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From the Editors

In this pathbreaking work, now with a new introduction, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.<br> <br>Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy” versus “unworthy” victims, “legitimizing” and “meaningless” Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.
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Customer Response

This is not the book you think it is
I've made a repeat attempt to tackle this book, which I've always had reservations about.

[1] The main theory - 'propaganda model' - is only 35 pages, less than a tenth of the book - it looks like the initial seed which has been padded out.
[2] The 'model' is: five 'filters', though another is sneaked in. These are (1) Ownership of media [this is pre-Internet, and mostly refers to print]. (2) Advertising and its withdrawal, direction etc. (3) 'Sourcing'. This is almost entirely state sources, including academics and 'think tanks'. (4) Flak and enforcers. (5) 'Anticommunism as a control mechanism. Then (6) in effect biasing the report, clearly shown when switching sides.

The rest of the book is examples: (i) bogus elections, in El Salvador, Guatemaa and Nicaragua. (ii) 'The KGB-Bulgarian Plot to Kill the Pope'. (iii) Indo-China wars - this section is about half the whole book.

So what's the problem? I'll be brief and schematic:
** Although Chomsky emphasises the money-making press, the fact is (pp 19-23) that for example the Pentagon's publishing was 'sixteen times larger than the nation's biggest publisher'. The USAF, US Chamber of Commerce etc etc and 150,00 'professional' PR people would appear to dwarf the press, if I'm reading this book correctly. In other words, in the unlikely event that the publishing combines tried to become open and honest, their output would still be a tiny fraction of the total 'source'.
** Chomsky has a persistent tendency to assume organisations have a genuine purpose. He (as many have noted) has no truck with 9/11, NASA moon frauds, and so on, which are of course hugely expensive frauds. And yet, if you consider the huge military spending, why should it happen to be needed year on year? It's perfectly possible they bombed and burned Vietnamese just as a time-filling makework exercise.
** The whole idea of 'manufacturing consent' seems wrong - the slogan is out of kilter with the facts. What 'consent' have you, reader, given for mass immigration, for example? Or bombing Kosovo? Or invading Iraq? Absolutely none. 'Manufacturing stupidity' or 'manufacturing indifference' may be nearer the mark; but nothing really is 'manufactured'.
** There's a whole section on bogus elections, but Chomsky doesn't seem to compare this with the USA's first-past-the-post system, which has naturally morphed into two big parties. Democracy is a remote ideal, indeed, in the USA too.
** On 'communism', Chomsky never mentions the Jewish funding or personnel, which marks it out as entirely distinct from genuine humanitarian movements. Nor does he mention Mossad plots.
** Chomsky gives figures e.g. (p. 50) 10,000 deaths in El Salvador in 1980, 'disappearances' in Guatemala estimated at 40,000. Out of very roughly 5M and 8M populations at that time. It's an unpleasant thing to say, but knife, gun, and drug crime, infant mortality and so on are rife too.
** The final half of the book, on the Vietnam War, is important as of course it's largely censored. However, again,. what consent did ordinary Americans give to it? And what effect has Chomsky actually had in practice, for example, prosecuting Kissinger, or getting reparations?

I don't think the 'propaganda model' even begins to describe the reality. However the book may be valuable in opening peoples' eyes to military mass murders. Hence 3 stars.

A must read for anyone who watches TV
I think that the vast majority of people living in America believe that the media is in some way bias. Many would also say that political, economical, and governmental interests influence the media, but in a democratic society, such influence has its limits and is legitimate in the capitalistic world we live in. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky set out to analyze such media distortions and censorship-what types of news, which items, and how they are reported-in this book in a scholarly manner and challenge "the democratic postulate.. that the media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the truth, and that they do not reflect the world as powerful groups wish it to be perceived."
"Manufacturing of Consent" is very much stylized as an investigational- polemical form; a thesis backed by its arguments and evidence. The first paragraph of the book sets out its main thesis " The mass media serves as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general public. It's 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 interests, to fulfill his role requires systematic propaganda". Herman and Chomsky employ the model they developed "Propaganda Model" as a framework to test and explain this performance of the American media with its systematic propaganda and censorship; while their investigation is limited to only a few individual cases--three 1980s Central American elections, the alleged 1981 KGB-Bulgarian plot to kill the Pope, and the Indochina Wars -- their model is testable and can be applied and modified to a variety of events. The model is divided among 5 basic filters through which "raw news' is passed through in order to become newsworthy.
The first filter is "the size, ownership and profit orientation" of the media. Since the book was published in 1988 and all its content is from that time period, the filter is explained through the "fact" that large transnational businesses and corporations own much of the mass the media (Advance Publication, Cox Communications, Mc-Graw-Hill, NY Times, Westinghouse). The premise for this is that in 1986 there were 25,000 media entities in all in the U.S-radio, newspaper, TV, book publishers- yet 29 of the largest media systems account for over half of the outputs of the newspaper, magazines, broadcasting, books, and movies. This conglomeration into 29 top tier media systems has resulted from a trend of centralization that has increased in the post WWII rise of TV and national networking era. These large media companies are very much large, profit-seeking corporations that face the pressures of all other businesses-stockholders, directors, markets, and bankers- to focus on the bottom line; revenue. Decreased regulation and restriction on mass media by loosening of rules limiting media concentration, cross ownership, and control by non-media companies has allowed for this trend of centralization toward greater integration of the media in the market system, posing a threat "to the unrestrained commercial use of the airwaves".
Secondly, "the advertising license to do business" is the second filter. Before the province of advertising, the price of a newspaper used to cover the costs of doing business, however, with the introduction of press advertising, papers that attract ads could afford a copy price much cheaper than the production cost, in effect putting the former out of business and the latter dominating today's media; press advertising. So with advertising, the free market does not create a neutral system with buyers choice deciding; rather it's the advertisers choice that ultimately influences the content of the media that they buy and pay for- the "patrons" that provide for the media subsidy. With the "selling message" in mind, advertisers will want to avoid the more intraquite and complex controversies that interfere with the "buying mood", seeking a more entertaining slant that keeps the viewers interest heightened. One example of this in today's news TV stations are the fancy studios with their lights, background music, attractive anchors, and the edits and borders on the screen. Also more recently, this is what caused the TV station HLN to become popular culture- celebrity gossip- "news" channel.
Thirdly, "Sourcing Mass-Media News" is a crucial filter in which "a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest." Media agencies can't afford reporters and cameras everywhere, so economics dictates that they concentrate their sources where significant news often occur, where important rumors and leaks break, and where regular news conferences are held. The main sources that the media relies on are the White House, Pentagon, and State Department for two main reasons: they produce a large volume of material that suits well with the demands of news organizations scheduled flow of coverage, and because they are considered credible sources, the news organizations maintain their image of objectivity in having a trust with the audience and to deter or reduce costs from libel suits/criticism and investigative expenses. The problem with this is that that these three main sources have their own agendas and haven't been very forthcoming in that time with their involvement with Ecuadorian and Salvadorian elections in the 1980's, alleged KGB-Bulgarian Plot, and Indochina Wars (provided with a volume of evidence) and, yet the news proliferators-NY Times, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, - still relied on these "experts" as their sources of information, becoming less an investigative body and more a loudspeaker for propaganda.. This all develops into the classic "revolving door" between the media outlets and government, ultimately influencing public perception of foreign affairs and setting the agenda. Such a "symbiotic relationship" of "..Reciprocity of interest" as mentioned earlier, results in the censorship, selection, and bias of information and events that have resulted in the deaths of millions and spurred the phenomena of "worthy and unworthy" victims in news coverage. A far cry from a democratic none totalitarian system we Americans prize our country as being.
Fourthly, we as people finally have some say as the "flak and enforcers". Negative responses to media statements in the form of letters, telegrams, petitions, law suits, speeches, and bills before congress (punitive action) amounts to costs that must be accounted for and so influencing media coverage. Contrary to how I presented this as "we as people" having such power, it's overwhelmingly produced by large individuals or groups with "substantial resources". Some examples are the American Legal Foundation, the Media Institute, Freedom House, and Accuracy in Media (the more prominent politically funded think-tank's and monitors), but some of the larger producers of flak are also the White House and FCC. This flak forces advertisers to not offend their constituencies because outright boycotts could be held against them and as this model and for most things in the world for that matter, revenue and agenda would be lost. As a result to avoid this, stories are spun and distorted in order to minimize flak fallout and at the same time seriously compromising its integrity. So if certain programs are thought to elicit controversy resulting in flak then as a result they will be negated and avoided. This ability for flak to be produced yet again "reinforces the command of political authority in its news-management activities; sadly.
The last filter is one that has been slightly enhanced-"Anti-communism as a control mechanism"- reflecting the era at the end of the Regan year's in which the book was written, however, implying any prevailing ideology. At the books time, communism the was unequivocally prevailing evil and so across the land (America) property owners were threatened of their class positions and superior status of such Marxists, egalitarian ideologies. The abuses of the Communists in China, Russia, and Cuba were well publicized and used to develop opposition to communism to a first principle of western ideology and politics in very much a fear tactic style as occurred with McCarthyism; a sort of nationalistic religion. The concept is to mobilize a the population against and enemy, and since it's such an abstract concept, it can be used against who supports accommodation with Communists or policies threatening property interests (the left most the time); not even being those who challenge the notion of anti-communism. Assumptions behind ideologies are rarely challenged and are accepted by the masses, and what allows power and political elite to manipulate the country for or against the countries (governments) enemy; a process of manufacturing consent. Today, such ideologies that persist are "the war on terror", "Extremist Muslims", and "Osama Bin-Laden"; not all necessarily being illegitimate threats.
"Furthermore, in a system of high and growing inequality, entertainment is the contemporary equivalent of the Roman "games of the Circus" that diverts the public from politics and generates a political apathy that is helpful to preservation of the status quo". One of the underlying themes from this quote (which is from the book) and the entirety of the book that can be taken is the cliché that history repeats itself--in such a fashion that if we don't challenge the assumptions of how our world works, come to terms with the inherent human interest we all have to some extent for ourselves, the many influencing factors and " selling messages" that infiltrate our lives unconsciously, and that truth shouldn't be marginalized a being merely relative; all themes form the inception of humanity. And this scholarly feat by Herman and Chomsky present this all in an objective fashion in their timelessly supported "Propaganda Model" of past events, but most importantly for future events that will directly effect us.

Not about Ideology, but Perception and Control of It
In "Manufacturing Consent" there are too many concepts to list in this critical and influential work by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. Anyone who receives information from any form of media should read this book. If you're curious and/or question the information that you're bombarded with every single day and night of your life, check out "Manufacturing Consent."

So many questions, and more importantly so many answers, supported by data. Backed by facts. Who decides and chooses what we read and don't read? What we see and don't see? What we hear and don't hear? The power of the media and its influence often stems from not only what is reported but what is *not* reported. This, is power. And, who actually owns the major media conglomerates?

What we, the common people, discuss over a cup of coffee or beer at the dinner table is spoon-fed to us. The "topics of the day," week, or year, are handed to us on a dish. And naively, we eat what's on the plate.

This book is one of Chomsky's most influential and heuristic books. And, there is a reason why Noam Chomsky is blacklisted from the (MSM) mainstream media in the United States, while being the 8th most cited author in the world for over 20 years.


WORTHY VS. UNWORTHY VICTIMS

The concept of the "worthy" vs. "unworthy" victim is statistically studied in "Manufacturing Consent." A worthy victim is abused or murdered in an enemy country by a perceived or actual enemy, whereas an unworthy victim is abused or killed in a "friendly" country. Whether a nation or movement is an "enemy" or "friend" is defined by the mainstream media, which is no doubt firstly influenced by the U.S. government, whose foreign policy establishes the rules, or teams, if you will.

One example of a worthy victim noted was Polish priest and solidarity supporter Jerzy Popieluszko. A perfect example of news creation and news management of propaganda. The Polish secret police abducted, bound and gagged, and murdered Popieluszko and threw his body into a reservoir. The media response and coverage of this was comprehensive, emotional front-page news. But this case, is compared to others. Who chooses to run a story front-page? For how many days? Yes, Popieluszko was a worthy victim to be reported on, but why were so many other "worthy victims" ignored. Ideological management by the mainstream media.

Another more detailed example example of this is in the section covering The Indochine Conflicts in Laos and Cambodia in "Manufacturing Consent."

After reading "Manufacturing Consent" we can recognize our new "heroes" and "worthy victims" of today: with the recent Iraq conflict the media is using the "Cult of the Fallen Soldier," which a concept originally created by the Germans, hundreds of years ago.

Further reporting includes adjectives used to describe the "heroism" and "bravery" of soldiers in military conflict. The specific acts are almost never specifically detailed, nor the details corroborated. Weazel Words. This was very common in Vietnam and now is used in Iraq. Some individual fighting for the "good guys" is labeled a "hero," but we are not informed of the heroic act(s) that he did. Was it documented? As for the term "brave," Perhaps he or she was. We don't know, because we're not told. A recent example is the case of Jessica Lynch. This does not only apply to the false myth of Jessica Lynch, but is used throughout these military-media campaigns to cover all of the participants, be they military, military families, civilian, bureaucrats, (e.b. Paul Bremer) and politicians.

"Manufacturing Consent" is timeless, and we see the mainstream media today function exactly the same way today as it did when this book was written. it's just that the "bad guys" who "threaten" the US and it's 5,100+ nuclear warheads have changed. The fact that this book was written in the late 1980s reinforces the facts that only the players have changed, yet the game remains the same.

Many citizens of the world view "reality" that is carefully constructed for them, and often through an "ideological" lens. There is comprehensive and pervasive censorship in America. The filtering of the info was receive is not about the false "Left vs. Right" paradigm. It's about the paradigm of perception.

PROPAGANDA
PROPAGANDA
Many credit Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" with being the premier study of government propaganda. In Leftist circles it is hailed as a Bible, a rite of passage for any true activist to understand the system. But again, Chomsky's work, while appearing radical, is actually gatekeeper disinfo.

Chomsky spends the entire book attempting to prove that newspapers diminish American war crimes while exaggerating those of foreign governments. Such a point is easy to prove, and he does so in his own droll and methodical method.

Yet he stops there. Chomsky does not discuss the real elephant in the room: direct CIA collaboration with media outlets and journalists beginning in the 1950's under Operation Mockingbird.

Chomsky avoids writing about Mockingbird, the CIA program which covertly put major publishing, newspaper, and media outlets, as well as thousands of individual reporters under direct agency control. Agents included Ben Bradlee at Newsweek, Henry Luce of Time and Life, and Arthur Sulzberger of The New York Times, Alfred Friendly of the Washington Post, and Joseph Harrison Christian Science Monitor.

Shouldn't this a significant development for a historian authoring an honest study of propaganda? After all who is to say that this program doesn't still continue? The Bush administration has admitted spending hundreds of millions on fake newscasts and paying individual reporters like Armstrong Williams to push talking points in newspapers. What about the times they haven't been caught? Exactly how many mainstream commentary and news outlets work with the CIA and White House?

Perhaps this is the reason why the scripts of the nightly news on ABC, CBS, and NBC are almost exactly the same, while Newsweek, Time, and the New York Times push the elitist agenda on cue (as seen most prominently in the run up to the war in Iraq).

Furthermore Chomsky does not discuss collaboration between the Bilderberg Committee and the major media outlets. Shouldn't this concern the so-called radical anarchist, when media editors attend secret meetings calling for eugenics, world government, and a cashless society control grid?

Owners, editors and writers from Time, Newsweek, Economist, Washington Post, New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC and every news outlet in between have attended the world government meetings.

Furthermore, what about the influence of the CFR, which openly calls for a Panamerican Union and the end of American national sovereignty? The CFR counts amongst its members major editors, owners, and journalists in media outlets from PBS to CBS, CNN to News Corp., New Republic to U.S. News and World Report.

Aren't these the reasons that journalists push the propaganda Chomsky identifies? In "Manufacturing Consent," Chomsky takes limited aim at an easy target. But he fails to dig deeper and examine the actual reasons why the propaganda permeates the mainstream media opinion. Clearly the influence of the CIA, CFR, Bilderberg Committee, and White House have turned major media outlets into little more than docile commissars. Furthermore, the interlocking interests of media owners with the military industrial complex have served to sway content even further.

Chomsky's "classic" study is little more than a limited hangout project. He is merely shooting the messengers, blaming journalistic "bias" while failing to follow the trail of money, power, corruption, and black propaganda. Instead, he identifies some passive propaganda and is hailed as a brilliant analyst and purveyor of truth by the Leftist minions. But his true achievement is ignoring the reasons behind the lies, as he executes a masterful bait and switch tactic. Is it a coincidence that Chomsky's co-author for "Manufacturing Consent," Edward Herman, has also denied any government complicity in 9-11?

While claiming to expose propaganda, Chomsky has perfected the art.

The Creel Committee, the corporate media, and systematic deceit: Manufacturing Consent
"They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them of their blindness."
(John Milton; from epigraph to Manufacturing Consent).

In 1917, Woodrow Wilson established an independent agency, known variously as the Committee on Public Information (CPI) and the Creel Committee, whose purpose was to control public opinion in the US with an eye towards generating support for the war effort in general and cultivating a deep seated and abiding hatred of everything German in particular. Further, this bias propagating "machine" did not scruple to arouse fear and hatred of German-Americans as well--that was then manifest by the public at large--so effective was it at compelling prejudice via a calculated use of various media, including print and film.

And, although the CPI had been dissolved within two years, the all-important lesson of methodological mind control of the masses was not lost upon those facilitators of media propaganda Wilson had employed, most famously Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays. Lippmann was to develop his ideas related to the establishing of opinion within the rank and file, which collective he deemed to be inherently deficient in participating in that American polity coming into focus in the aftermath of a world war--and amidst a burgeoning labor movement in early twentieth century America, i.e., the worker-collective response to the exploitative industrial age [Wiki].

As Noam Chomsky has remarked, the system of coercion of the masses striving for improved working conditions would now prescind from the overt brutality and blood letting witnessed at Ludlow, Colorado and Lawrence, Massachusetts--which brutality functioning with the connivance of a State attuned to the prerogatives of the investor class, but notably less sensitive to the realities of the "lower classes" struggling in many cases to meet basic needs--in favor of a subtle but nonetheless effective means of monitoring and influencing the "bewildered herd," as the populace was envisioned by elitist social theorists like Lippmann, Bernays, et al. And that now subtle "means" as propaganda-of-choice was defined alternately as--via Lippmann's metric--the "manufacturing of consent" or consent's "engineering" (via Bernays).

In the now-famous scholarly work, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky develop a model used to demonstrate the existence of bias in the media and, specifically, the manufacturing of consent as verity ensuring the socio-political and economic status quo. The model is tested via the five "filters" they have identified, which filters news must acknowledge before emerging in print or other media as "journalism." The filters which inform the "propaganda model" in Manufacturing Consent are explained as:

"(1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and
profit orientation of the dominant mass-media forms; (2)
advertising as the primary income source of the mass media;
(3) the reliance of the media on information provided by the
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" [MC, 2].

They trace the development of print media in Great Britain and the US throughout the nineteenth century as beginning with newspapers disseminating practical information to a nascent working class, papers of relatively modest size and means by today's standards but, more importantly, unhindered in the type of coverage they may furnish to labor. Owing to the more manageable size of readership and, therefore, production outlays, and as the early news resources were not reliant upon advertising revenues to carry the day-to-day operating costs--and, therefore, less restricted in their coverage of non-market oriented information and views--a freer dissemination of the news to that social strata was sustainable.

As industry, commerce, print technology, and populations develop and expand through the nineteenth, and into the early twentieth centuries, however, the operating costs of early news resources becomes more prohibitive, with the eventual outcome being that only large-scale entities, i.e., corporations and conglomerates, can afford to maintain coverage of what is now an increasingly global field of news interest. Further, as news dissemination becomes a more corporatized affair, information resources for labor in America and Great Britain are now found to be virtually non-existent as the development of union organization is at cross purposes with the State-sanctioned corporate agenda and ideal.

I. Industry's quantum leap forward--and the media follow suit...

The first filter of the propaganda model that Chomsky and Herman define argues to the unremitting increase in size of media concerns, implying, therefore, patent corporate control, corporate agenda and, invariably, news bias at large among what amounts to twenty-four or so mass-media conglomerates functioning in the US today. This fact of corporate presence--and, of course, domination--marks the first significant inroads of the business sector and the investor class into a nation's news media.

In addition to the new media-as-industry profile of news outlets there emerges a linking up of government and media via the need for regulation and oversight of this newly-massive venture. As a result, the State establishes its influence upon news content via the need for media licensure and, consequently, the caution exercised to avoid alienating those in charge of both issuing said media charters as well as effecting media oversight.

"Another structural relationship of importance is the media companies' dependence on and ties with government. The radio-TV companies and networks all require government licenses and franchises and are thus potentially subject to government control or harassment. This technical legal dependency has been used as a club to discipline the media, and media policies that stray too often from an establishment orientation could activate this threat. The media protect themselves from this contingency by lobbying and other political expenditures, the cultivation of political relationships, and care in policy" [MC 13].

The "news" being disseminated to the readership rarely, if ever, contradicts the verities of a commerce-driven socio-political order, thus guaranteeing--via a State-endorsed vicious cycle--the maintenance of the status quo in favor of those in possession of capital and, therefore, in "possession" of the political influence needed to sustain their prerogatives as well. Of the influence upon media objectives by investors, major stockholders, and members of the finance community underwriting media affairs, Chomsky and Herman note:

"These holdings, individually and collectively, do not
convey control, but these large investors can make
themselves heard, and their actions can effect the welfare of
the companies and their managers. If the managers fail to
pursue actions that favor shareholder returns, institutional
investors will be inclined to sell the stock (depressing its
price), or to listen sympathetically to outsiders
contemplating takeovers. These investors are a force
helping press media companies toward strictly market
(profitability) objectives" [MC 11-12].

All of the outside influence from the finance and investment collective serves to limit the occasion of dissent from the received, "party" line, i.e., it serves the maintenance of the socio-economic status quo, which influence careful to uphold the prerogatives of privilege and Power, both in the private sector and the precincts of the State, one working in tandem with the other to achieve corporate goals and prevent capital flight.

"...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; and they are closely interlocked, and
have important common interests, with other major
corporations, banks, and government" [MC 14].

II. Advertising revenues and the marketing of a readership...

The second filter of the propaganda model refers to the rise of a news media underwritten solely by advertising dollars--as opposed to, e.g., the prevalence of left-leaning news resources of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries functioning entirely on copy circulation sales as income, with the income derived from the per-issue price covering both production costs and profit. The point to be considered, though, is that advertising is not a benign presence merely underwriting the day-to-day operating costs of the news outlet without material effect upon the news content at large. That is, the media's reliance upon advertisers for their financial well-being translates into content stress, i.e., market priorities precede those of the news-buying public.

"With advertising, the free market does not yield a neutral system in which final buyer choice decides. The advertisers' choices influence media prosperity and survival" [MC 14].

There inheres now a disseminating of news designed to attract the massive advertising revenues needed to prevail in the highly-competitive media market. The idea stressed, though, is that news media now must "sell" a readership to advertisers marketing goods and services--i.e., "sell" readers as potential consumers--with the Power-based initiative of commerce and investment all but displacing the realities of dissident journalism, and, in turn, labor and its pressing concerns--which concerns perennially contradicting those of the investor class and the business sector, i.e., a "nuisance" to be kept in check.

With the advent of advertising revenues, therefore, the per-issue price of newspapers is reduced--offered below cost--thus eroding the market share of those outlets without advertising who must sell at a much higher per-issue price in order to function, much less compete. The result is the decline and eventual displacing of media outlets serving the labor force, leaving the finance and market-biased media as the only news resource to the community. Chomsky and Herman:

"From the time of the introduction of press advertising,
therefore, working-class and radical papers have been at a
serious disadvantage. Their readers have tended to be of
modest means, a factor that has always affected advertiser
interest. One advertising executive stated in 1856 that some
journals are poor vehicles because, `their readers are not
purchasers, and any money spent on them is so much thrown
away'" [MC 15].

Yet, they note, although market-biased news outlets will tend towards a readership equally inclined towards market interests, investment, and commerce, "they easily pick up a large part of the `down-scale' audience, and their rivals lose market share and are eventually driven out or marginalized" [MC 14-15].

Then, too, the news outlet--i.e., print or other media-will cater to the commercial interests and political leanings of the advertisers by promoting consumerism while declining news critical of, e.g., the corporation as adversary of American labor, or the State as corporate functionary via campaign funding and K Street liberality. The program content of network media reflects those interests even as it avoids content analyzing, e.g., corporate malfeasance, the drive to defeat the EFCA bill, or the channeling of taxpayer dollars to financial interests "too big to fail"--which dollars, an alternative news outlet would argue, might be spent to develop jobs and improve social services for the elderly and other less economically advantaged groups.

"Advertisers will want, more generally, to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the `buying mood.' They seek programs that will lightly entertain and thus fit in with the spirit of the primary purpose of program purchases--the dissemination of a selling message" [MC 17-18].

Further, those news outlets who fail to garner their share of the advertising market owing to, e.g., a readership known by advertisers as economically disadvantaged--and, therefore, not "viable"--will be displaced by its market-biased competitors, with the upshot being that labor now lacks a media outlet favorable to their cause. Citing the research of media analyst James Curran regarding the failure of three newspapers favorable to a working class and its concerns in London, Chomsky and Herman note conclusions similar to their own, arguing:

"...the loss of these three papers was an important contribution to the declining fortunes of the Labour Party, in the case of the Herald specifically removing a mass-circulation institution that provided `an alternate framework of analysis and understanding that contested the dominant systems of representation in both broadcasting and the mainstream press.' A mass movement without any major media support, and subject to a great deal of active press hostility, suffers a serious disability, and struggles against grave odds" [MC 15-16].

III. Mutuality and influence: the media industry and the news-source bureaucracies

The third filter informing the propaganda model as analytical tool is the necessity of a consistently credible--by corporate media standards--source of information distributed as news by the mass media outlets, i.e., "the reliance of the media on information provided by the government, business, and `experts' funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power."

Chomsky and Herman note the extensive news vacuum which media outlets must now fill in order to sustain both the industry as consistent source of news and--more to the point--its advertiser-revenue flows, on a day-to-day basis. The commerce-driven proliferation of news as exchange value commodity is manifest in the now cumbrous mass media, whose needs will be met via repetition of the received view, with said view shored up by the acquiring of "experts"--e.g., academics who proffer their credentials as "verification" of their argument to the news-buying public and are compensated, in exchange, by the corporate media outlets.

"The relation between power and sourcing extends beyond official and corporate provision of day-to-day news to shaping the supply of `experts.' The dominance of official sources is weakened by the existence of highly respectable unofficial sources that give dissident views with great authority. This problem is alleviated by `co-opting the experts'--i.e., putting them on the payroll as consultants, funding their research, and organizing think tanks that will hire them directly and help disseminate their messages. In this way bias may be structured, and the supply of experts may be skewed in the direction desired by the government and `the market'" [MC 23].

The ready supply of processed spin is to be found within both the State and corporate regimes, those bureaucracies providing the daily fodder with which the corporate media outlets fill out their printed matter and evening-news time slots. The unremitting exchange of "news" as commodity has a convenient resource in the State and corporate regimes equally intent upon serving the prerogatives of the investor class as well as hindering dissent and limiting the occasion of meaningful social reform.

"In effect, the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access by their contribution to reducing the media's costs of acquiring the raw materials of, and producing, news. The large entities that provide this subsidy become `routine' news sources and have privileged access to the gates. Non-routine sources must struggle for access, and may be ignored by the arbitrary decision of the gatekeepers" [MC 22].

The policy of what one media executive referred to as the need for "concision" in the relaying of news, i.e., a brief retelling of the received view as party line with minimal deviation from the preferred program is also standard procedure within the mainstream media, and this is particularly the case with network "journalism." Alternative assessments require substantiated data and facts to support dissent and criticism of the party line, which policy of concision conveniently disallowing that necessary additional time allotment. The outcome is predictable and approved, by both advertiser and news outlet, and the policy is strictly observed in the service of the market agenda.

IV. Right-wing antagonists: a State/corporate bludgeon...

The fourth filter refers to the existence of agencies funded by the corporate regime whose purpose is to criticise, censure and otherwise attack the media for any perceived lapse in adhering to the received, politically correct view as defined by the corporate regime, i.e., "`flak' as a means of disciplining the media." Said agencies exist in tandem to the State's censure of "lapses" by a media occasionally critical of, e.g., faulty policy or legislation pursued for reasons of lobby influence versus ethical necessity.

One such agency, Accuracy in Media (AIM) is typical of the aggregate right-wing edifice of control of the media via large infusions of funds from those whose interests are being secured from criticism--and even analysis--when said examination may serve to cast the enterprise in a less than favorable light. Chomsky and Herman:

"AIM was formed in 1969 , and it grew spectacularly in the seventies. Its annual income rose from $5,000 in 1971 to $1.5 million in the early 1980s, with funding mainly from large corporations and the wealthy heirs and foundations of the corporate system. At least eight separate oil companies were contributors to AIM in the early 1980s, but the wide representation in sponsors from the corporate community is impressive. The function of AIM is to harass the media and put pressure on them to follow the corporate agenda and a hard-line, right-wing foreign policy....It conditions the media to expect trouble (and cost increases) for violating right-wing standards of bias" [MC 27-28).

The fall-out occasioned by these attacks from the right may be manifest in litigation, propaganda against the offending media outlet, or withdrawal of advertising revenues, all costly deterrents to any perceived departure from the mainstream media's assigned role of defending investor-class privilege and entitlements, whether in the press or network news outlets.

V. News taboo: the ideological line that is not crossed

The fifth propaganda model filter pertains to the anti-communism mindset as secular religion in the US. With the demise of the Soviet Union, however, that "religion" is now practiced as merely another ideological bias, i.e., an unquestioned belief in "the System," that being the virtually sacrosanct place in the US of capitalism and business as "the American Way." And, Chomsky and Herman note, "Journalism has internalized this ideology."

And, to sustain the analogy, just as communism was perceived to be a haunting dynamic and ideology throughout Europe in Marx's nineteenth century and manifest in the October Revolution and the left-of-center labor activism in Europe and the US---i.e., an unremitting drive to deliver the workers of the world from thrall to industry---so, too, is capitalism and the market economy seen as inevitable and the prevailing "spirit" informing the market's version of democracy---quote-unquote. It is the fifth filter through which news in the US is refracted, the not-to-be-questioned reality informing Empire. Or, as Coolidge avowed, "the business of America is business," i.e., the generating of capital is what we are about.

As those who espoused labor activism as a means to achieve worker's rights were once stigmatized as being un-American, so, too, are those who question the free-market ideology of, e.g., Alan Greenspan---or, latterly, Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner---seen to be un-American adherents of, e.g., Socialism, or, more radically, libertarian socialists as virtual enemies of the State, a view fostered by the market-biased media with few exceptions. Chomsky and Herman:

"A final filter is the ideology of anticommunism. Communism as the ultimate evil has always been the specter haunting property owners, as it threatens the very root of their class position and superior status. The Soviet, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were traumas to Western elites, and the ongoing conflicts and the well-publicized abuses of Communist states have contributed to elevating opposition to communism to a first principle of Western ideology and politics. This ideology helps mobilize the populace against an enemy, AND BECAUSE THE CONCEPT IS FUZZY IT CAN BE USED AGAINST ANYBODY ADVOCATING POLICIES THAT THREATEN PROPERTY INTERESTS....It therefore helps fragment the left and labor movements and serves as a political control mechanism" [MC 29; stress added].

Therefore, and even though the Red scare of the fifties has all but been dismissed, with, e.g., the fall of the Berlin wall, there persists a line in the media establishment beyond which corporate news outlets are not fain to cross, i.e., a left-of-center éminence grise is assumed present and threatening to subvert the values held inviolable by those interests the media is to safeguard. Whether that threat is labor activism contending for fair wages yet perceived as a nuisance to the reified market and investor class, or a political activist in the Dominican Republic working to establish a participatory democracy--in contradiction, e.g., to the wishes of policy makers in DC unnerved by the possibility of a functioning democracy in its proximate sphere of influence--the media filter takes precedence over unbiased coverage of those events of the day.

Coda: the lessons of the Creel Committee

Chomsky and Herman delineate with meticulous and thoroughgoing research the bias present in the mainstream media, and the effect of this predisposition to favor and sustain market and investor-class interests upon those groups kept out of view because their issues, concerns, and needs inconveniently contradict the status quo of wealth and privilege. As the Creel Committee was established to galvanize opinion and "manage consent" during a time of war, so, too, is there a perceived need to manage the consent of the "bewildered herd" in this ongoing class war between, on the one side, the investor, entrepreneurial, and finance regimes, and in contradistinction to privilege and its entitlements, American labor, its workers and families.

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