Analysis Of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy Of The Mass Media

In their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent The Political Economy of the Mass Media, linguistics philosopher Noam Chomsky, alongside media analyst and professor Edward S. Herman, developed what is now known as the “Propaganda Model”. In the book, Herman and Chomsky analyse what they believe to be the function of the mass media, and evaluate how and why the media performs such functions. In chapter 1, they declare that the media is a system for communicating messages to the general population, and assert that its function is to “amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with values, beliefs, and codes of behavior (...) In an authoritarian country, where the media is heavily controlled and censored by the government, it is easy to envision how the media operates, its biases and limitations. However, in countries where this formal censorship is
Nonetheless, the authors claim that there are in fact many filters that media has to work through, and that influences the content that is put out. They claim that what is presented by the news is shaped by the propaganda model, which caters to the interest of a power elite. The propaganda model, in turn, results in a pattern of manipulation and systematic bias. Herman and Chomsky claim there is a total of five filters which affect and limit messages distributed by the media. These filters are applied to the raw material possessed by the media, and only after this material is processed does it reach print. Consequently, these filters serve as a basis to decide what is noteworthy and should receive more attention and how discourse should be shaped. For the purpose of this essay, I will write about how these filters affect information published in newspapers, but it is important to note that the propaganda model is not limited to one form of