System Security: A Missing Filter for the Propaganda Model?

Within the context of American counter-intelligence breaches in recent years, the authors examine discourse practices in corporate media that illustrate how the prevailing social and political order is maintained despite occasional shocks to the System. Upon this understanding, this chapter seeks to clarify what the System is, how it is managed and insulated from threats, and what role corporate media play within the System that serves to shape the public’s understanding of key issues. Critical discussions focus on power relations, propaganda, and elite concepts of democracy, how these are negotiated in mass media and understood by those with the power to define keywords and concepts. The authors elucidate Herman and Chomsky’s (1988, 2002) ‘Propaganda Model’ by proposing that a System Security news filter has emerged as a necessary safeguard for the present post-9/11 era of global capitalism interconnected by complex networks of digital media and interlocking corporate interests that span national boundaries.