Media literacy, anyone?

That is corporate media worst nightmare, having the masses be media literate. It is true, media literacy is non-existent. And it is so because we are not pushed to be critical thinkers enough.

From traditional media to digital mass media, we have not been encouraged to assess information critically and it shows. People consume the first news available to them at face value with no questioning, resulting in a real lack of understanding of reported issues. This is my call to ask for mandatory media literacy everywhere!

Credit: collage by me

I know many of us are quite overwhelmed with the constant flow of information readily available at our fingertips. It is not helping when social media has built a significant competition among news outlets, pushing them to rush information to pride themselves for being the first to publish THE SCOOP of the day/month/year. Yet the blame is not all on digitised information, but the lack of proper critical thinking skills that are not taught well, but just what you need so you don’t question the status quo too much.

Your press is not that free

I have a master’s in journalism. In journalism school, I was taught the ethics of the job. One of them is being as close to the truth as possible, another is standing my ground: don’t be intimidated by your interviewees, I have to let all parties tell their stories, don’t send them your piece before it is published, if they want to clarify something I may have misreported, they have a right of reply that I have to follow up with. My role as a journalist is to seek information and report it to the masses so they have a great understanding of any situation. I am the bridge between the outside world, the government and the people. I am the only way they get to be updated on what is going on locally and internationally. I was taught that being a journalist was of great importance because, without people like me, who are the objectivity needed, the world would be in total darkness and easily manipulable. I believed it, I wholeheartedly believed it until I worked some unpaid internships and paid jobs as a journalist and got confronted with how policed and restrictedly framed my reporting had to be.

There are different rules and guidelines to follow depending on the news outlet you work for. Generally, if it is a touchy subject, you are asked to beat around the bush, don’t be too straight forward. Sometimes if the touchy subject is somehow financially tied to the outlet (through ownership or donations), it is better to not even report it, but because we have freedom of press and want — more like need — to appear impartial, OK, you can report it, but again by beating around the bush and even better if that beating is downplaying the touchy subject. An example I have in mind regards Amazon in the Washington Post (Wash Post). Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, purchased the publication in 2013 and even though Bezos has claimed not to have any say on what is published or not, I remember a uni seminar analysing two publications from 2018 about the US Postal Service (USPS) review, requested by then president, Donald Trump who was unhappy with the company, accusing it of tanking the postal service.

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The first publication was a Wash Post article, and the second from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). During the seminar, we scrutinised how the same information was conveyed; whether information corroborated or not, how pertinent and efficient each of the articles were, as well as our overall feelings about them. One sentiment that was unanimous among all students was that the severity of the situation felt different. Just from the headlines, both articles are giving different tones. If the WSJ mentions that the review is “likely to hit Amazon” on its postal rates, and makes Amazon the focus of its article, the Wash Post, already downplays it from the very beginning, headlining “Treasury suggests review of postal rates – but not just for Amazon”… “Not just for Amazon” … it implies that it is not that much of an issue as other parties are also involved in the economical downfall of USPS. Since headlines give the tone of the article, we knew that the Wash Post piece would water down the issue, and it did. Over the years, the Wash Post has been criticised for its biased reporting on Amazon-related topics¹. A journalist at the outlet shared anonymously with the HuffPost their thoughts on the bias in the newsroom :

“I’m not sure if this is exactly what you’re looking for, but I would say that i tend to do less critical thinking about Amazon than I do, say, about Facebook or Google or Walmart, and the reason is fairly obvious: because I am thankful for the opportunity I have, which wouldn’t exist without Jess [Jeff] Bezos. Absent a deep, more thoughtful analysis, do I have concerns about Amazon’s impact on the world―labor practices, antitrust law and the future of small businesses? Yes. And would I say that out loud at work? No.”

I want to show the dilemma we are facing here: journalists are censoring themselves or being censored on reporting truthful news because the billionaires and/or corporations that own them are dictating how to report the news. Even though, it is not explicit, journalists always have in mind that something is at stake. But what is at stake?

On manufacturing consent

Profit! This is what is at stake.

Billionaires and corporations are closely interlinked with their governments to assure their assets and power status are not taken away from them. This means, that Jeff Bezos can pride himself to support federal $15 minimum wage to pass so he can smash any unionisation and still make more money as he beats his competitors in the market. He can even use his own media outlet to advertise this support and have Wash Post readers claim: yes, billionaires may be bad, but do you know any other billionaires who would publicly support raising the minimum wage for their workers? - My response is, I haven’t searched it yet, so I don’t know. But also, Bezos is not doing it because he got hit by a sudden conscience that wealth disparity is a problem that needs to be solved! No, in fact, he is doing that so you believe that billionaires are actually not that terrible people. He is manufacturing consent for that belief, so you let him be, let the status quo be, and you go on about your day until another breaking news reminds you how evil billionaires and corporations still are despite all the PR. This manufacture of consent is a nicer way to say that what Bezos is doing with his Washington Post is propagandising you by selling you the point of view you must adopt about him and by extension all billionaires.

American linguist and political activist, Noam Chomsky, has extensively studied the media, how it operates and why it manufactures consent. Therefore, I highly recommend you to watch the 9-minutes video I embedded above because it is pointless to repeat exactly what he is already so brilliantly saying. I would, though, focus on the New York Times (NYT), referenced by Chomsky as THE most important news outlet in the US and around the world. He states about the paper’s role:

“history is what appears in the New York Times archives, a place where people will go to find out what happened, is the New York Times. Therefore, it's extremely important if history is going to be shaped in an appropriate way, that certain things appear, certain things not appear, certain questions be asked, other questions be ignored, and that issues be framed in a particular fashion.”

The power the NYT holds over media coverage today is undeniable. So much so that even non-English-speaking countries think very highly of their reporting. It is very rarely questioned, and even seen as the beacon of truth in the journalistic world and beyond. But as Chomsky affirms in the video, national media such as the NYT sets a general agenda for local news to follow. This is what he calls the Propaganda Model — “they determine, they select, they shape, they control, they restrict in order to serve the interests of dominant elite groups in society” — this elite, that owns the media, does so to mainly appeal to advertisers that fulfil their status system and maintain the power structure in place. Advertisers are the ones keeping the media functioning, we, the readers, are just the capital counted in reader- or viewership allowing media outlets to up their advertising rates to make money. And because money is at play, it is important for the media to frame the world in ways which are not going to be challenged, hence the suppression of dissident voices and alternative media that are perceived as a greater threat to the system. The reader’s main function is to follow orders and when we are told to think a certain way or pay attention to certain things, that is the media shaping the frameworks for us. Our critical thinking is restrained, so it does not disrupt the current world order.

Challenge and question everything

Even though the NYT is perceived as the best of journalism, it is not exempt from messing up. And it did numerous times! When it stood behind the Iraq war by propagating unsubstantiated information against Iraqis to justify their plight and admitted years later of their wrongdoings. Or when they had to confess that their award-winning podcast, the Caliphate, a 12-parts series story about a Syrian ISIS state executioner was actually fabricated, and they had to retract it. But let’s not forget about their very horrendous reporting on the genocide happening in Gaza right now and their effort to manufacture consent by publishing the now debunked systematic mass rape story. It took independent media such as The Electronic Intifada, The Grayzone, Mondoweiss and The Intercept as well as independent reporters like

Zei Squirrel

to challenge, question and show the fraudulent work behind the NYT story, by doing their respective thorough investigations. Since then, the NYT published another article revising some of their claims and distancing themselves from the “journalists” they hired for the piece (one is a filmmaker who posted genocidal tweets about Gaza, the other is a culinary critic with no experience in doing any investigations of this scale whatsoever).

Credit: @erinoverbey on X

Because this is the New York Times, and it is a reputable outlet, the debunked mass rape story spread like wildfire and was enough to convince many people around the world (mainly liberals and republicans and non-opinionated folks) to believe it and justify the Israeli genocidal assault on Gaza. And because critical thinking is not encouraged and pushed, many people did not corroborate the information following the publication, especially when the family interviewed in the NYT piece, rebuked the article, shortly after it came out, claiming that they had been manipulated by the jouralists as they had no evidence that their loved-one who was killed on October 7th, had been sexually assaulted.

People are way more sceptical with independent media than they are with corporate media and to be fair, rightfully so, yet people should bear the same scepticism for the mainstream media. You should be critical of all information provided to you regardless of the outlet. The reason why independant media is vilified and labelled as bogus is because it does not follow the propaganda model, in fact, it challenges it. And when you challenge the current world order, you are excluded, suppressed or eliminated because those alternative narratives are seen as threatening in the current system. Like Noam Chomsky puts it: “They’re dysfunctional to the institution itself”. Yet, independent news is important in a democracy. They are a necessity because a democratic society should allow the system we live in to be confronted and questioned and if it is posing a threat, let’s question again what threat it is posing. Is it really fake news or is it a dissident voice challenging the dominant narrative?

For media literacy

Please understand that fake news is real and a massive problem in this day and age. But know that fake news is not only spread by Fox News, Breibart or any right-wing conspiracy outlet. As showcased in this piece, NYT also spread fake news. This idea that only right-wing media relies on fake news is so dangerous because it shields neoliberalism from any criticism when neoliberalism is just a water down version of fascism that came about after World War II². You should be questioning all media outlets regardless of their political affiliations! Yes, even leftist media! Because misinformation plagues everyone and everywhere even the most precaurious of researchers.

I understand we live in a world where the constant flow of information is doing our head in! We don’t know where to start. On top of that, we have life to deal with, little time for ourselves, so it can get distressing very quickly. I don’t expect people to be on top of their media literacy, ever because a lot of it requires geopolitical knowledge and who has the time to truly dig on the relations between Russia - the US and Europe since the Cold War til today? I mean I wish, many of us had that time to as not only it is interesting as hell but it really helps with understanding the dynamics amongst regions and countries. But unfortunately, that time is not given to everyone… free time is an actual privilege these days!

Credit: Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash

So to start easy first, I suggest you to follow a set of corporate and independent media outlets. When a domestic news breaks, do you due diligence to corroborate the information (are all outlets giving similar information? Do they have clear sources? How do they report? Is there a lot of passive voice or active voice?³). Keep an eye out on on-the-ground and specialised⁴ news outlets when it comes to international news. Today we have advanced translating tools and since social media became a thing, a lot of international news also provide their reporting in English. For instance as this genocide is unfolding, I keep a close eye on Israeli news (Haaretz, The Times of Israel, Ynet, The Jerusalem Post, i24news, Channel 12 & 14 as well as some known hasbara people on socials) because they are way more honest and truthful about what is happening within the Israeli society and the IOF destructions in Gaza so I get to have access to information that western media chooses not to report on (but have access to) or decide to report weeks or months later when people have moved onto the new atrocities. For Palestine, I follow mostly Palestinian journalists on the ground (Bisan Owda, Prince Kouta, Motaz Azaiza, Hind Khoudary, Nour Swirki, Saher Alghorra and Sami Shehada) as well as corporate media such as Al-Jazeera, TRT, The New Arab and Press TV, add to that independent media outlets that I listed in the passage about the debunked NYT mass rape story.

It is important for us westerners to be knowledgeable about how the western world functions and how it has been shaped in its 500 years of tyranny. The more we grapple the direct role the West has in every mess happening all around the globe, the less we get duped by the media justifying that mess. Lastly for an even better understanding of US imperialism and its grip on the world, I recommend you to go read the CIA declassified documents where they exposed all the regime changes they conducted and how they conducted them.

Bringing down the empire also means dismantling the very tools allowing the empire to exist and it first start with our manufactured consent.

1. Jin, T., Abilgaziyeva, A., & Lam, T. T. Media Ownership and Bias: Evidence by the Washington Post’s Reporting after Amazon’s Acquisition in 2013.

2. Lazzarato, M. (2009). Neoliberalism in Action: Inequality, Insecurity and the Reconstitution of the Social. Theory, Culture & Society, 26(6), 109-133.

3. This is an important point to pay attention to because passive voice distance the subject from its action, diluting its implication whereas active voice will be clear on who is doing the action to whom or what

4. By specialised news outlets I mean media that do report on specific topics relating to issues abroad such as The Electronic Intifada and Mondoweiss which are founded and led by people in the West but reporting exclusively on Palestine with journalists on the ground and abroad.