Jelly Beans in Every Picture
Michael Deaver was Ronald Reagan’s advisor and obviously, as you can tell from the video clips, had much to do with the creation and management of Reagan’s political image. Michael Deaver, from a Bill Moyers documentary titled Illusions of News, speaks candidly and cynically of his manipulation of network news and journalists like Leslie Stahl on behalf of Ronald Reagan.
First of all Deaver operates on a key insight fundamental to understanding the nature of television; TV is an image-based medium, Deaver calls it an “entertainment” medium. Furthermore images tend to be an aesthetic phenomena and we respond to images less with our intellects and more with our hearts. Deaver understands that images are not so much true or false – as linguistic utterances or statements are – but rely on an aesthetic response; we like or dislike images. Operating on that assumption (or we could say journalistic convention) Deaver produced “movies” that were difficult to dislike and impossible for television news producers to pass up in their quest for ratings. Listen to what Leslie Stahl says about the how the White House informed her that even when she was critical of the White House no one heard her because they were only remembering the images of Reagan.
This is compounded by the fact that citizens in a democracy depend on privately owned media for all types of information from a diverse range of sources in order to fulfill their role as citizens. Institutional constraints (media organizations and their economic pressures) shape media work and allow officials like Deaver to proagandize through the news.
The video clips explore the relation between media consolidation and this type of ownership requiring television news departments and newspapers to generate larger profits and a connection between ownership and the requirements of media professionals to live up to the requirements of corporate owners. It provides a compelling context in terms of economics and its impact on professionalization. Several of the speakers in this clip comment on the relatively recent change in network news departments due to conglomeratization; it boils down to the interdiction that news departments, in order to generate large profits, must become more entertaining. These critics feel that the requirements of creating an audience for advertisers by sheer entertainment drives out more substantive news.
There is a real contradiction here in the profession of journalism (print as well as electronic) as Bill Moyers says; how to make news programs that people will want to watch and at the same time giving people substantive information and insight they can use in a democracy. The critics in this clip believe that television news is falling too much on the side of sheer entertainment. Listen to how Mark Hertskaard, a media scholar, implicates the FCC under President Ronald Reagan in this problem. Then Ben Bagdikian discusses the profit-driven nature of TV news and lastly Martin Koughan – former CBS news producer - talks about the close ties between the entertainment wing and the news wing of media corporations.
What they all seem to agree on is the emergence of a corporate imperative that views journalistic and documentary departments within media corporations as any other profit-driven endeavor; the news must entertain and create an audience for advertisers along with sitcoms or police dramas. Along with this drive for profits is an impulse for down-sizing and cost-cutting. This tendency within corporations reaches into news organization; as staffs and budgets are slashed news departments depend less on investigation and research into the powers-that-be and more on official sources and people like Deaver. Within this economic and professional environment the news becomes more susceptible to using Deaver’s propaganda because it makes economic sense to use the “pretty pictures” he supplies for free. Furthermore news departments are less likely to criticize a popular President like Reagan for fear of alienating audiences who will go elsewhere thus driving down ratings and upsetting advertisers.
What is important here is that the concentration of media ownership in large corporate conglomerates shape or limit the content of mass media because of the manner in which private ownership and market/profit considerations play out. Furthermore as the law of the market prevails an ”if it sells it’s good” ethos takes charge. This is not bad if the product is bread or shoes but when the “product” is information or criticism that citizens need in a democracy or the “product” is our culture then we can see the problems.
