The Propaganda Model

The Propaganda Model

             The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky to explain how propaganda and systemic biases function in mass media. First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, basically the model explains how private business are after their higher sale money by selling the product (readers and audiences) to the advertisers rather than providing quality news. Here the news is being misshaped and reformed from its original form. Herman and Chomsky call the factors which misshape news as filters. The news is being filtered by each of these factors before they reach its audience or general public. Describing the media's "societal purpose", Chomsky writes, "... the study of institutions and how they function must be scrupulously ignored, apart from fringe elements or a relatively obscure scholarly literature".

The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five classes are:

1.   Ownership of the medium

2.   Medium's funding sources

3.   Sourcing

4.   Flak

5.   Anti-communism and fear ideology

The first three are said to be the most important factor, by the authors. In versions published after the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001, Chomsky and Herman updated the fifth prong to instead refer to the War on Terror and anti terrorism, although they state that it operates in much the same manner.

Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles which the model postulates as the cause of media biases