Propaganda model

The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that states how propaganda, including systemic biases, function in mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are propagandized and how consent for various economic, social and political policies are "manufactured" in the public mind due to this propaganda.

The theory posits that the way in which news is structured (through advertising, media ownership, government sourcing and others) creates an inherent conflict of interest which acts as propaganda for undemocratic forces.

Overview

First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the "Propaganda model" views the private media as businesses interested in the sale of a product — readers and audiences — to other businesses (advertisers) rather than that of quality news to the public. Describing the media's "societal purpose", Chomsky writes, "... the study of institutions and how they function must be scrupulously ignored, apart from fringe elements or a relatively obscure scholarly literature". The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five classes are:

1. Ownership of the medium
2. Medium's funding sources
3. Sourcing
4. Flak
5. Anti-communist ideology

The first three are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important.

Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles which the model postulates as the cause of media biases.

The filters

Ownership

Main article: Concentration of media ownership

The size, and profit-seeking imperative of the dominant media corporations is said to create a bias. The authors point to how in the early nineteenth century, a radical British press had emerged which addressed the concerns of workers but excessive stamp duties, designed to restrict newspaper ownership to the 'respectable' wealthy, began to change the face of the press. Nevertheless there remained a degree of diversity. In postwar Britain, radical or worker-friendly newspapers such as the Daily Herald, News Chronicle, Sunday Citizen (all since failed or absorbed into other publications) and the Daily Mirror (at least until the late 1970s) regularly published articles questioning the capitalist system. The authors posit that these earlier radical papers were not constrained by corporate ownership, and were therefore free to criticize the capitalist system.

Herman and Chomsky argue that since mainstream media outlets are currently either large corporations or part of conglomerates (e.g. Westinghouse or General Electric), the information presented to the public will be biased with respect to these interests. Such conglomerates frequently extend beyond traditional media fields, and thus have extensive financial interests that may be endangered when certain information is widely publicized. According to this reasoning, news items that most endanger the corporate financial interests of those who own the media will face the greatest bias and censorship.

It then follows that if to maximize profit means sacrificing news objectivity, then the news sources that ultimately survive must be fundamentally biased, with regard to news in which they have a conflict of interest.

Funding

The second filter of the propaganda model is funding generated through advertising. Most newspapers have to attract and maintain a high proportion of advertising in order to cover the costs of production; without it, they would have to increase the price of their newspaper. There is fierce competition throughout the media to attract advertisers; a newspaper which gets less advertising than its competitors is put at a serious disadvantage. Lack of success in raising advertising revenue was another factor in the demise of the 'people's newspapers' of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The product is composed of the affluent readers who buy the newspaper — who also comprise the educated decision-making sector of the population — while the audience includes the businesses that pay to advertise their goods. According to this filter, the news itself is nothing more than "filler" to get privileged readers to see the advertisements which makes up the real content, and will thus take whatever form is most conducive to attracting educated decision-makers. Stories that conflict with their "buying mood", it is argued, will tend to be marginalized or excluded, along with information that presents a picture of the world that collides with advertisers' interests. The theory argues that the people buying the newspaper are themselves the product which is sold to the businesses that buy advertising space; the news itself has only a marginal role as the product.

Sourcing

The third of Herman and Chomsky's five filters relates to the sourcing of mass media news: "The mass media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest." Even large media corporations such as the BBC cannot afford to place reporters everywhere. They therefore concentrate their resources where major news stories are likely to happen: the White House, the Pentagon, 10 Downing Street, and other centralised news "terminals". Although British newspapers may occasionally complain about the "spin-doctoring" of New Labour, for example, they are in fact highly dependent upon the pronouncements of "the Prime Minister's personal spokesperson" for government-related news. Business corporations and trade organizations are also trusted sources of stories considered newsworthy. Editors and journalists who offend these powerful news sources, perhaps by questioning the veracity or bias of the furnished material, can be threatened with the denial of access to their media life-blood - fresh news. Thus, the media become reluctant to run articles that will harm corporate interests that provide them with the resources that the media depend upon.

This relationship also gives rise to a "moral division of labor", in which "officials have and give the facts," and "reporters merely get them". Journalists are then supposed to adopt an uncritical attitude that makes it possible for them to accept corporate values without experiencing cognitive dissonance.

Flak

The fourth filter is 'flak', described by Herman and Chomsky as 'negative responses to a media statement or [TV or radio] program. It may take the form of letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, law-suits, speeches and Bills before Congress, and other modes of complaint, threat and punitive action'. Business organizations regularly come together to form flak machines. Perhaps one of the most well-known of these is the US-based Global Climate Coalition (GCC) - comprising fossil fuel and automobile companies such as Exxon, Texaco and Ford. The GCC was started up by Burson-Marsteller, one of the world's largest public relations companies, to attack the credibility of climate scientists and 'scare stories' about global warming.

For Chomsky and Herman "flak" refers to negative responses to a media statement or program. The term "flak" has been used to describe what Chomsky and Herman see as targeted efforts to discredit organizations or individuals who disagree with or cast doubt on the prevailing assumptions which Chomsky and Herman view as favorable to established power (e.g., "The Establishment"). Unlike the first three "filtering" mechanisms — which are derived from analysis of market mechanisms — flak is characterized by concerted and intentional efforts to manage public information.

Anti-communism and fear

So I think when we talked about the "fifth filter" we should have brought in all this stuff -- the way artificial fears are created with a dual purpose...partly to get rid of people you don't like but partly to frighten the rest. Because if people are frightened, they will accept authority.

— Noam Chomsky

The fifth and final news filter that Herman and Chomsky identified was 'anti-communism'. Manufacturing Consent was written during the Cold War. Chomsky updated the model as "fear", often times as 'the enemy' or an 'evil dictator', including dictators such as Colonel Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, or Slobodan Milosevic. This is exemplified in British tabloid headlines of 'Smash Saddam!' and 'Clobba Slobba!'. The same is said to extend to mainstream reporting of environmentalists as 'eco-terrorists'. The Sunday Times ran a series of articles in 1999 accusing activists from the non-violent direct action group Reclaim The Streets of stocking up on CS gas and stun guns.

Anti-ideologies exploit public fear and hatred of groups that pose a potential threat, either real, exaggerated, or imagined. Communism once posed the primary threat according to the model. Communism and socialism were portrayed by their detractors as endangering freedoms of speech, movement, the press, and so forth. They argue that such a portrayal was often used as a means to silence voices critical of elite interests.

Empirical support

Following the theoretical exposition of the propaganda model, Manufacturing Consent contains a large section where the authors seek to test their hypotheses. If the propaganda model is right and the filters do influence media content, a particular form of bias would be expected — one that systematically favors corporate interests.

They also looked at what they perceived as naturally-occurring "historical control groups" where two events, similar in their relevant properties but differing in the expected media attitude towards them, are contrasted using objective measures such as coverage of key events (measured in column inches) or editorials favoring a particular issue (measured in number).

Examples

Coverage of "enemy" countries

[The polls] show that all of the opposition parties in Nicaragua combined had the support of only 9 percent of the population, but they have 100 percent of Stephen Kinzer.

Noam Chomsky

Examples of bias given by the authors include the failure of the media to question the legality of the Vietnam War while greatly emphasizing the Soviet war in Afghanistan as an act of aggression. Other biases include a propensity to emphasize violent acts "genocide" more in enemy or unfriendly countries such as Kosovo while ignoring greater genocide in allied countries such as the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. This bias also said to exist in foreign elections, giving favorable media coverage to fraudulent elections in allied countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala, while unfavorable coverage is given to legitimate elections in enemy countries such as Nicaragua.

A study found that in the lead up to the Iraq War, most sources were overwhelmingly in favor of the invasion.

Chomsky also asserts that the media accurately covered events such as the Battle of Fallujah but because of an ideological bias, it acts as pro-government propaganda. In describing coverage of raid on Fallujah General Hospital he states that The New York Times, "accurately recorded the battle of Fallujah but it was celebrated...it was celebration of ongoing war crimes". The article in question was "Early Target of Offensive Is a Hospital".

Scandals of leaks

The authors point to biases that are based on only reporting scandals which benefit a section of power, while ignoring scandals that impact the powerless. The biggest example of this was how the US media greatly covered the Watergate Scandal, but ignored the COINTELPRO exposures. While Watergate helped Democrats, and only harmed people politically, COINTELPRO harmed average citizens and went as far as political assassination. Other cited examples include coverage of the Iran-Contra Scandal as only focusing on people in power such as Oliver North but omitted coverage of the civilians killed in Nicaragua as the result of aid to the contras.

In a 2010 interview, Chomsky compared media coverage of the Afghan War Diaries released by Wikileaks and lack of media coverage to a study of severe health problems in Fallujah. While there was ample coverage of Wikileaks there was no American coverage of the Fallujah study, in which the health situation in Fallujah was described by the British media as "worse than Hiroshima".

Applications

See also: Media coverage of the Iraq War and Media coverage of climate change

Kofi Annan and Richard Perle have said the Iraq War is illegal, but this was never mentioned in the US media.

Since the publication of Manufacturing Consent, both Herman and Chomsky have adopted the theory and have given it a prominent role in their writings, lectures, and theoretical frameworks. Chomsky, in particular, has made extensive use of its explanative power to lend support to his own interpretations of mainstream media attitudes towards a wide array of events, including the following:

• Gulf War (1990), the media's failure to report on Saddam's peace offers.

• Iraq invasion (2003), the media's failure to report on the legality of the war despite overwhelming public opinion in favor of only invading Iraq with UN authorization. According to the liberal watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, there was a disproportionate focus on pro-war sources while total anti-war sources only made up 10% of the media (with only 3% of US sources being anti-war).

• Global warming, the media gives near equal balance to people who deny climate change despite only "about one percent" of climate scientists taking this view. Chomsky commented that there are "three sides" on climate change, the last of which are "denialists" who say the scientific consensus is "nowhere near grave enough".

Influence and reaction

On the rare occasions the propaganda model is discussed in the mainstream media there is usually a large reaction. In 1988, when Chomsky was interviewed by Bill Moyers there were 1,000 letters in response, one the biggest written reactions in the show's history. When he was interviewed by TV Ontario, the show generated 31,321 call-ins which was a new record for the station. In 1996, when Chomsky was interviewed by Andrew Marr the producer commented that the response was "astonishing". He commented that

"The audience reaction was astonishing... I have never worked on a programme which elicited so many letters and calls".

Pressure groups

With the emergence of the Internet as a cheap and potentially wide-ranging means of communication, a number of independent websites have surfaced which adopt the propaganda model to subject media to close scrutiny. Several examples of these are, Free Press, FAIR and the anti-corporate Media Lens, a British-based site authored by David Edwards and David Cromwell.

In May, 2007, both Chomsky and Herman spoke at the University of Windsor in Canada summarizing developments and responding to criticisms related to the model. Both authors stated they felt the propaganda model is still applicable today (Herman said even more so than when it was originally introduced), although they did suggest a few areas where they believe it falls short and needs to be extended in light of recent developments.

Harvard media torture study

From the early 1930s until...2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27). By contrast, from 2002‐2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to waterboarding as torture.

John F. Kennedy School of Government

In April, 2010, a study conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School showed that media outlets such as the New York Times and Los Angeles Times stopped using the term "torture" for waterboarding when the US government partook in it from 2002 to 2008. It also noted that the press was "much more likely to call waterboarding torture if a country other than the United States is the perpetrator." The study was very similar in nature to media studies done in Manufacturing Consent for topics such as comparing how the term "genocide" is used in the media when referring to allied and enemy countries.

Studies of other countries

Chomsky has commented in the "ChomskyChat Forum" on the applicability of the Propaganda Model to the media environment of other countries:

That's only rarely been done in any systematic way. There is work on the British media, by a good U[niversity] of Glasgow media group. And interesting work on British Central America coverage by Mark Curtis in his book Ambiguities of Power. There is work on France, done in Belgium mostly, also a recent book by Serge Halimi (editor of Le Monde diplomatique). There is one very careful study by a Dutch graduate student, applying the methods Ed Herman used in studying US media reaction to elections (El Salvador, Nicaragua) to 14 major European newspapers. [...] Interesting results. Discussed a bit (along with some others) in a footnote in chapter 5 of my book "Deterring Democracy[".]

Criticism

Inroads: A Journal of Opinion

Gareth Morley argues in an article in Inroads: A Journal of Opinion that widespread coverage of Israeli mistreatment of protesters as compared with little coverage of similar (or much worse) events in sub-Saharan Africa is poorly explained. Chomsky responded that when testing a model, examples should be carefully paired to avoid reasons for discrepancies not related to political bias. For instance, general coverage of the two areas compared should be similar. In this case, according to Chomsky, they are not: news from Israel (in any form) is far more common than news from sub-Saharan Africa.

New York Times Review

Historian Walter LaFeber criticized the book Manufacturing Consent for overstating its case, in particular with regards to reporting on Nicaragua, and not adequately explaining how a powerful propaganda system would let military aid to the Contra rebels be blocked. Herman responded in a letter by stating that the system was not "all powerful" and that LaFeber did not address their main point regarding Nicaragua. LaFeber replied that:

Mr. Herman wants to have it both ways: to claim that leading American journals "mobilize bias," but object when I cite crucial examples that weaken the book's thesis. If the news media are so unqualifiedly bad, the book should at least explain why so many publications (including my own) can cite their stories to attack President Reagan's Central American policy.

See also

• Corporate censorship
• Concentration of media ownership
• Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
• Media Lens
• Free Press
• Independent Media Center
• Media Matters for America
• Media bias
• United States journalism scandals

External links

• The Propaganda Model Revisited by Edward S. Herman, 1996
• The Propaganda Model: An Overview by David Cromwell, 2002
• A Critical Review and Assessment of Herman and Chomsky's Propaganda Model, by Jeffery Klaehn, European Journal of Communication 17(2), 2002
• The Propaganda Model: A Retrospective by Edward S. Herman, 2003
• Media, Power and the Origins of the Propaganda Model: An Interview with Edward S. Herman by Jeffery Klaehn, 2008
• The Herman-Chomsky Propaganda Model Twenty Years On Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 6(2), 2009
• Propaganda Model Resource List at Source Watch

Online Videos

• Manufacturing Consent, The Propaganda Model, 1992
• 'Noam Chomsky - Exception to the Rulers: Media in Democracy'
• 'Noam Chomsky - The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Part 1'
• 'The Myth of the Liberal Media: The Propaganda Model of News'
• Chomsky "Media" interview by Andrew Marr The Big Idea, 1996