Noam Chomsky: Life, Work, and Theories

• Week 9 focuses on key thinker Noam Chomsky.

Brief Background

• Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1928.
• Studied linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania and earned his Ph.D. in the field.
• Early linguistic research provided a foundation for later work in Media and Communications.
• An American professor & public intellectual known for works in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism.
• Referred to as "the father of modern linguistics".
• A major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of cognitive science.

Propaganda Model of Media

• Created alongside Edward Herman.
• Media roles include education, informing, entertaining, and inculcating.
• Focuses on wealth and conflicts of class interest.
• Fulfilling media roles requires systematic propaganda.
• Media appears free but can be controlled by the elite.
• Manufacturing Consent was published in 1988.
• The propaganda model focuses on the inequality of wealth and power.
• The model focuses on multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices.
• Raw material of news must pass through five filters.
• Leaves only the cleansed residue fit to print.
• Journalists are convinced of news value.
• The system is fundamentally built in a way that prevents alternatives to the news.

Five Filters

• Size, ownership, and profit orientation of the mass media.
• The advertising license to do business.
• Sourcing mass media news.
• Flak and the enforcers.
• Anti-communism as a control mechanism.

The First Filter

• Size, ownership, and profit orientation of the mass media.
• Refer to James Curran and Jean Seaton.
• Radical Press emerged in the early 19th century.
• Serves a working-class audience.
• Unified the workers.
• Expensive security bond as a condition for publication.
• Imposing designed taxes.
• After 1869, not a single daily publication was established in Britain.
• Eclipse of the national radical.
• Industrialisation of the press.
• Pre-television news markets were local.

The Second Filter

• The advertising license to do business.
• Advertising serves as a powerful mechanism weakening the working-class press.
• Accomplishes what state taxes and harassment failed to do.
• Advertisers acquired licensing authority de facto.
• Without advertisement, newspapers ceased to be economically viable.
• Circulation typically covers the cost of publishing.
• Advertisement drives the price of production below cost.
• Advertiser's choices influence media prosperity and survival.
• Working-class and radical papers have been at a serious disadvantage because of this.
• Readers are not purchasers.
• Audience "quality" is crucial and the "Hungry for Profit" prevails,.
• Public-television station WNET lost its corporate funding.

The Third Filter

• Sourcing mass-media news.
• A symbiotic relationship with powerful sources of information.
• There is economic necessity and reciprocity of interest.
• The principle of bureaucratic affinity by Mark Fisherman.
• News protects from criticisms of bias with material portrayed as presumptively accurate.
• News is facilitated to gather through advance copies of speeches and forthcoming reports.
• Mutual dependency exists.
• The powerful influence the media through personal relationships, threats, and rewards.

The Fourth Filter

• Flak and the enforcers.
• "Flak" refers to negative response, including letters, telegrams, phone calls, lawsuits, and speeches.
• Media find flak uncomfortable and costly.
• Positions have to be defended within the organisation, sometimes before legislatures and even in courts.
• Advertisers may choose to withdraw.
• Flak from the powerful can be either direct or indirect.
• Government is a major producer of flak through assailing, threatening, and "correcting" the media.

The Fifth Filter

• Anti-communism as a control mechanism
• Uses ideology of anti-communism.
• Mobilises the populace against an enemy.
• Serves as a political-control mechanism.
• Exercises a profound influence on media.
• Human rights abuse was used as a propaganda strategy.
• Described as a tool by the Taliban to torture citizens.
• The Taliban were portrayed as heroes in propaganda campaigns.
• Propaganda campaigns have generally been closely attuned to elite interests.

Test your knowledge of Noam Chomsky, his academic work in linguistics and other fields, and his propaganda model. Explore his contributions to linguistics, political activism, and media criticism. Learn about 'manufacturing consent' and the filters of the Propaganda Model.