Page 410 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Propaganda Model |

The propaganda model assumes that regularities of misrepresentation in
media flow directly from the concentration of power in society. It holds that
media interlock with other institutional sectors in ownership, management,
and social circles, effectively circumventing their ability to remain analytically
detached from the power structures of which they themselves are integral parts.
The net result of this, the model concludes, is self-censorship, without any sig-
nificant coercion. Media performance is understood as an outcome of market
forces.
This model has been a battleground issue because it questions many of the
basic assumptions of American democratic media practices, especially First
Amendment guarantees of a free and open press able to provide citizens with
the information they need to shape their own lives, elect their leaders, and
create policies in their own interests. Yet like most critical ideas, the model
challenges the media to live up to its democratic mandate and it points to the
ways in which, and reasons why, the fourth estate often fails to keep the public
informed. In addition, in a country that prides itself on its freedom of express
and civil liberties, the model asserts that Americans are the targets of an all-
encompassing propaganda environment that is almost invisible and is infre-
quently identified as such. Though it presents at times devastating criticisms of
the media that many believe to be extreme, over the past 20 years the model has
proven to be a useful tool to scholars and analysts seeking to understand the
complexities of how and why the media often fail to live up to their democratic
mandate.

ThE FivE FiLTErs
The propaganda model presumes that a series of five interrelated filters
constrain how media create news. In brief, these influences include: (1) own-
ership, size, and profit orientation of dominant media firms; (2) advertising
as the principle source of media revenue; (3) dominance of official sources
within the news; (4) flak as a control mechanism; and (5) anti-communism
and/or the dominant ideology as a means of social control. Herman and
Chomsky maintain that these pressures on reporting are the most dominant
elements in the news production process. The filters interact, but also operate
individually and one filter may have more influence at any one point in time.
How particular topics, issues, events, actors, and viewpoints are represented
within the news, and whether they are present at all, is bound to the structural,
institutional context(s) in which news itself is created and produced. The un-
derlying assumption is that media shape public opinion by controlling what
ideas are presented and how they are treated, and also by limiting the range of
credible alternatives.
According to Chomsky, social control within the capitalist democracies is
so effective because ideological indoctrination is combined with a general im-
pression that society is relatively open and free. The view of dominant social
institutions as autocratic, oppressive, deterministic, and coercive can be un-
derstood as the bedrock on which the foundations of the propaganda model