Australian National University, Canberra
Young and old: connecting generations
The AIATSIS National Indigenous Studies Conference brings together multi-disciplinary expertise from across the Indigenous Studies sector, including researchers, policy makers, community members, academics, representative organizations, consultants, traditional owners and service providers.
AIATSIS invited Jonathan to make a presentation and run a workshop at the AIATSIS National Indigenous Studies Conference held at the Australian National University in Canberra. Below is a copy of the paper he delivered addressing issues of media, representation and identity.
(No reproduction of this article in full or in parts is allowed without Jonathan Bogais’ prior written authorisation.)
How word manipulation can change the face of history
©Jonathan Bogais Ph.D
This article seeks to develop a conceptual account of the interplay between those who want to manipulate public opinion, the journalists who are often the unwitting tool of the manipulation and whose role is to deliver the messages, and the public whom the manipulators expect to accept the content of their messages. It investigates the means used to manipulate public opinion: how a new form of propaganda has superseded rhetoric. It intends to clarify the nature of their relationships and the influence on information and history.
Propaganda has been used for many years by dictators, political, religious and military leaders, social and political activists and revolutionaries to influence or convince the public by delivering specific one-sided messages by way of rhetoric. Many media organisations around the world have been known to favour political parties from all spectrums of politics, offering their readers and viewers a choice of rhetoric depending on their political beliefs.
Making statements using rhetoric that agrees with one’s beliefs is permissible and in compliance with Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states:
“Everyone has the right of freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
The Declaration is not binding though. Another UN document, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), is a codification of the Declaration’s principles in international law and is binding on the states that signed it. The Covenant makes freedom of information less cut and dry. It mentions that communicators have responsibilities as well as rights. Article 19 of the Covenant (in contrast to the Declaration) states:
1- Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
2- Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
3- The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary.
a. For respect of the rights and reputations of others;
b. For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.
Article 20 of the Covenant goes on to identify other specific grounds for restrictions:
1 - Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.
2 - Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.
Freedom of expression was a motto used by activists and journalists in the 1960s and 70s. Military strategists have known since then that freedom of expression and media influence on public opinion fuelled the anti-war movements and contributed to ending the Vietnam War. Images of civilian sufferings brought by field correspondents and photographers had tremendous psychological impact on the public leading to the development of strong movements against the war. Those messages exposed the truth. Manipulating the media, therefore, became indispensable for the military and the politicians to prevent ‘hostile’ public opinion movements from re-emerging. Without public support for a conflict, however, the military and the governments are powerless. If the public, however, supports a conflict, it is unstoppable. Even the notion of ‘collateral damage - civilian casualties - becomes acceptable to the manipulator (government and military leaders) based on ‘moral justifications.
After the Vietnam War, control of the media by military press officers took priority in every important conflict. ‘Pools’ were set up to brief the media and briefings were conducted by military press officers. Restrictions were imposed preventing journalists and photographers from going into the field to witness and report on what was really happening, making it impossible for them to discern what was the truth. Relationships never seen before developed between political leaders and media organisations to justify and endorse the use of military force. News Corporation’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, said in 1990 that his entire organisation would support the military action against Iraq and Fox News became the mouthpiece of the US Government attracting the highest viewer ratings over the next two decades. The bias in documenting history became blatant. Recorded in history for ever is the photo of a young Vietnamese girl running naked towards the press photographer, her body showing horrific burns following a napalm bombing of her village. What images of the real war in Iraq - among other recent conflicts - have been recorded for future generations to see? Very few. Yet, media outlets screened endless images the West wanted the public to see; turning war reporting into a media circus designed to entertain the masses and brain-wash the public with their justifications. Politicians distorted the truth and often lied, to ensure the public would support ‘their’ war. Propaganda from politicians and bias from the media; what about the truth. What about history?
Closer to home, a Senate Select Committee was appointed to inquire into and report by 23 October 2002 on the so-called ‘children overboard’ incident, where on or about 6 October 2001, an Indonesian vessel was intercepted by HMAS Adelaide within Australian waters reportedly 120 nautical miles off Christmas Island. In his foreword to his report, Senator Cook, Chair of the Senate Committee investigating the matter, wrote:
“This has been a most unusual inquiry… What gave the proceedings heightened significance was that the ‘children overboard’ claim was made and given dramatic media prominence immediately after a federal election had been called in which border protection and concerns about asylum seekers were central issues.”
“The Committee’s efforts were aimed at getting at the truth of the matter so there is an accurate public record of the events… A question does arise which is addressed. It concerns what can be done to prevent a recurrence of the behaviour that led to the public receiving false or inaccurate information.”
Trying to prevent this recurrence at a time when politicians perpetrate lies to justify outcomes is a challenging task. A question has hung over this inquiry that it did not and could not address: “Did the overboard story and the emotional reaction it provoked influence the outcome of the federal election?” Asking this question invites a number of subsidiary and speculative questions:
¥ If it did influence the outcome, would the truth have led to a different result?
¥ Would an appropriate and timely correction of the record have changed the direction or influenced the presentation of the issues in the campaign?
¥ Would the credibility of the key players have been affected in the judgment of electors if the truth had been uncovered and exposed outside official channels during the campaign period?
Another example of political manipulation emerged when large numbers of Australian demonstrators marched in Sydney against the war on Iraq. Former Prime Minister, John Howard was quick to accuse them of helping Saddam Hussein. He said:
"People who demonstrate and who give comfort to Saddam Hussein must understand that, and must realise that it's a factor in making it that much more difficult to get united world opinion on this issue, which in the end is the best guarantee there is of finding a peaceful solution."
According to Mr Howard, a strong case of moral justification existed to support the war on Iraq, and therefore the Australian’s involvement in it.
It is clear that associated with moral justifications, integrated propaganda in shaping public opinion becomes justified if the manipulator believes that moral principles are behind the decision. Convincing the public that moral justifications vindicate any action is the key factor in propaganda strategy. The messenger is now overwhelming the message.
Following the recent riots in the UK, Prime Minister, David Cameron said:
“The breakdown of moral values over the last decades is causing an unprecedented social crisis in our country”.
Using moral justifications gave Mr Cameron assumed the right to authorise a range of measures designed to contain further unrests, rather than address the causes of the crisis responsible for a breakdown in social values - what he calls “moral values.”
Disputes over the censorship associated with propaganda are all over the ranks ordering of priorities. For example, in theocracies authorities invoke religious values to justify censorship. The Rushdie case was an example of how such beliefs were ranked higher than freedom of information. In liberal democracies, governments use “national security” or other values said to be in the interest of wider society to justify restrictions. Understanding how priorities are ranked and valued is the first step to understanding why censorship remains a cause of disagreements.
What distinguishes propaganda, or manipulation, from rhetorical efforts to persuade, is the role of the public's beliefs about the issue. The purpose of rhetoric is to change the public's mind, to see its position as incorrect and the speaker's view as correct. The objective of manipulation is to force the target to choose from alternatives presented by the manipulator and that scenario puts the manipulator in a position of strategic advantage. The media is one of the tools used by the manipulator to influence the public.
This raises fundamental questions: Is the traditional role of the impartial journalist changing? Do audiences, readers and consumers want journalists to voice an opinion? What will happen to information should journalists not hold true the notion of impartiality and fair reporting? Will the audience move away from truthful and unbiased source of news towards opinionated information?
News reporting is embedded in negativity and has become a never-ending topic of criticisms. Describing news as a perverse portraiture of the world might be an overstatement, yet there is a growing perception in the community that much of the media industry - especially news - focuses on people’s weaknesses and failures without the will to understand the reasons behind these flaws, their circumstances, and how they connect with their strengths and merits.
When reporting news, harm varies widely from the methods in which journalists interact with their subjects, to invasion of privacy, encroaching behaviour and offensive coverage. News has a commercial value and sensationalism occupies an important place in communication often to the detriment of information. Taking advantage of individuals in an intensely emotional or disturbed state, using inappropriate or disparaging language, showing images to shock the public, are only too common in news reporting. Journalists may inflict harm on others in any one of these areas, or in a combination of them. The ethical issues arising from the relationship between journalists and their targets are often associated with misrepresentation of facts, misquoting, invasion of privacy, harassment and insensitivity.
Journalists’ influence on public perception gives them the means to make or break a person. Yet journalists can be vulnerable too, depending on the actions of those who exercise power and authority over them, including those who control news organisations. In a highly concentrated media ownership environment, especially in Australia, professional journalists are expendable and have become pawns in the hands of media owners. The rapid growth of social media and the emergence of citizen journalists - many of them operating beyond the realms of ethics and professionalism - are putting more pressure on professional journalists, whose declining number is partly responsible for the transformation of news gathering and reporting.
Given the well-established role of the news media as political informant to the public, it is important to evaluate whether this perceived ideological bias influences how people process news. The growing public perception that potentially ideologically-biased media outlets could present substantial obstacles to an objective dissemination of information is a risk. Labeling news organisations according to their stated biases might caution the viewer about the ideological nature of the news content. This could induce the viewer to perceive ideological bias as well as raising cognitive barriers that make it difficult to properly grasp and process the information.
After the attacks of 11 September 2001, manipulating public opinion in its favour became an obsession of the Bush administration. Michael Deaver - a friend of former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and a specialist in psychological warfare – advocated the use of military strategy to influence media coverage, especially broadcast news.
In an eerily similar scenario, former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, used the media to justify his decision to launch the Northern Territory Intervention in 2007. Mr Howard, his cabinet and much of the media invoked ‘moral justification’ to warrant the intervention in Aboriginal communities using police and the army.
At a time when many of us no longer question the validity of the information we receive, the biases brought by the reporters to the stories they cover cause much of the misinformation received by the public. The reaction of political leaders after the release of the Wikileaks files is a testimony to the endemic political corruption faced by the developed world.
This transformation of the media raises important questions: How do we understand our culture? How are we to understand the world? How can future generations learn the truth behind history when the facts have been ignored, distorted, or hidden? Until only recently, we learned about history from the knowledge left by our ancestors, from archives, and what historians had uncovered. The media is imposing new versions of history without the public being reasonably able to contest them, as accessing the original facts is becoming increasingly difficult. A dictatorship uses censorship; in a democracy, manipulation is the chosen weapon. The target of these attacks, however, is always the same: the ordinary people, especially the young and impressionable.
Michael Deaver’s expertise in psychological warfare is introducing a new science of integrated propaganda using main channels of communication: newspapers, television, movies, textbooks, political speeches which are produced by some of the most powerful and respected people in society. Based upon ideals and biases embraced by most members of society, this new form of propaganda has become a major factor in the workings of modern socio-political systems. It is hard to identify despite (or perhaps because of) its ubiquity helped by the rapid growth in communications technology that has taken place over the last decades. Self-censorship by journalists and the effects of the shared biases of the people who produce the mainstream media are, for a large part, responsible for the widening of the social transformation we are currently experiencing.
This metamorphosis is not restricted to the media. Politicians and a new breed of intellectuals are re-writing history to suit policies or needs, presenting young generations with a distorted truth of history. Claims of involvements in events or movements, which have influenced the betterment of individuals, groups, or cultures, are made without concerns for the truth and without respect for the connection between the old and the young in transmitting knowledge; an issue important to the late Aboriginal activist, Chicka Dixon.
Chicka Dixon was a strategist, a leader, who could reflect on the achievements of the past - he had been instrumental to many of them. Chicka spoke about the failure of intellectuals to see how political manipulation would lead to the condition of his people being worse in 2010 than twenty years before.
During an interview I conducted with Uncle Chicka in February 2010 - one month before he passed away - he said:
“Strong leadership is needed to face the lies and the greed of those who want Aboriginal people to remain in the dark ages; and this is not happening, even with our people. Our intellectuals failed us. We have no leaders.”
Chicka believed in education and he loved children. He had tears in his eyes when talking about the suffering of young people, especially young Aboriginal people.
In the meantime, examples of media biases when Aboriginal matters are at stake are rampant – deliberate at times, or just out of bad habits or ignorance.
Example 1
ABC TV – (Presenter’s name withdrawn): “The history of Aboriginal funding in Australia is littered with stories of misspending and poorly-targeted schemes. Not so is a privately-inspired Aboriginal Employment Strategy which had its birth in...”
Example 2
(Newspaper article) – “Redfern Indigenous youth are being deterred from a life of crime and into the workforce by becoming involved in a mentor program run by community group, (name withdrawn). The mentor program targets Indigenous Australians, especially those of low income, limited education or those released from juvenile detention, and arms them with different skills to become productive members of society.”
The first two examples in this article are - deliberately or not – biased. Re-writing them using the same words, yet differently positioned, to tell the story as it is without prejudice is a simple editing process. Yet, it appears that this simple learning process - that should become a cognitive process - has been ignored in most school and university syllabuses.
Addressing issues of prejudice requires leadership. It requires people able to challenge the ‘social justifications’ excuse used by political leaders to vindicate their repressive actions and work out strategies to redress injustice.
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