Media manipulation

Media manipulation is an aspect of public relations in which partisans create an image or argument that favours their particular interests. Such tactics may include the use of logical fallacies and propaganda techniques, and often involve the suppression of information or points of view by crowding them out, by inducing other people or groups of people to stop listening to certain arguments, or by simply diverting attention elsewhere.

As illustrated below, many of the more modern mass media manipulation methods are types of distraction, on the assumption that the public has a limited attention span.

Distraction types

Distraction by nationalism

This is a variant on the traditional ad hominem and bandwagon fallacies applied to entire countries. The method is to discredit opposing arguments by appealing to nationalistic pride or memory of past accomplishments, or appealing to fear or dislike of a specific country, or of foreigners in general. It can be very powerful as it discredits foreign journalists (the ones that are least easily manipulated by domestic political or corporate interests).^{[citation needed]}

Example: "You want to know what I really think of the Europeans?" asked the senior United States State Department official. "I think they have been wrong on just about every major international issue for the past 20 years." ^[1].
Example: "Your idea sounds similar to what they are proposing in Turkey. Are you saying the Turks have a better country than us?"
Example: "The only criticisms of this proposed treaty come from the United States. But we all know that Americans are arrogant and uneducated, so their complaints are irrelevant." (Note that sarcasm is often difficult to detect in textual form.)
Example: The "Support Our Troops" campaign created by the Republican party during the War on Terror implies that opposing the war effort detracts support away from the individual soldiers fighting the war. Thus patriotic support of the troops becomes a form of support for the war in general.

Straw man fallacy

The "straw man fallacy" is the lumping of a strong opposition argument together with one or many weak ones to create a simplistic weak argument that can easily be refuted.

Example: Grouping all opposed to the 2003 invasion of Iraq as "pacifists", so they can be refuted by arguments for war in general. As with most persuasion methods, it can easily be applied in reverse, in this case, to group all those who supported the invasion together and label them as "warmongers" or "lackeys of the United States".

Distraction by scapegoat

A combination of straw man and ad hominem, in which your weakest opponent (or easiest to discredit) is considered as your only important opponent.

Example: If many countries are opposed to our actions, but one of them (say, France) is obviously acting out of self-interest, mention mostly France. As with most persuasion methods, it can easily be applied in reverse, in this case, attempting to discredit George W. Bush in order to discredit the entire coalition against Iraq.

Distraction by phenomenon

A risky but effective strategy summarized best, perhaps, by David Mamet's 1997 movie Wag the Dog, by which the public can be distracted, for long periods of time, from an important issue, by one which occupies more news time. When the strategy works, you have a war or other media event taking attention away from misbehaving or crooked leaders. When the strategy does not work, the leader's misbehavior remains in the press, and the war is derided as an attempted distraction.

US President Clinton's bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan^[2] is often cited as an example, to distract attention from the Monica Lewinsky affair^[3]^[4].

Distraction by Semantics

This involves using euphemistically pleasing terms to obscure the truth. For example saying "choice" or "reproductive rights" instead of referring to the medical term "abortion", or, similarly, "pro-life" instead of "anti-abortion". A brilliantly executed example was the way that President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation prevented European nations from entering the war in support of the Confederacy by framing the war in terms of the moral issue "slavery" as opposed to states rights.

Other types

Appeals to Consensus

By appealing to a real or fictional "consensus" the media manipulator attempts to create the perception that his opinion is the only opinion, so that alternate ideas are dismissed from public consideration. Michael Crichton explains:

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus.
Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
— ^[5]

Marginalization

This is a widespread and subtle form of media manipulation: simply giving credence only to "mainstream" sources of information; it exists in many news outlets. Information, arguments, and objections that come from other sources are simply considered "fringe" and ignored, or their proponents permanently discredited, or accused of having their own agenda.

Example: "I think there are a lot of people out there who feel the way I do, but haven't wanted to come forward because they're afraid of being identified with a fringe group..." Langley said. "I don't believe in all the things that all the (anti-war) groups stand for, but we all do share one thing in common: I do believe that this war is wrong." ^[6]
Example: "Because Mike Gravel has not demonstrated measurable public support for his campaign to date, he has not received an invitation [to the 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidate Debates]." ^[7]

Demonisation of the opposition

This is a more general case of distraction by nationalism. Opposing views are ascribed to an out-group or hated group, and thus dismissed out of hand. This approach, carried to extremes, becomes a form of suppression, as in McCarthyism, where anyone disapproving of the government was considered "un-American" and "Communist" and was likely to be denounced.

Example: The consignment of almost all dissent to the "International Jewish conspiracy" by Nazi Germany.
Example: Labelling those with any sort of right-wing views as "Nazis", or those with left-wing views as "commies", etc.

Googlewashing

This is a new word coined by Andrew Orlowski of The Register in April 2003 ^[8] to describe the alleged practice of changing the meaning of a meme (in this example, Second Superpower) by web-publishing a well-linked article using the term in an inoffensive manner, stripped of its political significance. Google has also been observed to exclude certain sites from the search function (notably Google.fr and or Google.de).^[9]

People concerned about media manipulation have promoted the teaching of media literacy to teach about the above techniques and thus make them less effective with people thus educated.

Notes

^ [1] New York Times article
^ [2] Operation Infinite Reach
^ [3] Daily Telegraph, "Clinton strikes terrorist bases", Friday 21 August 1998
^ [4] CNN.com, "Thousands stage anti-U.S. protest in Sudan", August 22, 1998
^ Michael Crichton, from the speech "Aliens Cause Global Warming", given at Caltech, Pasadena, CA, January 17, 2003, reprinted here: http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html
^ [5] SF Chronicle: "Anti-War Forces Get New Recruit"
^ [6] NH Insider: "Gravel dismisses CNN ... statement"
^ [7] The Register: "Anti-war slogan coined, repurposed and Googlewashed in 42 days"
^ [8] Harvard Law School: "Specific Sites Excluded from Google.fr and/or Google.de"