The Fact
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s 1988 propaganda model identified five structural filters affecting mass-media output: concentrated ownership and profit orientation; advertising as a major revenue source; reliance on government, business, and approved expert sources; organized “flak” that can discipline media; and anticommunism as an ideological control mechanism in the Cold War context.
What This Means
Their model did not require a central censor choosing every story. It proposed that the economic and institutional structure of mass media can systematically influence what becomes news and how it is framed.
Sources
- Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, 1988, Chapter 1, “A Propaganda Model.”