People-Filtering and Self-Censorship
by
Charles Lamson
We should see, first of all, that people who work for media corporations - as janitors, secretaries, reporters, editors, producers, or executives - are products of a culture, in which capitalism and extreme inequality, are taken for granted and so it takes no special coercion to get media people to accept capitalism as normal. In fact, that is how they are likely to think when they show up looking for work.
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Media people also learn that being too critical of government or corporations will get them labeled "extreme" or, worse, "biased." It is better for their careers, reporters learn, to stay within the bounds of conventional political opinion. To give serious attention to an alternative candidate, or to make an issue of a candidate's embrace of capitalism, would be seen as strange, and would probably be suicidal for a journalist's career. a boss might wonder, "Doesn't this person know what the real story is? Maybe this person is in the wrong business."
And so no conspiracy is necessary for information to get filtered in a way that favor those in power. All that is required is a little people-filtering: hiring and rewarding those who accept dominant assumptions about what is right and true, and weeding out those who think differently. The result is an organization in which everyone seems to agree about what is worth covering and what is too far out to deserve attention. Even though this is not the result of a conspiracy, we can see that it is not an accident either. Certain resources (primarily money) are being used to create agreement about what is normal and what is far out.
All this is not to say that media people never report stories about corporate crime or political corruption. Of course they do. Such stories are usually interpreted, however, as examples of misbehavior by individuals or by individual firms. They are not seen as evidence that the system itself and the rules by which it operates are flawed.
Powerful people and organizations do sometime act in heavy-handed ways to control the flow of information to the public. News stories are sometimes squashed at high levels if they might be too damaging to political leaders or corporations. Threats of lawsuits and withdrawal of advertising dollars can also be used to influence decisions about which stories to report and how to report them. More often, however, the flow of information is controlled by self-censorship - that is by reporters and editors doing what they know is acceptable, and likely to be rewarded, and shying away from what they know will get them in trouble.
In some times and places the flow of information is controlled by coercion - "You will be shot if you print that story." but coercion is not a smart strategy in the long run. It is more effective to control information by shaping thinking about what is good and right and true, and by offering rewards with: "If you focus on what's important and interesting [in our judgement] you will get a raise and a promotion." In this way, people can be conditioned to want to do what suits the interests of more powerful others.
If writers who criticize the government are killed, or if their books are burned in the streets, everyone will know that an effort is being made to control information. It is much harder to see information being controlled by shaping ideas about what can be taken for granted and about what is interesting and important. It is also hard to know when alternative points of view are being ignored, or when conformist work is being rewarded, inside organizations.
*SOURCE: THE SOCIOLOGICALLY EXAMINED LIFE, 2ND EDITION, 2001, MICHAEL SCHWALBE, PGS. 162-164*
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