Modern Public Relations Of Western Ideology

The documentary, Toxic is Good for you, states the USA is the most propagandized people in history because the type of propaganda that is waged in Western democracies. Through the use of public relations, governments and corporations seek to manipulate public opinion in a way that would persuade the public to identify with them. Our textbook ( 2014) states, “ Public relations refers to the total communication strategy conducted by a person, a government, or an organization attempting to reach and persuade an audience to adapt a point of view” (Campbell, Martin, & Fabos, 2014, p.421).

This essay will exam how mass media in America saw one of its greatest collapses between the events of 9/11 and the lead up to the Iraq war.(Kamiya). The essay will use Herman and Chomsky's Propaganda model and its five filters and the Frankfurt school's concept of 'culture industry' to illustrate where the media went wrong. Habermas' public sphere model will be used to discuss what the media should have done. Media became a form of propaganda that enforced ignorance and lacked a balance between pro-war patriotism and necessary critiques. The mass media sacrificed its role as the fourth pillar of democracy through supporting the Bush administration and dismissing facts and the interests of the public.

Mass Media forms such as television, radio, and the press are predominantly owned by the bourgeoisie, increasing the likelihood that the media is filled with capitalist ideologies encoded in the texts to be decoded and consumed by the masses. The extract ‘Media as Manipulation? Marxism and Ideology’ from ‘Media, Culture and Society: An Introduction’ by P. Hodkinson (2011) explores several Marxist and Neo-Marxist perspectives on mass media. It also discusses the ways in which the media influences life in a capitalist society. This summary will provide a critical review of the extract and the various perspectives it presents.

As time and history have progressed, the institution of media has captured and held control over the public ideology. In this modern capitalistic age, the power held over the media as developed and been re-directed. The media acts as the key distributor and translator of the ideology within our society throughout history and in the present day. However, the context in which we communicate is changing, and with this, the relationship and interaction between politics, media and public life have altered (Blair, T 2007). Changed to an extent where the information being relayed may indeed be harmful to society, in the absence of objective, complete and accurate relaying of information (Blair, T 2007). Though the free society that we operate in does

Media has the power to determine how we perceive world events. Just as Happer and Philo say, “…they [the media] are key to the setting of agendas and focusing public interest on particular subjects, which operates to limit the range of arguments and perspectives that inform public debate (Happer & Philo, 2013). Society for years has relied on the media to inform us of what is happening around the world, and whether we like it or not, what they choose to show us or not show us affects our opinions. Since people don’t have the ability to be in these situations and see for ourselves, they must be dependent on someone else to inform them. We

In regard to modern times, warfare is sadly a common occurrence throughout the world. Because of this, and because news and media are such an integral part of society, important events of wars are typically published in newspapers across the globe, featured on nightly news, and talked about extensively. In fact, it is hard for the average person in Western societies to not be informed about the happenings of particular events due to the fact that this information is so widespread. However, warfare coverage has not always been at the forefront of media. It was not until the Vietnam War that wartime happenings emerged as readily available public information, so available that it was streamed into any private home with a television. So the question is how has media coverage of wars impacted society? Throughout this paper, the impacts of media coverage during the Vietnam War will be presented, including how such broadcastings affected American war-time sentiment while simultaneously establishing and increasing anti-American attitudes across European nations.

In 1988 authors Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky published a piece of work titled “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media“, wherein they argued that the mass media carry out propaganda by way of market forces and advertising by effectively selling people to other large conglomerates. As media is financed by marketing and strategic advertising, The Propaganda Model suggests large corporations interact and thrive by directing attention and ultimately prophets at other large corporations. Since “Manufacturing Consent” was published, many have argued that the propaganda model is nothing short of a mere conspiracy theory, often widely condemned for its deterministic overview of media ownership and censorship. In the essay, I will aim to critically analyse these claims, as well as discuss the Propaganda Model itself in more detail and get to the core of the theory put forward by Chomsky and Herman.

As public relations and journalism, the PR practitioners and the journalist are always related to each other nowadays. Both of them are important factors of the modern mass media, which aim to influence public opinions since the early twentieth century (Coombs and Holladay, 2010). In order to sharp citizen’s opinions, Charron(1989) mentions that the PR practitioners and journalists often prefer to work together and share information as cooperation. The dependent relationship, as Coombs (2010) explains, the PR practitioners scheme to cover through media, while the journalists are exploiting

According, to my interpretations of the documentary 'War Made Easy’, the news media plays the social role to inform to the people, but moreover is a business that needs high rating to sell and be profitable, which makes necessary to cover what is a subject of interest to the people, many times no weighting or making an objective analysis of the situation, and war is not the exception.

Although I do not have specific experience as a public relations practitioner, my credibility comes from PR courses and extensive amounts of research into the position. Because of this, I have created a list of potential responsibilities that a PR practitioner will have if they were to be employed at J. Gregory Salon. This list comes from a survey conducted in 2010 by the Institute for Public Relations in predicting what the top duties for PR managers in 2015 would be. (Watson & Sreedharan. 2010)

Noam Chomsky talks about an abundance of points in the 1992 documentary, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky And The Media. However, one main point that stuck out was Chomsky’s view on Public Relations in the media. One might wonder what public relations involves, well it involves advertisements for a company or a group. Chomsky views public relations in a naysay style and aims to grasp the true meanings behind each.

As discussed in class, one of the most influential agencies of socialization is the media. The way we see ourselves or the way other people see us come from what we are told by others and what we tell ourselves. In the Better world handbook, the chapter on media states that “the way we think and act in our daily lives is inextricably linked to the information we receive about the world” (Jones, Haenfler and Johnson). The chapter continues to discus how information delivered to us can be bias and this raises the issue on who controls the media and what we see through it. The problem with this could be that that whoever controls the media does not necessary have our best interest in mind and the content that is transmitted through the media is profit driven. . In the article “Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong” gives a perfect accept of how easy it is for information to get omitted based on what people what you to know and what they don’t want you to know. From a young age, people decide what they want you to know, so that they can decide on what they want you to think about certain topics whether its American history or something else, its like the

“A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth” – Joseph Goebbels, German Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. This is the exact words of Nazis most famous propagandist in using media as a mass weapon of propaganda and mind control. Could you imagine Germany in 1930s, without Television channel, without the Internet, without every mobile device in your palm, what channel of information will you get? Of course, newspapers, flies, images, celebrities were used as tools for propaganda purposes, designed to provoke a reaction, and ultimately, a form of control over their citizen. Nowadays, with all the advanced of technologies, information can reach everyone in every corner of the Earth, the message is delivered in the subtlest ways, without people’s conscious, has shaped everyone’s decision, or at least shape their behavior toward the decision that the orchestrator want the audience to perceive. With the booming of internet, information sharing seamlessly, we must ask ourselves, the role of media in conveying, shaping the society that we are living in. Let look at few examples of U.S propaganda machine, and later, the particular case of fish sauce in Viet Nam back in October 2016.

Throughout society, the mass media constantly changes over time. The mass media play a prominent role in informing the public about what occurs within the world, especially in areas which audiences do not acquire direct experience and knowledge. This essay will argue that the propaganda model is no longer valid as it has become outdated. This essay will also discuss the model in relation to the five filters and draw on Rampton's critique of the propaganda model in contemporary society.

Only recently being recognized as a discipline in itself, modern day professional public relations practices can trace its roots to the early 1900s where the first public relations firm, the Publicity Bureau, was founded in Boston. In 1923, Austrian-American public relations pioneer, Edward Bernays, identified three fundamental concepts of public relations. In 1984, American theorists, Grunig and Hunt, conceptualized the now-famous four models of public relations and the excellence theory that were generally adopted by public relation agencies across the globe. With so many significant milestones and theories of public relations established in the United States, it stands to reason that public relation practices would naturally adopt a western perspective.