A Propaganda model, Andrew Wells

Both Herman and Chomsky argue that all mainstream media outlets are in large corporations, which in return are mostly likely apart of a larger conglomerate. The conglomerates, because of their size, have powerful interests that may be endangered when certain information is "publicized."As a result a bias and censorship against the news is more than likely to occur.

This essay talks abotu the 5 filters that help filter out news that get published. The one just talked about was the filter of Ownership. The following filters include: Ownership, funding ,sourcing, flak, and Anticommunism as a control.

Its obvious that the mainstream media depends on heavily advertising revenues to survive. An example can be found in sports. The way a sport makes money is by the various amount of adverting during and in the middle of game play. Advertising is shown so frequently that the viewer is sometimes never aware that the ad is in front of them. Herman and Chomsky claim through the example of adertising in a newspaper, that the owners objective is to produce mass amounts of advertising with out affecting the reader to be uninterested. The idea behind the newspaper is supposedly to inform but what the owner is doing is puting the advertising as the product not the actual information printed.

The third filer is known as the sourcing filter. This is where the medias concern is the continuous flow of information to fill the demand for daily news. Herman and Chomsky argue that this task can only be filled by major business or even the government. To make it easier for the news promoters to get a hold of information from the government there are places in which they can discuss business, scheduling press conferences at hours well geared to news deadlines, and organization of press releases or photo opportunities.

The fourth filter is known as the Flak filter. Herman and Chomsky both refer this filter as a "negative response to a media statement or program" (Hc, 275). Flak from the powerful can be either direct of indirect. Direct(ex. Phone call or message). Indirect (ex. Funding a campaign with knowledge of later down the road asistance)

The fifth and and final filter is the Anticommunism as a control. This is the idea of exploiting public fear through potential threatening situations. The situation can either be real or fake. Both Herman and Chomsky say that this was often used to silence the public. An example of this could be the Iraq invasion and the Gulf war. With todays use of the internet many "indie" sites are able to publish independent articles to produce a certain idea of what the situation actually is.