Judith Miller, The New York Times, and the propaganda model

Abstract

An assessment of Herman and Chomsky's 1988 five-filter propaganda model suggests it is mainly valuable for identifying areas in which researchers should look for evidence of collaboration (whether intentional or otherwise) between mainstream media and the propaganda aims of the ruling establishment. The model does not identify methodologies for determining the relative weight of independent filters in different contexts, something that would be useful in its future development. There is a lack of precision in the characterization of some of the filters. The model privileges the structural factors that determine propagandized news selection, and therefore eschews or marginalizes intentionality. This paper extends the model to include the "buying out" of journalists or their publications by intelligence and related special interest organizations. It applies the extended six-filter model to controversies over reporting by The New York Times of the build-up towards the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the issue of weapons of mass destruction in general, and the reporting of The New York Times correspondent Judith Miller in particular, in the context of broader critiques of US mainstream media war coverage. The controversies helped elicit evidence of the operation of some filters of the propaganda model, including dependence on official sources, fear of flak, and ideological convergence. The paper finds that the filter of routine news operations needs to be counterbalanced by its opposite, namely non-routine abuses of standard operating procedures. While evidence of the operation of other filters was weaker, this is likely due to difficulties of observability, as there are powerful deductive reasons for maintaining all six filters within the framework of media propaganda analysis.