How Journalism Protects Elites and Maintains the Status Quo
“Reinforcing for those on the winning team the comforting dualism of Civilization versus Barbarism”
Welcome to Biocentric, a newsletter focused on sustainability, greenwashing, and building a resistance movement to defend the planet. I’m Max Wilbert, co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass and co-author of ‘Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It.’ Biocentric subscriptions are free, but paying for a subscription supports the community organizing work you read about here, and gets you access to behind-the-scenes information and unreleased drafts.
This is part one in a two-part series. The next part can be found here:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of...
It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
― Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928)
Over more than three years working to Protect Thacker Pass, it is a striking fact that the number of journalists who have interviewed me is far greater than the number of dedicated grassroots activists who have taken action to defend the land.
Why is that?
The simple answer is that working to defend the planet is punished, while working in industries that destroy the planet is rewarded. I’ve written about this here before — for example, in these two pieces:
There are far more jobs available in environment and climate reporting than in activism and organizing. The job search website Glassdoor lists 569 jobs under “Climate Reporter,” and only 129 jobs under “Environmental Activist.” Guess which pay better.
And, if you consider that most environmental non-profits are engaged in greenwashing, compromise, and even outright collaboration with corporate power, that imbalance — both in number of jobs and pay — becomes even greater.
Journalism is Big Business
Most people think that journalists work in the public interest.
This is true — in some cases. But these are the exceptions. The majority of journalists work for corporations. Comcast, for example, which owns MSNBC among many other cable channels, is worth $186 billion. Thomson Reuters is worth nearly $60 billion. Fox News and News Corp. — both dominated by Rupert Murdoch — are worth nearly $40 billion combined. The New York Times is worth $7.2 billion and is traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
To Understand Power, Follow The Money
The stories which are told (and not told) by journalists shape ideology, culture, politics, and government. In other words, all media is political.
News is a business, and like any business, generating profit is the goal. This means that understanding the role that media plays in shaping our culture begins with following the money. Who is getting rich, and how? What are the explicit and implicit messages? What is not discussed or given airtime?
This process is not new, and perhaps the most essential work on critical media analysis is Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. The book largely focused its critique on The New York Times as a so-called “paper of record.” In it, they write:
“The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.”
Base and Superstructure
While I disagree with significant parts of Marxist and socialist theory and praxis, the Marxist analysis of base and superstructure is another useful framework for understanding media as a system of power.
In Marx’s analysis, base refers to the economic means of production within a society. This includes workers, machinery, productive land, flows of capital, and the people who own or control these elements. Superstructure refers to everything not directly involved in production, including culture, religion, law, government, politics, media, and so on. The base produces food, clothing, shelter, and other material goods. The superstructure produces culture, and in a society of extreme class divisions such as ours, the superstructure justifies the functioning of the base and defends the power of the elite.
In this framework, superstructure and base can be understood as reciprocal, both involved in supporting one another in a dynamic process of evolution.
This theory is necessarily coarse. It doesn’t account for the complexity that, for example, the ruling class is not united, but is rather made of factions jockeying for power and influence (Democrats vs. Republicans, for example). But, it does capture the reality that most class interests are shared between these factions, and that the mass media helps normalize and reinforce these interests.
Journalism’s Heroic Tradition
It would be wrong to ignore the heroic tradition within journalism.
At their best, journalists hold the powerful accountable, expose scandals and coverups, and unflinchingly hold a mirror up to society. As human beings, they cannot and do not refrain from developing a moral perspective on the issues they cover.
There is a truly heroic tradition within journalism, and the work can be profoundly dangerous. Since 1993, nearly 1,700 journalists have been killed. Warzones can be particularly dangerous: eighteen journalists have been killed in Ukraine, several were killed in the October 7th attack in Israel, and a stunning 95 have been killed in Gaza (along with 3 in southern Lebanon) — more than were killed during the entirety of World War II (Israel has been accused many times of deliberately targeting journalists).
Journalists and writers like Upton Sinclair, Dahr Jamail, Ida Tarbell, Rachel Carson, Seymour Hersh, James Baldwin, Gary Webb, Bob Woodward, Florence Graves, George Orwell, Karen Silkwood, Daniel Ellsberg, Barbara Ehrenreich, W.E.B. Du Bois, Glenn Greenwald, Joe Darby, Bill Moyers, Edward Snowden, and of course, Hedges himself profoundly shaped my understanding of the world.
Nearly 20 years ago, following their trailblazing footsteps, I enrolled in an environmental journalism undergraduate program, but I didn’t last long. After a few years, I realized that my professors were obsessed with what Chris Hedges has called “the creed of objectivity” in a 2010 essay, and I decided to design my own major instead.
In his essay, Hedges — fresh off being driven out of his job as the New York Times Middle East bureau chief for his outspoken opposition to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq — writes:
“The creed of objectivity and balance, formulated at the beginning of the 19th century by newspaper owners to generate greater profits from advertisers, disarms and cripples the press.
And the creed of objectivity becomes a convenient and profitable vehicle to avoid confronting unpleasant truths or angering a power structure on which news organizations depend for access and profits. This creed transforms reporters into neutral observers or voyeurs. It banishes empathy, passion and a quest for justice. Reporters are permitted to watch but not to feel or to speak in their own voices.
They function as ‘professionals’ and see themselves as dispassionate and disinterested social scientists. This vaunted lack of bias, enforced by bloodless hierarchies of bureaucrats, is the disease of American journalism.”
Presciently, Hedges ends his piece by predicting the post-truth landscape we now inhabit:
“…the traditional press, by clinging to an outdated etiquette designed to serve corrupt power structures, [has] lost its social function. Corporations, which once made many of these news outlets very rich, have turned to more effective forms of advertising. Profits have plummeted…
The world will not be a better place when these fact-based news organizations die. We will be propelled into a culture where facts and opinions will be interchangeable, where lies will become true, and where fantasy will be peddled as news. I will lament the loss of traditional news. It will unmoor us from reality. The tragedy is that the moral void of the news business contributed as much to its own annihilation as the protofascists who feed on its carcass.”
[Fourteen years later, “traditional” media like newspapers, TV, and magazines continue to decline as advertising dollars flow increasingly to digital platforms like social media which can micro-target ads to viewers based on ubiquitous privacy-destroying data collection.]
Journalism on the Front Lines
Few journalists live up to the ideals of the profession. As an activist on the front lines, I am intimately familiar with this reality.
Since January 2021, I was on the front page of The New York Times and photographed for Le Monde, was on CNN and NPR, and was interviewed by The Guardian and dozens of other radio stations, news sites, and podcasts.
Some of the journalists who I spoke to were kind and professional. Here are a few journalists that did an excellent job with reporting on Thacker Pass:
“The Battle for Thacker Pass” by Evan Malmgren, The Nation
“Neocolonialism: Pillaging the Earth for the ‘Climate’” by Christopher Ketchum, Truthdig
“The Rush For White Gold” by Austin Price, Earth Island Journal
Jennifer Solis, who has written many pieces in Nevada Current
Brenda Norrell, who has covered Thacker Pass consistently at Censored News
And many others
But that experience was far from universal. Many of the journalists we encountered were profoundly unprofessional. For example, most had done very little research. Few of them had read through our website, studied the press releases dating back to the beginning of the campaign, or scanned legal filings. Even fewer did any in-depth research, even to the point of reading the publicly available Wikipedia pages on Thacker Pass.
But some went beyond unprofessionalism and came with an destructive mindset. Their goal, just like the goal of Lithium Americas Corporation, was to monetize what they could extract. The truth — nuanced, challenging, and difficult to communicate — was less important than maximizing views and promoting a political ideology which would attract major advertisers and sponsors.
NPR’s Marketplace
Ironically, one of the most striking examples of this came from NPR’s Marketplace, which is ostensibly “public” and operated as a non-profit.
In theory, this does put them in favorable position — when it comes to telling the truth — as compared to for-profit corporations. However, the influence of corporate sponsorship and foundation funding, as well as the cultural paradigm of urban, highly educated liberal professionalism, means that these platforms represent and promote certain status-quo worldviews and political positions. NPR functions exceptionally well as an element of the superstructure.
My experience with the NPR show Marketplace led me to file a lengthy complaint with their internal ethics board. Here’s a few excerpts from that letter:
Yesterday I listened to the first episode of Marketplace's new podcast, "How We Survive"… and was angered to discover it amounts to a smear campaign. Based on this first episode, I believe that Ms. Wood, Ms. Hershman, and Marketplace have violated the ethical standards of journalism… [including via conflicts of interest.]
This podcast is sponsored by 3M Corporation, a multi-billion-dollar multinational corporation that is deeply involved in lithium battery production and use... In fact, 3M is a manufacturer of lithium-based battery electrolytes, lithium-based lubricants, and lithium-ion battery packs… This corporate sponsorship was not disclosed… and casts serious doubt on your journalistic integrity. It appears that 3M is sponsoring a hit piece to protect their business interests…
[In regards to sensationalism, you] assured me that your in-depth podcast format would allow sufficient time for nuance. But in editing, you chopped our discussion into (more) sensationalized soundbites to prop up a narrative which seems to match that of mine opponents and to benefit your corporate sponsors. And, you used a soundbite from our conversation… completely out of context, purely for shock value. This is unethical…
[In summary] The first episode of How We Survive contains factual inaccuracies, misleading statements and generalizations, a profoundly disrespectful and unprofessional tone, and is bankrolled by a corporation deeply involved in the lithium business.
Marketplace ignored my letter.
“In essence, the private media are major corporations selling a product (readers and audiences) to other businesses (advertisers). The national media typically target and serve elite opinion, groups that, on the one hand, provide an optimal “profile” for advertising purposes, and, on the other, play a role in decision-making in the private and public spheres.
The national media would be failing to meet their elite audience’s needs if they did not present a tolerably realistic portrayal of the world [e.g. outright lies are easily exposed]. But their “societal purpose” also requires that the media’s interpretation of the world reflect the interests and concerns of the sellers, the buyers, and the governmental and private institutions dominated by these groups…
[T]he mass media are interested in attracting audiences with buying power, not audiences per se; it is affluent audiences that spark advertiser interest today, as in the nineteenth century. The idea that the drive for large audiences makes the mass media “democratic” thus suffers from the initial weakness that its political analogue is a voting system weighted by income!”
― Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Marketplace is emblematic of the relationship between media, political ideology, and corporate power, all wrapped neatly in the guise of “public radio.” Ostensibly, media platforms work to maintain editorial independence by separating their reporters from their advertising/sponsorship departments. In theory, this means that reporters will be free to produce hard-hitting journalism without even being aware of who is sponsoring a given segment.
In practice, everyone knows who pays the bills. The fact that their podcast was sponsored by a company deeply involved in lithium battery company production only makes the irony more profound.
As the great Upton Sinclair once said, “It is hard to make a man understand something, when his job depends on him not understanding it.”
Axel Springer SE
Another of the worst attacks on us came in early 2022, when, led by an employee who favored lithium mining, E&E News and Politico launched a smear campaign against myself and Protect Thacker Pass.
The context here tells the story: both E&E and Politico are owned by Axel Springer SE, a German media corporation worth nearly $10 billion USD (the largest media publishing firm in Europe). Best known in Germany for their newspaper described as a “blend of National Enquirer and Fox News,” it’s eponymous founder has been called “Germany’s Rupert Murdoch.”
Axel Springer has been credibly accused of taking a $7 million payment from the CIA in the 1950’s to kick-start the operation of mass media favorable to US foreign policy. Since the 1950’s, the company has stated that “solidarity with the libertarian values of the United States of America,” along with support for Israel, are core values. Employees in Germany are made to sign a written commitment stating their allegiance to these values. After the acquisition of Politico in 2021, CEO Mathias Döpfner said that support for Israel and for a free-market economy “are like a constitution, they apply to every employee of our company.”
Civilization vs. Barbarism
Axel Springer fits squarely into a long history of media corporations working to shape public opinion in favor of empire. Gray Bretchin’s 1999 book Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin, for example, details “how imperial cities parasitize their hinterlands for the benefit of those who own their land and much else besides — especially the channels of information that shape perceived reality and certitude for unwitting millions.”
Mining is always a part of this. Bretchin focuses especially on media mogul William Randolph Hearst and the interplay between the violence of colonial expansion and extraction of raw materials from the Earth on one hand, and the ideology required to justify this violence on the other. His book highlights the influence of media in “reinforc[ing] for those on the winning team the comforting dualism of Civilization versus Barbarism.”
That phrase is as apt a description as any for what the worst journalists did at Thacker Pass by building ideologies to support mining and “technological progress” and undermine indigenous and grassroots environmental movements. More broadly, this is what most journalists do by normalizing industrial capitalism.
Good Journalism is a Combat Discipline
Journalists are not a homogenous group. Some are openly opposed to movements for justice and sustainability, and work outright to enhance the power of corporations and the ruling class. Others fall prey to the mythology of objectivity, reporting blandly on our descent into chaos while taking home comfortable salaries paid by advertising dollars. And some few journalists take on the responsibility of both reporting truthfully and taking action to make the world a better place at the same time.
While I'm not a journalist, I am a storyteller and it's a responsibility that I take extremely seriously. I'm a writer, a podcaster, a video producer, an author, and the creator of this newsletter. And I'm someone who provides a great deal of new information to the public. I break stories that have not been told before. I speak from my perspective on the front lines. And I consider it an obligation to be very clear about my biases, my perspectives, and the place where I'm coming from.
The type of journalism that I believe we need — and that we saw some of at Thacker Pass — is challenging. It does not pay well. As a writer and organizer, I survive under the poverty line on income from this newsletter and from community support. This type of work does not lead to cushy corporate jobs, raises, and careers.
On the contrary, this it is more likely to lead to being fired or criminally charged. That is because it involves getting involved, setting aside the veil of objectivity and taking action to change the world. It means not being content with standing on the sidelines of stories about injustice, but actually taking action to halt it. It means taking risks, doing hard work, and putting yourself on the line.
As industrial civilization accelerates the sixth mass extinction of life on earth, rebellion is not something that will be rewarded. The only reward comes in our own conscience.
Journalism — like writing, like art, like any profession — must be a combat discipline in this era of ecological collapse. Don't be a bystander. Choose a side, and take action.
This is part one in a two-part series. The next part can be found here:
Postscript
Someone sent me this great talk from Valerie Vande Panne, who is also on Substack. Vande Panne is a former Managing Editor of Native News Online, which put out some great coverage of the Thacker Pass fight.
Keynote address by Matt Kennard, investigative journalist with Declassified UK, on the parlous condition of 'mainstream' journalism, the influence of the security state and the legacy of John Pilger.
Great piece, Max. I would say we have a similar situation in the world of science, "forest science" and "climate science" in particular, which is why it is so easily used by power to justify their projects. For decades, numerous scientists have argued that land change (damage) is also a cause of climate change, an equal or greater cause in certain aspects. Yet despite a small army of "climate journalists" no one knows. The same thing with this new idea that forests need "management" in order to cope with climate change. "Management" IS climate change.
Max, thx for the good overview with a lot of specifics, and i especially appreciated the 'from the activist' perspective and info. Also, a lot of people don't realize how the big media conglomerates have their tentacles and dollars in a wide array of venues including TV, films, music, internet, sports teams, publishing industry (including magazines), etc., controlling the messages of virtually all mainstream pop so-called culture consciousness. The big 6 (as of when the following was posted): National Amusements, Disney, TimeWarner, Comcast, News Corp, Sony. "The 6 Companies That Own (Almost) All Media" https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own-almost-all-media-infographic/