The Myth of the Liberal Media

If you think U.S. news has a liberal bias, this assumption-shattering film from Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, and Justin Lewis will have you thinking again. Making the common-sense case that mainstream news media are more committed to their bottom-line interests as large corporations than to left-wing advocacy, they dissect how news content gets shaped within a narrow, and ultimately conservative, institutional frame that marginalizes the progressive perspectives of a broad cross-section of the American public. The film, made before the rise of Fox News, has become only more relevant with time.

"If you want to understand the way a system works, you look at its institutional structure. How it is organized, how it is controlled, how it is funded." - Noam Chomsky

"The Mainstream media really represent elite interests, and what the propaganda model tries to do is stipulate a set of institutional variables, reflecting this elite power, that very powerfully influence the media." - Edward Herman

Sections: The Propaganda Model & Agenda Setting | The Ownership Filter | The Advertising Filter | The Newsmakers Filter | The News Shapers Filter | The Flak Filter | The Attack on the Welfare State | The Attack on Social Security | The Attack on Health Care | Labor & Business | Anti-Communism & The Free Market | Anti-Communism & The Free Market: Russia | Anti-Communism & The Free Market: Cuba | Dictators & Democracy | Dictators & Democracy: Saddam Hussein | Dictators & Democracy: Suharto