Subject: RE: The Propaganda Model From: PFiske@aol.com Date: Sun, 24 Mar 1996 10:42:37 -0500

David Bill wrote:

>This got me thinking about The Propaganda Model as laid out by Edward
>Herman and Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent. Their theory: *The mass
>media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the
>general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and
>to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs and codes of behavior
>that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger
>society.

and went on to ponder the implications for the web.

I'd argue that the Herman/Chomsky represents a delusion that afflicted
intellectuals in the '60s-'70s, to the effect that they and those like them
could rise above the culture they are from (Marx thought so to) and view it
in some detached manner. That's nonsense. We all reflect (with some
variations) our culture, journalists no less than others, and that in turn is
reflected in our writing. More to the point, I think, is that you can't write
to somebody if you don't reflect their culture, particular not in the
confined space of a newspaper, because they won't know what you are talking
about. I write about economic issues, and it's real hard to convey to a
general audience the substance of economic ideas because, for the most part,
they don't have a gut understanding of things like sunk costs and opportunity
costs; so you write to them in a way that they do understand. That ain't
propaganda in my book.

David's musings about the web are, I would guess, on the mark, inasmuch as
there is less of the influence of large corporate institutions in the way
stuff is presented. But I suspect the difference, while satisfying to the
small web publisher, is trivial in the sense that Herman and Chomsky sought
to address.

Phineas Fiske, Newsday

------------------------------

End of online-news-digest V1 #573
*********************************


From owner-online-news-digest@marketplace.com Mon Mar 25 12:51:43 1996
Received: from marketplace.com (majordom@marketplace.com [199.45.128.10]) by cnj.digex.net (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id MAA29633 ; for ; Mon, 25 Mar 1996 12:51:37 -0500