Page 160 - Communication Theory and Research

McQuail(EJC)-3281-11.qxd 8/16/2005 6:32 PM Page 145

A Critical Review and Assessment of Herman and Chomsky’s ‘Propaganda Model’ 145

part. The net result of this, the authors contend, is self-censorship without any
significant coercion. Media performance is understood as an outcome of market
forces. [...] Herman and Chomsky tell us that the institutional nexus is
extremely tight, such that media share close interlocks with the state and
corporate sectors.
The PM argues that media serve ‘political ends’ by mobilizing bias, patterning
news choices, marginalizing dissent, by allowing ‘the government and dominant
private interests to get their messages across to the public’ 28 (Herman and
Chomsky, 1988: 2).
According to this framework, media serve to foster and reinforce an intel-
lectual and moral culture geared towards protecting wealth and privilege ‘from
the threat of public understanding and participation’ (Chomsky, 1989: 14).

The general picture is of a media machine acting as a self-regulating system
where propaganda is produced voluntarily and in a decentralized way by
media personnel who censor themselves on the basis of internalized sense
of political correctness. (Rai, 1995: 46)

Market forces in action: the five ‘filter
elements’ (constraints) explained

Herman and Chomsky (1988: 1–35) argue that the ‘raw material of news’ passes
through a series of five interrelated filter constraints, ‘leaving only the cleansed
residue fit to print’. These filter elements continuously ‘interact with and reinforce
one another’ and have multilevel effects on media performance (Herman and
Chomsky, 1988: 2). The five filter elements are:

... (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit
orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the
primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on
information provided by government, business, and ‘experts’ funded and
approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) ‘flak’ as a
means of disciplining the media; and (5) ‘anti-communism’ as a national
religion and control mechanism. (Herman and Chomsky, 1988: 2)

The first filter constraint emphasizes that media are closely interlocked and
share common interests with other dominant institutional sectors (corporations,
the state, banks) (Herman and Chomsky, 1988: 3–14). As Herman and Chomsky
point out: ‘the dominant media firms are quite large businesses; they are
controlled by very wealthy people or by managers who are subject to sharp
constraints by owners and other market-profit-oriented forces’ (Herman and
Chomsky, 1988: 14).
The second filter highlights the influence of advertising values on the news
production process. To remain financially viable, most media must sell markets
(readers) to buyers (advertisers). This dependency can directly influence media