Propaganda Model of the Media

This model for the media was proposed in 1995. It says that the media serves only as a tool for the established order. Stage two did some comprehensive content analysis of mainstream news and the data fit almost perfectly into the model. This kind of theory stuff might cost you $100-$250 at places like http://www.mediaed.org/ which is an awesome organization, but I'll fill you guys in on the Propaganda Model for free.
News organizations get tons of stories, leads and events that hey have to sift through to determine what is newsworthy. There are four filters that news goes through: The Ownership Filter, The Advertising Filter, The Source Filter, and the Flak Filter.
A. Ownership. If one takes an hour or so to study who owns the media they will find a very small group os extremely rich, white guys. Eisner, Turner, Murdoch, John Malone, Conrad Black, Microsoft, Time Warner, Viacom, The News Corporation, Disney, etc. Ted Turner is the only big media owner that is not confirmed to be way conservative. Anyone with money can start a news station, and you can get on TV with the approval of John Malone (conservative). Murdoch controls stations in UK, Australia, China (state propaganda), and America and he specifically sets a right-wing, pro-business agenda on his American newscasts (Fox News). The news is slanted to fit the owner's worldview. And it works, because, after all, rick white guys buy more luxury cars and investment protfolios. Which leads me to my next filter:
B. The Advertisement Filter. Magazines and newspapers get much closer to 50% of their money from ads, but television news gets nearly 100% of their funding from advertisements, about $200 billion a year. The media therefore must solicit things that don't offend advertisers, because if they don't they get pulled faster than Bill Maher. Sometimes the less truth you tell, the better off you are such as with the San-Jose Mercury News when after they ran an article on how to deal with car dealers, the car dealers in the area boycotted the station, pulled all their ads, and the newspaper had to issue formal apologies and rebuke the truth in the article. Or ABC after being sued by Phillip Morris for reporting cigarettes are bad. That's right, not to long ago it was illegal to say on the news that cigarettes were addictive, because the cigarette companies that are killing people, had better lawyers and would sue the parent company of the news company and take them over. For more on this watch the great movie The Insider. Another example of the advertising filter at work is that Chrysler has papers that they advertise in send their editorials to them in advance to check for "accuracy". If there is anything they don't like they pull the ads from the paper in advance.
C. Source Filter. Next we look at who makes the news. 73% of Americans demand objectivity in their news. This is why the only way Fox news can continue to exist is to scream that the rest of the news is slanted to the left even though there is absolutely zip, zero zilch evidence for that and anyone why actually studies it will feel quite stupid quite fast if they think the media is "liberal". So in order to appear non-biased but still put in bias in the media, you get an "expert" to say it for you. All you have to do is choose you favorite biased "expert". Luckily, corporations have pumped billions of dollars into "think tanks" to provide the "experts" for the news media. Out of the top five most cited think tanks four of them were created with corporate money with a conservative agenda (1. Heritage (2000+ times in 1995) 3. American Enterprise Institute, 4. CATO, 5. Georgetown Center for International Policy Studies) and one is centrist, (2. Brookings institute), although a few see it as left of center. The sources for our news comes from an intricate web of government, business, think tanks and the media itself. All reporting with the worldview of an elite.
C. Flak Filters. Flak filters are created by media watchgroups that complain and protest media outlets that they don't like. There are strong liberal and conservative media watch groups. The conservative ones happen to get tons of money from corporations and thus become more effective. For example, the organization "Accuracy in Media" recieved money from eight oil companies. Flak also comes from PR offices of the Pentagon, big defense contractors and big business in general. PR efforts from defence contractors and the Pentagon were even able to get David Evans, a lifetime marine who knew how the Pentagon worked, fired for reporting on defense spending waste.

I'm now going to go read the labor section in my local newspaper. Wait, there is no labor section, I suppose I'll just read the business section and see how the stocks are doing, because people who buy stocks also buy more from advertisers. Damn, I'm hosed.
Faithfully,
--CC
http://www.igc.org/
http://www.mediaed.org/