AGE of PROPAGANDA the Everyday Use and Abuse Of
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AGE OF pROpAGANDA The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion The linked image cannot be display ed. The file may have been moved, renamed, or deleted. V erify that the link points to the correct file and location. REVISED EDITION ANTHONY R. PRATKANIS and ELLIOT ARONSON University of California, Santa Cruz To the memory of my parents, Harry Aronson (1903-1950) and Dorothy Aronson (1901-1989) They had a wonderfully innocent, childlike trust that, in this country, almost everything they read (especially if it was between the covers of a book) was absolutely true. E. A. To my son, Tony T. Pratkanis (born 1991) Chances are, he will grow up with a healthy skepticism but a regrettable cynicism about the truth of everything he reads, hears, and sees. A. R. P. WHY WE WROTE THIS BOOK We are of different generations. One of us (E. A.) was born in 1932 and grew up during World War II. "At that time, I fervently believed just about everything I was exposed to in school and in the media. For example, I knew that all Germans were evil and that all Japanese were sneaky and treacherous, while all white Americans were clean-cut, honest, fair-minded, and trusting. Perhaps you had to be eleven years old to take seriously the racial and national caricatures presented in the war movies of the early 1940s. But in those days, most grown- ups²including my parents (to whom this book is dedicated)²certainly wanted to believe in the basic message of the war movies and did, in fact, have a childlike trust in the media. They hung on every word President Roosevelt said in his famous fireside chats and never dreamed of questioning the nobility of the motives behind our national policy. They thought (and so did I) that the purpose of commercial advertising was to inform the consumer." The world has taken a few turns since then. A. R. P. grew up during the Vietnam war and was witness to the blatant lying by public officials of that era. "At the time, I sat riveted to my television screen, scared to death by the images of death and destruction beamed into my living room from Vietnam, all the while learning that politicians only lie when their lips move. I came of age during the Watergate era when a sitting president, Richard Nixon, was forced to resign when faced with incontrovertible evidence (some of it supplied by his own tape recordings) of the lying, dirty tricks, and attempted cover-up that he and his cronies had perpetrated on the American people. For me, commercials, whether for different brands of products or different brands of politicians, were entertainment designed to make someone rich or more powerful." In the first edition of this book, we lamented the fact that there was no White House tape recorder in use during the 1980s²so that President Reagan escaped the consequences of deceiving the American people (and the world) by subverting the Constitution through the covert sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of the profits from that sale to support the Nicaraguan Contras.1 We felt (and continue to feel) it to be a sad commentary on our times that, although the majority of the American people were furious at Nixon and his cronies, by the time of the Iran-Contra scandal most Americans seemed to have developed a more cynical attitude about being deceived and did not seem displeased when Oliver North, John Poindexter, and President Reagan himself succeeded, for the most part, in "beating the rap." And now, ho hum, other investigations come along²the savings and loan debacle, the BCCI crisis, Ruby Ridge, and various shady campaign contributions given to U.S. politicians of every stripe. Who cares? Business as usual. Such cynicism carries a price. A cynical electorate is a lackadaisical electorate, as evidenced by the fact that fewer than 50% of eligible Americans now bother to vote. And then there was the world-famous slow-speed chase, the media circus of the century²the trial of O. J. Simpson.2 An international audience sat riveted to their TV sets as an army of more than 1,000 credentialed reporters plus untold media pundits went over and over and over every excruciating detail of the case and the story²from the cost of the trial to the menu at the Mezzaluna Restaurant to Marcia Clark's topless vacation on the French Riviera. CNN alone employed 70 correspondents and 250 legal experts to produce 1,530 hours of O. J. trial coverage and commentary. O. J. trinket vendors made more than $1 billion selling such treasures as novelty Simpson wrist watches, T-shirts, orange-scented O. J. air fresheners, and Judge Ito Jell-0 molds. From January 1, 1995, until the week after the verdict, television network news spent twenty-six hours and fifty minutes, or 13.6% of the available airtime, covering the O. J. story. That is more time than was devoted to Bosnia (thirteen hours and one minute), the bombing in Oklahoma City (eight hours and fifty-three minutes), and the U.S. budget (three hours and thirty-nine minutes)²the other top three "news" stories²combined. And after the O. J. verdict was rendered, what was the news media to do? The trial had been a cash cow. The coverage was relatively cheap to produce, garnered great ratings, and brought in top advertising revenues. For example, the television networks charged advertisers ten times their normal rate for thirty seconds of commercial time during the O. J. verdict. What would top a juicy, intriguing trial of a prominent athlete? What would keep the advertising revenue flowing? How about an impeachment trial of a U.S. president for sex crimes? And that is what we watched next. Beginning in January of 1998, the nation's mass media, particularly its news programming, launched around-the-clock coverage of stories and speculation about then-President Clinton's sexual misconduct, especially with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky.3 The number of jokes told about Bill Clinton on late-night TV soared a whopping 111.3 % during the year of the saga. An estimated 67.6 million Americans watched Clinton's televised speech on August 17, 1998, in which he admitted an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky. In the month just before this announcement, the network morning news shows devoted 179 segments to the Clinton sex scandal and only 56 segments to any other news about the Clinton administration. Much of this coverage bordered on the hysterical, with rumor chasing gossip chasing innuendo²much like the coverage of the O. J. trial. For example, a panelist on CNBC stated that the president had had sex with four other interns besides Lewinsky, ABC News reported that Clinton and Lewinsky had been caught in the act, possibly by Secret Service agents, and then the Dallas Morning News followed up with news that an agent was ready to testify that he saw the president and Lewinsky engage in a sex act. Of course, these still unsubstantiated rumors were repeated over and over again by the news media, giving them an air of respectability. Amidst this media roar, President Clinton infamously shook his finger at the American public and denied having sex with "that woman." What were the reactions of Americans to having their news shows turned into the "All Monica, All the Time" network? Bill Clinton's approval ratings soared during the period. Newt Gingrich and others who led the impeachment charge lost favor with the American public (with some being forced to leave government because of their own revealed sexual indiscretions). Opinion polls showed that Americans had lost respect for the news media and did not like the way the saga was covered. We think the most telling statistic of all is this: QVC, the "All Shopping, All the Time" TV network posted the second-highest sales week in its history immediately after the August 17 admission by Clinton. Apparently, many of those 67.6 million Americans who tuned in to hear Clinton went channel surfing without delay after the pronouncement and settled on QVC as an alternative to the "news" coverage. It was as if American citizens were saying, "I am sick and tired of the blather. I am going shopping." Something needs to change. The mass media respond to our itch for entertainment and spectacle and create "news" coverage of the ilk found in the O. J. Simpson trial and the Monica Lewinsky saga. Such "news" coverage feeds our cynicism about government and the state of our nation. For example, consider the media coverage of the 2000 U.S. presidential election. The campaign was marked by a lack of interest from both citizens and the news media. However, as soon as a possibly entertaining spectacle emerged²the recount of votes in Florida²then the networks launched around-the-clock coverage²coverage that feeds our cynicism that things seem to be out of control. The losers are those of us who respect democracy. For while we sat glued to the trial and the saga, we didn't sit glued to stories covering investigations of campaign finance violations or providing in-depth analysis of issues of great importance to our country, such as spiraling health care costs, the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons at the international level, the shrinking middle class, the expanding number of children in poverty, and the continued consolidation of mass media power into the hands of a few large firms. This itch for entertainment carries a price²the information we need to participate in a democracy is replaced by trivial entertainment, thus making it harder and harder for us to carry out our responsibilities as citizens.