MDSA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Propaganda Model
A Propaganda Model
Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky
Notes
• 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
• A propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel
effects on mass-media interests and choices.
• The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters," fall under the
following headings;
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;
5. Anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism.
First filter: Size, concentrated ownership.
• It has long been noted that the media are tiered, with the top tier-as measured by prestige,
resources, and outreach-comprising somewhere between ten and twenty-four systems. It is
this top tier, along with the government and wire services, that defines the news agenda
and supplies much of the national and international news to the lower tiers of the media,
and thus for the general public.
• Television is now the principal source of news for the public.
• Many of the large media companies are fully integrated into the market, and for the others,
too, the pressures of stockholders, directors, and bankers to focus on the bottom line are
powerful.
• The large media companies all do business with commercial and investment bankers,
obtaining lines of credit and loans, and receiving advice and service in selling stock and
bond issues and in dealing with acquisition opportunities and takeover threats. These
investors are a force helping press media companies toward strictly market (profitability)
objectives.
• It may be recalled that from I965 to I967, an attempt by International Telephone and
Telegraph (ITT) to acquire ABC was frustrated following a huge outcry that focused on
the dangers of allowing a great multinational corporation with extensive foreign
investments and business activities to control a major media outlet. The fear was that ITT
control "could compromise the independence of ABC’s news coverage of political events
in countries where ITT has interests."
• 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.
• The great media also depend on the government for more general policy support. All
business firms are interested in business taxes, interest rates, labor policies, and
enforcement and non-enforcement of the antitrust laws. GE and Westinghouse depend on
the government to subsidize their nuclear power and military research and development,
and to create a favorable climate for their overseas sales.
The second filter: The advertising license to do business.
• One advertising executive stated in I856 that some journals are poor vehicles because
"their readers are not purchasers, and any money thrown upon them is so much thrown
away."
• In short, the mass media are interested in attracting audiences with buying power
• The power of advertisers over television programming stems from the simple fact that
they buy and pay for the programs-they are the "patrons" who provide the media
subsidy.
• As such, the media compete for their patronage, developing specialized staff to solicit
advertisers and necessarily having to explain how their programs serve advertisers’
needs. The choices of these patrons greatly affect the welfare of the media, and the
patrons become what William Evan calls "normative reference organizations," whose
requirements and demands the media must accommodate if they are to succeed.
• For a television network, an audience gain or loss of one percentage point in the Nielsen
ratings translates into a change in advertising revenue of from $80 to $100 million a
year, with some variation depending on measures of audience "quality." The stakes in
audience size and affluence are thus extremely large, and in a market system there is a
strong tendency for such considerations to affect policy profoundly.
• Advertisers also choose selectively among programs on the basis of their own
principles. Large corporate advertisers on television will rarely sponsor programs that
engage in serious criticisms of corporate activities
• Advertisers 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.
• Television stations and networks are also concerned to maintain audience "flow" levels,
i.e., to keep people watching from program to program, in order to sustain advertising
ratings and revenue.
