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A Critical Review and Assessment of Herman and Chomsky’s ‘Propaganda Model’ 151

7. Chomsky (1982: 14) does, however, acknowledge seductions of privilege.
8. Personal correspondence, Dr Peter Archibald, Sociology, McMaster University, Hamilton,
Ontario, Canada, November 2001.
9. Edward Herman (2000) adds that, ‘This would seem to be one of the model’s merits; it
shows a dynamic and self-protecting system in operation.’
10. Specifically, when elites are divided over tactics, ‘space’ is created, allowing room for
debate (see Herman, 2000). Hackett (1991: 281) also points out that dissent is likely to find
expression in the major mass media only when certain conditions are met. These
conditions, however, can be seen to favour the explanatory logic of the PM.
11. Despite the gate-keeper model’s theoretic inadequacies, Hackett (1991: 98) states that it is
an appropriate description of the work that newspaper editors actually do ‘with regard to
news about national and international affairs: They select and disseminate, rather than
generate, such news’.
12. Stuart Hall explains that preferred codes are ‘rendered invisible by the process of
ideological masking and taking-for-granted. ... They seem to be, even to those who
employ and manipulate them for the purposes of encoding, simply “the sum of what we
already know”’ (Hall, cited in Winter, 1991: 44).
13. Personal correspondence, Dr Peter Archibald, September 2001.
14. Personal correspondence, Dr Peter Archibald, November 2001.
15. Other scholars contend that media are far more pluralistic. Doyle et al. (1997: 243) state that
‘media are more open, pluralistic, and diverse than the more pessimistic dominant
ideology suggests’.
16. Personal correspondence, Dr Peter Archibald, November 2001.
17. Personal correspondence, Dr Peter Archibald, November 2001.
18. Personal correspondence, Dr Peter Archibald, November 2001.
19. Personal correspondence, Dr Peter Archibald, November 2001.
20. No one theory is all-encompassing, but this does not detract from the fact that the PM can
still be effective in certain cases.
21. Personal correspondence, Dr Valerie Scatamburlo-D’Annibale, November 2001.
22. Personal correspondence, Dr Valerie Scatamburlo-D’Annibale, November 2001.
23. Chomsky (1997a: 61) prefers not to use the term ‘ruling class’, thinking it insufficient for
serious class analysis. Instead, he prefers the term ‘elites’ or ‘dominant elites’, but concedes
that because ‘political discourse is so debased’, it is only possible to ‘talk vaguely about the
establishment’, or about ‘people in the dominant sectors’.
24. The debate here effectively mirrors the Marxist response to the liberal-bourgeois thesis
within Canadian sociology.
25. At the same time, however, Herman and Chomsky (1988: 301) do state that media
behaviour is determined, to the extent that most mass media are themselves interlocked
with the ruling bloc.
26. In Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Chomsky stresses that dissent
culture continues to thrive, despite the structural forces present in the mainstream media.
This is echoed, strongly, by Herman (1996a, 2000) who states that critics often fail to
recognize that the PM is ‘about how the media work, not how effective they are’.
27. In the Preface to Manufacturing Consent Herman and Chomsky (1988: xi) note that: ‘We do
not claim this is all the mass media do, but we believe the propaganda function to be a very
important aspect of their overall service.’
28. Herman and Chomsky (1988: xii) describe the PM as a ‘guided market system’ within
which the guidance is ‘provided by the government, the leaders of the corporate
community, the top media owners and executives, and the assorted individuals and
groups who are assigned or allowed to take constructive initiatives’.
29. Cohen and Young (1973: 16); Clement (1975: 280–1); Martin and Knight (1997: 253);
Bagdikian (1983: 160–73); Lee and Solomon (1990: 65–72); Nelson (1989).
30. Herman (2000) writes that ‘Studies of news sources reveal that a significant proportion of
news originates in public relations releases. There are, by one count, 20,000 more public
relations agents working to doctor the news today than there are journalists writing it.’
31. Source: transcript, ‘Noam Chomsky Meets the Washington Press’, National Press Club,
DC, 11 April 1989, p. 2.