By Dino Sossi
Undue Influence–Chomsky’s Propaganda Model
Figure #1 – Hey girl. Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky (Maharjan, 2018)
Most people take media at face value.
Everything we watch on television, listen to on the radio, or read in newspapers seems like it is just the way that it is supposed to be. Programming is programming. News is news, just a normal, objective fact of life.
In short, the media is just the media.
In the late 1980s, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky caused scholars and even members of the mainstream media to revisit the neutrality of the news according to their propaganda model (1988).
Everything Old is New Again: Manufacturing Consent
Figure #2 – Manufacturing Consent (Pantheon, 1988)
Herman and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) helped us view the mass media from a broader perspective. In short, instead of looking myopically at media as an individual industry, the book contextualized it across the broader political and economic landscape where it resides and the larger forces that it encounters.
Key to understanding mass media’s influence on its audience is Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model and its multiple filters (1988).
The Propaganda Model: 5 Filters
Figure #3 – Filter out all of that bad news (Herman, 2018)
Filter #1–Financial Ownership:
The first media filter is financial ownership. Messages are filtered due to the media’s large size, the influence of corporate ownership, and its orientation toward profit. Any information that is shared with the public becomes biased due to these large-scale corporate interests. Unfortunately, radical free presses and similar types of alternative voices have become marginalized and even shut down altogether.
Filter #2–Funding Through Advertising:
The second filter is funding through advertising. Messages become filtered due to the media’s dependence on various forms of advertising. Production costs can be prohibitive, advertising fortunately lowers them. To appease advertisers and the essential funding they provide, news and other stories that dampen the reader’s “buying mood” are excluded or marginalized. News providers essentially sell their buyers to advertisers. Media organizations cannot afford to alienate these buyers.
Filter #3–Reliance on Public Relations (PR):
The third is reliance on public relations (PR). Messages are filtered due to the media’s tendency to rely on public relations to increasingly provide the facts that fill out their stories. Due to limited resources, the mass media needs to rely on various centralized news sources like government officials, major corporations, trade groups, etc. As a result, there is an incentive for journalists and editors not to offend major news sources for fear of having their precious access restricted. Being overly critical and rejecting corporate values becomes difficult; media messages tend not to offend.
Filter #4–Flak:
The fourth is flak – negative responses to various media messages and programming. Messages are filtered due to the impact of various pieces of flak like lawsuits, petitions, phone calls, etc. Doubt is cast against organizations that disagree with corporate assumptions. In short, the public information we consume has been managed.
Filter #5–Anti-communism and Fear:
Finally, the fifth filter is anti-communism, which, over time, has become a more general filter known as fear. Media organizations appeal to the population’s concerns about communism to shape their messages and appeal to their various audiences. As the threat of communism has increasingly waned since the original publication of Manufacturing Consent, the specter of fear has now shifted to encompass evil dictators, the War on Terror, and even eco-terrorists (a.k.a. environmentalists).
Still the One–The Legacy of Chomsky’s Propaganda Model
Over three decades after its initial publication, the legacy of Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model is still prevalent. In short, the media industry creates and shares mass media messages that are distorted due to various forms of propaganda. As a result, when we encounter media messages, we need to keep the various forms of propaganda in mind to help us interpret their meaning more accurately.
References:
Herman, E. S. (2018, Jan 1). The propaganda model revisited. Monthly Review. https://monthlyreview.org/2018/01/01/the-propaganda-model-revisited/
Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. Pantheon Press.
Maharjan, P. (2018, February 17). Propaganda model of communication. Businesstopia. https://www.businesstopia.net/communication/propaganda-model-communication
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