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The complex information ecosystem–in which public and private sources battle for control of policy, in which marketers and publishers compete for the public’s attention, in which popular press magazines crowd the grocery store checkout line and peer-reviewed sources are locked away in databases, and in which electronic sources are updated and disseminated instantly across vast global networks—is extremely challenging to navigate.  This module looks at problems inherent in different sources of information. Neither government nor free-market sources can claim to be completely unbiased, and it is worth the effort to think about the advantages and disadvantages of both.

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The Soviet Model of Government Censorship

Governments can control information in several ways, and an information literate individual will understand this as an implicit feature of the state. Some governments, such as the former Soviet Union, controlled information through a total, censorial lock down. Other countries manage information through other methods, including by the creation of culture or by favoring public funding for some avenues of research but not others. The end result is that people are limited in their information choices, though certainly some methods of control are more all-encompassing and insidious than others.

The former Soviet Union provides an excellent study of government censorship. Theirs was a huge, monolithic government capable of controlling virtually all information their citizens were exposed to. Everything was run though official channels to make sure it corroborated the state’s version of reality. So total was the state’s control of information that even when people knew that the story was fabricated or framed, they knew better than to talk about it with anyone but their closest friends and family members. Their misfortune provides a useful example of one extreme of government censorship.

As King (1997) documented, there was a well-known tendency in Stalin’s Russia to erase from public records those who had fallen out of favor, and even after his reign, as Wertsch (2006)  explained, citizens in Russia and the Baltic region understood that there were “blank spots” in the public sphere that were not to be discussed:

In some cases these were literal blank spots, as in photos where people’s images had been painstakingly airbrushed out of existence; in other instances, the notion was more figurative, having to do with what could—and could not—be discussed in a public setting (58).

The example used in Wertsch is 1939’s Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which was a non-aggression agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The two countries agreed not to fight one another and to divide the countries between them into “spheres of influence.” Germany would exert influence over some countries, among them Poland and Romania, and Russia would influence the others, specifically Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia (61). Though the citizens of these countries obviously knew something had happened, and must have assumed that the Molotov-Ribbentop Pact had something to do with it, they also knew better than to ask questions about it. Thus, one morning when they woke to find that during the night they had been annexed into the USSR, they went about their days as if it had always been that way.

The interesting thing about this–and the wonderful case study the collapsed Soviet Union provides us–is how this information was handled in textbooks at the time and in subsequent years. Wertsch pointed out three different versions of the history as it appeared in textbooks at different times. In the first version of the history, written in the 1970s, there was no mention of the Pact, which would make sense, since in the official version of Russian history, it didn’t exist. Instead, the non-aggression treaty was noted as a strategically good decision and the subsequent annexation of countries is discussed in a completely unrelated context, using language that advanced the Socialist agenda (61).

Later, during the Glasnost years of the 1980s, the history started to change a bit. A textbook in use at the time showed the transition between one version of history and another. Note how ambiguously worded the passage was, so as to avoid laying responsibility on anyone:

As a result of complex processes of international and internal development, Soviet power was established anew in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia….However, in the new regions entering the USSR, breaches of the law characteristic for those years of the abuse of power were tolerated along with democratic revolutionary transformations. All of this made the situation more complicated in these regions, It had a negative effect on people’s psychological state and at the same time on the military preparedness of the USSR (62).

Interestingly, this version of history was implicitly critical of the Soviet Union, but it still danced around telling its readers what exactly happened. There was  no mention of the Pact, no mention of who entered into the agreement, and no mention of what exactly happened besides “complex processes of international and internal development.” Wertsch stated that the “obvious awkwardness” of the account was the product of a couple of competing impulses. On one hand, they had to acknowledge that something happened. But on the other hand, there was not a clear idea as of yet what the new version of truth was going to be (63). One can imagine that people, after years of living under complete state control, were wary that anything they said could come back to haunt them.

By 1998, a 9th grade history book contained a new narrative. By that time, it was safe enough to actually tell people about the secret plans in the pact, as well as to talk about the machinations behind the scenes. The pact was rationalized as a difficult decision that had to be made. In the textbook one can find language such as:

Stalin was confronted with a difficult choice: either reject Hitler’s proposal, thereby agreeing to have German forces move to the borders of the USSR in case Poland was defeated in a war with Germany, or conclude an agreement with Germany that would provide the possibility for pushing borders back from its west and avoid war for some time (64).

Wertsch suggested that the history was framed in this way to avoid a sense of national shame. It was neither a questionable decision nor a bad decision, so much as it was a hard decision which external forces had dictated. Some may recognize that this marks a shift from the hard censorship of state to a softer censorship of culture, where the truth is admitted but not dwelled upon, where an ugly historical truth is kept at the margins of the public sphere.

Some Westerners assume that the level of state control exerted in the former USSR could not happen now. But there are nations, such as China or North Korea, which are as iron-fisted with information today as the USSR was then. One reason for Westerners’ sanguine outlook on censorship is the advance of technology. People assume that with so much information flowing around the world total control would no longer be possible.

MacKinnon (2012) pointed to an Apple ad that aired during the Super Bowl in 1984. An Orwellian face is projected on a big screen and dictates propaganda to a subservient audience. Suddenly a woman ran down the aisle and hurled a sledgehammer at the face, shattering it, and presumably freeing the people (3). The explicit message was that Apple’s technology was going to set people free. In the heart of the Reagan years, the implicit message was that capitalism would free people from the tyranny of socialist governments. Yet, MacKinnon also pointed out that now, in a time of great freedom for the pursuit of free market and corporate goals, when the new normal is for world governments to consult with multinational corporations “in order to create financial, trade, and foreign policy objectives” (11), before Apple was allowed to expand its market into China, they were required to agree to China’s terms of censorship (115). And, of course, they did.

Somewhat ironically, Toffler (1995) pinned the collapse of the Soviet Union on their misplaced value on labor instead of information and intellectual capital (62). Though they understood the utility of suppressing information in order to maintain an unassailable narrative for a cowed citizenry, they did not understand that knowledge workers conversant if not fluent with information would provide a great economic boost to freer countries in the years to come (63).

The Soviet and Chinese models of information control are as extreme as they are well-known. Social critic and linguist Noam Chomsky famously opined that there are two kinds of censorship, the kind in authoritarian regimes and the kind in supposedly free countries. Of the two he asserted that the censorship in free countries is more insidious because people living in authoritarian regimes know to go around the official sources to find the truth while supposedly free people do not bother because they live under the illusion that they are free. Two means of this control are that government can encourage the building of culture in which certain narratives and values are shared among its citizens and that it may also choose to fund or de-fund certain areas of research that it finds objectionable.

Cultural Invention

In The Invention of Tradition Hobsbawm and Ranger discussed “invented tradition” as ritualized or symbolic practices that serve to “inculcate certain values and norms of behavior” (1).  People may reflect here on the many rituals they are party to at different times–parades, holidays, the air and water show highlighting the Blue Angels, or saying the pledge of allegiance before sporting events. All of those things serve to tie people to the past and make clear in a subtle way what they should value if they want to be good citizens. But this is not merely a social practice. Hobsbawm and Ranger showed that this was “a conscious process in almost all countries, especially during the 19th century, through which elites and popular movements created rituals, symbols, and texts of a politically usable past” (qtd. in Young 89). In this way cultural norms were and are advanced and people are held together in a shared reverence for certain things, with a shared vocabulary for talking about ideas, and with a shared admiration for symbols that represent ideas. Naturally, this kind of enforcement brings some ideas to the forefront while pushing competing ideas to the margins, serving to censor information that contradicts what is politically and socially preferred.

Important historical events can be turned into traditions because people relate to history via narratives. No matter what transpired in fact, present-day people can only relate to those facts through the stories that are told about them. It should be noted that narratives have peculiar traits that facts don’t. As Bruner (1991) summed up:

We organize our experience and our memory of human happenings mainly in the form of narrative—stories, excuses, myths, reasons for doing and not doing, and so on…Unlike the constructions generated by logical and scientific procedures that can be weeded out by falsification, narrative constructions can only achieve ‘verisimilitude’ (4).

In other words, narratives are a version of reality dependent on their believability. They may contain the grain of truth but are not necessarily bound to it. That is not to say that all attempts to draw meaning from history are either pointless or false—though some interpretations are certainly more supported by the historical record than others. Rather, it is important to recognize that a quote, a moment, or even an entire event can and will be taken out of context to persuade people of one thing or another.

Meanwhile, these rituals, symbols, and texts are still alive today, and because of enculturation people become increasingly closed off to ideas that are outside of the norms that the culture is based on. This is in turn used like a shortcut by political leaders who don’t have to spend time refuting ideas that the broader culture has, at some point in the past, already rejected. But it ALSO allows leaders to argue a point without having to make a real case. If a leader can convince the public that a course of action is against the culture, is against tradition, or against the community’s shared values, then the actual merits of the case need never be considered.

Governments also spread or restrict information through budgetary decisions and legislative procedures. Government services that were once established to provide information, such as the Congressional Research Service and National Public Radio, for lawmakers and citizens respectively, have been victim to budget cuts. K. R. Kosar (2015), a former CSR analyst wrote of the dedication of the CSR staff and their renowned dedication to dispassionate analysis. He listed some of the extremely noteworthy accomplishments of the agency over the years but stated that he simply had to leave after spending too much time in an environment that had become, in his words, “frantic” and “reactive.”

At the same time, NPR finds itself under perennial attack from Republican lawmakers who accuse them of liberal bias. Though this may have been the case in the beginning, when NPR did have “countercultural roots” (Sherman 2005), NPR receives funding from various multinational corporations and does a great deal of in-depth reporting unavailable elsewhere. (37). Cutting their budget would be a considerable loss for journalism and for the information needs of their growing audience.

Still another way that the US government is sometimes at odds with information is by passing legislation at the state or local level to restrict scientific study and information. Representative Chip Cravaak infamously amended a funding bill to to make sure that the National Science Foundation could not “carry out the activities of the Climate Change Education program.” Legislators in states like Oklahoma try to get culturally or politically upsetting science removed from schools. The National Center for Science Education keeps a running list of legislative attacks on science education and curricula. These types of attacks in turn create a feedback loop. Distorted information is used to justify policies that further distort information.

Though the United States government does not march in lockstep as the Soviet government did—indeed, one of the two main political parties seems to want to abdicate control of the government to private industry—America’s confusing and confounding political and media landscape allows for censorship, some of which is more obvious than others.

Consider the Texas school board. Up until 2011, they had the power to decide what was included in all textbooks used in Texas. (For reasons of economy, many other states adopted the textbooks, as well, so the effects were felt all over.) In 2012, individual school districts started having more say in the process, and the Texas School Board no longer had the final say. But up until then, this relatively unknown group of people who had been voted in by a very small number of people, had an enormous say in what appeared in the state’s textbooks.

Riley (2012) offered some examples of the Texas State School Board in action, noting that the board skews conservative and that decisions about what is put in and taken out are often politically motivated. In a particularly telling episode, religious freedom is downplayed:

A proposed amendment from one of the Democratic board members would have required students to “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” One Republican member argued that the “founders didn’t intend for separation of church and state in America” and called the statement “not historically accurate” and the conservative members voted down the standard. The board then added a new one that suggests the “separation of church and state” is not a key principle of the First Amendment (Par. 3).

Moreover, sometimes the decisions were completely arbitrary. As Riley also noted, the Texas artist Santa Barraza was stricken from the standards because one board member googled her and found a painting that included nudity (Par. 10). 

Thus there are different kinds of government censorship, the censorship of authoritarian regimes and that of freer societies. Though they are different, the net effect can be the same: access to information is limited. While there is no argument that one kind of censorship is more debilitating, if the very notion of truth is subject to change with political whims, an information literate population must learn to access information from multiple sources, comparing free-market to government sources, and honing in on the truth.

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Advertising and Marketing

Advertising uses images, words, and sounds to create favorable impressions in viewers in order to sell products. This video, with the sound down, could be about virtually any large, bio-technology company. 

 

Yet, with the sound on, the narration gives away the store: this is how advertising works, using images and sounds to stir emotions and positive feelings that might not be entirely deserved.

But the issue is not just what the ads say and don’t say (or how they say it or don’t say it), it is how pervasive they are that gives them power to shape public discourse. Derren Brown, a British illusionist, wanted to show the influence that image placement and advertising can exert on people: 

A Question of Focus

At any state fair one can usually find an FFA (Future Farmers of America) petting zoo. Children will walk up to the pens, feed, and pet lambs, sheep, etc… This all goes pretty smoothly until the end, where one finds the shorn lambs who have been grease-painted into their various cuts of meat. Young children may be prompted to ask, “Why did they color them like that?” It might be difficult for some parents to answer on the spot because one rarely expects to see a transgression that confuses people’s compartmentalization like that: animals are their friends, except for the ones they eat. When people are forced to simultaneously confront this dichotomy, it causes the uncomfortable feeling of cognitive dissonance. Sticking with this example, here are some tricks that advertisers use to misdirect people’s attention from one idea to another, thus helping maintain this tidy compartmentalization:

Interestingly, the video itself is a bit of sleight of hand, as the presenter is not actually a marketing consultant but an actress, and it is clear that the video is meant to convince the viewer that factory farming is cruel. Regardless of its slant, it makes some interesting points about how things are sold in a way that minimizes consumer discomfort.

How Can Information Literacy Help?

The Cook report recommends that consumers need to be better informed about their purchases, which is completely in line with the tenets of information literacy. For instance, whereas information literacy would recommend that people seek unbiased information and weigh different sources against one another in terms of credibility, timeliness, and authority, Cook et al suggest that people evaluate advertising and marketing materials using unbiased sources such as product-rating periodicals, libraries, public consumer agencies, Public Broadcasting Company, and National Public Radio. If the language of the free market is meant to convince people to buy something or, perhaps, to buy INTO something, it should be counterbalanced by unbiased, public information, that does not come from commercial sources. Then, the authors apply their research more broadly to suggest that, “Our choice is not a zero sum choice, but it does involve questions of priorities, the understanding of which we have to grasp in order to make educated choices about the future” (44). In other words, inasmuch as information literacy is a key component of making informed decisions and of being a cognizant participant in a democratic society, understanding the prevalence and effects of advertising is vital.

Information and Broader Culture

Going back to the notion of public information, as a culture, people expect to be manipulated by advertisers, and so they put their guards up when the ads play. On the other hand, people feel safe while watching the news or reading the newspapers because those places are supposed to inform rather than to promote. But, as seen in the history of newspapers, the same forces that shape the messages of marketing also subsidize and support the places where people go for information. Thus, finding unbiased sources of information, as recommended, may be more difficult than expected.

The effect is a pervasive thread in Western culture that is pro-industry and pro-business. While there is nothing wrong with industry and business, if those forces do not work for the benefit of humanity, overall, then their modus operandi might need to be investigated. However, and here is the crux, that kind of scrutiny is difficult if those very same interests have been allowed to define the parameters of the discussion. These parameters are, in part, set by marketing, advertising, and branding, but it runs still deeper than that.

Cultural anthropologist Marvin Harris suggested in his 1979 Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture, that, of the many things a culture can argue about, the one thing that is off limits is its means of sustenance. For instance, if a society depends on whaling for its food, its heating oil, and for its very economy, it will find a way not to discuss the killing-too-many-whales problem. In other words, it is hard to get people to realize that they need to protect the environment when their economic livelihood depends on not protecting the environment. One could likewise argue that if one depends on the products of industry for his sense of prestige, comfort, or purpose, then it is not surprising to see that he is willfully blind to the impact his decisions have.

Thus, business and industry messages have impacts beyond which soda one may buy at the grocery store. They seep into broader culture, coloring the presentation of information supposedly in the public sphere. This is not entirely surprising. Media companies make their living by exposing people to as many advertisements as possible (O’Reilly and Tennant 2009), and beyond that, the market system that was invented to make sure people got the goods they wanted as efficiently and as cheaply as possible has arguably grown larger than humanity can contain and control (Shmookler 175).In the case of corporations, the structure of the system makes it virtually impossible for the organization to behave in a socially and environmentally responsible fashion (182). The people in charge of the corporation are in the position of leadership precisely because of the bureaucratic processes of conformity to the corporate system of maximizing profits (183). This extends down the line until, as Alan Liu noted in The Laws of Cool, work began  taking over public life and personal time via “company-mandated ‘lifelong learning,’” the “home office,” “telecommuting,” and “edutainment” (77).

It is almost unnoticeable that the voices of industry and work pervade the sphere of public discourse. At Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, which is beloved by kids and parents alike, the presentation of educational information is heavily influenced by industry. Thinking about the video on advertising above, consider the wording of the following placard:

Pork producers keep their breeding pigs in specially designed barns that protect the animals from illness, injuries and extreme weather conditions, while allowing fresh air and sunlight in. Sows receive nutritious diets of corn, soybeans and vitamins, have free access to fresh water and are cared for under close supervision of veterinarians. The animals are kept safe from predators and protected from the aggression that often exists among sows housed in group pens. They also are spared from the competition for food that occurs when animals are kept in groups. Housed in individual stalls, sows are able to move back and forth, lie on their sides, and fully extend their limbs.

Note how the language makes it seem as if pig farmers are nothing more than benevolent caretakers of the animals. They offer the pigs food and nutrition, and despite visual evidence to the contrary, plenty of sunshine, exercise, and strolls down to the creek to drink fresh water. They also protect them from predators. Except for humans.

Because confusing the animals with bacon may result in cognitive dissonance, it is important to keep people distracted. One would expect to find this deception in a commercial, not in a museum. Conspicuously absent from the discussion is how many pounds of vegetable matter it takes to make one pound of animal matter, how much forest has been clear-cut to support cattle for food, how the overuse of antibiotics is creating drug-resistant strains of diseases that endangers human lives, or how keeping animals in solitary confinement is inhumane. In other words, the focus of the placard makes this read more like an advertisement than a museum exhibit meant to disclose important information.

Information and Mass Media

Most of the time when people think of censorship, they think of things like the Soviet Union, China, or the Texas School Board. The assumption is that the Free Market—an economic market in which supply and demand are not regulated or are regulated with only minor restrictions and the Free Press—a press not restricted or controlled by government censorship regarding politics or ideology will make censorship impossible. In keeping with the model of the free market, media outlets have a great deal of discretion about what they cover and how they cover it, just as people are free to choose which media to watch and read. Some stations employ branding and marketing techniques to carve out niches in the media world, and people respond to it. People who want to find a particular slant or focus in their news stories know to seek out Fox, MSNBC, or CNN. Theoretically, all should be well. Yet, complicating this world view are that sometimes government must intervene to keep a popular press from squelching unpopular ideas and that sometimes media, left to their own devices will cover what is commercially profitable instead of socially necessary.

In the first case, consider the 1934 Communications Act, which held that the airwaves–then newly of interest because of the burgeoning field of radio–would be used for the common good instead if strictly for profit.  According to Wright’s  American Society: How It Really Works, “Broadcasters were given renewable licenses for fixed terms that gave them exclusive use of specific parts of the radio spectrum, but they were also described as ‘trustees’ who had to serve the ‘public interest’ rather than simple, outright owners with full private property rights” (5-6). Also, the Act restricted the number of stations an individual could own so as to keep a limited number of people having to great an influence on society. Implicit is that more voices and more owners would provide a greater a greater breadth of opinion and viewpoint.  Thus, in order to encourage the diversity of opinion that goes hand in hand with democracy, the government sought to limit ownership of American radio.  Yet, this would later be decried as an impingement on the free market. For example, if someone can afford to buy 1000 radio stations, what right does the government have to keep him from doing so?  

As if to answer the question, the 1996 Telecommunications Act lifted most of the regulations on radio stations and ownership.  Unsurprisingly, the field became dominated by a few corporations, such as Clear Channel and ViaCom, within the decade (6).  Hence, the ideologies and biases of those parent corporations flourish on over ten thousand stations coast to coast.

But is that really such a bad thing?  It certainly isn’t a new thing. One may recall that the early press in America was openly partisan. Today it is less so. In 2005 Rosenson  evaluated the news stories in four major newspapers to determine how neutral their coverage of state legislatures was and if the tone of their coverage was swayed by the partisan orientation of the newspaper’s ownership and found that the newspapers were neutral in their coverage over 80%of the time (2015). However, it should be noted that his evaluation focused on tone and balance, and seemed to equate objectivity with neutrality. Moreover, other researchers have indeed found bias.

Gilens and Hertzman’s “Corporate Ownership and News Bias: Newspaper Coverage of the 1996 Telecommunication Act,” examined news coverage about the 1996 Telecommunications Act and showed definitively that the beneficiaries of the Act covered it more favorably than did those news outlets which did not have a vested interest in the decision. This analysis included not only editorial content but hard news, as well. 

Thus, some newspapers presented news that served to “further the interests of their corporate owners rather than the interests of their readers in fair and complete coverage of an important public policy issue” (383). Further, they surmise:  

As more and more media  outlets come under the control of fewer and fewer corporate owners, the potential for conflicts of interest increases. News organizations owned by large conglomerates with far-flung investments are more likely to find that the public issues they report on carry implications for their corporate parents’ financial health. If newspaper coverage of the proposed changes in television ownership regulations examined here is indicative of a general tendency within the news media, we have much to be concerned about (384)

The poet John Milton, of Paradise Lost infamy, also worked as a journalist in his day, and one of his contributions was to suggest that the press should act as a “marketplace of ideas.”  That is, people should have access to opinions across a wide spectrum, compare them side by side, and decide which are best, accordingly.  Since then, it has been understood as unquestionably true that democratic societies benefit from a press free from government oppression.  But the traditional dichotomy of business and government—that the former represents the free market and freedom while the latter represents rulers and oppression—might be somewhat misleading in this instance.

There are, according to Wright, four main problems with the notion that the free market will lead to a free press and its underlying assumption that “the best ideas survive the competition”:

*The owners of mass media companies have the power to decide what content they produce.

*The free market argument assumes that the market for news is extremely competitive, but since only the very wealthy can afford to compete, the offerings are fairly limited (ie. Most cities have one or two newspapers instead of 12 or 15).

*Corporate news stations make their money almost entirely from advertising, so the central aim is to attract advertisers, even if that comes at the expense of watering down, dumbing down, or omitting offensive news.

*Corporate news is beholden to shareholders and thus seeks to minimize costs and maximize profits, even if it means offering stock journalism, fluff articles, op-eds, and otherwise inexpensive and/or pedestrian articles. (2).

If the fear is that media companies will sometimes choose profits over responsibility, never was it so clear as in 2007. That year  two important things happened: The IPCC released a report that predicted dire consequences for all of humanity if carbon emissions were not lowered drastically, and Ana Nicole Smith died.

[ted id=248]

In a revenue-driven media system, this should not be surprising. News channels knew that they would profit if they played wall to wall Ana Nicole Smith, so why shouldn’t they?

Information literacy asks for an awareness of the forces behind the stream of information both in the private and the public sphere. According to Blidook’s “Choice and Content: Media Ownership and Democratic Ideals in Canada,” there are three main ways of assessing the impact of media ownership on the content they provide:

1. Look at the practices of the media owner to see if its interests have influenced its content.
2. Look at whose interests their content serves.
3. Compare the differences in the content between a source that has a vested interest and a source that does not (55).

These are important considerations when determining the usefulness of a source. Different news providers have different constraints and biases. For instance, the Washington Post points out that NBC, which was owned by General Electric at the time, had nothing to say about General Electric’s tax avoidance issues in 2010. Likewise, it is next to impossible to find unbiased reportage about labor unions on Fox News, which champions business interests over worker interests.

As Blidook cogently sums up:

The fact that a given event occurs does not mean that a given news outlet will report on that event, or if the event is reported, that it will be presented in a manner that weighs certain information in the same manner as another news outlet.  In short., there is a process between ‘fact’ and ‘coverage’ that affects whether the given fact is reported, and also the manner in which it is reported….This process may include many factors, though one important factor is ownership of the media outlet and the interests or biases of that ownership. (55)

In accurately understanding and discussing information, it is a good practice to dig into the sources to find out who owns them, what issues or causes they champion, and what biases they typically show.

Ahsley Lutz at Business Insider has posted a handy chart showing media consolidation (ie. who owns whom), though she is good to point out that GE and Time Warner’s holdings have changed some since the chart was created.

Likewise, there are a number of websites that monitor media behaviors, though often they are subject to their own biases. Pew Research Centers Project for Excellence in Journalism is one good place to go for information about journalism, in general. The Media Research Center  explores liberal bias in the media. Media Matters explores conservative bias in the media.

 

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In understanding the complicated media and political landscape in any policy debate, it is important to understand the competing sides of the debate as well as the biases of the policy experts that politicians consult to inform or justify their decisions. It is useful to understand the role of think tanks and other influence brokers. As one might expect, people who have a political, professional, or economic interest in the information that societies draw upon to form policies may be highly motivated to trumpet the upsides and squelch the downsides of their research and findings.

What is a think tank?

Politicians in America mostly have backgrounds in law, and that makes sense, since those are the people in charge of drafting laws. But the corollary to that is that they are rarely also experts in the subjects they are required to make laws about. Thus, it would make sense that the lawmakers bring in subject matter experts to educate them on how their decisions might ultimately effect the world. Often these experts are culled from think tanks, which are typically privately financed research groups that study government, laws, business, and other specialized subjects and use their research to influence public policy.

There are three main arrangements that stem from this influence:

1) Politicians seek guidance on an issue and seek out the experts in think tanks who can provide research and knowledge to inform their decisions.

2) Think tanks seek out politicians who will be voting on a particular piece of legislation and offer them the research they have done. Often a component of this is that the think tanks are actively trying to advocate for or against some policy and seek to influence lawmakers.

3) Think tanks draft model legislation and give it to politicians and influence them to submit it.

This range of activities suggest a sliding scale of industry influence in the nation’s laws, and the reader can decide for herself which seems more or less compatible with the idea of democratic governance.

The history of think tanks is a pretty boring affair, which is probably how they have come to have so much influence. Nothing discourages active oversight more than a boring subject. But they have existed for over a hundred years, which is about how long it has been in vogue in America to think that policy experts, social scientists, economists, and other people trained in the study of society are uniquely qualified to shape civilization.

According to James Allen Smith’s The Idea Brokers, think tanks first made a big splash in America in the first quarter of the 20^th century. At the time, there was not a lot of intellectual capital in Washington, so leaders sought to bring in experts to help shape policy. Smith opined that this desire stemmed partly from the efficiency craze of the late 1800s. Recent scientific breakthroughs had led some to suspect that efficiency could be quantifiably, scientifically measured (46-48). Thus, in the 1920s and 30s academics who had previously been passive observers of industry, government, and policy were beginning to take a more active role in advocating for policies (49-51). As one might anticipate, this advocacy spanned the political spectrum and influenced policy, social messaging, marketing, framing, and news in every conceivable area of social and/or economic concern.

Sound Science : an example of Think Tank and Industry Influence

To understand the reach of industry public relations and think tank advocacy in modern times, one need only trace the use of the phrase “sound science” from its inception to its broader use in society. Anyone familiar with the discourse surrounding climate change has heard the phrase sound science bandied about. The leg work for this was done by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway in Merchants of Doubt, Chris Mooney in The Republican War on Science, and Riley Dunlap and Peter Jacques in “Climate Change Denial Books and Conservative Think Tanks: Exploring the Connection.”

As Chris Mooney (2005) pointed out, the roots of sound science go back to the tobacco companies who, in the 60s, were having to find ever-more inventive ways to deny that smoking caused cancer. In 1964 the surgeon general released a report that tied cigarette smoking to a variety of serious illnesses, and the tobacco companies mobilized to do something they dubbed “manufacturing uncertainty.” Their lawyers would direct teams of researchers and scientists to undermine the facts however they could (67-68).

It was revealed in 1979 that a 1969 internal memo from Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company titled, “Smoking and Health Proposal” purposefully sought to confuse the public’s understanding of the link between cancer and its product (Kenyon 2016). The memo stated its goals in the kind of blunt language it would never want to be part of the public record. In part it read, “Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy” (qtd in Kenyon Par. 2). Though they did not use the phrase “sound science,” the seeds of manufacturing doubt in science were sown.

Mooney (2005) documented that the American Industrial Health Council in 1981 described their mission as ensuring the “adequacy and quality” of science used in the industry. They likewise praised President Reagan’s pursuit of “sound science” in the creation of federal health policies (qtd. In Mooney 66). Later, the George C Marshall institute included similar language in its mission statement (65).

According to Oreskes (2011), in 1990, S Fred Singer, who was one of the “experts” who testified to congress that there was no link between smoking and cancer, created his “Science and Environmental Policy Project” to “promote sound science in environmental policy” (143)

In 1993 the phrase moved from mission statements into the very name of one think tank: The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition. They described themselves as “a grassroots-based, not-for-profit watchdog group of scientists and representatives from universities, independent organizations, and industry that advocates the use of sound science in public policy” (qtd. in Mooney 67). That same year, internal documents of Phillip H Morris had called for the creation of just such a think tank (67); however, there is no concrete evidence of a link between the two events.

In 1999, ExxonMobil’s stated environmental science policy, according to Skjaerseth and Skodvin’s Climate Change and the Oil Industry, was to, “Work with government and industry groups to develop environmental laws and regulations that are based on “sound science” (45-46).

By 2001, President George W. Bush, formerly the founder of Arbusto Oil, made sure to include in his speeches his insistence that US climate change policy be informed by, wait for it, sound science.

For all this talk of wanting sound science, are these think tanks actually pursuing the truth? Dunlap and Jacques (2013) studied 108 climate change denial books written before the year 2011 and found that 1) most evidence very strong ties to right wing think tanks, with the relationship decreasing among self-published books and 2) that 90% are not peer-reviewed (701-05). Since peer review is a central tenet of scientific writing, it seems unlikely that the aim of these organizations was as pure and noble as stated. In fact, according to James Hoggan’s Climate Cover-Up, (2009) in 2006 the American Enterprise Institute offered cash to scientists who would “agree to write a critique of the anticipated Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC” (74). 

 

Besides influencing companies and politicians directly, think tanks and other policy advocates try to influence public opinion in a variety of ways. Graham Wayne, a contributor to Skeptical Science and the Guardian, has uncovered that Heartland is also taking this approach with American schools. In 2013 they were the force behind the NIPCC or Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, which was meant to challenge the findings of the IPCC.

To make sure they got the word out, they sent memos to school boards and science teachers encouraging them to present their findings. Needless to say, this is problematic because the NIPCC report is less objective, less credible, less authoritative, and less factual than the IPCC report by an order of magnitude. Yet, public school educators, with already busy schedules, are unlikely to have the time to research the NIPCC claims, so their arguments may be presented as reasonable alternatives to the vast consensus among experts in the field.

Another way that influence brokers attempt to influence public policy is through astroturfing. In politics, when common, everyday citizens organize themselves into a large group to persuade the general public of the merits of an issue or cause, it is known as a grassroots movement. These types of movements may spring up around any kind of issue, from any side of the political divide. Senator Lloyd Bentsen, the late Democratic Senator from Texas, once stated on the Senate floor that he could tell the difference between grassroots and astroturf. He was complaining about protests and letter-writing campaigns that were meant to appear spontaneous and organic, but which were actually a paid part of corporate marketing and public relations spin. There are many examples of astroturfing in the not-too-distant past. Researching Microsoft anti-trust letters, Brooks Brothers Riot, Al Gore’s Penguin Army, Broadband for America, or numerous other well-known incidents will perhaps prove eye-opening to the information literate student.

In 2015, investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson gave an illustrative TED Talk about the reach of influence of astroturfing and gives some helpful tips on recognizing it.   

Given their reach, finances, and devotion to ideology over science, think tanks such as Heartland should be watched closely and their findings viewed with healthy skepticism. When research turns up a think tank paper or policy statement, it should not be automatically dismissed as wrong; however, being aware of different think tanks and their biases will allow researchers to better understand the slant of their thinking as well as what they might be leaving out or misrepresenting. It would only be wise to become familiar with some of the more prominent think tanks and their known political affiliations.

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 How are the censorship in the former Soviet Union and in the case of the Texas School Board different? How are they similar?

What do Hobsbawn and Ranger mean by the phrase “invented tradition?” How does tradition—whether invented or organic—impact information?

What are some of the ways that governments may censor information?

What are information deficiency and commercial misinformation? Which do you think is a bigger problem and why?

What is cognitive dissonance, and how do marketers and advertisers try to keep us from feeling it?

What are some examples of government and industry interacting with one another to shape the contemporary information landscape?

What are four reasons that the free market might not lead to a free press?

What are the three main arrangements that lobbyists and influence brokers may have with lawmakers in the United States? Which seem most and least democratic?

What is sound science?

What is the difference between a grass roots movement and an astroturf movement? What are some ways to tell them

In your own words, what are “weasel words?”

In your own words, what is the difference between “false equivalence” and “treating all opinions as equal?”