Comment

...From this perspective the media have only limited autonomy, and their conflicts with the main policy drift are likely to be minor, in the nature of qualifications, and capable of being muted by a determined government...

...Dan Hallin's "The Media Go to War--From Vietnam to Central Amer- ica," (July/August 1983) gives a posi- tive view of the evolution of the mass media as a critical instrument that is not warranted by evidence...

...Given the fact that Carter and Reagan have been supporting a [regime guilty of gross human rights violations], my conclusion is that only by dint of an exceptional degree of media coopera- tion has it been possible for the Ad- ministration to maintain its policies completely intact in the face of such an onslaught...

...Unfounded allegations such as these create an atmosphere of distrust totally inimical to the continuing cooperation and on-site research and treatment so desperately needed...

...One trouble is that this was a single program, and Hallin cites several others that stick closely to the pure, Cold War format...

...Its victims now include: women, Haitians living in countries other than the United States and Haiti and foreigners who have lived in Haiti...

...These are urgent questions, involving human life and suffering here and in Haiti, that cannot be brushed aside or distorted in order to exhibit the AIDS crisis as just another example of neocolonialism in action...

...Other sources] show that the media caved in completely to the government's propaganda require- ments...

...Haitian victims of the disease are often unwilling to acknowledge homosexual experiences for fear of being ostracized, making it more difficult to trace the path of the disease...

...Paul Horowitz Edward Strug New York, NY Are the Media Critical...

...This is either a truism--the impact of AIDS on each risk group is "particular"--or a politically and humanly misguided attempt to compete in the arena of victimization...

...patients to be of Haitian origin, not the "only about 2.5%" reported...

...Such contentions are impossible to prove, given current uncertainty about the etiology of AIDS and mounting evidence that the disease is rapidly becoming a world tragedy...

...Teas and others have pointed to possible coverups and early blocking of research funds because of pressure from powerful commercial interests...

...Hallin gives the impression that the Moyers program and other flashes of criticism represent a trend...

...Hallin recognizes that episodic, "one shot" releases are not as important as day-in-day-out reiteration of government handouts, yet he regularly cites episodes of dissent from which he tends to gen- eralize without showing their quantita- tive significance or impact...

...Cooley also dismisses as "another glaring piece of sensationalism" the Boston Globe article about Dr...

...As for my "model" of the media, which is not elaborated explicitly in "The Media Go to War," it is Gramsci- an: I believe, that is, that control of consciousness in an advanced capitalist society is maintained indirectly, through the loose but powerful influence of a worldview and set of social practices accepted as common sense at all levels of society...

...U.S...

...Furthermore, Cooley seems unwilling to acknowledge, let alone criticize, anti-gay bigotry...

...foreign policy, is a domination model or a media-government conflict model more illuminating...

...For whom...

...but not only does he fail to substantiate this for the period covered, subsequent events have shown the power of a de- termined Administration to render the mass media exceedingly quiet...

...Warren Johnson, "The Haitians are doing an excellent job...

...Jane Teas' theory that AIDS may be related to outbreaks of African Swine Fever in Haitian pigs...

...especially since one important Haitian health official responded openly to a New York Times reporter that, if necessary, he would lie for the good of his country...

...At the same time it is central to my argument that this change is limited, particularly by ideology and the per- sistence of certain journalistic routines...

...In short, Hallin's stress on media- government conflict leads him to un- dervalue the capacity of the goverment to overwhelm dissent, fix the frame of national discourse and profoundly af- fect the flow of information within that framework...

...government researchers have attempted to characterize her as an "outsider" as far as the official medical establishment is concerned...

...In the only case where Hallin examines in some detail a campaign in which the govern- ment tried hard to get over a propa- ganda theme-the 1981 White Paper-- media dissent was modest and the gov- ernment was able to get over quite ef- fectively their claim of external sourc- ing of the Salvadorean rebels...

...An illustration is Hallin's excessive attention to a March 20, 1982 CBS-Bill Moyers documentary, "Central Amer- ica in Revolt," which according to Hallin "represents an important break" with many traditions by contesting sim- ple Cold War ideology and allowing Third World critics to speak their piece...

...Within the domination-solidarity framework, government-media "con- flict" would be properly relegated to the marginal, not the core analysis, and attention would be paid to large areas of agreement and governmental pow- ers of mobilization of bias...

...If we want to understand the main drift of the mass media in their selection of premises and frames of reference in portraying U.S...

...More importantly, Cooley's uncritical reliance on statements by official Haitian government and medical authorities seriously undermines the credibility of her assertions...

...Cooley's article, by ignoring both Haiti's harsh social realities and the impact of Haitian attitudes toward gay men creates obstacles to just such bridge building...

...For some time now, although Cooley fails to mention it, both the mainstream and gay media have been carrying reports of Haitian government charges that AIDS was brought into Haiti by gay North American vacationers who infected local male prostitutes...

...I focus on conflict because I believe the U.S...

...Gay men (not "homosexuals," as Cooley writes: there are no known Continued on page 4. Continued from page 2. cases of AIDS among lesbians) and Haitians and other victims of AIDS all suffer from inadequate funding of re- search and medical care, from hysteri- cal stigmatization by the public and even by medical workers...

...This is why I do not dwell on such things as corporate ownership (owners do not in fact control the day- to-day political content of the news) or FCC regulation (which is now being dismantled...

...Hallin's model shows its inadequa- cies most clearly in thinking about the March 1982 election...

...The Administration has also been quite suc- cessful in injecting just enough Cold War ideology and claims of Cuba-So- viet "intervention" to gain policy-ac- ceptability...

...Nowhere does Hallin mention the structure of the mass media, their own- ership, their integration into a multina- tional corporate network, dependence on sponsors, relations with government as licensee (radio and television) and the fact that most top-level media offi- cials and reporters are upper middle- class patriotic citizens...

...This included remarkable sup- pressions and lies institutionalized to a degree it would be hard to surpass in a totalitarian state...

...This follows in considerable part from the fact that Hallin's basic frame of analysis is gov- ernment-media conflict, not government power and government-media solidar- ity...

...Edward S. Herman Professor of Finance Wharton School University of Pennsylvania Dan Hallin responds: It is not my intention to put forward a "conflict model" of the media in op- position to a "domination model...

...Faced with the paucity of resources for research and treatment, brutally unequal distribution of social and medical services, the class structure of Haitian society, the viciousness of its political regime and, now, with the defensive posture of government officials and elite doctors, how can we believe that the necessary tasks can be accomplished...

...A domination model stresses the power of a government-corporate elite, which normally shares and agrees upon a set of major premises, to impose these on the underlying population...

...Current (December 1983) Center for Disease Control statistics show 4.6% of U.S...

...Need for Bridge Building Martha Cooley's article, "Haiti: the AIDS Stigma" (September/October 1983 Report) calls long-overdue attention to the plight of Haitians who are being victimized by the mixture of irrational fear and reinforced prejudice which has accompanied the AIDS epidemic...

...But Hal- lin fails to generalize from this case study...

...This weakens her analysis, even if she aims to focus on the impact of AIDS on Haiti and Haitians and not to address the issue of AIDS in its entirety...

...The Haitian tourist industry has been practically destroyed and Haitians in this country, up against government attempts to deny them the right of residence, have been made to feel even more unwelcome...

...The scapegoating and racism implicit in this situation, deplorable concomitants of the historically lop-sided relations between the United States and its impoverished Caribbean client state, need to be underscored again and again...

...Anti-gay bigotry has made research into AIDS more difficult here and in Haiti...

...Yet despite its value in bringing to light important aspects of the Haitian AIDS dilemma, Cooley's article leaves us with a confused and over-simplified version of a difficult and complex situation...

...With a different frame than Hallin's, a different conclusion easily follows...

...Whatever the plausibility and eventual outcome of the swine fever hypothesis, more deserving of questioning is Cooley's own assertion that, in the words of Dr...

...Cooley states that the "implications" of AIDS on Haitians "have been particularly devastating...

...Swine fever transmission is still only one hypothesis among many, but Dr...

...This emphasis is qualified and con- tradicted by other lines of argument, but it persists throughout in frequent reference to greater media sophistica- tion and illustrations of deeper media insight...

...How...

...Can't we emphasize this in combatting racism among white, gay men and homophobia among Haitians, and in fighting for adequate health care for all...

...establishment has become divided and foreign policy therefore politicized to a degree far greater than we have seen since the onset of the Cold War, a change worth documenting especially for an audience which, as I assume is true of most who read Report on the Americas, doesn't need to be lectured about imperialism or the fact that the media have generally been complicit in it...