Puppet masters at work.

When we talk about Television or any media and propaganda, Joseph Goebbels is perhaps the most infamous name that comes to mind. The Reich Minister of Propaganda used his position to influence newspapers, theatres, art galleries, radio broadcasts and the cinema. His vision was that of an empire that would control schools, universities, film, radio and television. He wrote, “The national education of the German people will be placed in my hands.” His mission to sell Nazi ideology was a success Goebbels started the work for Adolf Hitler to control the German people. Even after this death, Goebbels remains a shadow behind the workings of media, be it TV, newspapers or social media. One other name associated with Nazi propaganda in media is the German film director and actress, Leni Riefenstahl.  Although she went onto deny her Nazi connections and feigned ignorance of Hitler’s atrocities on the Jews, her contribution to Nazi propaganda cannot be forgotten. She was famous for the film Triumph of the Will, released in 1935, a purported documentary of the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, featuring footage of troops, speeches from Nazi party leaders, and animated reactions from the German citizens present. After the war ended, Riefenstahl tried to defend her films, Triumph of the Will and Victory of the Fate by calling them documentaries. However, Susan Sontag wrote in her 1975 essay Fascinating Fascism, “In Triumph of the Will, the document (the image) is no longer simply the record of reality; ‘reality’ has been constructed to serve the image.”

Louis Althusser recognized the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) as the method by which the bourgeoisie maintain power. ISA, according to Althusser uses methods other than violence to achieve the same objectives as Repressive State Apparatus (RSA). ISA may include educational institutions, media outlets, religions, clubs, and family. These institutions are apolitical in appearance, instead of being a part of the state. ISA disseminate ideologies that reinforce the control of the dominant ruling class. People, in an effort to avoid social ostracization, ridicule and isolation co-opted the ideologies. Althusser’s point was that a social class cannot hold state power until and less it simultaneously exercises hegemony over and through ISA.  Althusser’s theory of ideology draws upon the works of Marxist theorists such as Antonio Gramsci, Jacques Lacan, where he posits that: "Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence"; and "Ideology has a material existence". 

Gramsci’s definition of Hegemony implies its establishment by consenting submission of the ruled class.  But he also put forward the idea that hegemony cannot be obtained only by coercion but can be obtained through public consent.
However, this is a tricky area. Herman and Chomsky argued in their propaganda model that the filters (ownership of the medium, funding sources, flak, sourcing, anti-communism or fear ideology, which post 9/11 attacks changed to War on Terror/counter-terrorism) narrow the type of news or information that is being put out. News from those at a disadvantage or those whose ideology does not line up with the incumbent class will inevitably be left out. There is also the prospect of the influence of agenda setting which affects the kind of news being put out. Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model spelled out how masses are manipulated and consent for economic social and political policies is manufactured in the public media.

Perhaps one of the best examples of media control and public manipulation dates back to the era of the First World War. In 1917, under the executive orders of the then American President Woodrow Wilson, the Committee on Public Information (CPI) or the Creel Committee was formed. This was the nation’s first “ministry of information.” In its mere 26 months of existence, the CPI used every available medium to drum up enthusiasm for the war that the country was initially neutral towards. One of the most common images from CPI is the portrait of Uncle Sam declaring, “I WANT YOU FOR US ARMY.” The committee used newsprint, posters, radio, telegraph, and movies to broadcast its message. CPI recruited about 75,000 "Four Minute Men," volunteers who spoke about the war for a length of four minutes at social events. The committee had various other divisions that dealt with producing patriotic films, pushing the agenda for the war, or those which produced pamphlets and posters for putting up across the country. The committee or Wilson did not stop merely there. They actively waged a movement of suppression and intimidation against those that refused to toe the line, especially ethnic and socialist papers that continued to be against the war. CPI was also tasked with encouraging recruitment into the army for the war. To curb the media, they would bury the other newspapers and journalists under paper by issuing as many as 6,000 press releases. This left a gap of information and news regarding the war time activities and events, which is where the state and its agency stepped in to provide the public with news and information. Needless to say, this tactic paid off very well. This move by President Wilson was not without its criticism. One of the most vehement critics was Walter Lippmann.  Lippmann himself was an advisor to President Wilson, and referred to public opinion as “pictures in our minds”. He said that individuals learn to “see with their minds vast portions of the world that they could never see, touch, hear, or remember”. He claimed that individuals made pictures inside their heads in response to the world outside, and the social and political relationships they saw became their public opinion. According to Lippmann, stereotypes emerged when these mental pictures were acted upon in groups and were crystallized into “national will, a group mind, or a social purpose”. Through this means, Lippmann believed, public opinion could be molded with the efficient transmission stereotypes to serve as a mode of mass patriotic education.

What exactly is ideology? Although the word ideology was originally coined during the aftermath of French Revolution, its popularity is attributed to Marx’s use of it. The Marxist conception of the word centers on the statement that ideology is false consciousness which prevents the proletariat from realizing the material reality of their exploitation by the bourgeoisie. This concept was applied by Frankfurt School scholars Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno in their essay “The Culture Industry: Enlightment as Mass Deception.” They argued that the conformity of works of mass culture transmits a cultural ideology which the masses have no choice but to accept (thus aligning with the status quo). This uniformity of ideology again leads to docile acceptance of pre-determined patterns of speech and behavior by the weaker/subjugated class to fit in. In addition to their argument that the culture industry leads to homogeneity of ideology and mass culture, they put forward the notion that the medium of transmission aids the spreading of ideology. Adorno and Horkheimer’s argument that the culture industry creates an illusion which creates demand for the products of capitalism can perhaps be exemplified by “the American Dream”, a popular occurrence in pop culture narrative. This narrative was a frequent feature of American movies and other media outputs- a house in a semi-urban area with a white picket fence, a nuclear, happy family, freedom, optimism and hope for the children, etc. People conformed to this idea as though they had been handed a script- work hard, save money, send the kids to college and happily retire to a warmer climate. The American dream is not simply a product of mass culture or mass media but finds a place within the constitution of the country and the Declaration of Freedom.

But there is a contradiction here. The American dream can mean different things for different people. The discovery of gold in California in 1849 brought in a hundred thousand men looking for an overnight fortune- this was the then American dream. The 21st century American dream is associated with consumerism. This difference in perception of the meanings can be explained by Stuart Hall’s work. Hall argued in his theory of encoding and decoding that the meaning of a text is not fixed by the sender, rather it depends on the receiver’s worldview built around his knowledge and experience.
Hall viewed mass media, especially TV, as the most important instrument of 20th century for continuing ideological hegemony because TV provided the framework for perceiving reality. His view was that while TV appeared to give the impression of diversity and plurality, it censored images that went against the status quo and represented all that was in the interests of the incumbency. 

This is perhaps quite visible in the Indian television news channel scene. Toeing the nationalistic lines of the current right wing government, Indian television news channels have quite turned the coat. Major news channels and their star anchors can be seen rehashing the same rhetorics over and over again, seeing as they go quite well with the incumbent government's theme. If we take a look at say, Zee News, particularly at Sudhir Chaudhary's segment, we can see the nationalistic overtones in his reporting. A recent segment of his show DNA went viral for all the wrong reasons. Taking an image from a Facebook page which is known for pushing conspiracy theories, Sudhir Chaudhary did an entire show based on it. The only thing that he or his team seemed to have done is translate the language of the image. This comes at a time when the entire world is reeling with the consequences of the Corona Virus pandemic. Instead of focusing on the issues at hand, Sudhir Chaudhary decided to tell his viewers some more propaganda vilifying Muslims which turned out to be plagiarised. Following the controversy surrounding the Nizamuddin Markaz as a Covid-19 hotspot, right wing media channels went on a frenzy, so far as to term this "Corona Jihad". This was a tremendously low point of Indian television news media. This should not come as a shocker to us given that the right wing Bharatiya Janata Party has made no qualms about their politics of othering. But this is a topic for another day.