Yes, I'm afraid the five filters are alive and well and they apply as ever to mainstream media. As someone who laboured for nearly 20 years at CBC, I would especially point to filter #4, flak. Tonight CBC Radio's World at Six (a program I used to edit) barely mentioned the latest Amnesty International report which is entitled: "Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity." CBC's online story, carefully "balances" Amnesty's reporting with Israel's counter-claims that these are "lies" motivated by "anti-semitism." https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-palestinians-amnesty-report-1.6323377
Any journalist who has toiled for Mother Corp. knows that criticism of Israel has to be treated with the utmost understatement because well-organized Jewish groups are ever at the ready to deliver many rounds of potentially career-ending flak.
The Chomsky/Herman propaganda model was conceived before the advent of social media --- an era which ended the mainstream media's monopoly on mainstream news and also empowered readers, viewers and listeners to report their own news and to comment on it without having to please professionally trained editorial gatekeepers. Social media are themselves powerful channels of propaganda, but the five filters don't apply as well to them.
If the filters apply, it would be in different ways. For example, #1 ownership and profit orientation of the media refers to the conglomerate corporations that own big news organizations and that therefore, tend to slant the information they present to favour those corporate interests including the interests of their corporate advertisers.
Big social media outfits such as Facebook and Twitter have their own corporate interests, but they're based on a diversity of news narratives and opinions because their business model is based on personal engagement. The longer you stay on Facebook, the more ads you see and the more money they make. Also, they're not producing their own news, but carrying posts that their users want to share. So, ownership and profit-orientation are still important factors, but they play out in different ways. I guess, put another way, they can make just as much money (and profit) from news & views that challenge the interests of big corporations as from ones that support them. In fact, they can make money on anything their users want to share.
The New York Times is top down, Facebook is bottom up and that makes all the difference. As McLuhan said: The medium is the message.
I would say rather that Facebook and Twitter’s business model is based on what has become a standard pattern of Silicon Valley-style oligarchic grift: of antitrust, secret surveillance, monetizing personal data, cooperating with repressive states around the world and essentially merging with the US national security state at home. In collusion with the western governments, these companies have effectively waged war against free speech and privacy through surveillance, censorship, data mining and controlling the flow of information. Insofar as they are platforms that disseminate news and information and that regularly purge dissident voices and censor content in a nondemocratic, opaque process (as top-down as any used at the NYT) based on bogus pretexts, the filter of private ownership is still a central one affecting what information people have access to. If the Silicon Valley behemoths could make as much profit and market share and preserve their lucrative and expanding connections with the US national security state by not censoring, i.e. from freely allowing all "news & views that challenge the interests of big corporations” and state power, they wouldn’t be constantly engaged in political censorship of such news and views. The medium is not the message, but the ownership of the medium, as in the Herman-Chomsky analysis, still determines to a substantial extent what messages will be permitted.
Yes, yes, yes, I agree wholeheartedly when you mention "secret surveillance and monetizing personal data." That's what I meant by the medium is the message. Facebook, for example, is not just pushing ads, it's using algorithmic formulas that enable effective sales targeting as well as the packaging and resale of personal information to other advertisers including political parties. This is a medium unlike no other. Print, radio, TV were powerful in their day, but computer-driven networks multiply that power manyfold while gathering together the powers of those older forms.
I take your point that ownership matters, but, in this case (Facebook, I mean) it does not necessarily determine what messages will be permitted, at least not in the ways that the Herman/Chomsky propaganda model forecast. "User-generated content." Think about that!
I do agree though and again wholeheartedly that state power matters too. In return for antitrust exemptions and other perks, social media --- sometimes under coercion --- are helping national security states keep tabs on things.
But beware. Social media are offering "free" services that people can't resist because these services are real and also "social" and also "personal" and therefore highly seductive. Yep, the medium is the message.
re "I take your point that ownership matters, but, in this case (Facebook, I mean) it does not necessarily determine what messages will be permitted, at least not in the ways that the Herman/Chomsky propaganda model forecast."
Not always, but then legacy media, at least when Manufacturing Consent was written, wasn't a monolithic system either. Dissent was allowed (much less now), often within predetermined boundaries, but there was still pervasive censorship on behalf of media owners, state-corporate power and US imperialism generally. It's similar with FB, twitter, Google, even if modalities are different. Wrt to the first, there are countless examples. Here's one:
I'm not sure how this kind of overt censoring of voices dysfunctional to US imperialism flowing directly from the material interests and elite connections of the platform's owner differs in kind from what H&C described wrt the ownership filter. That bottom-up, Sandinista-generated content was censored by US intelligence spooks from the top-down. This kind of heavy-handed interference may have been rare early on, but that's changed. And as with traditional media, there is no recourse. I don't disagree with the other points.
Appreciate your current article and the amazing work you've done over your career with The Examiner.
From another point of view, being a journalist has never been easier or more accessible.
As we speak, citizen journalists, on the ground in Ottawa, with little more than go-pros, I-phones and battery packs are destroying the government/corporate media narrative and getting true stories out to the world.
Perhaps as the institution of journalism consolidates into a straight-jacket of fewer owners and tighter control, etc., the spirit of the "free press" lives on in the citizen journalist that exists in each of us.
Linda, that is an impressive body of work!
Yes, I'm afraid the five filters are alive and well and they apply as ever to mainstream media. As someone who laboured for nearly 20 years at CBC, I would especially point to filter #4, flak. Tonight CBC Radio's World at Six (a program I used to edit) barely mentioned the latest Amnesty International report which is entitled: "Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity." CBC's online story, carefully "balances" Amnesty's reporting with Israel's counter-claims that these are "lies" motivated by "anti-semitism." https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-palestinians-amnesty-report-1.6323377
Any journalist who has toiled for Mother Corp. knows that criticism of Israel has to be treated with the utmost understatement because well-organized Jewish groups are ever at the ready to deliver many rounds of potentially career-ending flak.
The Chomsky/Herman propaganda model was conceived before the advent of social media --- an era which ended the mainstream media's monopoly on mainstream news and also empowered readers, viewers and listeners to report their own news and to comment on it without having to please professionally trained editorial gatekeepers. Social media are themselves powerful channels of propaganda, but the five filters don't apply as well to them.
Thanks Bruce! Yes, social media has changed the landscape. I'm curious, which filters do you think don't apply as well to them?
If the filters apply, it would be in different ways. For example, #1 ownership and profit orientation of the media refers to the conglomerate corporations that own big news organizations and that therefore, tend to slant the information they present to favour those corporate interests including the interests of their corporate advertisers.
Big social media outfits such as Facebook and Twitter have their own corporate interests, but they're based on a diversity of news narratives and opinions because their business model is based on personal engagement. The longer you stay on Facebook, the more ads you see and the more money they make. Also, they're not producing their own news, but carrying posts that their users want to share. So, ownership and profit-orientation are still important factors, but they play out in different ways. I guess, put another way, they can make just as much money (and profit) from news & views that challenge the interests of big corporations as from ones that support them. In fact, they can make money on anything their users want to share.
The New York Times is top down, Facebook is bottom up and that makes all the difference. As McLuhan said: The medium is the message.
I would say rather that Facebook and Twitter’s business model is based on what has become a standard pattern of Silicon Valley-style oligarchic grift: of antitrust, secret surveillance, monetizing personal data, cooperating with repressive states around the world and essentially merging with the US national security state at home. In collusion with the western governments, these companies have effectively waged war against free speech and privacy through surveillance, censorship, data mining and controlling the flow of information. Insofar as they are platforms that disseminate news and information and that regularly purge dissident voices and censor content in a nondemocratic, opaque process (as top-down as any used at the NYT) based on bogus pretexts, the filter of private ownership is still a central one affecting what information people have access to. If the Silicon Valley behemoths could make as much profit and market share and preserve their lucrative and expanding connections with the US national security state by not censoring, i.e. from freely allowing all "news & views that challenge the interests of big corporations” and state power, they wouldn’t be constantly engaged in political censorship of such news and views. The medium is not the message, but the ownership of the medium, as in the Herman-Chomsky analysis, still determines to a substantial extent what messages will be permitted.
Yes, yes, yes, I agree wholeheartedly when you mention "secret surveillance and monetizing personal data." That's what I meant by the medium is the message. Facebook, for example, is not just pushing ads, it's using algorithmic formulas that enable effective sales targeting as well as the packaging and resale of personal information to other advertisers including political parties. This is a medium unlike no other. Print, radio, TV were powerful in their day, but computer-driven networks multiply that power manyfold while gathering together the powers of those older forms.
I take your point that ownership matters, but, in this case (Facebook, I mean) it does not necessarily determine what messages will be permitted, at least not in the ways that the Herman/Chomsky propaganda model forecast. "User-generated content." Think about that!
I do agree though and again wholeheartedly that state power matters too. In return for antitrust exemptions and other perks, social media --- sometimes under coercion --- are helping national security states keep tabs on things.
But beware. Social media are offering "free" services that people can't resist because these services are real and also "social" and also "personal" and therefore highly seductive. Yep, the medium is the message.
re "I take your point that ownership matters, but, in this case (Facebook, I mean) it does not necessarily determine what messages will be permitted, at least not in the ways that the Herman/Chomsky propaganda model forecast."
Not always, but then legacy media, at least when Manufacturing Consent was written, wasn't a monolithic system either. Dissent was allowed (much less now), often within predetermined boundaries, but there was still pervasive censorship on behalf of media owners, state-corporate power and US imperialism generally. It's similar with FB, twitter, Google, even if modalities are different. Wrt to the first, there are countless examples. Here's one:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/meet-nicaraguans-facebook-falsely-branded-bots-censored-days-elections/278835/
I'm not sure how this kind of overt censoring of voices dysfunctional to US imperialism flowing directly from the material interests and elite connections of the platform's owner differs in kind from what H&C described wrt the ownership filter. That bottom-up, Sandinista-generated content was censored by US intelligence spooks from the top-down. This kind of heavy-handed interference may have been rare early on, but that's changed. And as with traditional media, there is no recourse. I don't disagree with the other points.
Thanks for this great discussion, Bruce and Brooks!
Amazing. You contribute so much to the health and well-being of my little grey cells. Without your work, they'd atrophy!
Thanks for that, Geoff!
Thanks Linda!
Appreciate your current article and the amazing work you've done over your career with The Examiner.
From another point of view, being a journalist has never been easier or more accessible.
As we speak, citizen journalists, on the ground in Ottawa, with little more than go-pros, I-phones and battery packs are destroying the government/corporate media narrative and getting true stories out to the world.
Perhaps as the institution of journalism consolidates into a straight-jacket of fewer owners and tighter control, etc., the spirit of the "free press" lives on in the citizen journalist that exists in each of us.