? Why don't we get commentaries on ABC, NBC, CBS? Why don't we get on Nightline?

p49
MP: There will be times when dissident perspectives can come through because the ideological control isn't all that efficient. Somebody might get something in, but only once. Take, for example, the time Bill Moyers described imperialism in Guatemala. He talked about how a democratically elected government under Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 was overthrown by the CIA with the instigation of the multinationals in a country where 2 percent of the population own 80 percent of the wealth and how today in Guatemala there's no occupational safety controls, no labor unions, no minimum wage, and much misery and poverty. He was able to say that in his report on Central America once. You never heard it again. So occasionally little things like that will come in.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Media/Propaganda_Parenti_STP.html

My 2-cents.