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| META TOPICPARENT | name="TheSirenTriangle" |
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Quotations | | | "The mass media play an integral part in the support of war. The mass media did not start the war with Iraq, but they shaped the context, the audience expectations, the discourse, and the production of symbolic meanings. We live in a postjournalism era, when there is no longer separation between event makers, event promoters, and event chroniclers. All rely on media logic and the sense about what will look good to relevant audiences, how to promote appropriate meanings, and above all, how to market and sell it all as something desirable. We have seen that War Programming is now a package; propaganda is joined to the news process when journalists and news sources operate with media logic, share in the construction and emotional performance of events, and limit the public forums for discussion, especially dissent." (Altheide 2005, footnotes omitted). | |
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> | The editor of a Korean-language newspaper in San Francisco says that the symbolism of the Cold War hangs over media coverage of the North Korean nuclear situation, blinding journalists to important new perspectives. Young Kee Ju is editor of the Korea Daily. (http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=3cba62077da228b95031823eb037753d)
"As scholars of mass communication pondered over the last 40 years why American news coverage of foreign policy took the form it did, one clear point of consensus emerged: Journalists were heavily dependent on public officials to supply the raw material for the news, and this dependency transferred a large amount of control over news framing to the very officials that journalists sought to hold accountable. Two main theories were developed to account for this apparent lack of journalistic autonomy. The first explained that elites tended to express solidarity over first principles in matters of foreign policy regardless of minor disagreements over how those principles should be acted upon (the hegemony model, associated with the work of Hallin and Chomsky, among others). The second proposed that critical news coverage of governmental actions would tend to appear only in those rare moments when officials in Washington were publicly and vocally divided on core issues (the indexing model, associated with the work of Bennett and others). However, the world in which these standard theories were developed has undergone dramatic change, and the assumptions on which they were premised no longer can be taken for granted. With the demise of the Cold War paradigm for interpreting U.S. actions abroad, officials and citizens today are more divided on first principles than they used to be. Iournalists have become more critical in their reporting of foreign policy, and elite dissensus is no longer required for triggering oppositional framings of American actions overseas. Moreover, neither the hegemony nor the indexing account leave much room for independent influence by public opinion, which seems today an important resource for silencing elite opposition to the president's use of American power abroad." (Althaus 04)
"Results show that the worlds created by ABC and CCTV apparently were molded according to the logic of views from 'here and there' that are bound up with the social location of the respective news organization. The social construction of reality perspective suggests that the selection and presentation of news on the two networks depend not so much on the properties of the event or issue itself, but rather on its position in the broader social structure relative to its external context." (Chang 98) | | | Government and Defense Contractors
"The results once again confirm the powerful effects of ideology on defense voting but also indicate that PAC contributions exert a statistically significant (though marginal) impact even when ideological predisposition is controlled. In addition, the results support the argument that those members with weaker ideological predispositions are more responsive to the effects of PAC money. Finally, the results indicate that, even at the margins, PAC contributions from defense contractors can influence the outcome of legislative deliberations, especially when the vote margin is not very large." (Fleisher 1993) | | | "Growing privatization in the US, intense competition and the weakening of rules governing the relationship between contractors and the government have contributed to the “revolving door” phenomenon, which consists of the movement of former federal officials to the private sector, and through their connections and inside knowledge, exerting political influence over the government decision-making process as lobbyists, consultants and board members on behalf of the contractors for whom they work. The revolving door also involves the naming of executives from government contractors to senior positions within the state administration. Spurred by the move to streamline government and involve industry in procurement decisions, contractors and government have developed a symbiotic relationship in the US that is reflected in the fluid movement of key individuals between government and industry. Both Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney – when he held this job before becoming CEO of Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root – have tried their utmost to privatize the American military. For Rumsfeld, following corporate strategy, downsizing means moving to “just in time” hiring, using private firms to provide what the military formerly did for itself. He has insisted that it makes no sense to keep and pay for a well-trained standing army, when the US can purchase every sort of service on an “open market” whenever there is a need for military action. Cheney and other proponents of outsourcing ask why should soldiers cook for themselves, move their trash, provide supplies, run and maintain their technology – why not privatize these activities and free the military to concentrate on core tasks only? Even in the case of actual military duty – guarding public officials from hostile attack, fighting terrorist and guerrilla assaults – much of what soldiers traditionally do can be performed by PMCs. All of these services can be hired only when needed, and the army can be kept small, and hence inexpensive in terms of manpower. Thus, on taking office, Cheney named executives from leading military contractors as heads of the three services. James Roche, the secretary of the Air Force, is a former vice president of Northrop Grumman; Gordon England, the secretary of the Navy, is a former executive at General Dynamics; and Thomas P. White, a former secretary of the Army, came from Enron. A recent study of defense contracting in the US identified 224 high-ranking government officials over the past seven years who moved into the private sector to work as lobbyists, board members or executives of contractors. Moreover, at least one-third of these former high-ranking former government employees had held positions that allowed them to influence government contracting decisions. A survey of the revolving door phenomenon concluded that “the revolving door has become such an accepted part of federal contracting in recent years that it is frequently difficult to determine where the government stops and the private sector begins.” (Schreier 2005, pg. 90. footnotes omitted). | |
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> | "The domestic politics of American military spending during the Cold War confronts scholars with an important but often overlooked puzzle: the two major parties appear to have switched positions on the issue. During the early Cold War era, Democrats were generally supportive of increased military spending while Republicans were critical. After the mid-1960s, Democrats increasingly tended to oppose larger military budgets, while Republicans more often favored them. This paper presents evidence about the process through which this change took place. It identifies several developments in the domestic and international environment that may have contributed to this party switch, and evaluates preliminary evidence about each of them." (Fordham 07) | | | Defense Contractors and Media
"Defense spending on research and development has sparked much innovation. Microchips, radar, lasers, satellite communications, cell phones, GPS, and the Internet all came out of Defense Dept. funding for basic research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and national laboratories. There were breakthroughs at IBM and Bell Laboratories, and all were commercialized by Intel Corp., Motorola Inc., and other corporations. The same is true of artificial intelligence, supercomputers, high-speed fiber optics, and many other breakthroughs. The bulk of information technologies, in fact, were developed through massive R&D investments in military technology." (Cypher 2002) |
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