The Propaganda Model Revisited

This seems like a good time to apply the Propaganda Model to current events.

In the first collaboration between Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, they began critiquing the media. To my knowledge, it was the first time that Ed did it, and maybe Noam, too. Their book was subjected to one of the most outrageous censorship efforts ever, as their publishing company was wiped out by its owners to prevent the publication of their book. It was another six years before they published a greatly enlarged version of their original book. The genesis of their Propaganda Model can be seen in those books (1, 2), and Ed was its primary inventor, which grew from his corporate studies. The Propaganda Model is essentially a conflict-of-interest model in which the media’s stated purpose – to search for the truth and hold the powerful to account – is undermined by the powerful themselves. Near his life’s end, Ed stated that the media serves elite interests at the expense of accurately informing the public, which his life’s work was devoted to revealing. To this day, the Propaganda Model remains unrebutted.

In the last published words of his lifetime, Ed wrote that the Propaganda Model was as applicable as it was when it was first presented 30 years earlier. In light of Sam Husseini’s rough treatment at the State Department, this seems like a good time to revisit the Propaganda Model.

Sam’s treatment is a clear example of the Propaganda Model’s third and fourth filters, of news sourcing and flak. As Sam mentioned as he was being carried from the State Department’s briefing room, the State Department refused to answer his questions. This is the news-sourcing filter in action, as Sam lost access to a news source, and being carted out of the briefing room is a blatant example of that filter in action. Sam’s arrest and rough treatment was also a rather extreme example of flak. Sam was injured by his treatment. Of course, Sam’s treatment pales beside the ultimate form of flak: murdering journalists. At last count, 166 of Sam’s professional colleagues have died in Gaza during Israel’s assault, for the greatest act of killing media workers yet recorded by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

As long as the mainstream media is dominated by capitalist interests, the Propaganda Model’s first filter will apply, as ownership interests are always served first and profits are always king. One of Sam’s focuses in recent years has been the possible lab origin of COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a focus of mine in recent years, and since TV news gets 70% of its ad revenues from Big Pharma, it is no mystery why the media has never challenged Big Pharma’s role in the pandemic response, from waging wars on early treatments (which were unpatented and hence, not lucrative) to the fraudulent testing of its deadly COVID vaccines and related drugs. This is the Propaganda Model’s second filter, of advertiser influence, on steroids.

The final filter of the original Propaganda Model is ideological. When Manufacturing Consent was first published in 1988, that fifth filter was identified as anticommunism, which was an American national religion in those days. Ed and Noam stated in 2009 that the “war on terror” had replaced anticommunism as the ideological filter since the Soviet Union’s demise. In the 1990s, Ed wrote that the “miracle of the market” was an article of faith in the media during capitalism’s triumphant phase. The Propaganda Model will always be applicable while capitalist interests dominate the media, and various academics have proposed other filters, which only strengthens the Propaganda Model’s basic framework.

One irony of current events is that while Russia no longer has a communist economy, it is still demonized in the West, especially during the war in Ukraine, as American neocons risk nuclear war. Was communism really an existential threat to the world, or was it the lack of American control over a land with vast resources?

Ed also invented the idea of worthy and unworthy victims, and Gazans are once again unworthy victims. The Gazan death toll is almost certainly over 100,000 people, which has even been called genocide by imperial tool Amnesty International. Sam called attention to that as he was being dragged from the State Department.

Recent events are simply more confirmation of the Propaganda Model’s validity. My work is about ending capitalism and far more. When humanity’s organizing principles change from scarcity and fear to abundance and love, the world will end as we know it, and nobody will miss it. Only one thing can do that, and that is my life’s work. Until then, the work of people such as Ed and Sam will be beacons in the darkness.