Edward S. Herman’s last words published in his lifetime were: “The Propaganda Model lives on.” Does it ever. I was so happy to see that no less than four works were devoted to Ed’s memory soon after his death, and those works were filled with academic assessments of the Propaganda Model, applications of it to many global issues, proposals for new filters, and the like. Academics could ask for no more, that their work would inspire so much ferment. That is what academic heaven looks like. Even though the media has done its best to ignore it, the Propaganda Model is increasingly accepted globally, as trust in the mainstream media has correspondingly plummeted, for good reason. I have to give the American public some credit there, of slowly awakening to how execrable the mainstream media is.
I made my own small contribution when I added a little tobacco vignette to my discussion of the advertising filter. Little did I know how relevant that would become a couple of years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the propaganda and censorship reached new levels, and that is saying something. The USA’s medical system is abysmally corrupt, and even the defenders of science call medical science science’s flimsiest and most corrupt branch. Western medical interventions are almost all worthless, deadly, and lucrative. It was never more apparent than during the COVID pandemic. If Noam Chomsky had only understood that. About 70% of American TV ad revenue comes from drug ads, and half of TV news ads are drug ads, which is Ed’s advertising filter on steroids.
I see the continuing relevance of the Propaganda Model daily. As I write this, Facebook is censoring a documentary on the medical racket, to keep its Big Pharma partners happy. Ed warned about Facebook in his last interview.
As long as we have a capitalistic media, the Propaganda Model will be relevant, and as Noam said, the Propaganda Model is only a special case of the constraints that all intellectuals in capitalistic societies are subjected to. Very few rise above it, those who do are endlessly attacked, and I documented the attacks on Ed, even posthumously.
Until the Fifth Epoch arrives, Ed’s Propaganda Model will likely remain relevant.