Middle East is always a special region to be discussed with. Here, another chapter of clash for power happened in Aleppo (Syria) since the ninth of May 2016. All media descriptions of the tragedy similarly show disappointment and outrage towards Assad ruling in Syria. Their conclusion: we need U.S. intervention in Syria — which undoubtedly carries some political goals and hegemonic goals of its own. All said, that is just one little example of content manufacturing by popular media.
It is common in corporate medias to manufacture content of the news for the sake of some elites. News, or any kind of public information is an appropriate product of political power industry. In The Political Economy of Media and Power, Jeffery Klaehn explains the concept of propaganda model:
“The propaganda model doesn’t predict media impacts on public belief and opinion [emphasize added], though it clearly implies system-sustaining effects. The empirical evidence on the effectiveness of media and propaganda show that the media can significantly affect public opinion [emphasize added].”
Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky stress the point on how the propaganda model describes forces that shape what the media does. However, we know it doesn’t imply that any propaganda emanating from the media is always effective. Both experts try to explain the media structure and performance, then develop the concept more in a new analogy named 'worthy and unworthy victims.'
The main idea of the concept is how media treats two tragedies differently. The victims of first case splatters the world with the sad news since the background of tragedy are published massively by medias. Hence, the victims are called worthy because they’re seen as 'worthy victims' in common people’s point of view.
On the other side, the victims from the second area get infrequent attention. Medias are very seldom to spread the report of their daily struggle since there are some factors which make the specialized subjects need to think twice. Generally speaking, this is the act of manufacturing consent by media: draw the attention of people by switching the quantities of all news into unequal balance and using the specific terms for the actors of every news. The specific term itself, delineate actors with special designed content which would give the viewers/readers a desired alignment. As a consequence, a worldwide perception would be under the designed upward trends, created by the medias.
Here we can see how U.S. medias act to turn out an assembly of manufactured perspective towards world’s common sense. The chaos of Syria bombings was portrayed by Boston Globe titled, “Wave of ISIS Bombings Kill More Than 80 in Syrian Cities: Militants Strike in Coastal Region That Backs Assad” (Boston Globe, 05/23/2016) which shows how Assad is vulnerable in foreign aggression’s eyes. Syrian President also be observed as a delusional who remained defiant, saying that he stands ready "to confront any foreign aggression" (ABC News, 09/02/2013). Assad is also seen as the one who still cross the “red line” with the chemical weapons policy, who attracts US attention and intervention (Washington Post, 05/12/2016). The incognito, wished denouement is the world views Assad as a failed leader who acts like a schizoid person.
The question here is: why does the media manufacture their news in such way; while the case of Israel-Palestine and several old cases are as seldom as concealed matters be published?
That’s why John Pilger wrote in his writings about the phenomena. Pilger states “unworthy” ones as the many unmentioned tens of thousands killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and all other places by US, Israeli and other rapacious imperial waring and occupying forces. “Worthy” ones are those prominently mentioned who died or were hurt on September 11, 2001 in the US, on July 7, 2005 in a dubious London 'terrorist' bombing, on March 11, 2004 in the Madrid train bombings, and the Israeli corporal practically the whole free world still knows about since he was taken captive in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) last summer and is still being held. Also, the 15 British Royal Navy seamen arrested by Iranian armed forces, now released, and BBC journalist Alan Johnston, also apparently abducted and held captive in the OPT since March 12 when his employer reported he was forcibly seized from his car by gunpoint driving home from work in Gaza City.
Another bizarre uncovering found in the cases of Indonesia and Turkey. While there were more than 200.000 people died for the sake of Suharto’s invasion in East Timor, this event is seldom to be mentioned in the mainstream ideas. The same thing happens to the bombings in Turkey on March 2016. Both cases, build our logic to the fact of Indonesia and Turkey as the US client states, which need coverings and supports from the super power country.
Thus, now we get the main idea of why some cases are seemingly 'important' in common people’s eyes, and some others are not seen as 'equally important' in our eyes. This is the smart, clever trick of media which the majority of us doesn’t realized about.