Herman and Chomsky (1998) have believed that media outlets tend to transmit news that are in line with the values and beliefs of media entities and their partners. The authors have developed a model that sheds light on different factors that help integrate manipulated public information into the minds of people through propaganda. These factors include:
- The size, concentrated ownership, and profit orientation of mass media firms which highlights the centralization of mass media entities in the hands of a few elites. The latter is due to the large investments and costs needed to start such a business which in turn makes the wealthy dominate this sector. This concentrated ownership leads to shaping information as per the interests of the partnering corporations, the advertising companies and the wealthy owners. In addition, media outlets also need licenses and legal documents for legitimacy and as a result, the government sometimes is capable of intervening in the transmission of news across the public due to the media’s technical dependency on them.
- Advertising: For all media outlets, advertising is considered a major funding mechanism that helps in increasing their income and reducing their costs of production. This factor can also help in filtering the news since anything played or broadcasted that is not in line with the interests of advertisement providers may lead to a contract withdrawal and thus a risk of damaging the organization’s reputation. For example
- Source: To remain credible and avoid any kind of criticism, media organizations tend to be objective by relying on credible sources or its equivalent. However, sometimes having wealth and power can allow certain sources to manipulate the mass media into following a special agenda and into inducing change in their media policies.
- Flak: refers to the negative, damaging reactions formed by the local, national or international community towards a certain published statement or broadcasted programme by any media entity. However, when formed on an international scale, this would greatly damage the reputation of the organization attacked; notably, the sources creating such criticism must have great power to produce large scale flak. That’s why the media will always try to avoid statements which may bring flak and will always filter items that may cause the latter -prior to their publishing.
- The common enemy: as evident by the aforementioned filters, the media is controlled by a minority of elites; as a result, anything concerning communism is always portrayed drastically corrupt and immoral. Communism threatened this minority rule as it spread consciousness on the ideological and ethical domination of the ruling class in every epoch and its indirect control of the masses’ belief and value systems. Therefore, any item that portrayed the good side of communism was seen as a threat that must be reformed to match the benefits of the corporation’s owner(s).
Example on the fourth filter: “Flak”
Murdering journalists for doing their work: The worst type of flak might be the physical damage done to journalists for trying to portray the truth in its exact details. A lot of countries tend to voice the importance of freedom of speech on the news and on t.v shows; however, when it comes to the practical work, journalists suffer from a lot of constraints when trying to portray the event as it is. As previously mentioned, the worst type might be physically damaging journalists. For instance, Israeli soldiers target the Palestinian press when trying to cover the protests and according to the investigative committee of the UN’s Human Rights Council (2019), 39 Palestinian journalists were wounded by sniper shots and two photographers were found dead at the Gaza fence in 2018.
References:
Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (1988). A Propaganda Model [read excerpts]. Excerpted
from Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media (1st ed.). New
York, N.Y: Pantheon Books. Retrieved from: https://chomsky.info/consent01/
Omachonu, J. O., & Schultz, D. (n.d.). Media Concentration. Retrieved from https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1127/media-concentration
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