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First presented in the book , the theory views the private media as businesses selling a product - readers and audiences rather than news - to other businesses (advertisers). It postulates five "filters" that sort out the type of news that finally gets published. These are: ownership, funding, sourcing, flak, and anti-communist ideology the first three being the most important.
Herman and Chomsky note that all the mainstream media are large corporations which are themselves part of bigger conglomerates (like Westinghouse or General ElectricGeneral Electric Company or GE is a multinational technology and services company, one of the world's largest corporations. While it still uses its full name for legal purposes, it prefers to use the abbreviation GE in the names of its component businesse) which extend beyond traditional media fields. Due to their size, these companiesA company in the broadest sense is an aggregation of people who stay together for a common purpose. Such usage includes people assembled for: commercial purposes organised as a type of business organization. See company (law); military purposes . See comp have powerful interests that may be affected when certain information is publicized. Thus, a bias against news that conflicts with the interests of those who own the media is to be expected.
The fact that corporations are subject to shareholderA shareholder or stockholder is an individual or company (including a corporation), that legally owns one or more shares of stock in a joint stock company. Companies listed at the stock market strive to enhance shareholder value. Stockholders are granted control in the context of a profitProfit is what is gained, after costs are accounted for. In accounting, this is usually measured in monetary terms. In economics, profit is most often measured differently, since costs are opportunity costs. Profit is income received by buying low and sel-oriented market economyA market economy is an economy in which most allocations of resources occur as a result of interactions between buyers and sellers of goods and services. It is often contrasted with a planned economy in which most allocations of resources occur as a resul increases the influence of this filter. As the authors observe,
It follows that if maximizing profit means sacrificing news objectivity, then the news sources that ultimately survive cannot but be fundamentally biased.
The authors also note that mainstream media depend heavily on advertisingAdvertising is the paid promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas, by an identified sponsor. Marketers see advertising as part of an overall promotional strategy. Other components of the promotional mix include publicity, public relations, persona to survive. A newspaperBrookgreen Gardens Pawleys Island, South Carolina A newspaper is a lightweight and disposable publication, usually printed on low-cost paper called newsprint, containing a journal of current news in a variety of topics. These topics can include political like the New York Times, for example, derives 75% of its profits from advertisements.
The role played by this filter is best seen, the authors suggest, by adopting a traditional business framework. Like every other company, a newspaper has a product and an audience. However, in this case, the product is composed by the affluent readers who buy the newspaper –who are also the educated decision-making sector of the population-, while the audience includes the businesses who pay to have them buy their advertised goods. Seen in this light, news are nothing more than a "filling" to get privileged readers to see the advertisements that compose the real content, and will thus take whatever form is best conducive to achieve that end. Stories that conflict with the "buying mood" will tend to be marginalized, as will information that presents a picture of the world that collides with advertisers' interest.
To some extent, the people buying the newspaper are themselves the product which is sold to the businesses buying advertising space; the newspaper itself has only a marginal role as the product.
The president of the French television station TF1 stated this clearly in an interview in 2004, published in the book "Les dirigeants face au changement" (Editions du Huitième jour) (ref below):
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