Media ‘Biases’ and

‘Filters’

CMNS 130
 A Propaganda Model
 Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, 1988:
 NEWS FILTERS:
 Size, Concentrated Ownership, owner’s wealth, and
profit orientation of media organizations.
 Advertising as primary income source of mass media.
 Reliance of media on information provided by
 Government,
 Business and
 “Experts”
 “Flak” or negative response to ‘discipline’ the media.
 ‘Anti-Communism’ as a national religion and control
mechanism

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Size, Ownership, and Profit Orientation of
the Mass Media: The First Filter
 Top tier of media (measured by prestige, resources
and outreach) consists of government and news
agencies
 Government and news agencies define ‘news
agenda’
 They supply national and international news to
lower tiers of the media.
 Media depend on government for general policy
support.

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 Global “Networks”
 Many large media corporations are integrated into
the market through stockholders, directors and
bankers.
 Other factors include: Globalization, convergence,
de-regulation and synergy.
 These apply to manoeuverings of corporations as
well as the strategies of governments.
 Convergence—or erosion of boundaries —between
communication sectors results from digital
technologies and their capacity to transfer
information between formerly segregated areas in
broadcasting, telecommunications and computers

CMNS 130
 Privatization and De-regulation
 Privatization and de-regulation or, more
appropriately, ‘re-regulation’—from regulation in
the public interest to new regulatory regimes based
on economic and entrepreneurial imperatives—
have shifted the focus from public service
mandates and monopoly structures to commercial
forms of production and a more open economy.
 De-regulation of communication industries is the
result of global trade liberalization and new
technologies—satellite, cable and the internet—
which are no longer tied to geographical
boundaries.

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 Synergy
 Corporations have created synergy—”the process
of taking a media brand and exploiting it for all the
profit possible” (McChesney, 1998)—via the
vertical (The control over cultural production, distribution and exhibition )
and horizontal (Ownership and control across a variety of media and
industries ) integration of industries.
 Global conglomeration has resulted in the
predominance of a few media mega giants
controlling the world-wide flow of communication
goods such as Time Warner, Disney, News
Corporation, Sony, Viacom, General Electric
(owner of NBC), Dutch Phillips (owner of
Polygram) and Bertelsmann
CMNS 130
 Who owns What?

 The combination of hardware and software

enables these companies to cross-promote films
and television programs through tie-ins and spin-
offs, such as home-videos, computer games,
books and toys.

 Website: Who owns what? (Canwest overhead)

- http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/canwest.asp

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 The Advertising License to do business:
The Second Filter
 Before advertising became prominent, the price of
a newspaper had to cover the cost of doing
business.
 With the growth of advertising, papers who
attracted ads could be sold below production costs.
This placed papers who lacked advertising at a
disadvantage.
 “The advertisers’ choices influence media
prosperity and survival.
 As a result, working class papers and a more
radical press are at a disadvantage.

CMNS 130
 The Influence of Advertisers
 Large corporate advertisers will rarely support programs
with serious criticisms of corporate activities,
environmental degradation, and interconnections between
military and industry.

 Advertisers will also avoid programs with serious

complexities and disturbing controversies that may
interfere with the ‘buying mood’ of its
readership/audiences.

 This dependence on advertising dollars, therefore,

translates into less critical content being printed or aired,
resulting in articles and programs, which are culturally
and politically more conservative.
CMNS 130
 “TABLOID” TV
 Instead of critical documentaries, ‘Discovery’
and ‘National Geographic Television’ programs
feature adventure and travel type shows which
invite viewers to escape into exotic landscapes
and scenarios.

 News programs are becoming increasingly

‘tabloidizised”, in their “relentless search for a
nightly extravaganza of chaos, conflict,
confrontation, and controversy (Fleras, p. 47)

CMNS 130
 Sourcing Mass-media News:
The Third Filter
 The mass media are drawn into a symbiotic
relationship with powerful sources of information by
economic necessity and reciprocity of interest.

 Media organizations need a steady, reliable flow of

the ‘raw material of news’.

 Media organizations have daily news demands and

imperative news schedules that they must meet.

CMNS 130
 Central Nodes for Gathering News
 Economics dictate media organizations to concentrate
their resources where
 significant news occurs on a frequent basis
 where important rumors and leaks abound,
 and where regular press conferences are held.
 Central nodes of such activities include
 The White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department,
in Washington, DC
 Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and provincial parliaments.
 Courts
 City Hall
 Police Headquarters (New York City)
 Special Events (Film Festivals, Sports event, etc.)
(Gaye Tuchman, 1978; Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, 1988)
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 Government Sources
 Government and corporate sources are easily recognizable
 They have credibility by their status and prestige.
 This helps media’s claim to be “objective” dispensers of the
news.
 It is a protection from criticisms of bias and the threat of libel
suits, they need material that can be portrayed as
presumptively accurate.
 It is also cost efficient: taking information from sources that
may be presumed credible reduces investigative expenses.
 However, materials from sources that need to be checked,
requires costly research.

CMNS 130
Information and Circulation
Government and corporations release
information to the media via:
 Press releases
 Public relations efforts
 Purchasing newspaper space to get viewpoint across
Professional Organizations (commerce and
trade) use:
 Public Relations and Lobbing activities
 Advertising, direct-mail campaigns, distribution of
educational films, booklets, pamphlets, outlays on
initiatives and referendums, political and think tank
contributions.
CMNS 130
 Government and business
promoters make things ‘easy’
for news organizations
 They provide media organizations with facilities in
which they can gather.
 They provide advance copies of speeches and
forthcoming reports.
 They schedule press conferences at hours well-geared
to news deadlines.
 They write press releases in usable language .
 They carefully organize their press conferences and
‘photo opportunities’.
CMNS 130
 The Role of “EXPERTS”

 ‘Experts’ tend to echo the official point of

view.

 They impart ‘objectivity’ and ‘authority’

to a news story (Stuart Hall, 1978)

CMNS 130
 “The large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the
mass media, and gain special access by their contribution
to reducing the media’s cost of acquiring the raw materials
of, and producing news”.
 Non-routine sources must struggle for access, and may be
ignored by the arbitrary decision of the gatekeepers”.
 “Critical sources may be avoided not only because of their
lesser availability and higher cost of establishing
credibility, but also because the primary sources may be
offended and may even threaten the media using them”.

 From Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (1988).

Manufactoring Consent

CMNS 130
 Flak and the Enforcers:
The Fourth Filter
 “Flak” refers to negative response to a media
statement or program.
 It may take the form of
 Letters
 Telegrams
 Phone calls
 Petitions
 Lawsuits
 Speeches
 Bills before Congress (US) or Parliament (Canada)
 Other modes of complaint, threat, and punitive action.

CMNS 130
 How ‘Flak’ affects the Media
 If flak is produced on a large scale, it can be both
uncomfortable and costly to the media.
 Positions have to be defended within the organization
and without, sometimes before legislature and even in
courts.
 Advertisers may withdraw patronage.
 If certain kinds of fact, position, or program are
thought to elicit flak, this may act to a deterrent to
media organizations.

CMNS 130
 How ‘Flak’ is produced
 Flak can be produced indirectly
 by complaining to constituencies (stockholders,
employees) about the media,
 by generating institutional advertising that does the same,
 or by funding think-tank operations designed to attack the
media.
 Corporations also sponsor organizations who keep a
close eye on media, and produce ‘flak’ when media
‘fail’ to portray business in an appropriate light.

CMNS 130
Anticommunism as a Control Mechanism:
The Fifth Filter
 Communism as the ‘ultimate evil’ has always been
the specter haunting property owners, as it threatens
the basis of their class position and superior status.
 The Soviet, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were
traumas to Western elites.
 The ideology helps mobilize the populace against an
‘enemy’.
 It also fragments the political left and labour
movements.
From Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (1988). Manufactoring Consent

CMNS 130
 The Framing of Issues
 When anti-communist fervour is aroused, the demand
for serious evidence in support of claims of
‘communist’ abuses is suspended.
 Defectors, informers move to the center stage as
‘experts’.
 Anti-Communist control mechanism exerts strong
influence on mass media.
 Issues tend to be framed in terms of a dichotomized
world—the ‘axes of evil’.

CMNS 130
 The Five Filters—Summary
 The five filters narrow the range of news that
passes through the ‘gates’.
 They limit what can be made into ‘big news’
items.
 Messages from and about dissidents and weak,
unorganized groups and individuals, are at a
disadvantage in sourcing costs and credibility.

CMNS 130
 The propaganda approach to media suggests a
systemic and highly political dichotomization
in news coverage based on serviceability to
important power interests.
 This can be discerned in dichotomized choices
of story and in the volume of coverage.

CMNS 130
 Constructing News Images
 “Seeing is believing”; “The camera never lies”—are
clichés which draw attention to popular beliefs and
apparent faith in observation and visual
representation.
 However, camera positioning and angle, picture
framing and lighting, image selection, photographic
retouching, digital image manipulation, editorial
cropping and final juxtaposition can all radically
change or even invert the sense of depicted scenes
—’the camera can lie”.
 ‘Time for Peace: Time to Go’! (overhead)

CMNS 130
 Signifier (shot) Definition Signified
(meaning)
Close-up Face only Intimacy

Media shot Most of body Personal

relationship
Long shot Setting and Context, scope,

characters public distance

Full body of Social

Full shot
person relationship
CMNS 130
 Signifier (film/video) Definition Signified (meaning)

Pan down Camera looks down Power, Authority

Camera looks up

Pan Up Smallness,

Camera moves in weakness

Zoom in Observation, focus

Image appears on Beginning

Fade in blank screen

Image screen goes Ending

Fade Out blank

Switch from one Simultaneity,
image to another exitement
Cut
Image wiped off Imposed
screen conclusion.
Wipe
CMNS 130
 Chavez: Inside the Coup
 Filmed & Directed By
Kim Bartley & Donnacha O Briain

 Edited By
Angel Hernandez Zoido

 Produced in Association with The

Irish Film Board
NPS & COBO, RTE, BBC, ZDF/ARTE, YLE

CMNS 130