As I have written, Edward S. Herman did not begin to criticize the media, as far as I know, until his first work with Noam Chomsky. That their effort was censored in spectacular fashion may have had something to do with their increasing criticisms of the press. The first hint of what became Ed’s Propaganda Model was in his 1979 effort with Noam. All of Ed’s efforts since then were primarily media critiques. In 1986, Ed presented a propaganda model that was very close to what became the Propaganda Model in Manufacturing Consent.
With Noam’s characteristic integrity, he insisted that Ed be named as the primary author of Manufacturing Consent, so Ed’s name was listed first on the book cover. Ed wrote the first part of the book, while Noam wrote the last chapters on Indochina. Noam was far more than a celebrity coauthor, but future mentions of Manufacturing Consent could entirely omit Ed’s name, and Ed was fine with that. Not only is Manufacturing Consent what Ed is primarily known for, but it is also the case with Noam, as far as the general public goes, even though he is a towering academic figure and the only living human who can be credibly compared to Einstein.
Ed’s Propaganda Model is a structural model of how the media operates and how various elite influences undermine the media’s stated purpose of holding the powerful to account, which is what the First Amendment was partly about.
There was some discussion of “worthy victims” in Noam and Ed’s 1979 collaboration, but in Manufacturing Consent the idea was fleshed out with its most famous example, of how the media covers the murders of priests and nuns, depending on who is doing the killing. The last words that Ed published in his lifetime were that the Propaganda Model was as applicable as it was 30 years earlier, when he invented it. As long as we have a commercial media under elite control, the Propaganda Model will be applicable. Ed and Noam periodically reassessed the Propaganda Model, especially its ideological filter.
Ed’s Propaganda Model has never been credibly challenged by any academic or journalist. Instead, it was attacked by irrational approaches and the media has done its best to ignore the Propaganda Model. While I am the only person on the Internet who carries Brian O’Leary’s torch, I am happy to report that Ed’s work still reverberates through the halls of academia. No less than four works were dedicated to Ed’s memory after he died, and those works were filled with analyses of the Propaganda Model and its application to many situations on Earth. I hope that I live to see a professional biography produced on Ed’s life, as it more than merits one.