Neoliberalism and the Media

Marian Meyers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351602969
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the multiple ways that popular media mainstream and reinforce neoliberal ideology, exposing how they promote neoliberalism's underlying ideas, values and beliefs so as to naturalize inequality, undercut democracy and contribute to the collapse of social notions of community and the common good.

Covering a wide range of media and genres, and adopting a variety of qualitative textual methodologies and theoretical frameworks, the chapters examine diverse topics, from news coverage of the 2016 U.S. presidential election to the NBC show Superstore (an atypical instance in which a TV show, for one brief season, challenged the central tenets of neoliberalism) to "kitchen porn." The book also takes an intersectional approach, as contributors explore how gender, race, class and other aspects of social identity are inextricably tied to each other within media representation. At once innovative and distinctive in its illustration of how the media is complicit in perpetuating neoliberal ideology, Neoliberalism and the Media offers students and scholars alike an incisive portrait of the intersection between media and ideology today.

PART I

Where We Are and How We Got Here

1

Neoliberalism and the Media

History and Context

Marian Meyers

The past several decades have seen seismic changes in the global and national political, economic and cultural landscape. Those shifts have rapidly accelerated in recent years, reflecting not only the schism between the major political parties in the United States, but also influencing the political economy of the European Union and nation-states around the globe. While there are numerous explanations for these changes, including an increase in anti-immigrant hostility and racism, much can be attributed to the ascendance of neoliberalism, a form of capitalism whose goals and related policies have been commonly embraced by the radical right and conservatives internationally and within the United States, where it has become the leitmotif of the modern Republican Party.

This shift over the past 40 years “from governmental philosophies of social welfare to neoliberalism” (Collins & Bilge, 2016, p. 16) has led to an increase in global economic inequality and a concomitant decrease in social mobility (Picketty, 2014) as “inequality and commodification mutually reinforce each other” (Giroux, 2011, p. 11). Critics of neoliberalism note that it is inherently anti-democratic in that it legitimizes government by a wealthy elite rather than a representative citizenry (Giroux, 2011; MacLean, 2017; Mayer, 2016; McChesney, 2013; Taplin, 2017). Under a neoliberal regime, governments no longer have a practical or ethical responsibility to their citizens and have abdicated any obligation to level the playing field for women, people of color, gender- and sexually-non-conforming people and others who have been disadvantaged by systemic discrimination. Instead of instituting policies to promote social and economic equality, neoliberalism calls for individual choice and personal responsibility as antidotes to the barriers of bias and prejudice.

Advocates of neoliberal policies have long recognized the need to convince the public of the rightness of their cause – and they understood the role that the media would have to play to accomplish this. In this regard, they have been spectacularly successful, spending untold billions to influence public opinion. Indeed, much of the effectiveness of neoliberal ideology – its global reach and acceptance as a common-sense way of understanding the world – can be attributed to the media. For example, the Institute for Contemporary Studies, funded by the right-wing Scaife Family Charitable Trusts, targeted the mass media to spread neoliberal ideas by developing economics curricula for schools and training businessmen and journalists to provide a “libertarian analysis of social problems” (MacLean, 2017, p. 121). But ICS has been far from alone in its outreach to the public. It has been joined by a web of think tanks, non-profit centers, universities and other organizations in spreading the libertarian gospel. The result is that neoliberalism has permeated both traditional and new media channels, extending its influence far beyond news stories to encompass entertainment, advertising, social media and other mediated genres.

This book explores how the media have espoused and normalized neoliberal beliefs, ideas and values – that is, neoliberal ideology – to a public that would otherwise reject any attempts to undermine democracy and institute the economic, political and social policies and laws of a neoliberal regime. Here, we are not talking about right-wing media outlets such as Fox News, whose alliance with the Republican Party and promotion of conservative politics has been well documented (Brock & Rabin-Havt, 2012; Sherman, 2014) or the Sinclair Broadcast Group which, as the largest operator and owner of television stations in the U.S., has been able to push a conservative agenda through local news broadcasts in nearly 100 markets (de la Merced & Fandos, 2017; Farhi, 2017; Folkenflik, 2018; Wemple, 2018). Nor are we referring to conservative AM talk radio, with hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, among others, or Breitbart News and InfoWars, two truly “fake news” outlets – among many – that traffic in conspiracy theories and radical-right propaganda. Rather, the focus here is on the seemingly neutral or objective media – the mainstream news, ad campaigns, books, movies and TV shows that are ubiquitous and appear innocuous but which, nevertheless, promote neoliberal ideology.

The late cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1988) pointed to the melding of “neoliberal doctrine within conservative philosophy” (p. 46) in Britain during the 1980s to explain the rise of an “authoritarian populism” (p. 7) spread by the nation’s media industry. The media’s primary work, he insisted, is to support and preserve this dominant ideology, which itself reflects the ideas and values of the economic, social and political elite. Today, within the U.S. and globally, that ideology is neoliberal capitalism.

Indeed, Harvey (2005) points out that its advocates have held considerable sway over a broad array of U.S. and international institutions and organizations, including education, the media, the financial and banking industries, and governmental regulatory agencies. In effect, it has touched all aspects of our lives, both conscious and unconscious. “Neoliberalism has, in short, become hegemonic as a mode of discourse,” Harvey (2005) explains. “It has pervasive effects on ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world” (p. 3).

The work of this chapter, then, is to lay the foundation for the rest of Neoliberalism and the Media, to situate it within the recent history and core tenets of neoliberalism, and to connect its ideas and values to popular media. In addition, because neoliberalism is far from neutral in the face of gender, race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and other signifiers of systemic inequality, the chapters that follow also take into account how aspects of social location and identity intersect within the neoliberal discourse and practice of the media. Feminist scholars Collins and Bilge (2016) point out that, “The neoliberal world order relies on a global system of capitalism that is inflected through unequal relations of race, gender, sexuality, age, disability and citizenship” (p. 138). By utilizing an intersectional perspective, it is possible to not only understand neoliberalism’s impact on disenfranchised people, but also to link “theory with practice that can aid in the empowerment of communities and individuals” (Collins & Bilge, 2016, p. 36).

Defining Neoliberalism and Its Effects

Harvey (2005) defines neoliberalism, in the first instance, as a “theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade” – the role of the state being limited to creating and preserving this framework (p. 2). In the second instance, he adds, neoliberalism “has entailed much destruction” in almost all aspects of our social, political and economic life – specifically in the areas of state sovereignty, labor, social relations, welfare, technology, “ways of life and thought, reproductive activities, attachments to the land and habits of the heart” (p. 3).

This definition of neoliberalism, while commonly understood as advocating for free markets and limited government, is misleading because it does not reflect the current realities of the relationship between the theory and the state. Neoliberalism is supposed to severely restrict intervention by governments on the grounds that they cannot possibly second-guess the market and “because powerful interest groups will inevitably distort and bias state interventions (particularly in democracies) for their own benefit” (Harvey, 2005, p. 2). However, nation-states and their regulatory agencies do, in fact, enact policies and laws to advance the accumulation of wealth and political power by corporate entities and multi-billionaire donors.

In addition, the meaning of “neoliberal” itself is widely misunderstood. First, it is often used interchangeably with libertarian and conservative. While this may be confusing, its use as a substitute for those terms is for good reason given that those who identify as either conservative or libertarian tend to support the same neoliberal policies and laws.¹ Second, “neoliberal” is sometimes confused with political liberals, left-wing politics, progressives and even the Democratic Party in the United States. In this case, there is a vast difference between “liberal” within a political context and “neoliberal” within the political economic sense indicated by Harvey. While political liberals assert the need for government to provide for the common good by regulating markets and providing public services, neoliberals counter that free markets and private property rights must be primary to insure individual freedom, liberty and choice. Neoliberal capitalism extols the virtues of personal responsibility as opposed to the collective good, an unfettered marketplace rather than one regulated by government, and the privatization of public institutions and services as opposed to government programs, agencies, and interventions. Phelan (2014) views the competition between these oppositional worldviews as at the heart of neoliberalism, which he sees as deriving from antagonisms during “a specific historical juncture” characterized by the “political and ideological contestation over the very meaning of modernity, progress, reason and human freedom” (p. 143).

What neoliberalism looks like in practice is the denial of global warming and the elimination of environmental protections and climate treaties; the decimation of unions and workers rights; the privatization of public schools, detention centers, prisons, roads, and services; the enactment of voter suppression laws and other legislation aimed at the curtailment of civil and voting rights protections; the gutting of taxes for corporations and the wealthy; and the drop in wages and benefits for workers. In essence, neoliberals primarily see human beings as consumers, and freedom as the ability to make choices within the marketplace. As Duke University historian Nancy MacLean (2017) explains, the goal of neoliberalism is to protect “capitalism from government” (pp. 74–87). In doing so, it undermines social values such as compassion, “the public good, community, and the obligations of citizenship” (Giroux, 2011, p. 9).

How We Got Here

Numerous scholars have linked the undermining of democracy and the social, cultural and governmental institutions that uphold it to the gradual enactment of neoliberal policies, laws and court decisions that, over that past half century, have privileged private property and wealth over the Keynesian social contract that views government as a necessary corrective to the excesses of capitalism. Among the primary researchers who have focused on the role of an ultra-wealthy donor class in the crusade for a radical right agenda are Duke University historian Nancy MacLean (2017) and investigative journalist Jane Mayer (2016, 2017). Both note that in a confidential memorandum written by Lewis Powell in 1971, shortly before he was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon, the future justice laid out a plan to allay potential skepticism and persuade the public to embrace neoliberal policies and thought. According to Mayer (2016), Powell viewed with alarm the increase in wealth equality and government regulation in the 1960s, as well as campus unrest that saw students protest against the Vietnam war and for social and economic equality for women and minorities; he considered those actions an attack on the free enterprise system that would lead to economic ruin for the moneyed classes. Powell proposed a multi-faceted approach that called on corporations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to fund organizations and groups that would: enlist scholars to publish and lecture in support of free enterprise; establish a speaker’s bureau; evaluate and influence the content of textbooks; influence college and high school curriculum and faculty; monitor the media so as to challenge unfavorable coverage; buy ads in support of neoliberal causes; increase political power through funding conservative politicians; and gain the support of the judiciary, which, Powell noted, “may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change” (Powell Memo, 1971).

Powell’s challenge was taken up by a handful of multi-billionaires and like-minded corporate collaborators over the past half century. Chief among those in this elite group are the brothers Charles and David Koch. In particular, Charles Koch² – the world’s 12th wealthiest person, with an estimated worth of $50.7 billion, and the chairman and CEO of Koch Industries – was singularly influential in deciding, in response to lawsuits filed against his company due to flagrant violations of the law, to transform the nation’s politics and laws through changing the outcome of its elections. He and others of the conservative donor class were subsequently aided by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 2010 ruling in Citizens United, which further consolidated the notion that corporations have the same free speech rights as individuals, thereby opening the floodgates of untraceable – but tax-deductible – “dark money” that could be given to non-profit “social welfare” organizations to influence elections, cut corporate taxes, and advance their interests more generally (Mayer, 2016).³ A wide-ranging network of foundations, think tanks, academic centers, advocacy groups, and corporations were among the recipients of the Kochs’ and other donors’ largesse, including the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, which vetted the list of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees provided to President Donald Trump,⁴ and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which for years has provided Republican state legislators with boilerplate, model legislation with the aim of advancing gun rights, deregulating industry, limiting abortion, voting and LGBT rights, privatizing public education, curtailing labor unions, and accomplishing a host of other conservative goals. These model bills are then provided with scholarly legitimacy by the Koch-funded State Policy Network (MacLean, 2017).

The far-reaching tentacles of this “Kochtopus,” as it is sometimes called, also includes organizations with such innocuous sounding names as the Reason Foundation, a national voice for privatization, the Liberty Fund, which recruits and trains graduate students and others to build an “intellectual cadre” for the cause (MacLean, 2017, p. 145), the Institute for Humane Studies, a training center for academicians, and the Center for Independent Education, which advocates for private schooling and vouchers rather than public education. In addition, the Charles Koch Foundation, American Enterprise Institute a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Notes on Contributors
• Part I: Where We Are and How We Got Here
• Part II: Corporations and Markets
• Part III: Responsibility and Choice
• Part IV: Consumers and Advertising
• Part V: Identity and Representation
• Index