A critical review and assessment of herman and chomsky's "Propaganda Model."

Abstract

Mass media play an especially important role in democratic societies. They are presupposed to act as intermediary vehicles that reflect public opinion, respond to public concerns, and make the electorate cognizant of state policies, important events, and viewpoints. The fundamental principles of democracy depend on the notion of a reasonably informed electorate. The propaganda model of media operations laid out and applied by Herman and Chomsky in “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media” postulates that elite media interlock with other institutional sectors in ownership, management, and social circles, effectively circumscribing their ability to remain analytically detached from other dominant institutional sectors. The model argues that the net result of this is self-censorship without any significant coercion. Media, according to this framework, do not have to be controlled, nor does their behavior have to be patterned, as it is assumed that they are integral actors in class warfare, fully integrated into the institutional framework of society, and in unison with other ideological sectors. It is not a surprise, then, given the interrelations of the state and corporate capitalism and the ideological network, that the propaganda model has been dismissed as a conspiracy theory and condemned for its overly deterministic view of media behavior. This article provides a critical assessment and review of Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model and seeks to encourage scholarly debate regarding the relationship between corporate power and ideology.