Where can we turn to for an analysis of the "new" mass media arriving on the Net? Is the "propaganda model" studied by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" still durable eleven years after publication? Here is a summary of that model.

They show that the media "serve to mobilise support for the special interests that dominate the state and private activity, and that their choices, emphases, and omissions can often be understood best, and sometimes with striking clarity and insight, by analysing them in such terms."

News passes through five filters: "(1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business and 'experts' funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) 'flak' as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) 'anticommunism' as a national religion and control mechanism."

While the national religion has faded in the years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, other filters have intensified. Consider ownership. In Great Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century, a radical press had emerged which unified the working class across the country, repeatedly emphasising the power of working people and providing an alternative value system and framework for looking at the world. But the growth of the radical press was not to last. Technological innovations "industrialised" the free press: "the total cost of establishing a national weekly on a profitable basis in 1837 was under a thousand pounds, with a break-even circulation of 6,200 copies. By 1867, the estimated start-up cost of a new London daily was 50,000 pounds. The Sunday Express, launched in 1918, spent over two million pounds before it broke even with a circulation of 250,000" note Herman and Chomsky, citing similar trends in the U.S. "Thus the first filter--the limitation on ownership of the media with any substantial outreach by the requisite large size of investment--was applicable a century or more ago, and it has become increasingly effective over time." With the recent merger of Viacom and CBS, their point seems well taken. New TV networks have arisen with the advent of cable. But the costs of creating a truly national network that reaches a significant audience is well beyond the means of any group focused on the interests of the working class-- no such network exists.

The second filter is the role of advertising. "Before advertising became prominent, the price of a newspaper had to cover the costs of doing business. With the growth of advertising, papers that attracted ads could afford a copy price well below production costs. This put papers lacking in advertising at a serious disadvantage: their prices would tend to be higher, curtailing sales, and they would have less surplus to invest in improving the saleability of the paper (features, attractive format, promotion, etc.). For this reason, an advertising-based system will tend to drive out of existence or into marginality the media companies and types that depend on revenue from sales alone. With advertising, the free market does not yield a neutral system in which final buyer choice decides. The *advertisers'* choices influence media prosperity and survival."

Herman and Chomsky have turned the argument that readers/viewers are in control upside down. The reader/viewer becomes the product, who is sold to advertisers by media geared to delivering consumers to the dominant base of political power in the country, namely corporations.

The political implications of this reality are stark: "A mass movement without any major media support, and subject to a great deal of active press hostility, suffers a serious disability, and struggles against grave odds." Further, they write, "the mass media are interested in attracting audiences with buying power, not audiences per se; it is affluent audiences that spark advertiser interest today, as in the nineteenth century. The idea that the drive for large audiences makes the mass media 'democratic' thus suffers from the initial weakness that its political analogue is a voting system weighted by income."

Turning to the third filter, who the media use to provide analysis, the authors present a study of experts on terrorism and defence on the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour which shows that from 1985 to 1986, excluding journalists, "a majority of the participants (54 percent) were present or former government officials, and that the next highest category, (15.7 percent) was drawn from conservative think tanks." Such lopsided use of experts continues today, as more recent studies from the group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting show, which need not be reviewed here.

The fourth filter, flak and the enforcers, consists of well-organised and well-funded groups such as Accuracy in Media (funded in the 1980s with money from oil companies among others), the Media Institute (funded by corporate-wealthy patrons), and others with similar connections. The media treat these groups who attack them well, "reflecting the power of the sponsors, including the well-entrenched position of the right-wing in the mass media themselves"; flaks are given op-ed space and time on talk shows.

The fifth filter, anticommunism, served to dichotomise the world in terms of Communist and anti-Communist powers. Efforts at replacing it continue, but nothing has yet been found to match the power of this ideology and religion.

These filters "narrow the range of news that passes through the gates, and even more sharply limit what can become 'big news,' subject to sustained news campaigns. By definition, news from primary establishment sources meets one major filter requirement and is readily accommodated by the mass media. Messages from and about dissidents and weak, unorganised individuals and groups, domestic and foreign, are at an initial disadvantage in sourcing costs and credibility, and they often do not comport with the ideology or interests of the gatekeepers and other powerful parties that influence the filtering process."

Herman and Chomsky then give a prescient example: the treatment of Turkey by the U.S. media. Noting the staunch U.S. government and business support for the Turkish martial-law government, they write that "Media that chose to feature Turkish violence against their own citizenry would have had to go to the extra expense to find and check out information sources; they would elicit flak from government, business, and organised right-wing flak machines, and they might be looked upon with disfavour by the corporate community (including advertisers) for indulging in such a quixotic interest and crusade. They would tend to stand alone in focusing on victims that from the standpoint of dominant American interests were unworthy."

Today, Herman and Chomsky are more right than ever. As both have recently written, treatment of Turkey stands out in marked contrast to Kosovo: Turkey's ethnic cleansing is not only tolerated but actively supported with U.S. weapons. This elicited no outcry by the mainstream media even as they were simultaneously decrying the ethnic cleansing taking place in Kosovo.

But won't the Net be different? It's interactive, the cost of setting up a web site is within reach of millions of Americans, and the cost of delivering content is virtually zero, regardless of the size of the audience. Have we not arrived at the point where A.J. Liebling's famous quip, "freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one," today means that we can all have that freedom?

[Adapted from the Political Literacy Course of Common Courage Press. Subscribe by sending a blank mail to PolitLit-subscribe@listbot.com© Common Courage Press]

In the second half of the 20^th century, chemical companies have been prevented from selling harmful products for greater public health and safety. Pesticides, one is made to believe, are on the way out. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration have been trying to keep the chemical industry on a tight leash, but things are far from being under control.

Dan Fagin and Marianne Lavelle assort some interesting and disturbing, though not entirely unknown facts. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated in 1989 that pesticides worldwide cause one million poisonings a year and 20,000 deaths. The problem, they say, is getting worse. According to one 1992 study, pesticides like Monsanto's Ortho Weed-B-Gon, which contains 2, 4-D, are used at least once a year by 98 percent of all families in the US. It is a huge and fast-growing industry. In 1995, the largest 100 US-based chemical companies sold over $234 billion worth of chemical products. This represented a 17 per cent growth over the previous year's sales and a neat profit of $35 billion. If that is not an ominous enough sign, while 300 man-made chemicals have been identified as cancer-causing agents in chemical tests, 80 per cent of chemicals currently in the market still remain untested.

Fear of law suits is not as constraining a force on corporate behaviour as many would like to believe. Chemical companies also know more about their products than they like to admit. In 1991 and 1992, the EPA offered amnesty from big money fines to any manufacturers who turned in health studies they should have turned in to the agency earlier. Manufacturers suddenly turned over 10,000 documents!

What are the health effects? While it's difficult to paint a complete picture, the dangers are clear. As Lavelle and Fagin write, "At least 20 peer-reviewed studies have linked various pesticides to cancer in children. A recent study of 474 Denver children, for example, found that they were more than twice as likely to get leukaemia if pest strips had been used in their homes and also were significantly more likely to get brain tumours or lymphomas if their homes had been treated by exterminators."

[Adapted from the Political Literacy Course of Common Courage Press. Subscribe by sending a blank mail to PolitLit-subscribe@listbot.com. © Common Courage Press]