Book review: Media, Propaganda and the Politics of Intervention
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836718768640 |
| Date | 01 June 2018 |
| Published date | 01 June 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Book review |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836718768640
Cooperation and Conflict
2018, Vol. 53(2) 296 –298
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836718768640
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Book review
FLORIAN ZOLLMANN, Media, Propaganda and the Politics of Intervention. New York: Peter Lang,
2017, 276 pp., $42.95 (paperback).
Florian Zollmann lectures at Newcastle University (UK). He examines how mainstream
Western media coverage of selected human rights atrocities varies considerably depend-
ing on whether those who commit them and/or to whom they are responsible are favora-
bly regarded by the Washington Consensus or unfavorably regarded. This is a further
rigorous testing of the hypotheses proposed by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in
their influential 1988 study, Manufacturing Consent. Like the Herman and Chomsky
classic, Zollmann’s study has the gravest possible implications for the health of Western
journalism and will be studiously ignored by a great many faculty in university depart-
ments of journalism, international communication and media studies whose career aspi-
rations may not sit well with critiques of this kind, however substantial.
In his qualitative and quantitative analysis, Zollmann investigates 1911 news, editorial
and comment items of coverage by US, UK and German elite news media of human
rights violations during military or police operations. These include (a) the ‘enemy/non-
allied’ examples of the Račak incident in Kosovo (1999), the first Benghazi incident in
Libya (2011) and the Houla incident in Syria (2012) and (b) the ‘allied’ examples of the
first Fallujah incident in Iraq (2004), the second Fallujah incident in Iraq (2004) and the
first Egyptian raid/Cairo incident in Egypt (2013). The newspapers selected are the New
York Times and Washington Post (for the USA), the Guardian, the Independent, The
Times and the Daily Telegraph (and their respective Sunday papers, the Observer, the
Independent on Sunday, the Sunday Times, and the Sunday Telegraph) (for the UK) and
the tageszeitung, Die Welt, Frankfurter Rundschau, Suddeutsche Zeitung and
Frankfurther Allgemeine Zeitung (for Germany).
Following Herman and Chomsky, Zollmann concentrates on reporting of indignation,
details of slaughter and responsibility. The category of indignation is further broken
down into the following: direct references to outrage; demand for, discussion or consid-
eration of investigations or inquiries as well as court proceedings; demand for, discus-
sion or consideration of sanctions, including political sanctions; demand for, discussion
or consideration of military intervention, including use of air and/or ground forces,
establishment of no-fly zones and or humanitarian corridors and/or the support of mili-
tant anti-regime forces. The category of details of slaughter refers to humanizing ele-
ments of victims of violence. The category of responsibility refers to assignments of guilt
or criminal liability.
The study finds that countries deemed ‘enemies’ of the West are subjected to a selec-
tive process of shaming that includes the evocation of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and
768640CAC0010.1177/0010836718768640Cooperation and ConflictBook review
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