On the propaganda model...

I have been trying to wrap my mind around the propaganda model proposed by Herman and Chomsky, and I'll admit it, I've encountered some cognitive dissonance along the way. The clincher for me comes when they say that the mass media are essentially a business selling a product. But that product is not the news itself. Rather, that product is the public, or a certain strata of the public. And the customer is not in fact the public, but rather the advertisers. Maybe this shows the degree to which I have become indoctrinated by mainstream thought, for it becomes difficult, almost counter-intuitive to try and think about it this way. So to help try to understand this idea better, I decided to make some sentences that seem straightforward enough, and then to substitute the new ideas into old, familiar places. First, let's look at the variables involved...

	common e.g.	prop model
seller	clothes retailer	media agency
product	clothes	public
customer	public	advertisers

Let's make some sentences that may help us to gain a better intuitive understanding of the propaganda model...

• A retailer sells clothes to the public.

• A media agency sells the public to the advertisers.

hmm...

• A retailer depends on the public to buy its clothes.

• A media agency depends on the advertisers to buy the public.

a little better...

• The public goes to a clothes retailer to buy clothes.

• The advertisers go to a media agency to buy the public.

ok...

• The public, through its purchasing power (i.e., money talks), influence the success or failure of a clothing retailer.

• Advertisers, through their purchasing power (i.e., money talks), influence the success or failure of a media agency.

There you go... I think this is helping now, for here is where the implications of the propaganda model begin to reveal themselves...

- Suvian