Ayesha Mahnoor

70081470

Film and media studies

Assignment

Write and apply the propaganda model of Chomsky and S.Herman on the
Pakistani context.
Introduction:

The Propaganda model of media control was introduced by Edward. S. Herman and Noam
Chomsky in their book ‘Manufacturing Consent – The Political Economy of the Mass Media’.
There are five steps in this model which are given below:
  Propaganda model and Pakistani context:
This model actually tries to understand how the person of a country or state is manipulated, and
how the social, economic, political attitudes are fashioned in the minds of people through
propaganda. This manipulation is done by media and media is controlled by different sources, in
Pakistan media is controlled by PEMRA.

An unforgettable incident is PEMRA order also requested cable operators to block the Geo TV
broadcast or move the channel to last on the list of channels.

Financial ownership:

Our media is under control elite class of the society. The information presented to the public will
be varying as per the interests of that class. Media act as the puppet in those hands.

Example: Pakistan television news is the major source in those areas where there are no cable
operators or there is no internet access people use dish antenna but there is not even any
productive news is published on PTV because of government ownership.

Funding :

Advertising is the main source of income for news channels different companies choose different
news channel to advertise their products even those products are unhealthy and everyone knows
but media use to advertise them because of their profit.

Example: advertisement of different soft drinks like Coca-Cola, sprite, 7-up and sting. Even An
illiterate person knows that colas are acidic in nature but our news channel advertise them.

Source:

There are many sources of the news channels rather than reporters and their teams. These sources
are present near the source of news because it is impossible to place reporters everywhere.

Example: Recently we have seen that winter vacation news is already come out without any
authentic news, press conference and tweet or without any source of news.

Flak:

Flak is actually a negative response on an act or on a media statement.

Example: in December a model posted a picture on instagram in which she is bare headed and
sitting in front of Gurudwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur and this picture is shared by a clothing
brand also. On this Pakistan’s Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry tweeted that the designer
and the model should apologise to the Sikh community, adding, “Kartarpur Sahib is a religious
symbol and not a film set.”

The model apology wrote “I am sorry for this if I hurt someone this picture is not part of the
photo-shoot I was just visited that place to know about the culture but I am sorry to all sikh
community”

Anti-communism:

In Anti-communism anchors are threaten to publish news without permissions. For different elite
groups communism is ultimate evil because it took their power and wealth. Communism is a
threat for their social status and for their life styles too.

Example: journalist Hamid Mir kicked out from his workplace because of a public speech after
that authority called him traiter or threat to the society.