Herbert I. Schiller was a brilliant pioneer in the study of corporate mass communications, and a highly articulate critic of US information practices, all of which are designed to support a plutocratic/imperialist status quo via thinly-veiled propaganda. Schiller clearly saw and dissected the Orwellian apparatus created by the US in the postwar period, essentially a refinement and massive amplification of what existed since the turn of the century, when the age of the corporate robber barons began to make its imprint felt on all areas of American life. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Cyrano’s Journal radical media review project, forerunner of The Greanville Post, for which I am deeply grateful. His essay, The Packaged Consciousness, reposted today, is one of the most formidable dissections of the corporate syntax of mass communications, a way of addressing human reality that poisons the mind and obfuscates far more than it enlightens. In fact, it rarely or never does the latter for that is not its purpose at all. Everyone, American or foreigner, should read this essay, for in compiling his case Schiller tore apart the artifice that underscores all messages from the global plutocracy.—P. Greanville
BONUS: FROM PAPER TIGER TELEVISION
Poor production quality was the signature of leftist attempts to produce countercultural messages, a symptom of their almost complete lack of funding.
REFERENCE:
Herbert Irving Schiller (November 5, 1919 – January 29, 2000) was an American media critic, sociologist, author, and scholar. He earned his PhD in 1960 from New York University. Schiller warned of two major trends in his prolific writings and speeches: the private takeover of public space and public institutions at home, and U.S. corporate domination of cultural life abroad, especially in the developing nations. His eight books and hundreds of articles in both scholarly and popular journals made him a key figure both in communication research and in the public debate over the role of the media in modern society.source.
Books
• Mind Managers (1972).
• Mass Communications and American Empire
• The Ideology of International Communications (Monograph Series / Institute for Media Analysis, Inc, No. 4)
• Mass Communications and American Empire (Critical Studies in Communication and in the Cultural Industries)
• Super-state; readings in the military-industrial complex
• Communication and Cultural Domination (1976)
• Living in the Number One Country : Reflections from a Critic of American Empire
• Who Knows : Information in the Age of the Fortune 500 (1981)
• Information and the Crisis Economy (1984)
• Culture, Inc.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression (1989)
• Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis in America (1996)
External links
• UCSD Department of Communication
• The Information Superhighway: Paving Over the Public. Interview with Herbert Schiller from Z Magazine, March 1994
• Understanding Information Media in the Age of Neoliberalism: The Contributions of Herbert Schiller
• Noted UC San Diego Communication Scholar, Media Critic Herb Schiller Dies
Note to Commenters
Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: editor@greanvillepost.com
We apologize for this inconvenience.
Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?
Send a donation to
The Greanville Post–or
But be sure to support YOUR media.
If you don’t, who will?
