"Man was born free,and everywhere he is in chains." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau Laswell's Model suggests that communication serves three major purposes. First it must survey the environment and alert the community to change. Second it must interpret the data so the community can respond. Finally communication serves as our history; it transfers down through time our values and ideals. To complete it's mission, modern media must get and evaluate the information and provide the general people with a clear, full, and unbiased view of the changes in the world, upon which citizens can act. Unfortunately, all too often current-day media fall short.
Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky have defined the reasons that media fall short in their mission to inform. The model they created has four major 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; and (4) "Flak" as a means of disciplining the media.1
English: A portrait of Noam Chomsky that I took in...
Chomsky at the World Social Forum (Porto Alegre) i...
Prototype of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution rede...Each of these filters takes a bit of the true reality out of the information and eventually leads to a misinformed public.
A recent incident at The San Francisco Examiner illustrated filter two. Nike and the Examiner were co-sponsoring the Bay to Breakers race. At the same time Stephanie Salter, a columnist at the paper, wrote an article about Nike's inhumane practices in Asian. The story was not published because the paper didn't want to upset Nike so close to the race. It's clear that the money Nike has effects the news reported about the company.
Media has turned from informing to entertaining. Entertaining sells and media has become profit oriented. This...