Editing Propaganda model (section)

=== 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]].