The Propoganda Model at Work

The decision by the executives at MSNBC to remove Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from the anchor position for the coverage of the 2008 U.S. presidential elections, and the New York Times' coverage of the decision¹, offers a contemporary example of how accurately Herman and Chomsky's Propaganda Model² reflects the state of mass media in the United States.

For anyone who is not familiar with the Propaganda Model, I will very briefly explain it as I understand it.³ Control over the majority of the media outlets in the United States have been consolidated into the hands of a very few powerful corporations, and the interests of these corporations invariably determine what is covered by the mass media and how the information is presented. This determination, however, rather than direct corporate intervention, tends to take the form of the following five filters:

1. Ownership -- I already mentioned that the majority of the media are controlled by a few corporations, but these corporations also have substantial financial interests in what information is presented. Moreover, they have the capacity to select journalists who conform to their interests and to eliminate those who do not.
2. Advertising -- While most consumers of the information delivered by the mass media imagine they are the customers, media outlets often work harder to market themselves to advertisers. The people relying on the media for information become the commodity that the media offers to the advertiser.
3. Sourcing -- Having the news delivered to your station requires a much smaller financial investment than sending a journalist out to gather it. Consequently, the profit-driven mass media rely heavily on official press releases, and tend to ignore stories that would challenge the veracity of these news sources.
4. Flak -- This is the filter that I believe is responsible for MSNBC's decision to change its coverage of the elections. Entire public relations firms have been established simply to complain about the 'leftist bias' in the 'liberal news media' today, and any media outlet that upsets the established powers can be effectively buried in a barrage of flak from commentators, politicians, lawyers and other pundits.
5. Antagonistic Ideology -- Herman and Chomsky originally called this filter 'Anti-Communist Ideology', but charges of supporting Communism have largely been supplanted by those of supporting 'Terror'.⁴ This filter can be used to label any attempt to evaluate the legitimacy of the U.S. government's actions an enemy sympathizer, and therefore an enemy h(er|im)self.

These filters do not always exert complete control over the information delivered by the mass media, but they do determine the depth and quality of the coverage of different topics. Consider, for instance, that among the several revealing stories and outraged editorials in the New York Times over the abuse and torture of detainees in the government's Guantánamo Bay prison camps, observations by various independent media and political activists that the mass media's failure of political oversight and accountability helped to propagate these crimes were largely absent. Such an observation, however, brings the corporate media's reliance on established sources into focus, and this simply wouldn't do. Similarly, MSNBC has made the mistake of pointing out the conservative stance of the corporate media by providing a counterweight, and NBC's successful pressure on MSNBC to change the anchors for the election coverage demonstrates how effective flak can be at bringing a member of the mainstream media into line with the prevailing conservative agenda.