Page 411 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

0 | Propaganda Model

FroM the Cold war Filter to anti-terrorisM
Written at the tail end of the Cold War, Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model made
note of the anti-Communist filter on news at the time. Like most Americans, many journal-
ists had been trained to vilify Communism, and thus actions of Communist or even Social-
ist governments were reported with suspicion and wariness, and domestic policy reporting
was careful not to appear in any way sympathetic to Communism or Communist causes.
The result was yet another limitation on American journalism that predetermined the frame
within which much world news was set, and that restricted the sort of reporting that could
take place domestically. Twenty years later, post–Cold War, remnants of a long held anti-
Communism, and hence of the anti-Communist filter, have not yet passed on, but they have
been replaced more prominently with an anti-terrorism filter. Rhetoric similar to the Cold
War era is once again common, as journalism participates in the Bush administration’s divi-
sion of the world into the good guys and bad guys, lovers of freedom and forces of hate, the
noble and the evil. Anti-Communism used to illicit conformity, in much the same way that
anti-terrorism filter has used fear to stifle dissent and challenge long-standing civil liberties
and freedoms.
As earlier, many journalists fear appearing to be “anti-American” by examining social
or cultural issues behind “terrorism,” or even sometimes of interrogating the complicity
of Western democracies in financing and establishing “terrorists.” Once more, then, much
international news is framed and thereby told before a journalist even studies the facts,
and much domestic policy reporting reacts to the much-hyped figure of the terrorist. As
such, the anti-Communist filter has become, or, rather, has been supplemented by, the anti-
terrorist filter.

are constructed. The propaganda model is first and foremost an institutional
critique of media. It is a critical perspective, one that conceptually confronts
how the interrelations of state, market and ideology constrain democracy,
and it theorizes the operation of power in relation to dominant structural el-
ements. Many scholars have embraced the model principally because it of-
fers an attractive analytical framework, one that is oriented toward empirical
research.
The propaganda model assumes that media choices pertaining to story
treatment are fundamentally political choices. It predicts that the treatment
accorded certain events, actors, and voices will differ in ways that serve politi-
cal ends. The model has its own methodological approach to the study of news
discourse.

CEnTraL mEThoDoLogiCaL TEChniquEs
Some commentators have suggested that Herman and Chomsky’s propa-
ganda model does not constitute a fully fledged analysis of media discourse be-
cause no single article or book chapter has been devoted to methodology alone,
and scholars have been required to consult a diverse range of books and essays