Echo chamber

From SourceWatch
Revision as of 12:39, 19 March 2004 by Maynard (talk | contribs) (see talk)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Echo chamber is a colloquial term used to describe a group of media outlets that tend to parrot each other's uncritical reports on the views of a single source, or that otherwise relies on unquestioning repetition of official sources.

In the United States, the Republican Party uses a network of conservative foundations, coordinated by the Philanthropy Roundtable, and described in an extensive report (March 2004) by Jerry M. Landay for Mediatransparency.org, support an echo chamber of think tanks, industry-friendly experts and subsidized conservative media that systematically spread its messages throughout the political and media establishment. Typically, the message starts when conservative voices begin making an allegation (e.g., Democratic candidates are engaged in "hate-mongering" with regard to Bush). Columns start getting written on this theme, which spreads beyond the subsidized conservative media, eventually begins appearing in places like the New York Times, and becomes a talking point and "accepted fact" throughout the media.

Maureen Dowd, in a column for the New York Times on 15 February 2004, described the deceptive condition as one where "the bogus stories ... ricocheted through an echo chamber of government and media, making it sound as if multiple, reliable sources were corroborating the same story."

To influence the media, conservatives have also set up several organizations that serve as recruiting, training and career advancement programs for budding journalists. On university campuses, conservative foundations support several networks of conservative professors, including the National Association of Scholars and the Collegiate Network of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which links and provides funds to more than 70 conservative student papers. The student papers in turn serve as conduits to the mainstream media, through organizations such as the National Journalism Center that provides training, ideological indoctrination and a job bank that helps conservative student journalists begin their careers with internships and permanent job placements at publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ABC, CBS, Fox News, Time, Newsweek, and the Associated Press.

Opinion pollsters and image makers such as Frank Luntz, Michael Deaver, Ed Rollins, Wirthlin Worldwide and Zogby International help develop the messages that echo in the echo chamber, by identifying hot-button “cultural” issues such as guns, abortion, family values and the flag that have enabled the party of privilege to position itself as the party with which lower-middle and middle-class voters identify.

Relatedly, see incestuous amplification

Part of the "echo chamber" effect relies not only on repeating a given stance through as many separate channels as possible, but on casting alternative sources of information and opinion as doing the same thing in the opposite direction. Long-standing accusations of the "liberal-dominated media", suggesting that the bulk of mass media today forms some sort of liberal echo chamber, denies the idea that the reverse may in fact be the case.

Also, it's notable that the cultural body of music is not experiencing the fresh joy of great new songs about peace and love and anti-war which was so remarkable during the quagmire of the 60's. "It's a hammer of justice; it's a bell of freedom; it's a song about love between the brothers and the sisters, all over this land." Much more diverse and uplifting than "Batttle Hymn of the Republic".

This lack of new music isn't because the musicians are overseas in uniform. It's because at the slightest peep of anti-war lyric, the radio stations blacklist the artists. The reason for this stems from a reduction in the diversity of radio-station and media ownership. Whether motivated by individual politics or by a desire to stay on good terms with the administration that empowered them, media moguls like Clearchannel and Rupert Murdoch are widely believed to place restrictions on the ideas expressed through the media outlets they control.

Examples

  • David Brock, a conservative journalist for the American Spectator, received $11,000 in funding from the John M. Olin Foundation and the Bradley Foundation to support attacks on University of Oregon law professor Anita Hill, after Hill testified before Congress that she had been sexually harassed by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Brock wrote an article attacking Hill and later a book, titled The Real Anita Hill. He later regretted writing the book and wrote a mea culpa titled Blinded by the Right, in which he admitted that his writers were "a witches' brew of fact, allegation, hearsay, speculation, opinion, and invective. ... I didn't know what good reporting is. Like a kid playing with a loaded gun, I didn't appreciate the difference between a substantiated charge and an unsubstantiated one.” In fact, Brock stated, "Every source I relied on either thought Thomas walked on water or had a virulent animus toward Hill. I had no access to Hill’s supporters, and therefore no understanding of their motivations, no responses to any of their charges, and no knowledge of whatever incriminating evidence they might have gathered against Thomas that was not introduced in the hearing. ... The conspiracy theory I invented about the Thomas-Hill case could not possibly have been true, because I had absolutely no access to any of the supposed liberal conspirators. ... All of my impressions of the characters I was writing about were filtered through their conservative antagonists, all of whom I believed without question."
  • Brock also says that the "Troopergate" allegations against Bill Clinton were instigated by Peter Smith, a conservative financier and top contributor to Newt Gingrich's political action committee, GOPAC. Brock says he received $5,000 initially from Smith to investigate allegations (later proven baseless) that Clinton had fathered a child with an African-American prostitute in Arkansas. "I was programmed to spring to action like a trained seal," Brock recalls in his book. "Peter offered me $5,000 for my trouble, not through the Spectator but paid directly to me by check; getting by on my Anita Hill book advance, I was a whore for the cash. Although accepting a payment like this was most unusual and unethical for a journalist, in my mind it was no different from taking money from politically interested parties like the Olin and Bradley foundations."
  • During the 2000 elections, the media echo chamber claimed falsely that Democratic Party presidential candidate Al Gore had pretended he invented the Internet, claimed he and his wife were the role model for characters in Love Story, and repeated a number of other false stories about Gore that painted him as someone with a bad habit of telling lies.
  • In the buildup to war in Iraq, the echo chamber repeated and the Bush administration's claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, was tied to Al Queda, and that the people of Iraq would welcome a U.S. invasion as "liberation."
  • "News outlets ideologically allied with Bush have been happy to assist in confusing the public" "That half or more Americans think Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attack -- perhaps the most media-covered event in our history -- stands as a horrific indictment of U.S. media today. Such levels of ignorance can't be found in other countries." [1]
  • Newsweek Magazine and NBC television partnered for a week of unbalanced promotion of corporate interests. [2]
  • talk radio
  • Major New Study on Media Coverage of Weapons of Mass Destruction concludes[3], [4]:
    • Many stories stenographically reported the incumbent administration's perspectives on WMD, giving too little critical examination of the way officials framed the events, issues, threats and policy options.
    • Too few stories offered alternative perspectives to the "official line" on WMD surrounding the Iraq conflict
    • most journalists accepted the Bush administration linking the "war on terror" inextricably to the issue of WMD
    • most media outlets represented WMD as a "monolithic menace" without distinguishing between types of weapons and between possible weapons programs and the existence of actual weapons
  • Knight Ridder (March 15, 2004) reported that "...A June 26, 2002, letter from the Iraqi National Congress to the Senate Appropriations Committee listed 108 articles [in major English-language news outlets worldwide] based on information provided by the INC [ Iraqi National Congress ]'s Information Collection Program, a U.S.-funded effort to collect intelligence in Iraq. The assertions in the articles reinforced President Bush's claims that Saddam Hussein should be ousted because he was in league with Osama bin Laden, was developing nuclear weapons and was hiding biological and chemical weapons. Feeding the information to the news media, as well as to selected administration officials and members of Congress, helped foster an impression that there were multiple sources of intelligence on Iraq's illicit weapons programs and links to bin Laden." [Italics added.]

SourceWatch Resources


External links

Retrieved from "https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Echo_chamber&oldid=37595"