Have you ever sat there and wondered if what we're seeing in the media, the news especially, is really all that's out there? Or better yet if it is being skewed without our knowing? Never before coming to college were these questions remotely familiar to me, however, since I've took my first communications class I have been fascinated with the idea that in between the mass media and the public there is another medium of sorts. I couldn't help but wonder why? What are the reasons the public cannot get an unbiased full picture? And who is deciding what I get to see.
It was for these reasons that Edward Herman's article "A Propaganda Model" intrigued me so much. In his article he explains the five filters that the news goes through before it reaches the mass public. The filters he outlined begins with the “size, ownership, and profit orientation of the mass media”, the next filter he discusses is the role that advertising plays, the third filter is the sources from which the news gets their information, the fourth filter is the negative feedback against the media, and the final filter is “anticommunism as a control mechanism”.
Personally I am most interested in the first two filters, ownership of the media and advertisings role. As far as ownership, a few major conglomerates own the mass media that everyone is all too familiar with. The affect of this is that what we see in the news and other media outlets is in the hands of a tiny but powerful elite. We see what they want to show us.
Now the second filter is where I am particularly interested. As a kid I always had the idealistic view that the shows that I was watching were there solely to entertain me, however, as I got older I began to realize the truth that I was being sold to advertisers. Whether it’s the news or sitcoms, the main goal is to get all of us to watch the commercials. Therefore if the advertisers don’t like what’s being said or portrayed on the media then it will not get put out there. Herman uses the example of how newspapers before advertising was prominent had to cover all of their costs, but when some newspapers began to attract ad’s their profits went up because the ads covered their costs not them. Slowly the other newspapers either adjusted to the new system or fell off. This goes to show that in order to survive and make profit off of your product you must succumb to advertising. Naturally companies placing these ads do not want to be associated with certain things that could poorly reflect in their product so they filter out anything they don’t like.
The perfect example of how this works is with the case of bovine growth hormone. In Tampa Florida reporters from Fox 13 investigated a story about the harmful affects that the bovine growth hormone, which was being secretly injected into cows and ends up in your milk, had potentially very dangerous repercussions to people’s health. After these reporters found out this dark truth they attempted to bring it out into the open. However it wouldn’t be that easy. As it turned out Monsanto, the company that produced the hormone, was a large advertiser with the station and they expressed concern over the report. Subsequently the report was never aired. You can read the whole story here The media can legally lie.
After reading Herman's article and seeing how many filters messages go through before they finally reach us I came to the conclusion that more important than what is reported on the news is what is not. The media sensationalizes little things like what dog Obama was gonna get when he became President and yet they stifle stories like the one above. the fact is that we need to take what we see with a grain of salt and know that there is a lot more than meets the eye.
