Chomsky and Castro

             Since our schedule got mixed up, I was not sure, which reading we would do tomorrow so I decided to write my blog on the reading that I most enjoyed. Herman and Chomsky’s “ A Propaganda Model” was written in the 80s and yet it is still relevant as ever. Their theory explores propaganda in mass media and how it functions to “amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society.”

According to Chomsky and Herman, there are five filters in which all content from mass media must go through: (1) Size, Ownership and Profit Orientation, (2) Funding, (3) Source, (4) Flaks, and (5) Anticommunism.

The last filter was one that came up over the weekend due to recent events.  As I am sure most of you have heard, Cuba’s revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro died a couple of days ago. As expected there were undertones of celebration and satisfaction in the media when announcing his death. They would discuss all the ways in which Castro failed to provide liberty and freedom for the people of his country, and that now that he is dead, Cubans will have the opportunity live freely as we do in the United States. As I went on other forms of media, such as Facebook and blogs, I found contrasting opinions in which people argued that in some ways Castro had been a true revolutionary. Cuba has the highest literacy rate in the western hemisphere (higher than the US) and an excellent healthcare system, yet rarely do we hear about these accomplishments. As stated by our authors, “It should be noted that when anti-Communist fervor is aroused, the demand for serious evidence in support of claims of "communist" abuses is suspended, and charlatans can thrive as evidential sources.”

We do not need concrete evidence of someone who has been labeled a communist as to why their actions fall in with communism. One they have received that label, anything that they do is automatically defined as communist and thus inherently evil and a threat to our nation. Now, I am not saying that we should not condemn some of Castro’s actions, but it is important to realize that not everything is as black and white as our media makes it seem. The media loves to put its own country on a pedestal and point fingers at everyone without realizing its own hypocrisy.  For example, we call ourselves champions of freedom, yet our country has one of the highest incarceration rates, which predominantly incarcerates people of color. Not a single nation is perfect, and it is essential that we recognize both the good and bad. We need to challenge our views on other countries as well as our own because what we hear from the media does not involve the stories from all sides.