Film Sessions: the Myth of a Free Press on Media Madness

NinaIllingworth December 22, 2020November 5, 2022 asylum seekers, BBC, blog, by the rich for the richer, capitalism, colonialism, corporate media, cultural studies, demonizing migrants, Edward Herman, Fantastic Lies, far right, film sessions, for profit media, forever war, hate groups, immigration, manufacturing consent, Marxist analysis, Media, media analysis, media bias, Media Madness, migrant caravan, migrant crisis, Migrant Rights, MP6, nationalism, nationalism leads to fascism, nativism, Newsnight, Nina Illingworth, Noam Chomsky, Offsite Writing, pig empire, Propaganda, pushing hate, Racism, refugees, Reviews, right wing fearmongering, selling hate for clicks, Sociology, ST2, Stuart Hall, the propaganda model, Tom Nicholas, Video, What The Theory, white supremacy, whiteness

Editor’s note: after struggling against online censorship and some epic procrastinating, I’m just about finished reorganizing my website. As part of that process, I’m posting links to older content that readers will never find again otherwise.

Thankfully, I’m most finished this process and only have a few posts from late last year left. Please bear with me in the meantime and thanks for all your support.

A Proper Pig Empire Propaganda Program

As those of you who’ve browsed the Leftist Theory page on this website are no doubt aware, I write a lot about media bias, the propaganda model, and the dirty tricks the ruling classes use to maintain capitalist hierarchies of exploitation in our society. In this December 19th, 2020, Film Sessions post over on Media Madness, I examine some of these issues through the lens of a fifty-five minute video by What the Theory’s Tom Nicholas. Combining both the Herman-Chomsky “propaganda model” and important theories about representation and meaning from Stuart Hall, our presenter demonstrates how media coverage of everyday news events is specifically designed to shape perceptions of those events in ways that benefit the wealthy, powerful, and incorporated.

“What makes Tom’s work here at least a little unique however is that he combines the ideas of media theorists Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, as well as a little bit of Marxist sociologist and foundational cultural theorist Stuart Hall, with key observations using an actual BBC story from earlier this year, about the so-called “migrant crisis,” a British version of the American “migrant caravan” scare, to demonstrate how the propaganda model works to establish bias in practice.”

To read more over on Media Madness, click on the quotation block above, or the header below:

What the Theory: The Myth of a Free Press

nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

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