Editing Propaganda model (section)

== Filters ==

=== Ownership ===
The size and [[Profit (accounting)|profit]]-seeking imperative of dominant media corporations create a bias. The authors point to how in the early nineteenth century, a radical British press had emerged that addressed the concerns of workers, but excessive [[stamp duties]], designed to restrict newspaper ownership to the 'respectable' wealthy, began to change the face of the press. Nevertheless, there remained a degree of diversity. In post World War II Britain, radical or worker-friendly newspapers such as the ''[[Daily Herald (UK newspaper)|Daily Herald]]'', ''[[News Chronicle]]'', ''[[Sunday Citizen]]'' (all since failed or absorbed into other publications), and the ''[[Daily Mirror]]'' (at least until the late 1970s) regularly published articles questioning the [[capitalist]] system. The authors posit that these earlier radical papers were not constrained by corporate ownership and therefore, were free to criticize the capitalist system.

[[File:Corporationsownmedia.png|thumb|upright=1.15|A table of six big media conglomerates in 2014, including some of their subsidiaries<ref>{{Citation|last=Spaynton|title=English: corp own|date=2015-06-10|url=https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Corporationsownmedia.png|access-date=2017-04-18}}</ref>{{Unreliable source?|date=July 2017}}]]

Herman and Chomsky argue that since mainstream media outlets are currently either large [[corporation]]s or part of [[Conglomerate (company)|conglomerates]] (e.g. [[Westinghouse Electric Corporation|Westinghouse]] or [[General Electric]]), the information presented to the public will be biased with respect to these interests. Such conglomerates frequently extend beyond traditional media fields and thus have extensive financial interests that may be endangered when certain information is publicized. According to this reasoning, news items that most endanger the corporate financial interests of those who own the media will face the greatest bias and censorship.

It then follows that if to maximize profit means sacrificing news objectivity, then the news sources that ultimately survive must be fundamentally biased, with regard to news in which they have a [[conflict of interest]].

=== Advertising ===
The second filter of the propaganda model is funding generated through [[advertising]]. Most newspapers have to attract advertising in order to cover the costs of production; without it, they would have to increase the price of their newspaper. There is fierce competition throughout the media to attract advertisers; a newspaper which gets less advertising than its competitors is at a serious disadvantage. Lack of success in raising advertising revenue was another factor in the demise of the 'people's newspapers' of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The product is composed of the affluent readers who buy the newspaper—who also comprise the educated decision-making sector of the population—while the actual clientele served by the newspaper includes the businesses that pay to advertise their goods. According to this filter, the news is "filler" to get privileged readers to see the advertisements which makes up the content and will thus take whatever form is most conducive to attracting educated decision-makers. Stories that conflict with their "buying mood", it is argued, will tend to be marginalized or excluded, along with information that presents a picture of the world that collides with advertisers' interests. The theory argues that the people buying the newspaper are the product which is sold to the businesses that buy advertising space; the news has only a marginal role as the product.

=== Sourcing ===
The third of Herman and Chomsky's five filters relates to the sourcing of mass media news: "The mass media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest." Even large media corporations such as the [[BBC]] cannot afford to place reporters everywhere. They concentrate their resources where news stories are likely to happen: the [[White House]], [[the Pentagon]], [[10 Downing Street]] and other central news "terminals". Although British newspapers may occasionally complain about the "[[spin-doctoring]]" of [[New Labour]], for example, they are dependent upon the pronouncements of "the Prime Minister's personal spokesperson" for government news. Business corporations and trade organizations are also trusted sources of stories considered newsworthy. Editors and journalists who offend these powerful news sources, perhaps by questioning the veracity or bias of the furnished material, can be threatened with the denial of access to their media life-blood - fresh news.<ref>{{cite web|last=Cromwell|first=David|author-link=David Cromwell|title=The Propaganda Model: An Overview|year=2002|publisher=excerpted from Private Planet: Corporate Plunder and the Fight Back; chomsky.info|url=http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/2002----.htm|access-date=7 March 2010}}</ref> Thus, the media has become reluctant to run articles that will harm corporate interests that provide them with the resources that they depend upon.

This relationship also gives rise to a "moral division of labor" where "officials have and give the facts" and "reporters merely get them". Journalists are then supposed to adopt an uncritical attitude that makes it possible for them to accept corporate values without experiencing [[cognitive dissonance]].

=== Flak ===
The fourth filter is 'flak' (not to be confused with flack which means promoters or publicity agents), described by Herman and Chomsky as 'negative responses to a media statement or [TV or radio] program. It may take the form of letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits, speeches and Bills before Congress and other modes of complaint, threat and punitive action'. Business organizations regularly come together to form flak machines. An example is the US-based [[Global Climate Coalition]] (GCC), comprising fossil fuel and automobile companies such as Exxon, Texaco and Ford. The GCC was conceived by Burson-Marsteller, one of the world's largest public relations companies, to attack the credibility of climate scientists and 'scare stories' about global warming.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://documents.uow.edu.au/~sharonb/columns/probe11.html|title=The Decline of the Global Climate Coalition|website=documents.uow.edu.au|access-date=2020-06-12|archive-date=2020-08-06|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200806123105/https://documents.uow.edu.au/~sharonb/columns/probe11.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>

For Chomsky and Herman "flak" refers to negative responses to a media statement or program. The term "flak" has been used to describe what Chomsky and Herman see as efforts to discredit organizations or individuals who disagree with or cast doubt on the prevailing assumptions which Chomsky and Herman view as favorable to established power (e.g., "[[The Establishment]]"). Unlike the first three "filtering" mechanisms—which are derived from analysis of market mechanisms—flak is characterized by concerted efforts to manage public information.

===Anti-Communism and fear===
{{rquote|right|So I think when we talked about the "fifth filter" we should have brought in all this stuff -- the way artificial fears are created with a dual purpose... partly to get rid of people you don't like but partly to frighten the rest.
Because if people are frightened, they will accept authority.|[[Noam Chomsky]]<ref>{{cite book |author=Noam Chomsky |title=Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky |editor1=Peter R. Mitchell |editor2=John Schoeffel |name-list-style=amp |place=New York |publisher=The New Press |year=2002 |at=Footnote 35}}</ref>|}}

The fifth and final news filter that Herman and Chomsky identified was 'anti-communism'. ''Manufacturing Consent'' was written during the Cold War. Chomsky updated the model as "fear", often as 'the enemy' or an 'evil dictator' such as [[Colonel Gaddafi]], [[Paul Biya]], [[Saddam Hussein]], [[Slobodan Milosevic]], or [[Vladimir Putin]]. This is exemplified in British tabloid headlines of 'Smash Saddam!' and 'Clobba Slobba!'.<ref name="The Propaganda Model: An Overview">{{Cite web|url=https://chomsky.info/2002____/ |title=Noam Chomsky|website=chomsky.info}}</ref> The same is said to extend to mainstream reporting of [[environmentalist]]s as '[[eco-terrorist]]s'. ''[[The Sunday Times]]'' ran a series of articles in 1999 accusing activists from the [[non-violent]] [[direct action]] group [[Reclaim The Streets]] of stocking up on CS gas and stun guns.<ref name="The Propaganda Model: An Overview"/>

Anti-ideologies exploit public fear and hatred of groups that pose a potential threat, either real, exaggerated or imagined. [[Communism]] once posed the primary threat according to the model. Communism and [[socialism]] were portrayed by their detractors as endangering freedoms of speech, movement, the press and so forth. They argue that such a portrayal was often used as a means to silence voices critical of elite interests. Chomsky argues that since the end of the Cold War (1991), anticommunism was replaced by the "War on Terror", as the major social control mechanism: "Anti-communism has receded as an ideological factor in the Western media, but it is not dead... The 'war on terror' has provided a useful substitute for the Soviet Menace."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://chomsky.info/200911__/|title=The Propaganda Model after 20 Years: Interview with Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky|website=chomsky.info|access-date=2019-04-16}}</ref> Following the events of September 11, 2001, some scholars agree that [[Islamophobia]] is replacing anti-communism as a new source of public fear.{{sfn|Allan|2010|p=22}} Herman and Chomsky noted, in an interview given in 2009, that the popularity of 'anti-communism' as a news filter is slowly decreasing in favor of other more contemporary ideologies such as 'anti-terrorism'.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://chomsky.info/200911__/|title=The Propaganda Model after 20 Years: Interview with Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky|website=chomsky.info|access-date=2019-04-16}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/24f173fa-cf31-4d46-aa2e-8431eb9739e0.pdf|title=Broadcasting Climate Change: State and Media|website=ecpr.eu|access-date=2021-02-11}}</ref>