Manufacturing Consent
A Propaganda Model
excerpted from the book
Manufacturing Consent
by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
Pantheon Books, 1988
The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.
In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite. It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest. What is not evident (and remains undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the huge inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance.
A propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public. The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters," fall under the following headings: (I) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (~) 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) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns.
The elite domination of the media and marginalization of dissidents that results from the operation of these filters occurs so naturally that media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news "objectively" and on the basis of professional news values. Within the limits of the filter constraints they often are objective; the constraints are so powerful, and are built into the system in such a fundamental way, that alternative bases of news choices are hardly imaginable. In assessing the newsworthiness of the U.S. government's urgent claims of a shipment of MIGs to Nicaragua on November 5, I984, the media do not stop to ponder the bias that is inherent in the priority assigned to government-supplied raw material, or the possibility that the government might be manipulating the news, imposing its own agenda, and deliberately diverting attention from other material. It requires a macro, alongside a micro- (story-by-story), view of media operations, to see the pattern of manipulation and systematic bias.
(snip)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html---------------------------------------------------
I think if we can stop the media from manufacturing consent
where there is none we have a chance . I just recieved this email
from moveon.org which indicates that Fox News was the place
where the idea of a GOP all night fillabuster about Judicial
Nominees came about . I think if we all try our best to get
this story out there , we'd be doing a great service to the
American people .
Here is the email I recieved from moveon.org:
Dear Media Corps member,
When we launched Fox Watch, we figured you'd find lots to report on. But we never anticipated that the results would come so quickly or be so outrageous. In the first few days of this initiative, we received word of Fox News media malpractice so egregious, we need you to help us alert the rest of the media today.
We've put together a press release about this incident. You can read it and electronically fax it to a news outlet of your choice, then follow up Tuesday with a phone call. Together we can get this incident in the news.
In an October 26 interview, Fox News anchors Tony Snow and Brit Hume questioned Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R.-Tenn.) on his response to the Democratic rejection of Bush's four most radical judicial nominees. The two pressed a reluctant Frist to hold an all-night filibuster session to draw media attention to the Democrats' stance, a strategy supported by many conservative activists. "Why won't you do it?" demanded Snow.
Less than two weeks later, Frist announced just such a session. Fox News crossed the line from journalism into advocacy for conservative causes.
Moreover, before the session began, a leaked memo showed Frist's aide coordinated with Fox News producers to have the Republicans march into the Senate chamber in time for a live shot at the start of Brit Hume's evening news report. Hume and Snow had created the Republicans' media spectacle and now wanted to broadcast the event with dramatic flair.
While Howard Dean has claimed the mantle of the 'Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,' Fox News has clearly become the public relations wing of the Republican Party. This is unacceptable practice for a media outlet, a deception of the American public.
With your help, we can get the rest of the media to pay attention to this deception. We have put together a press release about the incident. Click the link below to read it and fax it to the news outlet of your choice. Tomorrow, follow up with a phone call encouraging them to cover the story.
Read the press release, then fax it to a news outlet of your choosing at:
Sincerely,
--Noah T. Winer
MoveOn.org
November 24, 2003
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
