Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky came up with the 5 filters of manufacturing consent. These 5 filters are financial ownership, advertising, sourcing news, flak and ideology. These 5 filters should be visible in mass communication media, which includes newspapers, radio, TV and advertising. In this instance, we are going to apply the 5 filters to the Daily Mail and the I newspaper.

The first filter of the manufacturing consent is financial ownership. In this instance, the Daily Mail is a conglomerate who contributes towards the monopoly of Murdoch’s News Corp UK, which have subsidiaries including the Daily Mail, The Sun, The Sunday Times and The Mail on Sundays. While these are huge newspaper corporation that publish the most popular newspapers within the UK, the Daily Mail bought out the I for £49.6 million. This is significant because while the I is a smaller, independent newspaper, the Daily Mail is very popular and famous, therefore by buying out the smaller newspapers, they can bring brand loyalty and encourage the Daily Mail readers to purchase the I, meaning they will generate more revenue.

However, while the Daily Mail and the I are owned under the Daily Mail General Trust (DMGT), it is apparent that these newspapers source their information very contrastingly. For example, the Daily Mail has had a load of controversy and has been removed as a reliable source from Wikipedia because they rely on media sensationalism and using inaccurate headlines in order to bring in customers to buy their newspaper, however the I is very different in the fact that although it is owned under the DMGT, it hasn’t been classes as controversial and instead has a reputation for having accurate information and therefore haven’t received backlash for media sensationalism and what some call ‘fake news’. What’s also different is that they have very contrasting political views, even though they are under the same company. The Daily Mail is very right-wing politically aligned and support the Conservative Party. However, the I contrasts this by being left-wing politically aligned and supporting the Labour Party. The way these 2 newspapers contrast each other and are differently politically aligned could be a marketing strategy by having a newspaper that’s left winged and one right winged in order to attract more consumers because they are differentiating from other newspapers, which usually will stick to one politically aligned viewpoint.

Another one of the 5 filters’s flak. Flak is when you have a negative viewpoint towards something in the media. An example of Flak in the Daily Mail was in 2016, with the election of the new Prime Minister. The Daily Mail was heavily supporting Teresa May, a Conservative, yet had a negative viewpoint towards Jeremy Corbyn (Labour). One example of this was their use of support such as their masthead “Your tactical voting guide to boost the Tories and Brexit”. However, the I juxtaposes this viewpoint held by the Daily Mail and instead was showing support for Corbyn and the Labour Party and tried to create a negative viewpoint towards Theresa May and the Conservative Party.