Project Censored's 25th Anniversary

A review of the stories that have been selected by Project Censored over 25 years reveals several clear patterns. The stories are of considerable interest to the media constituencies: the corporate sector, the state authorities, and the general public. They fall in a domain in which corporate-state interests are rather different from those of the public. That such stories would tend to be downplayed, reshaped, and obscured --"censored," in the terminology of the project--is only to be expected on the basis of even the most rudimentary inspection of the institutional structure of the media and their place in the broader society.

Media service to the corporate sector is reflexive: the media are major corporations. Like others, they sell a product to a market: the product is audiences and the market is other businesses (advertisers). It would be surprising indeed if the choice and shaping of media content did not reflect the interests and preferences of the sellers and buyers, and the business world generally. Even apart from the natural tendency to support state power, the linkage of the corporate sector and the state is so close that convergence of interests on major issues is the norm. The status of audiences is more ambiguous. The product must be available for sale; people must be induced to look at the advertisements. But beyond this common ground, divisions arise.

We can make a rough distinction between the managerial class and the rest. The managers take part in decision-making in the state, the private economy, and the doctrinal institutions. The rest are to cede authority to state and private elites, to accept what they are told, and to occupy themselves elsewhere. There is a corresponding rough distinction between elite and mass media, the former aiming to be instructive, though in ways that reflect dominant interests; the latter primarily to shape attitudes and beliefs, and to divert "the great beast," as Alexander Hamilton termed the annoying public.

The managers must have a tolerably realistic picture of the world if they are to advance "the permanent interests of the country," to borrow the phrase of James Madison, the leading framer of the constitutional order, referring to the rights of men of property. The world view of planners and decision makers should conform to the permanent interests, not just parochially but more broadly. The great beast, in contrast, must be caged. The public must have faith in the leaders who pursue "America's mission," perhaps subject to personal flaws, or making errors in an excess of good will or naivete, but dedicated to the path of righteousness. Firm in this conviction, the public is to keep to pursuits that do not interfere with the permanent interests. It must accept subordination as normal and proper; better still, it should be invisible, the way life is and must be.

The political order is largely an expression of these goals, and the doctrinal institutions--the media prominent among them--serve to reinforce and legitimate them. These are tendencies that one would be inclined to expect on elementary assumptions, and there is ample evidence to support such natural conjectures.

The realities are commonly revealed during the electoral extravaganzas. The year 2000 was no exception. As usual, almost half the electorate did not participate and voting correlated with income. Voter turnout remained "among the lowest and most decisively class-skewed in the industrial world."[1] This feature of so-called "American exceptionalism," reflecting the unusual dominance and class consciousness of concentrated private power, has been plausibly attributed to "the total absence of a socialist or laborite mass party as an organized competitor in the electoral market."[2] The same is true of the "media market": it is virtually 100 percent corporate, with a "total absence of socialist or laborite" mass media. In both respects, "the system works."