Publisher’s Note: Consider this an ongoing thread re: our “Propaganda Model of News,” Real News (defined), so-called “Fake News,” censorship, and beyond in our Digital Age. Included!
First – a trailer for the Hollywood film THE POST (2018).
Our new book chapter – scroll down and enjoy.Â
Let’s begin with some multimedia “news” artifacts.
Two of our favorite REAL NEWS sources:
Here’s how the SnapChat platform “news feed” presents “news’ to its users. Fascinating.
Snapchat “News” Feed from February 22, 2018.
Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky’s “Propaganda Model of News” for the Digital Age, in partnership with Project Censored.
3) Find the 60 minute 2/16/2018 podcast version here.
4) And here is our Breaking ‘News’ – Critical Thinking About ‘Conspiracy Theory’ course and syllabus.
5) And the now-ubiquitous Sinclair Media FAKE NEWS propaganda-video.
And the MAIN EVENT, our POST-TRUTH article–>
If you donât read the newspaper, youâre uninformed.
If you read the newspaper, youâre misinformed.
âMark Twain, US humorist and anti-imperialist
Misleading news is worse than none at all.
âWalter Lippmann and Charles Merz, A Test Of The News
âFreedom of the Pressâ is guaranteed only to those who own one.
â A.J. Liebling, US journalist
1) Introduction: The Post (Truth) World
Begin, appropriately enough, with Hollywood, and celebrated director Steven Spielbergâs 2018 movie The Post â a âfeel goodâ fictional film focusing on the Washington Postâs 1971 publishing of the Pentagon Papers.
Some context.
For decades, Spielberg has served as the feel-good Frank Capra of our time, polishing tarnished historical truths into shiny happy stories for commercial consumption on the worldâs silver screens. The Post, Spielbergâs latest, represents post-truth Hollywood yarn spinning at its finest â a story of news, propaganda, censorship and journalism all wrapped up in a big red bow for audiences eager for a reminder of a time when our so-called âmainstreamâ (read: corporate commercial) US press occasionally âspoke truth to power.â
Calling The Post a mix of âbiography, drama, and history,â the Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) breathlessly summarizes The Postâs plot this way: âa cover-up that spanned four US presidents pushed the countryâs first female newspaper publisher and a hard-driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between the press and the government.â Sounds compelling, but given our post-truth age of news, propaganda, and (dis)information, Spielbergâs The Post is worth a more critical look.
To wit. Clocking in at just under 2 hours, and featuring a Hollywood A game cast â top billing is Meryl Streep playing Post proto-feminist publisher Katharine Graham opposite Tom Hanks as likeably macho Post editor Ben Bradlee â Spielbergâs The Post makes mythical mincemeat out of The Washington Postâs decision to publish US marine-turned RAND analyst-turned government whistleblower Daniel Ellsbergâs âPentagon Papers,â 7,000 âtop secretâ pages of classified information detailing US policymakersâ cover up of the Vietnam War debacle.
Post pros? Spielberg is at his best in capturing the frenetic nature of the Post newsroom (Better Call Saulâs Bob Odenkirk as Post reporter Ben Bagdikian steals the show) in the act of bringing a controversial, politically charged national news story into public view in the oh-so-cumbersome Age of Analog. Witness Spielbergâs lovingly filmed close ups of the setting of metal type, and his romance to mechanized lines of newspapers flying through giant industrial presses on their way to D.C. news stands. Spielberg also excels at individual (if fictional) character studies, capturing the frisson and friction between friends â Graham confronting JFKâs Camelot in the form of D.C. party pal and âdefenseâ secretary Robert McNamara (a charming but two-faced Bruce Greenwood) about the lies of Vietnam, and then challenging the corporate roosters gathered around her by daring to publish the Pentagon Papers against their collective masculine judgment âmore a feminist battle cry than a critique of US foreign policy, in the hands of Spielberg (and a scene that prompted spontaneous clapping from Vermont filmgoers. #MeToo.)
However. Spielberg concludes The Post at the DNCâs D.C. headquarters, in darkness, as a night cop discovers âburglarsâ prowling the building, thus giving a liberal Hollywood head-bashing to repulsive Republican Richard Nixon, Watergate, and the story that put the Washington Post on the map as a national-caliber investigative news journal â All The Presidentsâ Men, and all that. On the Vietnam question, in The Post, Spielberg sets up Nixon to take the fall, despite the decades-long machinations of the Deep State, and the bipartisan imperial nature of the Pentagon promoted and CIA-goosed US invasion of Vietnam, quietly begun by 1950s Republicans (Ike), ramped up in secret by 1960s Democrats (JFK sent in âadvisors,â and LBJ invented the Tonkin Gulf âfalse flagâ and fed it to US news outlets to justify full scale US escalation), and ending in the 1970s with defeat and retreat under Nixon, after the deaths of 58,000 US soldiers, and three million Vietnamese men, women, and children. The country of Vietnam, having requested national sovereignty from the Great Powers for decades while under French occupation, again found itself under imperial attack by the US – military, industrial, chemical, and geoengineered â as part of a 10-plus year US occupation that laid waste to the entire country, courtesy of the Pentagonâs âKill Anything That Movesâ policy (see investigative journalist Nick Turseâs 2013 book of the same name).[1]
Back to reality. Passing off The Post as âbiography and historyâ obscures much more than it reveals, and Spielbergâs film functions as pop culture propaganda at a time when Americans need a deeper and more nuanced understanding of our century-plus history as a global Empire.
Here is but one Post-truth example: the CIAâs âOperation Mockingbirdâ saw hundreds of âintelligence operativesâ âseededâ into US news organizations to âsteerâ national news stories in pro-US imperial directions â playing the U.S. ânewsâ like a âMighty Wurlitzer.â[2] Beginning in the 1950s, CIA ally Frank Wisner, and then CIA director Allen Dulles, recruited Washington Post publisher Phil Graham (Katherineâs husband) to run âMockingbirdâ within the US news industry, bringing into the Deep State fold respected news men at CBS, the New York Times, TIME, LIFE and other national news outlets. These cozy Deep State/US news connections, solidified through personal relationships at the dinner dances and cocktail clubs that Spielberg lovingly depicts in The Post, help explain why US ânewsâ outlets remained silent on critical questions of Empire, even championing an aggressive pro-war stance for the US in Vietnam, while ordinary Americans courageously took to the streets to demand civil rights, challenge the Vietnam war, and confront the imperial Beast (a âstreet heatâ 1960s and 1970s reality Spielberg turns into brief but bizarre âLa La Landâ moments in The Post.)
And today? The Washington Postâs Graham family sold their newspaper for $250 million in 2013 to the worldâs richest man, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (now worth more than $100 billion). Amazonâs Bezos now sits on Pentagon boards, enjoys a $600 million cloud computing contract with the CIA, hoovers 1 out of every 2 US retail dollars out of our national retail economy, systematically guts working class wages, jobs, and small businesses from coast to coast, and (insiders say) orders Washington Post reporters to refrain from writing stories critical of, um, you guessed it â Amazon, as well as all of their advertisers. âDemocracy Dies In Darknessâ is the Washington Postâs new Bezos Era slogan. #NoJoke. Perhaps someday, Spielberg will make a sequel to The Post, his beautiful, thrilling, but simplistic propaganda piece â Hollywood disinformation about the US ânews businessâ at its finest. And when he does, Spielberg can correct the historical record, and simply call it Post Truth.
1) What Is âNewsâ? â A Simple Taxonomy
 In considering questions of news, censorship, disinformation, and propaganda in what I call our 21st century âDigital Age of Disorientation,â Spielbergâs The Post is perhaps the finest example of what we might call âdis-infotainmentâ â powerful news-focused Hollywood-produced ahistorical propaganda, or mythology for the movie-going masses. Blowing up The Post in the bigger picture? Anyone who has explored the concept of ânewsâ knows that the term has a rich and storied definitional history. Here is a useful starting place, Tony Harcup and Deidre OâNeillâs March 2016 article âWhat Is News? News Values Revisited (Again).â âAlthough there are exceptions to every rule,â they write, âWe have found that news stories must generally satisfy one or more of the following requirementsâ:
â  1. The Power Elite: Stories concerning powerful individuals, organisations or institutions.
â  2. Celebrity: Stories concerning people who are already famous.
â  3. Entertainment: Stories concerning sex, show business, human interest, animals, an unfolding drama, or offering opportunities for humorous treatment, entertaining photographs or witty headlines.
â  4. Surprise: Stories that have an element of surprise and/or contrast.
â  5. Bad news: Stories with particularly negative overtones, such as conflict or tragedy.
â  6. Good news: Stories with particularly positive overtones, such as rescues and cures.
â  7. Magnitude: Stories that are perceived as sufficiently significant either in the numbers of people involved or in potential impact.
â  8. Relevance: Stories about issues, groups and nations perceived to be relevant to the audience.
â  9. Follow-up: Stories about subjects already in the news.
â  10. Newspaper agenda: Stories that set or fit a news organization’s own agenda.
This Top 10 list is useful, sort of, but letâs sharpen our definition of ânews we can useâ to consider our role as citizens charged with navigating this âdigital disorientationâ here in the US – the richest and most powerful Empire the world has ever seen.
2) What Is âFake Newsâ? â A Simple Taxonomy
Letâs next explore the many varieties of âfake newsâ â âfalse or counterfeit information published by news organizations,â according to Merriam Webster – found in our 21st century US ânewsâ culture. New book Critical Media Literacy and Fake News in Post-Truth America defines âfake newsâ as âpurposefully false and provocative âŠmisinformation and literally untrue news stories,â even as scholars recognize the ever-evolving politicized nature of the term âfake newsâ in an era when powerful corporate, media and state players push âfake newsâ terms for their own propagandistic purposes.â[3]
Hereâs a bold claim: the biggest purveyor of âfake newsâ is the US âDeep State,â the subterranean network of US government officials, intelligence agencies, and corporate commercial ânewsâ outlets who often collaborate to âmanufacture consentâ (to borrow Edward Herman and Noam Chomskyâs phrase) for US imperial policies. Drilling deeper, most of what is defined as ânewsâ in the United States newsâ scape is best classified in one of the following categories â a conceptual taxonomy, of sorts.
â  1. Infotainment: Any âone offâ ânewsâ story that promotes fluffy âkitty in the treeâ narratives falls into this category. Momentary glimpses of celebrities, sports figures, entertainers, as well as âfeel goodâ stories (often referred to as âhuman interestâ stories) or freakish âdog hit thrice by lightningâ tales can all be classified as âinfotainment.â These stories keep audiences watching, cultivate a âbuyers mood,â and promote aspirational lifestyles and a culture of consumerism central to the ideological underpinnings of our US ânewsâ culture.
â  2. âJunk Food News: âInfotainmentâ on serialized steroids, âjunk food newsâ refers to ongoing ânewsâ stories driven by âsensationalized, personalized, and homogenized inconsequential trivia,â often filling space that otherwise could be occupied by âreal news.â Project Censored founder Carl Jensen coined the term in a 1983 edition of Penthouse magazine, and since 2001, Project Censored has since devoted a chapter of their annual Censored book of top 25 censored news stories to an exploration of the top 10 junk food news stories from the previous year (Phillips, 2001). Jensen developed a humorous taxonomy for different kinds of âjunk food newsâ that included 1) brand name/celebrity gossip, 2) sexposes, 3) show biz stories, 4) âyo yoâ news (daily ever-changing statistics like stock market numbers); 5) fads and fashion; 6) anniversaries; 7) sports and celebrity athletes; and 8) political campaign horse race ânewsâ â which politician has raised the least or most money or is running ahead or behind in which state at any given moment.
â  3. âNews Abuse:â Another term coined by Project Censored, ânews abuseâ refers to news stories that potentially have merit, but are presented by US corporate ânewsâ outlets in a slanted or non-newsworthy manner. A classic example is the sensationalized and fabricated âPrivate Jessica Lynchâ story as a stand in for more critical coverage of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. I could fill this chapter with dozens of other ânews abuseâ momentsâ see any annual Censored book for a laundry list of examples.
â  4. âDeep State Disinformation:â Refers to secretive ânewsâ campaigns waged by the Deep State to âseedâ US corporate print, radio and television news outlets with public relations propaganda designed to âmanufacture consentâ for particular policy outcomes. US wars of aggression are perhaps the most prominent examples of Deep State disinformation campaigns. Public relations firms like Hill and Knowlton provided ânewsâ content to justify the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and prominent national journalists like New York Timesâ Judith Miller provided front page (dis)information reporting on Iraq president Saddam Husseinâs alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs, stories that turned out to be false, but in the moment helped provide the rationale for aggressive US warmaking in the Middle East, Africa and Beyond.
As mentioned earlier, Deep State US intelligence services like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have cultivated cozy relationships with prominent US journalists and publishers since the beginning of the Cold War (remember âOperation Mockingbirdâ), and now, even prominent Democratic Party operatives maintain intimate ties with US journalists, publishers, and news outlets, as revealed by 2016 documents published by WikiLeaks. The CIAâs start-up funding of Google, Amazon founder Jeff Bezosâ recent purchase of The Washington Post, and Amazonâs brokering of a $600 million data-sharing deal with the CIA, are but three specific examples that provide further evidence of the intimate ties between new digital media corporations, US journalism outlets, and the Deep State.[4]
â  5. âClick Bait:â Broadly, this term refers to any web content that prioritizes the generating of click-through online advertising revenue over any effort to provide accurate, detailed, nuanced, or complex news content, usually through the deployment of eye-catching graphics or titillating headlines. Some of the most popular online ânewsâ sites â Huffington Post, Upworthy, Buzzfeed, Salon, Townhall, and Breitbart â are driven by an obsession with providing profit-driven âclickbaitâ content.
3) Our US âTruth Emergencyâ
Tally up this âfake newsâ taxonomy, and US citizens are facing an
unprecedented situation Project Censored refers to as our collective âTruth Emergency.â Writes Project Censoredâs Peter Phillips:
There is a literal truth emergency in the United States, not only regarding distant wars, torture camps, and doctored intelligence, but also around issues that most intimately impact our lives at home. For example, few Americans know that there has been a thirty-five year decline in real wages for most workers in the country, while the top 10% now enjoy unparalleled wealth with strikingly low tax burdens. (Phillips and Kubiak in Censored 2004)
At our news journal Vermont Independent, we offer a comprehensive top 10 list of underreported news stories that are vital to informing citizens of the US of Empire âwhat is really going on,â which journalist George Seldes argues should be the #1 definitional goal of ânews we can use.â[5]
In the spirit of âclickbait,â here is our brief âTop 10â ânews we can useâ list, drawn from our Plan âVâ â Designing a 2nd Vermont Republic pamphlet, available at www.vermontindependent.org:
â  1. The US financial sectorâs debt-driven predatory capitalism, featuring a global economy driven by Wall Street, unaccountable moneyed institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO, and the âDeep State.â[6]
â  2. The Pentagonâs pursuit of a policy of âfull spectrum dominance,â global arms sales, drone warfare, geoengineering, sequential energy wars, and aggressive creation of âfailed statesâ in the greater Middle East.
â  3. The gutting of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the name of âHomeland Security.â
â  4. Electoral Dysfunctionâour votes as US citizens are no longer accurately counted.
â  5. A massive Orwellian surveillance apparatusâthink Facebook meets Google meets the NSAâwhich spies on us all.
â  6. A bankrupt and oligopolistic two party Democratic/Republican political system that serves only the rich and powerful.
â  7. A mass media network controlled by for-profit multinational corporations that distracts and divides us.
â  8. A US neo-colonial âempire of basesâ (as many as 1,000) that seeks to control the entire Planet and outer space, a space-age exercise in âimperial overreach.â
â  9. A collective inability to face the civilizational challenges that confront USâgeoengineered climate change, peak oil, and the threat of nuclear Armageddon.
â  10. Catabolic collapseâthe Mother of all Dilemmasâsystemic breakdown of a complex civilization that has overextended itself, a problem that has ultimately possessed and consumed every Empire over the past 10,000 years of world history.[7]
All of these stories are dramatically underreported within US corporate mainstream ânewsâ channels and outlets â to our collective detriment and ignorance. Without a basic factual ânewsâ-driven understanding and an informational grounding in US imperial policies, we as US citizens cannot even begin to discuss and debate the vital issues of our time.
4) âFake Newsâ versus âReal Newsâ
The term âFake Newsâ is a newly weaponized phrase for an old phenomenon â propaganda. In the face of fake news, letâs get real. Here is a simple definition. âReal newsâ stories are defined by âinformation that is recent, relevant, reliable, historically framed, hegemonically hip, and multi-perspectival.â
Letâs consider each of these six elements in turn.
– 1. âRecentâ means that the news story in question has been recently introduced into the cultural conversation and is,
– 2. âRelevantâ means âin playâ across multiple platforms and in various arenas.
– 3. âReliableâ refers to clearly verifiable and explicitly named âgo toâ sources (as opposed to vague, unclear, or unnamed âgovernment officialsâ or âsources claimedâ language.)
– 4. âHistorical framingâ means that the news story is contextualized in some meaningful fashion, grounded in past precedents and events â it does not simply occupy what might be called called âthe amputated Now.â
– 5. âHegemonically hipâ means that the news story makes transparent the power relations inherent in any discussion surrounding political events, including the biases and subjectivities of the news source reporting the story â foregrounding the political economy of news on a story by story basis is a vital intellectual task.
– 6. âMulti-perspectivalâ refers to the importance of news stories embedding multiple points of view within their narrative, not simply a binary âhe said/she saidâ or Dems/Reps sort of framing typically found in much of what passes for ânewsâ today.
While these six ingredients can be considered as a simple guide for defining âreal news,â when applying them as a framework for analyzing stories produced and distributed within our 21st century digital news culture, it quickly becomes apparent how few âreal newsâ stories are produced by our ânews industryâ outlets across print, radio, television and the Internet. Despite the seemingly endless variety of news and information available to us, few so-called ânewsâ stories meet all six of these criteria.
This leads to our next two questions.
Why is âreal newsâ so hard to find in the US?
And, by extension, why are we journalists, news organizations, and citizens unable to produce and deploy more âreal newsâ?
5) The âPropaganda Model of Newsâ 1.0 â Analyzing the US âNews Industryâ in the Analog Age
To answer these questions, consider Edward Hermann and Noam Chomskyâs conceptual model known as the âpropaganda model of newsâ (PMON). First published in their seminal 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media, the PMON is perhaps the most conceptually sophisticated critique of the US news âindustryâ ever produced.
Begin with their overarching conceptual argument.
The US ânews industry,â Chomsky and Herman argued in 1988, is a âguided market system,â with the guidance being provided by the government, the leaders of the corporate community, the top media owners and executives, and the assorted individuals and group who are assigned or allowed to take constructive initiatives.â This âguided market systemâ creates daily storytelling opportunities within the ânews industryâ steered âby the government, the leaders of the corporate community, the top media owners and executives, and the assorted individuals and group who are assigned or allowed to take constructive initiatives.[8]
In other words, the PMON suggests that the âsocial purposeâ of US ânewsâ is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state,â Chomsky and Herman concluded. âThe news media serve this purpose in many ways: through selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping debate within the bounds of acceptable premises.â[9]
Chomsky and Herman ended their book with a warning from former Washington Post journalist-turned-media scholar Ben Bagdikian, who observed that the institutional biases of the ânewsâ media revealed by the PMON âdoes not merely protect the corporate system. It robs the public of a chance to understand the real world.â[10]
Words worth pondering. Weâll come back to them shortly.
Manufacturing Consent was published in three editions: 1988, and then in 2002 with a new preface, and then again in 2008 with a new afterword. The bookâs core structural argument relies on extensive analysis of The New York Timesâ ânewsâ coverage during the mid-1980s. Chomsky and Herman used their data to posit a list of five âfiltersâ through which all raw information has to pass before being published by ârespectedâ (read: corporate commercial) US mainstream ânewsâ outlets. These five filters, best understood as emerging out of intimate Corporate/State economic and political networks, allow the US ânewsâ media âto mobilize support for the special interests that dominate the state and private activity,â wrote Chomsky and Herman, and the US ânews industryâsâ collective âchoices, emphases, and omissions can often be understood bestâŠby analyzing them in such terms.â[11]
Even in our 21st centuryâs highly charged political climate, many US ânewsâ outlets claim to be unbiased, professional, and objective. After documenting systemic bias within the New York Times, Chomsky and Herman, by contrast, sounded a âreality checkâ for this deeply flawed view of the US ânews industry.â âIf the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, to decide what the general populace can see, hear, and think about, and can âmanageâ public opinion by regular propaganda campaigns,â they argued in Manufacturing Consent, âthe standard view of how the system works [unbiased, professional, and objective] is at serious odds with reality.â[12]
In a moment, I will briefly review all five filters here, and then propose five additional filters for our digital age. Before doing so, letâs consider Edward Hermanâs last published essay before his 2017 passing (see Censored 2018), in which he argues that their âPropaganda Model of Newsâ (PMON) still holds up in the Digital Age, as well as providing updated scholarly and cultural contexts.[13] His summary conclusions are worth quoting, with a few caveats from my corner.
âThe unique feature of the PMON is that it offers a radical analysis and critique of the dominant, mainly commercial and advertising-based, mainstream media (MSM),â Herman wrote in 2017, âlocating their regular behavior and performance in their elite-dominated corporate structures and relationships, not in journalistsâ news-gathering practices or any supposed role as an independent watchdog serving the general public interest.â[14]
Two important observations here. Herman is quick to explain that individual journalists can still exercise some degree of professional autonomy within the ânews industry.â And the term âradicalâ does NOT mean âwild eyedâ or âtrending off the deep end.â Rather, âradicalâ implies a structural analysis that âgets at the root causes of the thing in question,â in this case, our national ânews industryâ culture of fake news, censorship, propaganda, and disinformation.
So again, the PMON âis a radical analysis and critique that traces poor media performance to media structures and relationships,â explains Herman in Censored 2018, and these structures and relationships are not âcorrectable by exhortation or superficial reforms.â[15]
Always good to define our terms here.
Back to Herman in Censored 2018. Our PMON, he wrote a few months before his death, was âpower-based, finding behavior and performance to originate from five sources related to institutional power.â
These five sources are 1) the ownership and profit orientation of the control group; 2) the impact of financial independence on advertising and advertisers; 3) the sourcing of news, with power accruing to dominant sources like the Pentagon, the State Department, or Appleâs headquarters, to which the media gravitate for credible and low-cost news; 4) flak, the negative feedback which is most important and influential when coming from agents of power; 5) ideology (i.e. â âanticommunism,â) which also derives from individuals and institutions with economic or political power.[16]
Three arguments for rethinking the five filters for our Digital Age. In his final Censored 2018 swan song, Herman conflates two of the filters – NEWS MAKERS (i.e. the POTUS, the FLOTUS, the SCOTUS, and other highly visible ânews worthyâ individuals and institutions) with NEWS SHAPERS (PR firms, think tanks, foundations, and âexpertsâ who âshapeâ news). 1) I think it vital to separate the two, and 2) I will save IDEOLOGY (filter #5 in their original book) for the very end of my analysis, as a sort of Umbrella filter that contains all others. Finally, I am slightly reordering the filters to make the PMON more accessible to students and citizens.[17]
Provocatively, Herman also notes a decided lack of interest in the PMON from the global scholarly community, referencing a twenty-year study of ten US and European media and communications journals in which scholars cite the PMON in only 79 of 3,053 articles (a 2.6 % reference rate), and within that tiny percentage, a majority of THOSE articles cite the PMON without any discussion. Furthermore, âmuch of the criticism [of the PMON] is extremely superficial and has failed to come to grips with its actual focus and claims,â Herman argues.[18]
The PMON, he makes clear, is NOT a âmodel of effectsâ or âa rigid or deterministic argument for conspiratorial elites consensually behaving badly, but rather a âbroad framework for analysis.ââ Channeling a sociological structure/agency model, Herman notes (once again) that the PMON analysis âalso explained that journalists can do their work with complete integrity while still following party lines and ideologies imposed by the institutional structures within which they work.â[19]
6) The âPropaganda Model of Newsâ 2.0 â Considering The âNews Industryâ in the Digital Age
And finally, in his last published essay before his passing, Herman argues for the PCOMâs continued relevance in our 21st century Digital Age. âThe main structural change that has affected the mainstream media (MSM) has been the growth of the Internet, with a rapid concentration process there and a huge drain in advertising revenue from the legacy media to the leading firms providing search information access and social media i.e. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Twitter,â explains Herman in Censored 2018. âNewspapers have been particularly hard hit, with a 60% drop in the workforce from 1990-2016, and a precipitous drop in advertising revenue from $65.8 billion in 2000 to $18 billion in 2014.â[20]
He also explains that our new Lords of the Cloud are quickly building powerful Big Data-driven monopolies â Amazon owns the world of US retail, Google enjoys 88% market share in online searches and search advertising, and Facebook boasts 77% market share in mobile social media, to name but three examples. At dayâs end, our civilizational shift from the Analog Age to the Digital Era means more of the same.[21]
Much more. âThe propaganda model suggests that the âsocial purposeâ of the NEWS media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state, writes Herman in 2017. âThe NEWS media serve this purpose in many ways: through selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping debate within the bounds of acceptable premises.â[22]
And finally, Herman channels media analyst Ben Bagdikianâs warning from Manufacturing Consent. The institutional bias of the private mass media âdoes not merely protect the corporate system. It robs the public of a chance to understand the real world.â[23] Again, words from three decades ago, still worth pondering.
Herman ends his Censored 2018 essay with conviction:
The Propaganda Model is as strong and applicable as it was thirty years ago. The structural conditions have, if anything, given it more salience, with greater media concentration but still more competition for advertising revenue, enhanced power and reach of advertisers, and little if any diminution in the effects of the other three filters. What is more, the performance of the MSM in treating the run-up to the Iraq War, the conflict with Iran, and Russiaâs alleged election âmeddlingâ and âaggressionâ in Ukraine and Crimea offers case studies of biases as dramatic as those offered in the 1988 edition of Manufacturing Consent. The Propaganda Model lives on.[24]
So, is Herman correct? Is the PMON still relevant for todayâs Digital Age?
I say, YES, with three caveats, five more filters to refine the PMON and, a bit of conceptual reinvention.
Caveats first. The Digital Age is different than the Analog Age in many respects â more powerful and more pervasive, with amplified promise and peril. Herman is a bit too quick to equate the two. Â Second, the phrase âmass media.â found in the subtitle of 1988âs Manufacturing Consent, is somewhat misleading, as Chomsky and Herman focused on NEWS media (not television, or Hollywood films, or X), and framed their analysis around a single influential NEWS journal, the New York Times. Third, Herman shortens the PMON to the PM in his final essay. Again, we ought to remember we are highlighting ânewsâ and the ânews industryâ in our analysis (not Hollywoodâs fictional fabrications of the ânews industry.â)
These caveats aside, Chomsky and Hermanâs PMON, a radical scholarly critique of the ânews industryâ using a filter-based framework â remains the most powerful starting place for understanding our 21st century news culture. Letâs revive and refine the PMON for our 21st century age, and take active steps to learn, understand, teach, and apply this PMON framework, as journalists, publishers, scholars, and citizens. In doing so, I propose adding to the PMON FIVE more filters. Below, I briefly sketch out each of our now TEN filters, provide a current example of each in play in our Digital Ageâs US ânews industryâ culture, and encourage all 21st century media teachers, communications scholars, citizens, and journalists to embrace and apply the PMON.
More about this in our conclusion. First, our TEN filters.
7) The Propaganda Model of News (PMON) 2.0 – New Filters For Our Digital Age
FILTER #1: ADVERTISING
With advertising, the free market does not yield a neutral system in which final buyer choice decides,â Chomsky and Herman wrote in their original 1988 edition of Manufacturing Consent. âThe advertisersâ choices influence media prosperity and survival.â[25]
Agreed, and 21st century advertising is at once subtler and more pervasive in our Digital Age of Big Data, because more and more advertising is being micro-targeted at individual news consumers through sophisticated algorithmic coding managed by Google, Facebook, and other digital media corporations. Advertising is the lifeblood of our corporate commercial media culture, and the ceaseless âto be you gotta buyâ consumer-happy promotion of goods, products, and services provides the majority of funding for US print, radio, television and Internet ânewsâ media. Advertisers have tremendous power to shape stories that provide US our ânews.â âHe who pays the piper calls the tune,â as the old nursery rhyme goes.
Example: Pick ANY corporate commercial ânews industryâ media outlet and pay attention to their advertising base. With print media, like the New York Times, this is easy â just peruse the pages of the newspaper (remembering that online advertising is an ever-increasing and harder-to-spot reality.) âNews industryâ channels like the New York Times are as much in the business of delivering their audiences to advertisers as they are in the business of delivering actual news, if not more so.
Repeat this last sentence a few times.
FILTER #2: OWNERSHIP
The dominant media firms are quite large businesses,â wrote Chomsky and Herman in 1988âs Manufacturing Consent. âThey are controlled by very wealthy people or by managers who are subject to large constraints by owners and other market profit-oriented forces, and they are closely interlocked, and have important common interests with, other major corporations, banks, and government.[26]
Agreed. In our 21st century Digital Age, many corporate commercial US ânewsâ outlets are in turn owned by much larger corporate entities that have a vested interest in maintaining the US imperial status quo. As Ben Bagdikianâs extensive Media Monopoly research has chronicled, 90% of our media content â radio, movie, TV, web, magazine and newspaper outlets â are now ultimately owned by 6 transnational corporations with âlittle to tell but everything to sell,â in the words of communication scholar George Gerbner.
Example: Research which corporation own your favorite ânews industryâ channel. Take MSNBC. Formerly owned by General Electric (which manufactures light bulbs AND Pentagon weapons guidance systems for global deployment), MSNBC is now owned by Comcast, the USâs largest cable corporation. I wonder how closely MSNBC ânewsâ has critically covered the national debate over âNet Neutrality,â given interests of parent company Comcast?
FILTER #3: NEWS MAKERS
âThe media need a steady reliable flow of the raw material of news [and] they have daily news demands and imperative news schedules that they must meet,â wrote Chomsky and Herman in Manufacturing Consent. âEconomics dictate that they concentrate their resources where significant news often occurs, where important rumors and leaks abound, and where regular press conferences are held.[27]
Again, agreed. In our 21st century Digital Age, so much of our daily ânewsâis consumed by the most visible persons and organizations deemedânewsworthyâ â the POTUS, the FLOTUS, and the SCOTUS, to name but three examples. Even a seemingly mundane ânewsâ story â âPresident Obama rearranges his sock drawer with the family dog!â â often trumps more vital stories that go underreported. And speaking of Trump, the current POTUSâ individual tweets â 140-character micro blog messages squeezed off in the dead of night – now constitute front page news. This absurdity is a powerful example of the NEWS MAKER filter at work.
FILTER #4: NEWS SHAPERS
âThe dominance of official sources is weakened by the existence of highly respectable unofficial sources that give dissident views with great authority,â wrote Chomsky and Herman in 1988. âThis problem is alleviated by âco-opting the expertsâ â putting them on the payroll as consultants, funding their research, and organizing think tanks that will hire them directly and help disseminate their messages.â[28]
True enough. Former Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont patrician/pediatrician Howard Dean, who represented (he said) âthe Democratic wing of the Democratic Partyâ when he ran an insurgent presidential campaign in 2004, now routinely appears on US television ânewsâ programs to denounce progressive policies like âsingle payer health care.â Prestigious US think tanks, foundations, and public relations firms, meanwhile, are in the business of producing âresearchâ designed to generate news and (dis)information for our voracious 24/7 Digital Age news cycle. For a variety of reasons, news organizations often find it easier to simply âsourceâ their information from these NEWS SHAPER organizations rather than conduct their own independent investigative research.
FILTER #5: FLAK
ââFlakâ refers to negative responses to a NEWS media statement or program,â wrote Chomsky and Herman in Manufacturing Consent. âIt may take the form of letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits, speeches or bills before Congress, and other modes of complaint, threat, or punitive action.[29]
Yes. âFlakâ or ânegative criticism,â are attacks on individual journalists or news organizations who stray beyond the boundaries of the accepted news status quo. The past few decades are littered with the careers (and occasional corpses) of US journalists who got too close to power in their pursuit of a story they deemed the public had a right to know, but offended the wealthy and powerful.
Examples: NBC fired popular TV news personality Phil Donahue for his outspoken criticism of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and Pulitzer prize winning New York Times foreign affairs journalist Christopher Hedges chose to resign before he was fired by the newspaper for his outspoken criticism of the US invasion of Iraq. Numerous examples of âflakâ abound.
Taken together, these five filters together comprised Hermann and Chomskyâs âpropaganda model of news,â and is my starting place for expanding the PMON for our 21st century Digital Age.
8) PMON 2.0 â Expanding the Conceptual Model
To wit. Here are five additional filters, based on how news and (dis)information is produced, deployed and âsharedâ through 21st century digital networks. Again, âdisorientationâ seems a central hallmark of our Digital Age, given the mindboggling complexities surrounding the workings of our 21st century news industryâ culture. These filters may help render some order out of chaos.
FILTER 6: âDEEP STATEâ DISINFORMATION
As mentioned earlier, the âDeep Stateâ has for decades secretly partnered with ânewsâ organizations and think tanks to âseedâ stories into mainstream ânewsâ channels designed to promote US imperial agendas, protect corporate interests, and advance the goals of what retired US general and departing Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower famously called the âmilitary industrial complexâ in his 1961 farewell address.
In our 21st century Digital Age, the concept of the âDeep Stateâ is now cracking into mainstream cultural conversations in ways never seen before, and this phenomenon bodes well for independent news analysis and information access. An entire book could be written on the Deep Stateâs relationship with the US news media. Certainly, the DEEP STATE DISINFORMATION âfilterâ is difficult to spot, as it demands a deep critical knowledge of US history and politics, and the ability to see beyond media-manufactured false binaries â Red versus Blue, Democratic versus Republican, âliberalâ versus âconservative, âfor us or against us.â
Example: Research âOperation Mockingbirdâ for the origins of one influential Deep State sponsored disinformation operation. Today, the use of the term âfake newsâ disguises myriad disinformation campaigns, a phenomenon Edward Herman explored in a lengthy Monthly Review essay a few months before his passing, in which he focused his attention on anti-Russian propaganda deployed through US ânews industryâ outlets. Specifically, the âRussia hacked the 2016 electionâ meme.[30]
âIt has been amusing to watch the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets express their dismay over the rise and spread of âfake news,â Herman writes in fall 2017. âThese publications take it as an obvious truth that what they provide is straightforward, unbiased, fact-based reporting. They do offer such news, but they also provide a steady flow of their own varied forms of fake news, often by disseminating false or misleading information supplied to them by the national security state, other branches of government, and sites of corporate power.[31]
Herman also points to the role of information suppression, even outright censorship, as practiced by 21st century âpillarsâ of US journalism. âAn important form of mainstream media fake news is that which is presented while suppressing information that calls the preferred news into question,â he explains. âMainstream media fake news is especially likely where a party line is quickly formed on a topic, with any deviations therefor immediately dismissed as naĂŻve, unpatriotic, or simply wrong.â[32]
Herman then historicizes this current phenomenon, providing a brief hundred-year history. âFake news on Russia is a Times tradition that can be traced back at least as far as the 1917 revolution,â he explains. âThe Times has taken the Russian hacking story as established fact, despite the absence of hard evidence.â Herman also connects the dots between the âDeep Stateâ and the New York Times (an old story, as it turns out.) Â âWhile quoting the CIAâs admission that it had no hard evidence, relying instead on âcircumstantial evidenceâ and âcapabilities,â the Times was happy to describe these capabilities at great length and to imply that they proved something,â Herman concludes. âEditorials and news articles have worked uniformly on the false supposition that Russian hacking was proved, and that the Russians had given these data to WikiLeaks, also unproven.â[33]
In sum, the âRussians hacked the 2016 Presidential Electionâ meme is perhaps the most powerful example of the DEEP STATE DISNFORMATION filter bubble at work in our current US ânews industryâ 24/7 cycle.
FILTER #7: ALGORITHMS
Contributing to our 21st century Digital Age, too, is the widespread use of proprietary corporately-controlled news and (dis)information platforms built on sophisticated ever-evolving computer code programs known as algorithms. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and other powerful global digital media corporations are constantly exploring new and novel ways to harvest consumer data and capture networked content for their true customers â advertisers and the third-party data harvesting companies who collect and share consumer information, often in secret our consent. To wit, our 21st century ânews industryâ provides vital content within the algorithmic mix, revealing intimate details about usersâ personal data and our connections with others. Becoming more aware of the ALGORITHMâs evolving power is vital.  Take a single but powerful example: Googleâs April 2016 decision to divert online readership traffic away from independent âleft leaningâ news sites like Truthout, Alternet, RT, WSWS, and Truthdig, all of which saw their monthly visitor rates drop precipitously in the following weeks and months.[34] Project Censoredâs webmaster reported a similar drop.
âGoogle, Inc., isn’t just the world’s biggest purveyor of information; it is also the world’s biggest censor,â writes USA Newsâ Robert Epstein in response to Googleâs algorithmic manipulations. âWhen Google’s employees or algorithms decide to block our access to information about a news item, political candidate or business, opinions and votes can shift, reputations can be ruined and businesses can crash and burn.â[35]
Examples of what we might call âalgorithmic censorshipâ abound â look for increased debate about this phenomenon (or maybe not?) as more of our news moves online.
FILTER #8: FILTER BUBBLES
Best considered in conjunction with the ALGORITHM, the FILTER BUBBLE is a conceptual term coined by MoveOn and Upworthy co-founder Eli Pariser. Think of the ALGORITHM that is something Digital Media corporations do to us, often without us knowing, while the FILTER BUBBLE is something we do to ourselves. Each of us develops a âfilter bubbleâ through repeated news and information searches online, as a combination of platform-specific algorithms and our own personal search choices construct a particular digital ârealityâ for each of us over time. If you and I search the exact same word or phrase on Google â âRussia Hack,â for example, we may get dramatically different search results, based on our aggregated personal search queries and decisions â our âdigital search footprints,â if you will.
Understanding the presence of our own âfilter bubbleâ and taking active steps to push our search for news and information beyond the routine, habitual, or even comfortable is a vital element of critical 21st century news consumption. Otherwise, we end up wrapping ourselves up in our own ânews realityâ that merely reflects our own individual tastes, choices, and consumption habits. By extension, our âtrusted friendsâ (a popular phrase in the world of digital media marketing) simply become foils for networking back to us what we already think we know. Fighting the FILTER BUBBLE, like developing an awareness of ALGORITHMS, is vital news consumption and production.
FILTER #9: BEHAVIORAL MICROTARGETING
What if 21st century Digital Age corporations could partner with political campaign strategists to reach into the Web and use social media platforms to âmassageâ a citizenryâs thinking, influence voter choices on particular issues, or encourage voters to support a particular candidate? Cambridge Analytica, a U.K.-based consulting company, claims they can engage in this sort of âbehavioral microtargeting,â using an alleged (and astonishing) 5,000 pieces of individual data on each of 220 million American voters. We canât know for sure, since their data is proprietary, but the use of âpsychographicâ data to manipulate behaviour is sure to gain notoriety in the years ahead, and must be considered as a primary filter in shaping behavior regarding our ânewsâ habits, particularly as our civic and consumer spaces become ever more intertwined with our digital selves.
FILTER #10: SOCK PUPPETS
Finally, imagine if corporations or governments could create thousands of fake social media accounts to âpadâ celebrity social media accounts (#FollowerFactory), or create, share, and promote or attack a particular candidate, campaign or ideological position? Already happening. SOCK PUPPETS is the filter naming these fake (often anonymous or stolen) social media accounts, which can be unleashed into digital and social media spaces via the ALGORITHMâs power and then used to spread messages, stories, and real or imagined claims (including so-called âfake newsâ stories) virally through various networks. Surely, being aware of the presence and use of sophisticated âsock puppets,â a powerful new digital filter in our brave new digital world of news and (dis)information in the 21st century, is of vital interest for all CMLE practitioners and independent journalists.
To conclude, âDEEP STATEâ DISINFORMATION, ALGORITHMS, FILTER BUBBLES, BEHAVIORAL MICROTARGETING, and SOCK PUPPETS constitute five new and powerful emerging digital filters that shape our ânews industryâ culture. When combined with the five analog filters posited by Hermann and Chomsky in their âpropaganda model of newsâ (PMON), we gain a deeper and more complex understanding of how news and (dis)information can be used to âmanufacture consentâ in our 21st century Digital Age, rather than promote dialogue, discussion, and informed debate about vital topics of interest.
5) Conclusion: Towards a Networked 4th Estate
FILTER #11: IDEOLOGY
To return to Manufacturing Consent one last time. Chomsky and Herman named âideologyâ as their final filter, focusing on the pervasive âAnti-Communismâ that permeated 20th century Cold War US news, information, and entertainment spaces.
âCommunism as the ultimate evil has always been the spectre haunting property owners, as it threatens the very root of their class position and economic status,â Chomsky and Herman wrote in 1988. âThis ideology helps mold the populace against an enemy, and because the concept is fuzzy it can be used against anybody advocating policies that threaten property interests or support accommodation with Communist states or with radicalism.[36]
To understand how IDEOLOGY works in our 21st century Digital Age, recognize that the Cold War standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States collapsed in three short years â 1989 to 1991 â with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the (mostly) peaceful implosion of the Soviet Union. Absent âcommunismâ as an existential threat to the US âway of lifeâ (code for âcorporate capitalism wrapped in an American flag), US political and economic elites needed a new Demon, and one soon materialized.
Simply change the word âAnti-Communismâ to âTerrorism,â wrap it in a powerful phrase â the âGlobal War On Terrorâ (A Bushâian phrase the Obama administration quietly changed to âThe Long Warâ) – and leverage said mojo throughout the US ânews industryâ culture. Voila. The US is now combatting âTerrorismâ with âDemocracy and Free Market Globalization,â cover for what Project Censoredâs former director Peter Phillips calls the transnational capitalist class. Their triune goal? Pro-corporate globalization, driven by the need to âprivatize, financialize, and militarizeâ everything in sight. And yes, there is a name for this phenomenon: âneoliberalism,â or, as some have named it, âfascism.â[37]
So now what? When confronted with Neoliberalism/Fascism in a 21st century Digital Age, what do we do? Regardless of oneâs politics, most thinking people agree that teaching critical media literacy education (CMLE) has never been more vital than it is now. And reviving and updating Chomsky and Hermanâs âpropaganda model of newsâ (PMON 2.0) is central to this collective work. To that end, Iâve summarized the TEN PMON 2.0 filters outlined here in an easily accessed two page handout, along with dozens of other free CMLE resources, at vermontindependent.org – and our use of a Creative Commons license makes these handouts universally available for linking, copying, distribution and use.
In memory of Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky and Edward Hermanâs vital if largely ignored work on the PMON, Iâll give the late great Edward Herman the last word, in the form of a question. Cui Bono is a Latin phrase that means âWho benefits?â Herman ends his 2017 Monthly Review essay with this quiet rhetorical bombshell.
âThe mainstream [NEWS] media never ask cui bono?â[38]
Hermanâs vital question is one upon which we in the 21st century, might build an entire global critical media literacy education and ânews industryâ reform effort.
R.I.P. Edward Herman.
Thanks to you and Noam Chomsky for showing us a way forward, towards a more just, democratic, and humane 21st century culture of news we can use.
Hereâs to a revived PMON 2.0 for our 21st century Digital Age!
END NOTES:
[1] Nick Turse. Kill Everything That Moves:Â The Real American War In Vietnam. (New York: Picador, 2013.
[2] See Brian Covertâs âPlayed by the Mighty Wurlitzer: the Press, the CIA, and the Subversion of Truth,â in Censored 2017, online at http://projectcensored.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/C17_06_Covert_Played.pdf; which is also Chapter 6 of Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth, Censored 2017: The Top Censored Stories and Media Analysis of 2015-2016 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2016).
[3] The book is forthcoming.
[4] Search for Nafeez Ahmed, âHow The CIA Made Google,â MEDIUM, January 22, 2015)
[5] As quoted in George Seldesâ The Great Thoughts. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996) â referenced online, no page # available.
[6] Scholarly literature on the âDeep Stateâ is growing. See the work of Canadian researcher Peter Dale Scott, and for a cogent introduction, Mike Lofgren, The Deep State: The Fall Of The Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government (New York: Penguin Books, 2016).
[7] Rob Williams, Plan âVâ – Designing A 2nd Vermont Republic (Waitsfield: Vermont Independence Press, 2017).
[8] Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, 1988), xii.
[9] Ibid, 298.
[10] Ibid, 303.
[11] Ibid, ix.
[12] Ibid, xi.
[13] Edward S. Herman, âStill Manufacturing Consent: The Propaganda Model at Thirty,â Censored 2018 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2017)
[14] ibid, 209.
[15] Ibid, 211.
[16] Ibid, 209.
[17] In Manufacturing Consent, Herman and Chomsky name and order their PMON filters in this way: 1) Ownership; 2) Advertising; 3) News Makers; 4) Flak; 5) Ideology. A subsequent Media Education Foundation (MEF) documentary entitled âThe Myth Of The Liberal Media: The Propaganda Model of Newsâ ordered the filters thusly: 1) Advertising, 2) Ownership; 3) News Makers, 4) News Shapers, and 5) Flak, and explored IDEOLOGY more broadly. I do another shuffle for pedagogical purposes. Watch the MEF film online here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYlyb1Bx9Ic
[18] Herman, Censored 2018, 211.
[19] Ibid, 211.
[20] Ibid, 215.
[21] Ibid, 215.
[22] Herman and Chomsky, 298.
[23] Ibid, 303.
[24] Herman, 208.
[25] Herman and Chomsky, 14.
[26] Ibid, 14.
[27] Ibid, 18-19.
[28] Ibid, 23.
[29] Ibid, 26.
[30] Edward Herman, âFake News On Russia And Other Official Enemies.â Monthly Review, July 1, 2017. Again, for a deeper exploration of CIA media manipulation, see Brian Covertâs âPlayed by the Mighty Wurlitzer: the Press, the CIA, and the Subversion of Truth,â Chapter 6 in Censored 2017, online at http://projectcensored.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/C17_06_Covert_Played.pdf
[31] ibid, 1.
[32] ibid, 1-2.
[33] Ibid, 10, 13.
[34] Andre Damon, âGoogle Escalates Blacklisting Of Left-Wing Web Sites And Journalists,â WSWS.org, October 20, 2017.
[35] Robert Epstein, âGoogle Is The Worldâs Biggest Censor And Its Power Must Be Regulated,â USANews.com  June 22, 2016.
[36] Herman and Chomsky, 29.
[37] Cornell West, âThis Is What Neo-Fascism Looks Like,â Democracy Now, December 1, 2016.
[38] Herman, 14.