The Rhetoric and Ideology of Human Rights in the Media

• Pages: 41-56
• Date: 14 October 2011
• Published date: 14 October 2011
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0275-7982(2011)0000006005
• Author: Josh Klein

THE RHETORIC AND IDEOLOGY

OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE MEDIA

Josh Klein

ABSTRACT

Using a critical perspective, this study reviews human rights and media in

the context of capitalist empire, using Habermas’ notion that capitalism

offers formal but not substantive democracy. The author draws the reader

into an impassioned discussion of the failure of government and media to

address the significant inequalities in the world and the resulting human

rights violations to demonstrate that human rights encompass concerns

about economic and social inequalities as well as political and civil rights.

Criticism of how capitalism treats rights has been part of the international

human rights conversation since World War II.

Increasing human rights violations in the world today and the mass

media’s evidentiary lack of interest in the sources of these social problems

underlie the author’s earnest search for a better way. The study draws

from the social science literature, while observing and gathering data on

media coverage. Data limitations on media human rights indicate further

research by the author that would explain the ideology and rhetoric as

well as historic shifting patterns.

Western social reality is alienated from its own criminal past to an alarming degree, and

is therefore encompassed by it.

– Richard Falk

Human Rights and Media

Studies in Communications, Volume 6, 41–56

Copyright r2011 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 0275-7982/doi:10.1108/S0275-7982(2011)0000006005

41

A sociologist from another planet visiting the United States who knew

political history might conclude that the concept of human rights is an idea

the nation has forgotten. If this alien visitor stayed in a hotel room and only

watched TV or surfed major media web sites, he or she would see violations

of every kind of human right: civil, political, social, and economic. But the

talking heads on the tube would rarely use human rights language to

describe these violent and discriminatory acts. If this hypothetical alien were

to venture out to the newsstand or the bookstore and had a critical eye (or

two), he or she would probably find that print news contained a higher

proportion of human rights violations than did the TV or TV network-

related web sites. Yet even in the more sophisticated print media, the term

‘‘human rights’’ or just ‘‘rights’’ would still be hard to find. I have used my

hypothetical alien to evoke a seldom-mentioned contradiction between the

world human rights situation and the American news media’s interest in

human rights. Despite a worldwide human rights crisis, the language of

rights is rare in major US media and elite circles. (The alien visitor idea is

borrowed from Noam Chomsky, who wrote about how a Martian journalist

might cover the war on terror.) My point here is that unburdened by

nationalism and fear, an observer would be impressed by the gap between

the global human rights tragedy and the lack of media interest.

This chapter argues that the dominant US media framing of human rights

reflects the media’s role in constructing a reality that serves elite interests.

Furthermore, I maintain that during the resurgent US neoliberalism and

chauvinism of recent decades, the media treatment of human rights has

become more obviously dismissive and biased, more ideological. This long-

standing pattern and its recent exacerbation are due to the media role in the

larger ideological system, which includes parts of the state, the family,

education, and religious institutions. This larger ideological system main-

tains hegemony by promoting and legitimating the worldview and values of

US capitalism’s upper class. In recent years, the media, like these other

institutions, have increasingly reflected the aggressive top-down agenda of

large corporations. This process is global, but I am focusing on the US in

this chapter.

An obvious question arises. Since the world supposedly changed after

September 2001, can the recent dismissal of human rights be attributed to an

innocent preoccupation with security? Is the media reflecting changed

popular priorities? Have Americans concluded that the right to their

security is more important than other rights like free speech or the right to a

job, taking the media with them? The answer to all these questions is no.

For starters, the decline in media interest in human rights started well

JOSH KLEIN42