A Note on The Propaganda Model: Chomsky-Herman vs

Herman-Chomsky
Many people are familiar with Noam Chomskys critique of the mainstream media, the
Propaganda Model of the media. Very often, the term manufacturing consent is used as a
shorthand for the model. As many people know, the book Manufacturing Consent has the
authors listed as Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, in that order, because the book was
primarily written by the economist Edward Herman. (As well as contributing to Manufacturing
Consent, Chomsky was writing a parallel book, Necessary Illusions, on the same theme, at the
same time).
There were differences between the Herman-Chomsky approach to the Propaganda Model in
Manufacturing Consent, and what one could call the Chomsky-Herman approach in other
works.
When people refer to the Propaganda Model, they often point to the five filters approach set
out in Manufacturing Consent. These filters are the mutually-reinforcing factors that lead to a
media system largely free from state control nevertheless producing highly-uniform news and
opinion similar in crucial ways to that produced by a state propaganda system.
The first filter is the size, ownership and profit orientation of the mass media. Edward
Herman gives basic financial data on, for example, the 24 largest media giants (or their
controlling parent companies), and spells out the affiliations of outside directors in 10 large
media companies (or their parents).
The second filter is the advertising licence to do business. In the case of commercial radio
and television, it is transparently the case that all the funding for these media operations comes
from other corporations, through advertising. In the case of newspapers, this is less apparent.
In a column on 26 September 2011, the Guardians Readers Editor, Chris Elliott, pointed out
that historically 60% of a newspapers revenue came from advertising, but that, during the price
war in the 1990s, advertising revenue crept up to 70% of the average newspapers income. The
Observer is now owned by the Guardian. One sign in the early 1990s that the Observer was not
financially viable was that advertising revenue had dropped to only 50% of total income.
Chomsky and Herman point out to us that newspapers appear to be selling news and opinion
to us, their readers, but actually the main business of newspapers is to sell the attention of
readers (preferably richer readers, who are better prospects for advertisers) to corporations. Just

as Google appears to be a search engine, providing a free service to us, the browsing public,
but actually it is a billion-dollar advertising agency, selling the attention of searchers to
advertisers.
The third Propaganda Model filter is sourcing: The media need a steady, reliable flow of
the raw material of news. Economics dictates that they concentrate their resources where
significant news often occurs, where important rumours and leaks abound, and where regular
press conferences are held. Government and corporate headquarters are credible and
recognisable sources of such raw material.
The fourth filter is flak negative feedback from forces outside the media. Clearly, the
more powerful and wealthy the source of the feedback, the more impact it will have. The fifth
filter was originally described as anti-communism. It is an ideological filter, demonising
enemies and reinforcing patriotic self-adulation in some way.
There is a strong emphasis in all this on the structural, a stress on corporate power and mergers
and other forms of economic concentration. An industry-level analysis.
I think we generally see another emphasis in Chomskys work, in what could be called the
Chomsky-Herman approach. While all of these factors are parts of Chomskys analysis of the
media, the emphasis, I think, is rather on the individual surrender of each intellectual to the
dominant ideology.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to use the five filters to actually analyse media coverage and to
counter propaganda. Of greater operational value are the tests that Chomsky and Herman have
set out for validating or invalidating the Propaganda Model and the concept of feigned
dissent.
The three basic tests are: using paired examples, documenting the range of permitted opinion
on a topic (also known as the spectrum of thinkable thought), and the most robust test of all,
examining a case held up as an example of the freedom of the press, of the anti-Establishment
nature of the media, to see if it actually reveals media servility rather than media independence.
Typically, according to Chomsky, those who pose as anti-Establishment voices in the
mainstream media, who take anti-war or apparently radical positions, actually help to reinforce
government propaganda. There are exceptions of course. In Britain, one immediately thinks of
Robert Fisk, George Monbiot and John Pilger as independent journalists who manage to
operate with integrity within the mainstream.

In relation to the Vietnam War, Chomsky pointed out that mainstream doves such as Anthony
Lewis and Stanley Karnow believed the Vietnam War began with blundering efforts to do
good, became a noble but failed crusade. Kennedy liberal Arthur Schlesinger Jr called for
the war to be ended on cost grounds, opposing noted hawk Joseph Alsop, who believed the
war could be won, but adding we all pray that Alsop is proved correct, in which case we
may all be saluting the wisdom and statesmanship of the American government.
In other words, Lewis, Karnow and Schlesinger all agreed that the US invasion of Vietnam
(they would never have used such a phrase) was benevolent in motivation, and morally and
legally justified, though unwise. They all accepted the fundamental principle that the United
States had the right to re-structure other societies by force.
By posing as opponents of the war while tacitly accepting this principle, Schlesinger and others
helped to reinforce the acceptability of US imperialism. Washingtons divine right to use
violence is not only acceptable, it does not even register as something that is debatable, it is a
presupposition of the debate.
The debate is over when the cost-benefit analysis weighs against the use of violence. This is a
prime example of what Chomsky calls feigned dissent. He warns that:
The more vigorous the debate, the better the system of propaganda is served, since the tacit
unspoken assumptions are more forcefully implanted. An independent mind must seek to
separate itself from official doctrine and from the criticism advanced by its alleged opponent.
Not just from the assertions of the propaganda system, but from its tacit presuppositions as
well, as expressed by critic and defender. This is a far more difficult task. Any expert in
indoctrination will confirm, no doubt, that it is far more effective to constrain all possible
thought within a framework of tacit assumptions than to try to impose a particular explicit
belief with a bludgeon. It may be that some of the most spectacular achievements of the
American propaganda system, where all of this has been elevated to a high art, are attributable
to the method of feigned dissent, practiced by the responsible intelligentsia.
This is, I think, the centrepiece of the Chomsky-Herman approach to the Propaganda Model,
as opposed to the industry-level analysis that opens the Herman-Chomsky presentation in
Manufacturing Consent.