Herman and Chomsky -- Kayla Salyer

"In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda" (Herman and Chomsky 204). Herman and Chomsky focus their essay "A Propaganda Model" on our mass media  as a systematic propaganda. It invites us into the ideological structure of the world, and keeps us there. Our capitalistic society needs class struggle, we need both a lower class and an upper class, and we also need a way to keep this in place. This is why we have systematic propaganda. Herman and Chomsky lay our five essential ingredients of our propaganda model:
1. Size, wealth, and concentration of media.
2. Advertising as income.
3. Reliance of media on institutional information sources
4. FLACK
5. Anti communism as a control mechanism.

These five essentials keep us following the crowd, and keep us in agreement so that the class system will remain. Within these, we find ourselves convinced that we have free will. We think that we can perceive things in any way we please, and that the media is only giving us the plain and simple facts. In reality the news has an agenda, and chooses to show us things and leave out others. It chooses its words carefully in a way that will make us lean towards one way or another. The conception that we are simply getting the facts, must lead to detrimental circumstances. We have no free will, no right to choose, because the products and opinions have already been chosen for us. With the number of media outlets lessening, and wealth of the media industry growing, we may find ourselves digging a deeper and deeper grave for free will. The perpetuation of inequality of the wealth and power of the world is shown indiscreetly in media. When unpacking

it, we can see the deliberate propaganda that is simply hidden under a thin sheet.