Manipulating the Mainstream Media

I just finished reading Ender's Game for the seventh or eighth time since eighth grade. For the first time, I read it for a class. For the first time, I was conscious of how smart Orson Scott Card really was in regards to the media.

Card predicts a ubiquitous Internet accessible from anywhere. Everyone has a "desk" akin to today's laptop, and even the kitchen table is wired so people can read their Internet-delivered papers at the breakfast table. "The Net," as it is called, has seemed even to replaced television. Now "vids" are accessible online through newspapers and what I can only imagine what is similar to YouTube. His predictions are not too shabby, considering the book was published in 1985.

One of the subplots of the novel involves siblings Peter and Valentine Wiggin, perhaps the two smartest pre-teens on 22nd-century earth, creating false identities on the Internet and using them to post political essays. These essays are in turn picked up by newspapers and quoted by politicians. The two rise to prominence in complete anonymity. The father even quotes Valentine's columns regularly, not knowing he is repeating his daughter's words, and that they are her political, rather than heartfelt, sentiments.

The Internet presents a stunning opportunity for political and media influence, but as was reinforced in readings for my independent media class today, media manipulation is nothing new.

In Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America, Rodger Streitmatter describes people and outlets that changed the face of the nation via a dissident press. Streitmatter takes a dissident medium as one that not only offers a differing view of society, but also one that seeks to "change society in some discernible way." What he seems to be referring to is journalism with a point of view, advocacy journalsim, whatever you want to call it. In some istances it's not so different from Peter and Valentine Wiggin, or if you want something classical, Thomas Paine.

But it's not the independent/dissident media itself that I'm focusing on for this post, but the way it can be used to manipulate the mainstream/corporate media.

The entire second chapter of Streitmatter's book is a biography of William Lloyd Garrison, a man whose egotism was perhaps only exceded by his desire to end slavery. In his paper, The Liberator, Garrison championed the abolitionist cause when mainstream newspapers shied away from "the most contentious issue of the era." With just a circulation of 2,500, however, Garrison was able to have a lasting impact on the abolitionist cause through his manipulation of the mainstream media.

One texhnique Garrison used was delivering the premier issue of his paper to over about 100 other editors, most of whom defended slavery. Rather than tossing them in the trash, these editors

were so offended by his words that they quoted him at length, accompanied by their own statements of outrage, to inform their readers of the extreme nature of the abolitionist credo.

Garrison then reprinted the response and his own rebuttal. Writes Streitmatter:

So by the end of this carefully orchestrated editorial chain reaction, Garrison had not only provided his own subscribers with a double-dose of lively reading, but healso had introduced readers of a pro-slavery paper to The Liberator and the anti-slavery ideology it promulgated.

Garrison also capitalized on the death of Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, who published a New England abolitionist paer, who was killed by a pro-slavery mob. By focusing on the loss of a great man and suffering of his family, as well as the loss of a paper, Garrison was able to promote the abolitionist cause without specifically speaking to it. His subtlety allowed him to skirt the issue but still make a connection in his readers' minds between abolitionism and this great man. Because Lovejoy was a reverend, Garrison's piece was quoted in churches across the country, igniting a word of mouth phenomenon.

Garrison also used media events with the idea that even bad press is good PR for his cause. At one gathering he set fire to a copy of the Fugitive Slave Law and United States Constitution with mock reverence, as though he were performing a sacrament. Mainstream media reports lambasted him, but also quoted him on the front page. Even the New York Times ran verbatim transcripts of his speeches!

Through clever tactics, Garrison was able to get his word out. It didn't matter if coverage was good or bad. What mattered was that people were seeing and hopefully considering his words.

Perhaps because I'm a journalism major, or spent a summer doing PR, I'm obsessed with this idea of the ability of individuals and organizations to manipulate the media. Just yesterday my professor pointed out that a Starbucks PR piece got top-column placement on Huffington Post (Thanks, professor!). The responses were minimal, and some questioned the ethics of the decision. One reader asked:

Is this article an advertorial? It reads like a press release. If this isn't a paid ad it should be, and if it IS a paid ad you need to let people know that.

Starbucks Via isn't "Breaking News and Opinion." It's advertising. But if I were a corporate executive, gosh darnit I'd probably do the same thing. I'd want to stop losing money and get some good press for a change.

Geeze, I even tried to manipulate the press this morning when I answered an e-mail from and Ithacan journalist who was just assigned the crew beat. I told her the sites to visit, the polls to look at, the things to focus on. The coverage was horrendous last year, and this year I want the articles written about the team to accurately reflect the sport.

I wonder how many people consider that when they are interviewed. It must be media week for me because there was another Ithacan reporter at the SCAR meeting last night covering the Emily McNeill story. Something happened that really bothered me as a journalist. People would interject their own ideas in their responses to questions, ideas that did not reflect the views of SCAR. They were more interested in representing themselves than the organization. I hope the reporter can sort through all the contradictory details she received.

As I sat there, I realized how easy it would be to manipulate a reporter who is totally uninformed on a subject. You just need a message and an agenda. It's a scary thought. It's what pushed us into Iraq.

Maybe it's better that these people were unaware that they are able to manipulate the media. It keeps the responses honest, even if they are misguided. But in the real world, it does not work that way. It is a good thing that Garrison was able to manipulate the media, but I think all too often the media does not realize that it is being duped by more malignant entities.