Manufacturing consent is the process by which power aligns the consciousness of the masses with the dominant ideology through various means. The media is an effective and powerful ideological institution. Therefore, the media’s Propaganda Model is an important determinant in manufacturing public consensus.
-What is the Propaganda Model?
The Propaganda Model is a theory coined by Herman and Chomsky to explain why mass media reporting is inevitably biased in terms of structural economic principles.(2008).In their book,Herman and Chomsky refer to five media “filters” that they believe news needs to pass through in order to reach the public. They ultimately determine what news is presented to the public. This is also an important step before reaching manufacturing consent. So in the next section, we will discuss how each of these filters may affect journalistic objectivity.
-The five filters of the Propaganda Model
·Ownership:
Mainstream media are usually affiliated with large corporations themselves. An example is China’s WeChat, a public platform owned by Tencent. And since these corporations also run other businesses, this media outlet may avoid reporting when the news has a negative impact on the interests of the corporation. Just like I hardly ever see any bad news about Tencent video on WeChat Public.
Image source:
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·Advertising:
Nowadays, advertising has become the most important revenue situation for the media. Over-reliance on advertising revenue can lead to a lack of autonomy in the media, which reports in the interests of advertisers. This will affect the objectivity of news and make it difficult to manufacturing consent.
·Sourcing:
Herman and Chomsky argue that news needs to be uninterrupted.(2008).That’s why the media will avoid reporting news that undermines the source. For example, some “expert” sources dominate the sources of news stories, but “people” are rarely the real sources.
·Flak:
At times, news is also used to expose the truth of something. For the reporter or the person who reports the story, there is a high probability that they will run into the interests of some large corporations or powerful people, and thus be threatened. So, some news is forced to be unreported.
·Anti-communism:
As mentioned in our lecture, constructed within the logic of the Cold War,Then the Western media either explicitly or implicitly argued that free market capitalism was superior to communism.Hence, questions are often phrased in terms of controlling.When viewed in the context of everyday life, media news reports suppress the voices of opponents in order to avoid the ideology of causing social unrest or provoking public panic.Even if this disturbs the objectivity of the news.
Overall, all five filters of the Propaganda Model do disrupt journalistic objectivity. And for manufacturing consent, the disadvantages of the Propaganda Model also affect it.
Reference List:
Featured Image：
https://5b0988e595225.cdn.sohucs.com/images/20190513/3e8560b243eb4d55a882bb0e157493d2.jpeg
Herman,E.S, Chomsky,A.N.(2008).Manufacturing Consent:The Political Economy of the Mass Media.
Your explanation of the Propaganda Model with examples is excellent and the video is really interesting. It makes it very easy to understand how these five filters work. Hopefully, you can also add some critical thoughts when you understand how it works, such as whether using the model is a good thing or a bad thing, and whether should there be any restrictions, etc. Overall, your writing is good.
Great explanation to what the propaganda model and the stages within the model, the video helps give clarification behind your words in the article, giving an indepth explanation behind the model. Some opinion regarding the points you’ve made would make the article connect more to the video, giving a more personal response as video takes away attention from the article, more detail.
In your post I learnt that a filter is the equivalent of acting as a messenger in the process of news dissemination. But your article doesn’t go into depth with examples, and some people may still not understand these proper nouns alone. I would suggest that you could write a concrete example of which word corresponds to which step.