Noam Chomsky and Media Ownership

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Noam Chomsky’s article entitled “A Propaganda Model” introduces several issues and ideas about media bias, ownership and reporting for discussion. This paper will present two of the main arguments made in Chomsky’s article and will then present a personal critique and counter-arguments made in an article from another academic source. Finally, at the end of this paper, a new question will be raised for the purpose of inciting more interest and discussion on the controversial topic of bias and propaganda in the media.


The way in which Chomsky’s article is structured has made it conducive to presenting the five filters through which he believes every media story passes before being relayed to the consumer. While all filters equally affect the way in which consumers receive news coverage, the two filters that embodied the most general complaints were the first and the third filters that stressed media ownership and sources of information as the main culprits of media bias.


Chomsky’s first argument with regards to the problem of media ownership and concentration stress the rising cost of owning and operating newspapers as the biggest problem. He says that the requisite large investment involved in running the newspaper limits ownership to corporate elites who focus intensely on profitability of the newspaper, thereby compromising journalistic integrity.


The second major argument made in the article discusses the sources of information used by the media and why they are not conducive to change. Chomsky explains that journalists require a steady flow of reliable and credible information and seeing as papers don’t have enough money to send reporters to the sites of every major story, they seek out avenues whereby they can get as much information at once as possible and invariably end up collecting most of their information from government and corporate press conferences. Another reason for which the media favor these press conferences as their sources of information is that by collecting information from government sources, the media have people to blame if the details of the stories are found to be untrue.


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I find the propaganda model to be simplistic and do not believe that the claims and predictions it has made have materialized. There were several criticisms that came to my mind while reading the first chapter of the book, yet I must admit that several of my objections were addressed and resolved in Herman’s ‘The Propaganda Model Revisited’. After having completed my analysis of both Chomsky’s chapter and Herman’s supporting document, as well as having considered articles from other sources such as the conservative magazine ‘The New Republic’, I have come to the conclusion that the vast majority of Chomsky’s arguments are well-supported and difficult to refute, yet still require a significant amount of reflection before they can be adopted whole-heartedly.


The first major criticism that I had against the propaganda model was that it failed to acknowledge the “continued opposition and resistance ” that one can find in any of several liberal media sources. In fact, many people believe that there is so much opposition to the status quo that the bias in the media is slanted against conservatives and in favor of a liberal viewpoint. In his article about liberal media bias in America, Thomas Lindsay goes as far as to say that “Democrats can count on the media to provide free campaigning ads in the form of ‘news coverage’ ”. In ‘The Propaganda Model Revisited’, Herman refutes my criticism and defends the model by explaining that the propaganda model “…is about how the media works, not how effective they are” . More specifically, Herman says that his model suggests the presence of a mechanism that risks having uncontrolled bias’ in favor of the status quo, yet the model never claims that the mechanism is effective in silencing all other points of view. The New Republic’s article called ‘The Contradictions of Conservative Media Criticism’ provides even more support for Herman and critiques against my criticism. In the article, Johnathan Chait says that the reason for which conservatives feel there is so much bias in favor of the liberal point of view is that “…conservatives, who dominate the word of ideological media criticism, don’t usually distinguish between biased reporting and reporting that contradicts their views” .


The second major criticism that I had against the propaganda model was that it failed to provide concrete examples of the way in which corporate sponsors and advertisers actually influenced the media. Do corporate sponsors and newspaper owners enter newsrooms and threaten journalists? Surely, not every left-minded journalist could be influenced by the fact that right-winged corporations were advertising in the newspapers. Today, many people have criticized Israel Asper because they believe he is trying to silence any dissenting opinion about the Middle Eastern conflict in the newspapers he owns, and while this criticism could serve to prove that media concentration and corporate sponsors apply direct pressure on journalists, this occurrence is an extreme example that has rarely manifested itself anywhere else in the media of free and democratic societies of the Western world. In ‘The Propaganda Model Revisited’, Herman defends his model by saying that the pressure exerted upon journalists to toe the conservative line is not direct, but rather ingrained in the general beliefs of the journalism profession. Herman says that the influence exerted upon journalists is difficult to detect because journalistic professionalism “…has also internalized some of the commercial values that media owners hold most dear, like relying on inexpensive official sources as the credible news source” .


Most of my questions and criticisms have been answered by at least one of the sources cited in this paper. I do, however, still have some reservations with respect to the propaganda model. While I initially misunderstood the model and thought it was claiming that there is only bias in the media that is slanted in favor of the conservative point of view, I now understand that the model only suggests that there are mechanisms in the current media that would allow for total bias in favor of the status quo. Nevertheless, I must emphasize the fact that Chomsky’s defense is still not airtight. He fails to recognize the fact that our society is full of mechanisms that allow for injustices, yet no one worries about them because time after time these injustices have failed to materialize. For instance, any structure that employs the honor system as a means of providing fair and equal treatment for all, leaves plenty of opportunity for injustice, yet these structures are continuously used because for the most part, people are honest and refuse to compromise their morals to tilt the scales of justice in their favor. Similarly, mechanisms in the media allow for much bias and injustice, yet journalists, who are left to their own devices, still produce a wide variety of views and criticisms simply because their consciences would not allow them to report on issues any other way. Thus, in this respect, the propaganda model fails to account for the plurality of ideas in the media.


Is it truly reasonable to assume that all corporate sponsors and major media moguls, who consist of our society’s “upper-class” elite, have conservative agendas that they impose upon the journalists who write for their newspapers? Or is it too much of a generalization to assume that all wealthy people subscribe to the same beliefs as the status quo?





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