Propaganda model and its five filters?

Answer 1

INTRODUCTION: The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general public. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to beat individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will combine them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda. The Propaganda Model What is the propaganda model and how does it work? The crucial structural factors derive from the fact that the dominant media are firmly imbedded in the market system. They are profit-seeking businesses, owned by very wealthy people (or other companies); they are funded largely by advertisers who are also profit-seeking entities, and who want their ads to appear in a supportive selling environment. The media are also dependent on government and major business firms as information sources, and both efficiency and political considerations, and frequently overlapping interests, cause a certain degree of solidarity to prevail among the government, major media, and other corporate businesses. MANUFACTURING CONSENT In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, the monopolistic control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the ends of a dominant elite. It is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent. A propaganda model focuses on this inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public. The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news "filters," fall under the following headings: 1. The size, concentrated 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 as a means of disciplining the media. 5. Anticommunism as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another. 1. SIZE, OWNERSHIP, AND PROFIT ORIENTATION OF THE MASS MEDIA: THE FIRST FILTER It talks about the media empires. That how other media things are in one hand. Corporate ownership of media. Media firms are affected by other firms. There are twenty-four media empires (or their controlling parent companies) that make up the top of media companies in the United States. This compilation includes: The three television networks: ABC (through its parent, Capital Cities), CBS, and NBC. These twenty-four companies are large, profit-seeking corporations, owned and controlled by quite wealthy people. Many of the large media companies are fully integrated into the market, and for the others, too, the pressures of stockholders, directors, and bankers to focus on the bottom line are powerful. The control groups of the media giants are also brought into close relationships with the mainstream of the corporate community through boards of directors and social links. In the early I980s, such institutions held 44 percent of the stock of publicly owned newspapers and 35 percent of the stock of publicly owned broadcasting companies. These investors are also frequently among the largest stockholders of individual companies. Example : In I980-8I, the Capital Group, an investment company system, held 7.I percent of the stock of ABC, 6.6 percent of Knight-Ridder, 6 percent of Time, Inc., and z.8 percent of Westinghouse. These holdings, individually and collectively, do not convey control, but these large investors can make themselves heard, and their actions can affect the welfare of the companies and their managers. The large media companies have also diversified beyond the media field, and non-media companies have established a strong presence in the mass media. The non-media interests of most of the media giants are not large, and, excluding the GE and Westinghouse systems, they account for only a small fraction of their total revenue. Their multinational outreach, however, is more significant. The television networks, television syndicators, major news magazines, and motion-picture studios all do extensive business abroad, and they derive a substantial fraction of their revenues from foreign sales and the operation of foreign affiliates Another structural relationship of importance is the media companies' dependence on and ties with government. The radio-TV companies and networks all require government licenses and franchises and are thus potentially subject to government control or harassment. This technical legal dependency has been used as a club to discipline the media, and media policies that stray too often from an establishment orientation could activate this threat The great media also depend on the government for more general policy support. All business firms are interested in Business Taxes, interest rates, labor policies, and enforcement and no enforcement of the antitrust laws. Example: political affiliation with T.V channels Dominant mass media firm's keeps on changing their interests, the media organizations have to realize on the official spooks person. Official spooks man also effect on media content. The media content is mostly decided by the government that what should be published and what not. 2. THE ADVERTISING LICENSE TO DO BUSINESS: THE SECOND FILTER Advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; since the mainstream media depend heavily on http://wiki.answers.com/wiki/Advertising revenues to survive, the model suggests that the interests of advertisers come before reporting the news. Chomsky and Herman argue that, as a business, a newspaper has a product which it offers to an audience. The product is composed of the affluent readers who buy the newspaper who also comprise the educated decision-making sector of the population while the audience includes the businesses that pay to advertise their goods. According to this "filter", the news itself is nothing more than "filler" to get privileged readers to see the advertisements which makes up the real content, and will thus take whatever form is most conducive to attracting educated decision-makers. Before advertising became prominent, the price of a newspaper had to cover the costs of doing business. With the growth of advertising, papers that attracted ads could afford a copy price well below production costs. This put papers lacking in advertising at a serious disadvantage: their prices would tend to be higher, curtailing sales, and they would have less surplus to invest in improving the salability of the paper (features, attractive format, promotion, etc.). For this reason, an advertising-based system will tend to drive out of existence or into marginality the media companies and types that depend on revenue from sales alone. With advertising, the free market does not yield a neutral system in which final buyer choice decides. The advertisers' choices influence media prosperity and survival The ad-based media receive an advertising subsidy that gives them a price-marketing-quality edge, which allows them to encroach on and further weaken their ad-free rivals. Even if ad-based media cater to an affluent audience, they easily pick up a large part of the "downscale" audience, and their rivals lose market share and are eventually driven out or marginalized. In fact, advertising has played a potent role in increasing concentration even among rivals that focus with equal energy on seeking advertising revenue. A market share and advertising edge on the part of one paper or television station will give it additional revenue to compete more effectively-promote more aggressively, buy more salable features and programs-and the disadvantaged rival must add expenses it cannot afford to try to stem the cumulative process of dwindling market (and revenue) share. The crunch is often fatal, and it helps explain the death of many large-circulation papers and magazines and the attrition in the number of newspapers. Television stations and networks are also concerned to maintain audience "flow" levels, i.e., to keep people watching from program to program, in order to sustain advertising ratings and revenue. Airing program interludes of documentary-cultural matter that cause station switching is costly, and over time a "free" (i.e., ad-based) commercial system will tend to excise it. Such documentary-cultural-critical materials will be driven out of secondary media vehicles as well, as these companies strive to qualify for advertiser interest, although there will always be some cultural-political programming trying to come into being or surviving on the periphery of the mainstream media. Example: In 1990s, Nawaz Sharif regime Jang newspaper was stopped publishing due to conflict between Mir Shakeel ur rehman . Jang kept on publishing one age newspaper. That's the way they kept on publishing because they have advertising license. 3. SOURCING MASS-MEDIA NEWS: THE THIRD FILTER The mass media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information by economic necessity and reciprocity of interest. The media need a steady, reliable flow of the raw material of news. They have daily news demands and imperative news schedules that they must meet. They cannot afford to have reporters and cameras at all places where important stories may break. Economics dictates that they concentrate their resources where significant news often occurs, where important rumors and leaks abound, and where regular press conferences are held Government and corporate sources also have the great merit of being recognizable and credible by their status and prestige. This is important to the mass media. As Fishman notes, News workers are predisposed to treat bureaucratic accounts as factual because news personnel participate in upholding a normative order of authorized knower's in the society. Reporters operate with the attitude that officials ought to know what it is their job to know In particular, a news worker will recognize an official's claim to knowledge not merely as a claim, but as a credible, competent piece of knowledge. These amounts to a moral division of labor: officials have and give the facts; reporters merely get them. Another reason for the heavy weight given to official sources is that the mass media claim to be "objective" dispensers of the news. Partly to maintain the image of objectivity, but also to protect themselves from criticisms of bias and the threat of libel suits, they need material that can be portrayed as presumptively accurate. This is also partly a matter of cost: taking information from sources that may be presumed credible reduces investigative expense, whereas material from sources that are not prima facie credible, or that will elicit criticism and threats, requires careful checking and costly research. The relation between power and sourcing extends beyond official and corporate provision of day-to-day news to shaping the supply of "experts." The dominance of official sources is weakened by the existence of highly respectable unofficial sources that give dissident views the mass media themselves also provide "experts" who regularly echo the official view. With great authority. Example: We can take example of LAL MASJID. Foreign media was dependant on us. As we all know Lal masjid is in Islamabad so whatever our agencies had given them for information. They had portrayed that on electronic, print media.CNN, BBC etc have their correspondents here in Pakistan. == The powerful media statement media statements used as mean of disciplining the media. Flak refers to negative responses to media statements or programs. Flak is feedback of the readers and viewers in the form of e-mails, telephone call's etc. it really effect on the media content. If flak is produced on a large scale, or by individuals or groups with substantial resources, it can be both uncomfortable and costly to the media. Positions have to be defended within the organization and without, sometimes before legislatures and possibly even in courts. Television advertising is mainly of consumer goods that are readily subject to organized boycott. During the McCarthy years, many advertisers and radio and television stations were effectively coerced into quiescence and blacklisting of employees by the threats of determined Red hunters to boycott products. Advertisers are still concerned to avoid offending constituencies that might produce flak, and their demand for suitable programming is a continuing feature of the media environment. If certain kinds of fact, position, or program are thought likely to elicit flak, this prospect can be a deterrent.The Center for Media and Public Affairs, run by Linda and Robert Lichter, came into existence in the mid-I980s as a "non-profit, nonpartisan" research institute, with warm accolades from Patrick Buchanan, Faith Whittlesey, and Ronald Reagan himself, who recognized the need for an objective and fair press. Their Media monitor and research studies continue their earlier efforts to demonstrate the liberal bias and anti-business propensities of the mass media. Although the flak machines steadily attack the mass media, the media treat them well. They receive respectful attention, and their propagandistic role and links to a larger corporate program are rarely mentioned or analyzed. AIM head, Reed Irvine's diatribes are frequently published, and right-wing network flacks who regularly assail the "liberal media," such as Michael Ledeen, are given Op-Ed column space, sympathetic reviewers, and a regular place on talk shows as experts. This reflects the power of the sponsors, including the well-entrenched position of the right wing in the mass media themselves. The producers of flak add to one another's strength and reinforce the command of political authority in its news-management activities. The government is a major producer of flak, regularly assailing, threatening, and "correcting" the media, trying to contain any deviations from the established line. News management itself is designed to produce flak. In the Reagan years, Mr. Reagan was put on television to exude charm to millions, many of whom berated the media when they dared to criticize the "Great Communicator.'' Example: Dr Asifa Siddique case 5. Anticommunism as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another. Anticommunist ideology -- is possibly weakened by the collapse of the Soviet Union and global socialism, but this is easily offset by the greater ideological force of the belief in the "miracle of the market." (Reagan) There is now an almost religious faith in the market, at least among the elite, so that regardless of evidence, markets are assumed benevolent and non-market mechanisms are suspect Journalism has internalized this ideology. Adding it to the fifth filter, in a world where the global power of market institutions makes anything other than market options seem utopian, gives us an ideological package of immense strength. It was given by herm and Chomsky during the cold war period. This filter is western identification of enemy and evil dictator. It is every important in geo political maneuvering anti ideology in phenomena that create some sort of fear, threats or damage against certain people's mind. Anti communism have become anti Islam. War between west and communism is going to be replaced between the war between west and Islam. Conclusion: It was invented by keeping in mind American media, but 9\11 it is applicable all over the world, perhaps we should have made it clearer that the propaganda model was about media behavior and performance, with uncertain and variable effects. Maybe we should have spelled out in more detail the contesting forces both within and outside the media and the conditions under which these are likely to be influential. The propaganda model remains a very workable framework for analyzing and understanding the mainstream media.