Captain Planet, Herman and Chopsky

The past few weeks we’ve been focusing on two main concepts: ideology and ISA. Both of these key concepts highlight the notion that we all act according to a subconscious set of rules; rules which dictate every part of our lives, including religion, education, family, politics, media, and culture. The reading A Propaganda Model by Herman and Chopsky, dealt heavily with the two key terms of ideology and ISA. The article talked in-depth about the advertising industry and the major media giants. Corporate conglomerates are monopolizing on the media market, and creating a hegemonic tier within the media system. “It has longed been noted that the media are tiered, with the top tier – as measured by prestige, resources, and outreach… It is this top tier, along with the government and wire services, that defines the news agenda and supplies much of the national and international news to the lower tiers of the media, and thus for the general public” (260). Like the ruling class within the population, there are dominant media companies within the media system. The top tier companies are those that are the wealthiest and control the most within the greater media system as a whole. These ‘top tier’ companies set the ideologies that the rest of society follow accordingly. The very first sentence in this article is; “The mass media serves as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general population. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society” (257). This quote really adds to the earlier quote by stating what the function of the media is, instead of the means of which it controls society. The graphs furthermore, strengthen Herman and Chopsky’s article by showing important statistics like dollar values, the controlling family, and the percentage of voting stock by the controlling group. The ideologies working in the media system are determined by these factors, making society subjective to the dominant hegemonic family in society.