The role of a free press in a democracy

Democracy requires people compete for favor and votes, and this competition normally takes place under conditions featuring what Lenin aptly called “freedom of propaganda.”

Nearly any message in the mass media is propaganda, if not commercial or religious then political.

Considered as texts, a very low percentage of messages in the mass media, regardless of who paid the freight, are merely informative, containing no shock and awe, no editorializing, no yelling or cheering,  no furious bellowing, nor any self-righteous fuming or pontificating.

And also no purported assertions or denials of moral or religious facts.

(See posts labeled "amoralism.")

But even of those few, seemingly innocent messages, the decision whether to inform and how to “frame” the information is often, though not always, based on its impact on opinion, expected or intended.

And that means as propaganda.

For example, the Republican Party was recently running out of scandals with which to paralyze the Democratic administration throughout the summer, so right now they are using, and some of their partisans possibly even arranging, leaks concerning secret activities of the NSA.

Activities that are no surprise to them, since they authorized and initiated them back when their man, GW, was in the White House, and since the congressional Republicans, at least, are regularly briefed about such goings on.

But the manner in which this information is being handled, just now, beginning with leaks to give the impression these are revelations and including inflamed outrage in the Republican media seconded by libertarians and left-wing America-haters like Glenn Greenwald and his media host, The Guardian, is mostly about attacking the administration and partly about the financial need for really big scoops.

And it has been suggested that part of the point is to embarrass and wrong-foot the administration going into talks with China about the various forms of cyber-war they have been conducting against the US.

The story being, for those who see it that way, that the leaks were actually arranged by the Chinese, knowing well what would become of them in the great yawning mouth of the American right wing noise machine.

Another piece of the puzzle is this.

Democracy is in part a ploy to let the populace vent rather than, say, going in for terrorism and revolution, as might happen where popular elections and rotation in office are not features of the regime.

But if per impossibile democracy featured only these things and not also freedom of propaganda the vast class of activists, agitators, and rich people with an agenda would have no greater scope for peaceable political engagement than ordinary voters, and in many cases no quantum of political power – bribery and other forms of corruption apart – greater than that of the littlest of little people who have the franchise.

In their eyes that would be no better than having no power, no voice, and no influence at all.

No better than dictatorship.

And these are the same people from among whom, when powerless, spring terrorists, assassins, rioters, rebels, and revolutionaries.

The crucial venting function of democracy is a matter of letting them vent – letting people who are not holders of political office but insist upon it have at least the degree of special clout, above and beyond that of the mere, ordinary voter, allowed them by freedom of propaganda.

But of course these various individuals and groups have different and often opposing agendas.

And so it is not unusual for some among them to oppose freedom of their opponents’ propaganda, often demanding that employers punish their damnable speech by firing them and sometimes demanding the government silence or punish it.

And if they speak for an elite consensus they can prevail, even against opposing groups with whom a majority of the nation sympathizes.

By the way, the complete lack of self-awareness with which the noise-making classes concern themselves with their own freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or freedom of expression to the total exclusion of the public’s freedom to choose what to read, hear, or view is quite revealing of their narcissism, even when blaring transparently self-serving tommyrot about democracy and the First Amendment, is it not?

Last, democracy in modern times means, above all else, mass politics.

The propaganda of the mass media, of media targeting the general public and, generally, as much of it as possible, target the masses.

Hence its blatancy, its lack of nuance and subtlety, and its egregious reliance on the abysmal stupidity of its target audience, along with their ordinarily fathomless, when not actually terrifying, ignorance of the matters of great moment disputed in the public forum.

The mass media that do nothing to alleviate these shortcomings and nearly everything to exploit them nevertheless do not omit, when an exercise in public hand-washing suits them, to harp on these self-same flaws of the public.

It is helpful to bear all this in mind when, from time to time, the blare of daily bilge and eyewash includes pious reminders of the noble and crucial role played by the press in our democracy by assuring an informed electorate and by exposing and castigating wrong-doing and injustice not only by officials but by the government itself.

And that playing this noble and crucial role requires that the media, unique among businesses and enterprises of all other kinds, go completely unregulated and irresponsible as regards the products they provide their consumers.

PS.

It is interesting the definitions of “propaganda” to be found on the net seem to have been written by people thinking primarily of what is sometimes called “white propaganda,” the use and dissemination of information and true allegations for purposes of political impact, to the exclusion of “black propaganda,” the dissemination of lies and other forms of falsehood, distortion, and deception for such purposes.

And that despite the lesson of experience that the latter generally predominates.