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Laura Krasovska
Media Culture and Criticism
26.09.2006.

The Analysis of Chomsky-Herman’s Filters as They Influence the Media Bias in

Latvia.

Nowadays mass media is a global network, which enables almost every

modern human being to be informed, communicated, entertained etc. “In [this] world

of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil[l] this role

requires systematic propaganda.” (A Propaganda Model) The Chomsky-Herman’s

model was based mainly on the description of United States media, but they stated

that the theory is appropriate to “any country that shares the basic economic structure

and organizing principles, which the model postulates as the cause of media biases.”

(Wikipedia) According to this, and taking into account that media biases are

considered “habits” of mass media people to approach both the presentation of

particular stories, and the selection of which stories to cover, with mostly one (their

own) subjective viewpoint, two Chomsky-Herman’s filters such as ownership and

sourcing would be then the most applicable to the Latvia’s media market.

Chomsky and Herman state that in our modern world mainstream media

outlets are either large corporations or part of conglomerates and that is why the

information that reaches the public then is stated from the perspective of these

particular interests. In Latvia, for example, there are 2-3 privately owned televisions

(mostly holding companies), such as LNT, TV3 , TV5 and Latvian television

(LTV1and LTV7), which, according to the Latvian National Radio and Television

Board, is owned by the Republic of Latvia. Now, when the election of Latvian

Parliament is getting closer, the biases in these media are seen more clearly than ever.
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Recently there were disputes whether political advertisements on televisions are

ethical and if they are not manipulations with people minds. To tell the truth-all the

commercials are, because their purpose is to persuade the consumer in favor of the

advertised issue. However, here another question is what kind of financial background

these political advertisements have. According to Chomsky-Herman’s statements that

issues, which most endanger the corporate financial interests that own the media will

face the most bias and censorship. And so it is in these televisions. Mostly State

owned television avoids these kinds of commercials, as the State institutions as well

as the whole society were the ones that raised the issue about the ethics of these

political commercials. It is now clear that these institutions do not want to appear in

conflict with...themselves. However, in private televisions these commercials are

being shown almost without a break. Their central aim at this point is the profit out of

another Chomsky-Herman’s mentioned filter-advertisements.

Another example of the ownership filters in Latvia can be easily observed on

the web sites of before mentioned televisions. State owned television is clearly

obliged to provide consumers with the financial information, purchase information as

well as identification numbers and even contract costs of these purchases. Meanwhile

private televisions continue their supply of entertainment and information on their

web sites and no information about the ownership and other such kind of issues is

available for the consumer there. This shows clear contrast of ownership filters that

coerce some media to do what would be right for them and for some media – what

would be favorable for them.

The sources are the essential guide for media to be viable. In a worldwide

range, it has been assumed that in order to meet the demands of consumers it is

necessary to have extensive informational and material resources. For news gathering
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in Latvia-these sources are mainly governmental institutions. According to Chomsky

and Herman, these relationships between government institutions that provide media

with information and media that collect and distribute this information, tend to be

mutually gainful. In Latvia, such example could be press conferences organized by

press secretariats of government institutions in which only particular press corps can

reflect the news obtained there and this refers to “photo opportunity” sessions as well.

If one look at now ongoing election agitation campaigns in Latvia, which, of course,

is the hot ground of last couple of weeks, it becomes truly clear, that sources of media

have enormous impact on the content as well as the viewpoint from which the

particular news content is represented to the whole society. Recently there was a case

when the politician, ex-minister of defense of Latvia and the leader of the party New

Era, Einars Repše knocked down a man in a car accident, as a result of which, this

man died. Although Repše gave a press conference the next day and so far the

investigations are in favor of Repše, it is clear that apparently his political opposites

have their own concerns how to use this situation. Usually such news in news portals

on internet appear there maximum only for two days-curious are informed about more

new little details and that is it. In this case, it was almost annoying when the same

article appeared on the internet almost for a week and each day it had only another

headline, but no changes in the article. Therefore, this is an example of sourcing filter.

“Source”, which has a background of government forces, was discussed in comments

of visitors of this news site.

According to these filters applied to Latvia’s media market, it is clear that the

smaller the market is and the larger the media network grows, the filters do influence

the media content. Therefore, the particular form of bias should be expected. The

difference then is to what extent each filter has this influence. More and more people
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realize and acknowledge the bias of media – these uncensored discussions can be read

on almost every news web site on internet and maybe this is already a small step

forward to downplay one subjective viewpoint a bit and open eyes to more objective

and diverse overviews at the issues from different angles.

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Works Cited

Chomsky, Noam and Herman, Edward S. “A Propaganda Model”, Media Culture and

Criticism by Dr. James Thurlow, fall 2006.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 25.09.2006.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model>