Pre-Class Herman and Chomsky

Herman and Chomsky’s article on America’s own model of propaganda is perhaps one of the most intelligent, well-put together and well-support essays on this topic I have ever read. As an educated American citizen, I think this piece should be read by anyone and everyone that has ever tuned into an American source for the news, whether it be the local newspaper or the national nightly broadcasts, these authors’ articulation of this cyclical business between the media, its ownership, and their bounded relationship to the government is nothing short of scary. It is absolutely unbelievable to grasp the highly politicized and profit-minded system that structures these relationships, and how their interests are overriding and are the ultimate decider of what is “important”, what is “worthy”, and what is “fact”. The amount of examples that are provided throughout this article are truly eye-opening in that they reveal exactly how these government and corporate relationships are able to manipulate media outlets into only broadcasting what lies in their interest, and consequently, only releases to the American public a very one-dimensional, one-sided view to a much large and complex interest: and this view is mostly, if not always, conservative, “Anti-Communist,” big-business, “mainstream”-minded.

Their explanation of the five filters that go into manipulating what we see on television and read in the newspaper was particular insightful for me as well, because although I had always recognized these “filters” as being in existence and of powerful constraint, I never realized to what extent they all functioned together in harmonious concert. The most interesting “filter” for me was that of the “flak machine” in which “centers” and “institutions” have been created for the sheer purpose of monitoring anti-business and thus supposedly “anti-American” propensities of the mass media. The media is than harassed by these groups until they decide to either abolish or provide counter-opinions to their “unconventional” arguments, which almost always end up with the media again giving more than adequate weight to the big business and government-sided point of view. Likewise, “although the flak machines steadily attack the mass media, the media treat them well. They receive respectful attention, and their propagandistic role and links to a large corporate program are rarely mentioned or analyzed” (277). I think the most alarming part is that it is our own government, a government that prides itself on a democratic society with freedom for every citizen, that is the major producer of this filth they call flak…