HOLLA! Herman & Chomsky

After really going over, analyzing, and understanding ideology more through the last couple of classes, ideology can be seen as a huge factor throughout the Herman & Chomsky reading. As they state in the beginning, “mass media serves as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace” (257). Mass media first of all is a system that reaches the entire populace being an ideological power in itself. The individuals and corporations that have control over mass media are also players in ideology as they completely control the mass media system. It was interesting to read about the 5 filters whose functions are to “narrow the range of news that passes through the gates, and even more sharply limits what can become “big news,” subject to sustained news campaigns” (279). Mass media started off as citizen’s media, a way for individuals (predominantly the working class) to reach out and relate to one another. Ideological powers tapped into, monopolized, and dominated this type of media and as a result we can all see that mass media versus citizens media is easiest to see, hear, and find. I didn’t really know how much the 5 filters played into what actually appears on the news and how they produce it into this form of almost blind propaganda. I personally see mass media as another ideological state apparatus used to keep the worlds citizens under control without us even knowing. For example, news stations in America continue to keep us blinded from the horrors that were and still are going on in the Middle East. If American news were to show us the whole truth and nothing but the truth American’s might begin to have a larger say in what’s going on in the Middle East and this could result to anarchy (maybe not this aggressive, but do you see my point). By major media giants controlling what we see through mass media, they are really blinded us to the truth in order to keep us under control and under the power of the few ideological strong holds that dictate how we should act, live, be, etc. This form of dictatorship I think according to Herman & Chomsky can be seen as propaganda in the mass media system, falsified ideas and beliefs that most American’s do not know the difference between.