ESPN, Herman and Chomsky

In the opening quote from Herman and Chomsky they states, “The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse us, entertain, and inform, and inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into institutional structures of the larger society.” The quote is relatively easy to understand. Are society would not be what is it today without the media continuously providing all of our information and entertainment. Furthermore, as discussed before we are essentially at the mercy of the media companies who give us all the mentioned information and entertainment. We know they control what is going but we still watch and listen. It is like what Benjamin says when we stated the public is a viewer, but absent minded ones.” They are the ones who control what we see and hear. Even though we may have different thoughts, we still listen to everything they have to say; we absorb it and rarely question it. Like Althusser says it is unconscious when theses ideologies are working on us but they still work on us and that structures into what is are larger society. Media can control people and for one who hasn’t studied it, it can be dangerous, it has a huge effect on why are society is the way it is today. Before the mention of the important 5 filters, one can see the quote “a propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices.” This quote just goes back to what I have been continuously noticing throughout of all my CMC classes, everything in the media seems to be because of money. It is only about how big companies can get and how much money they can make. It is like we were talking about with Marx, the person or company with the most material items or money rules in society and that is what they all strive for.