The 5 Filters of Mass Media Machine
1.Structures of ownership
- Maybe there is only a few select amount of companies
- “The first has to do with ownership. Mass media firms are big corporations. Often, they are part of even bigger conglomerates. Their end game? Profit. And so it’s in their interests to push for whatever guarantees that profit. Naturally, critical journalism must take second place to the needs and interests of the corporation.”
2.The role of advertising
- “The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky to explain how propaganda and systemic biases function in corporate mass media.”
3.Links with ‘The Establishment’
- Links with higher power
- (THE MEDIA ELITE)
- “The establishment manages the media through the third filter. Journalism cannot be a check on power because the very system encourages complicity. Governments, corporations, big institutions know how to play the media game. They know how to influence the news narrative. They feed media scoops, official accounts, interviews with the ‘experts’. They make themselves crucial to the process of journalism. So, those in power and those who report on them are in bed with each other.”
4.Diversionary tactics – ‘flack’
- Diverse someone’s attention to something else.
- “If you want to challenge power, you’ll be pushed to the margins. When the media – journalists, sources – stray away from the consensus, they get ‘flack’. This is the fourth filter. When the story is inconvenient for the powers that be, you’ll see the flack machine in action discrediting sources, trashing stories and diverting the conversation.”
5.Uniting against a ‘common enemy’
- “To manufacture consent, you need an enemy — a target. That common enemy is the fifth filter. Communism. Terrorists. Immigrants. A common enemy to fear helps corral public opinion.”
Al Jazeera English – The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine
AGENDA SETTING
FRAMING
MYTH MAKING
CONDITIONS OF CONSUMPTION