Herman and Chomsky

Herman and Chomsky’s Model of Propaganda

Herman and Chomsky’s Model of Propaganda was created in 1988, around the end of the Cold War. Herman and Chomsky argued that as a result of the political economy of the news industry, a news story must pass through five filters before it is declared ‘fit to print’ or ‘fit to broadcast’. The model is often referred to as ‘manufacturing consent’ as a shorthand as the model first appeared in Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s book Manufacturing Consent.

The structure of the model has five filters. The first is Financial Ownership.

All companies exist to serve the aims of the owners. However, there are very few mass media companies that control most of the news channels, papers and websites.  There are six main ones-News Corp, Disney, Viacom, GE, Warner Brothers and CBS.

The second filter in the Model of Propaganda is News Sourcing.

News media are pressured now to publish at minimal costs; so many news organisations source their news items from the same source-i.e. Reuters-rather than send their reporters out on the street. This also means that very little time is spent checking whether the news source is verified.

The third filter is Funding through Advertising.

Newspapers and news websites are increasingly reliant on advertising as a primary source of funding. In order to remain profitable, mass media outlets rely on their revenue as their source of income. It is therefore against the interests of the news media-whether it is a website or a paper-to run a story that is against that of the advertisers. This could mean a loss of funding and a loss of revenue.

The fourth filter is Flak.

Here, flak refers to negative feedback or responses to a media statement and it can take many forms from petitions, to simply angry letters or social media posts. Flak can be extremely costly to the mass media if enough of it is produced as it could cost advertisers to pull the funding, in particular advertisers on the television. When it transpired in early 2015 that an NBC newsreader lied about an experience in Iraq, NBC was left with no choice but to fire the reporter in question as it would be costly if they kept him, especially coming under such heavy criticism from the public.

The fifth and final filter is Anti-Communism.

As communism was portrayed as the ultimate evil back in the Cold War (1945-1991), it was the norm to portray the Cubans, Chinese, Vietnamese and particularly the Soviets in a very negative light. Especially given the Cold War threats of nuclear war, the reports of Russia carrying weapons of mass destruction was a worrying issue for the West.  Of course, the West also carried these weapons and this led to the creation of M.A.D, mutually assured destruction.

In the present, post-9/11 world, the biggest threat portrayed to us in the West is radical extremist terrorist groups. However, anti-communism is still shown as a threat to us, this time in the form of North Korea and their dictator, Kim Jong Un.

References:

Changing Minds. (2002). The Herman-Chomsky Propaganda Model.Available: http://changingminds.org/techniques/propaganda/propaganda_model.htm. Last accessed Mar 6th 2015.

Enoch, S. (2013). Theory: The Propaganda Model. Available: http://beautifultrouble.org/theory/the-propaganda-model/. Last accessed Mar 6th 2015.

Ford, D. (2016). North Korea threatens nuclear strike over U.S.-South Korean exercises. Available: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/06/asia/north-korea-preemptive-nuclear-strike-threat/. Last accessed Mar 8th 2016.

Herman, E, Chomsky, N. (Date Given 1988). Manufacturing Consent A Propaganda Model excerpted from the book Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. Available: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html. Last accessed Mar 6th 2015.

Press Trust of India. (2016). ISIS has eclipsed Al-Qaeda as principal terror threat: US. Available: http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/isis-has-eclipsed-al-qaeda-us-116030800294_1.html. Last accessed Mar 8th 2016.

Trueman, C.N. (2015). What Was the Cold War?. Available: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/the-cold-war/what-was-the-cold-war/. Last accessed Mar 5th 2015.