Source : Calgary Herald

Consumers of television news looking for obvious signs of bias should listen for the subtle sounds of propaganda in the music played during nightly newscasts, new research shows.

Carleton University's James Deaville studied the background music used by CBC Newsworld and CNN in the news coverage following the 9/11 attacks, and found a decidedly more gentle sound north of the border.

"It had a martial component, but it moved towards a softer sound," the music professor said in an interview.

"I think CNN was both trying to play on the tragedy and the fear, to say that this isn't over yet and it's an ongoing thing.

"It had a strong tone of revenge in the music. With the CBC, you just didn't get that. Maybe it was too Canadian. It wasn't advocating a rash response. It was an attempt to step back."

Results of the comparative study will be published in the forthcoming book Music in the Post-9/11 World, a collection of essays by music scholars exploring musical responses to the attacks.

Deaville, who has coined the term "auricular" aspects to describe the sounds of propaganda used by networks when packaging news reports, urges viewers to pay more attention to the music. In other words, he says, viewers should "audio-view" -- not just watch -- the news.

Providing music for broadcast media is a multimillion-dollar industry. Some national networks have either a composer on staff or commission music for special news events.

Local or smaller stations usually buy licensed packages or libraries of musical material from production companies.

In the case of CBC Newsworld's 9/11 coverage, Deaville tracked changes made to the music in the hours and days following the attacks.

Within nine hours of the attacks, Newsworld included an extended musical theme to the video footage. Over the next nine hours, the network constantly reworked the music to hit the right tone.

CNN added music to its special "America Under Attack" coverage 12 hours after it had begun.

Deaville does not know the identity of the composer, but believes the network likely commissioned the music, which he says had a "fear and anger" theme evoking horror and fear while simultaneously cultivating anger to garner support for a counter-attack.

The music was a mix of martial snare drums, a driving string part, a plagal cadence (frequently used in setting the word "amen") and bell sound -- evoking the drums of attack and war, and the bell of death and of a call to arms.

Deaville has also compared the music used by the American networks to cover the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, commissioned specifically for the news event. In CNN's case, the network prepared its music for news coverage of the war six months prior to the invasion, says Deaville.

It's difficult to gauge the effectiveness of music as a tool of propaganda because measuring audience responses is a challenge, he says.

But Deaville quickly adds that networks wouldn't spend so much money on composers, musical packages and sound editing in broadcasts if there were no return on the investment.

© Calgary Herald