kMO Herman and Chomsky

Herman and Chomsky state the essential ingredients in a propaganda model right away in their analysis. The “news filters” include (1) the size; concentration of 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 and (5) anticommunism.

Sourcing mass media news (the third filter), in my opinion is the most detrimental to society. The symbiotic relationship formed between these major sources and mass media creates a non-objective view in a world where honesty and accuracy are most needed. Since the media needs resources that they can claim are accurate, the easiest (CHEAPEST) way for them to do so is to go through government agencies. To claim that this way of obtaining information provides the public with unbiased news is an absolute lie. For example, Herman and Chomsky state, “The pentagon has a public-information service that involves many thousands of employees, sending hundreds of millions of dollars every year and dwarfing not only the public information resources of dissenting individual or group but the aggregate of such groups.”

The next interesting statement I found was, “Only the corporate sector has the resources to produce public information and propaganda on the scale of the Pentagon and other government bodies." This is basically saying that smaller companies do not have the means to purchase newspaper, television, radio space. Meaning that the major companies will continue to rule the media and hold the main influence over public opinion...