D.3 How does wealth influence the mass media? Anarchists have developed detailed and sophisticated analyses of how the wealthy and powerful use the media to propagandise in their own interests. Perhaps the best of these analyses is the "Propaganda Model" expounded in Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, whose main theses we will summarise in this section (See also Chomsky's Necessary Illusions for a further discussion of this model of the media). Chomsky and Herman's "propaganda model" of the media postulates a set of five "filters" that act to screen the news and other material disseminated by the media. These "filters" result in a media that reflects elite viewpoints and interests and mobilises "support for the special interests that dominate the state and private activity." Manufacturing Consent , p. xi]. These "filters" are: (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" (negative responses to a media report) as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism. "The raw material of news must pass through successive filters leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print," | |
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