"g. , "The Establishment") . Unlike the first three "filtering" mechanisms — which are derived from analysis of market mechanisms — flak is characterized by concerted and intentional efforts to manage public information. Flak from the powerful can be either direct or indirect. The direct could include the following hypothetical scenarios: Letters or phone calls from the White House to Dan Rather or William Paley Inqueries from the FCC to major television networks requesting documents used to plan and assemble a program Messages from irate executives representing advertising agencies or corporate sponsors to media officials threatening retaliation if not granted on-air reply time. The powerful can also work on the media indirectly by: Complaints delivered en masse to their own constituencies (e. g. Canadian Fitness Model, stockholders, employees) about media bias, Generation of mass advertising that does the same, By funding watchdog groups or think tanks engineered to expose and attack deviations in media coverage that endanger vital elite interests. By funding political campaigns that elect politicians who will be more willing to curb any such media deviations. "

". ] and you look at those examples to see whether they follow the Propaganda Model. " (Understanding Power, 18f; emphasis in the original) And so the book studies the examples regarded as paradigmatic examples of the independence of the press, such as the Vietnam war, Watergate, and the Iran-Contra Affair, and argues that these examples actually confirm the model. They also looked at what they perceived as naturally-occurring "historical control groups" where two events, similar in their relevant properties but differing in the expected media attitude towards them, are contrasted using objective measures such as coverage of key events (measured in column inches) or editorials favoring a particular issue (measured in number). Finally, the authors examine what points of view they believe are expressed in the media. In one case, the authors examined over fifty of Stephen Kinzer's articles about Nicaragua in the New York Times. They criticize Kinzer for failing to quote a single person in Nicaragua who is pro-Sandinista and contrast this with polls that Chomsky and Herman cite as reporting a 9% support for all the opposition parties taken together. Brandy Dahl Fitness Model Based on this example and select others, the authors conclude that such a persistent bias can only be explained by a model like the one they advocate. Applications Since the publication of Manufacturing Consent, both Herman and Chomsky have adopted the theory and have given it a prominent role in their writings, lectures, and theoretical frameworks. "