User talk:Bank of England
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[edit] Centrist Views
"There is a notion -- widely believed in the mainstream media -- that while there is propaganda of the left and propaganda of the right, there is no such thing as propaganda of the center. In this view, the center doesn't produce propaganda, it produces straight news. Mainstream journalists typically explain: "We don't tilt left, we don't tilt right. We're straight down the middle of the road. We're dead center."
When mainstream journalists tell me during debates that "our news doesn't reflect bias of the left or the right," I ask them if they therefore admit to reflecting bias of the center. Journalists react as if I've uttered an absurdity: "Bias of the center! What's that?"
It is a strange concept to many in the media. They can accept that conservatism or rightism is an ideology that carries with it certain values and opinions, beliefs about the past, goals for the future. They can accept that leftism carries with it values, opinions, beliefs. But being in the center -- being a centrist -- is somehow not having an ideology at all. Somehow centrism is not an "ism" carrying with it values, opinions and beliefs."
But instead of belaboring the point that the centrist media are currently tilting rightward, I'd like to address some elements of centrist news propaganda that are somewhat constant.
Centrist Cliches
If, for simplicity's sake, we define the left as seeking substantial social reform toward a more equitable distribution of wealth and power, and we define the right as seeking to undo social reform and regulation toward a free marketplace that allows wide disparities in wealth and power, then we can define the political center as seeking to preserve the status quo, tinkering with the system only very prudently to work out what are seen as minor glitches, problems or inequities.
How do these three positions play out journalistically? Unlike left-wing or right-wing publications which are often on the attack, centrist propaganda emphasizes system-supporting news, frequently speaking in euphemisms. If scandals come to light, centrist propaganda often focuses less on the scandal than on how well "the system works" in fixing it. (This was the editorial drumbeat in the papers of record following both Watergate and Iran-Contra.) When it comes to foreign policy, centrist propaganda sometimes questions this or that tactic, but it never doubts that the goal of policy is anything other than promoting democracy, peace and human rights. Other countries may subvert, destabilize or support terrorism. The U.S. just wages peace.
If propaganda from the center only emphasized the upbeat, pointing so much to silver linings that it never acknowledged the existence of clouds, there'd be a credibility problem. The public wouldn't believe such bland, euphemistic reporting. So, in selective cases, centrist propaganda does talk tough about government tyrants -- especially if they're foreign tyrants or U.S. officials already deposed. (J. Edgar Hoover was one such tyrant, whose 50-year reign at the FBI was rigorously scrutinized by the mainstream media only after he was dead and buried.) And centrist propaganda can take a tough look at a social problem -- especially if it's deemed fixed or on its way to being fixed.
Another hallmark of centrist propaganda is to affirm, no matter what the evidence, that U.S. foreign policy is geared toward promoting democracy. Journalists are not unaware that the U.S. helped overthrow democratic governments, for example, in Guatemala in '54, (Iran in '53), Brazil in '64, Chile in '73 -- but these cases are considered ancient history, no longer relevant. (In centrist ideology, since the system is constantly fixing and renewing itself, U.S. abuses -- even against democracy -- become distant past overnight.)
Mainstream journalists respond to such criticism by explaining that articles for the daily press are not history texts and cannot include everything. That's true, but centrist propaganda finds space for certain histories and not others. Many if not most of the reports on Hungary's transition from Communism traced human rights abuses to the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. By contrast, reports on Guatemala's current human rights situation rarely traced events to the U.S.-sponsored coup of 1954.
Good Guys Caught Between Left and Right
Besides consistently promoting peace and democracy overseas, according to centrist propaganda, the U.S. also consistently supports the good guys abroad. Not surprisingly, the good guys are always "centrists" on the political spectrum. At least that's what the media make them out to be. And there's another media cliche one hears about our good guys, the centrists: They are perpetually hemmed in by the bad guys of left and right.
For years, as El Salvador's armed forces and allied death squads murdered thousands of civilians, media pundits told us that massive U.S. aid to Salvador's military was needed to bolster "centrists" such as Jose Napoleon Duarte. In the media mantra of the time, Duarte was "hemmed in by death squads on the right and guerrillas on the left." In using that cliche, centrist media chose to promote a dubious State Department line, while ignoring groups such as Americas Watch and Amnesty International that had documented that the security forces of the Duarte government worked hand in glove with the death squads.
