" 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 . 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. Chomsky, in particular, has made extensive use of its explanative power to lend support to his own interpretations of mainstream media attitudes towards a wide array of events, including the following: Gulf War (1990) Panama invasion (1989) Iraq invasion (2003). Herman, seeking to build upon a more institutionalized framework to analyze mainstream media functioning, joined the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), which has as its goal the critique, documentation, and statistical analysis of what it alleges is media bias and censorship since 1986. With the emergence of the World Wide Web as a cheap and potentially wide-ranging means of communication, a number of independent websites have surfaced which adopt the propaganda model to subject media to close scrutiny. Hot Model Photo Several examples of these are MediaLens, a British-based site authored by David Edwards and David Cromwell. Testing applicability to other countries Chomsky has this to say: That's only rarely been done in any systematic way. "

" With the Soviet Union's collapse, proponents of the propaganda model have argued that the functionality and credibility of anti-communism has been fundamentally compromised. Proponents state that new, more functional anathemas have arisen to take its place. Chomsky and Herman argue that one possible replacement for anti-communism seems to have emerged in the form of "anti-terrorism". Summary Chomsky and Herman summarize their theory thus: "A propaganda model has a certain initial plausibility on guided free-market assumptions that are not particularly controversial. In essence, the private media are major corporations selling a product (readers and audiences) to other businesses (advertisers). The national media typically target and serve elite opinion, groups that, on the one hand provide an optimal "profile" for advertising purposes, and, on the other, play a role in decision-making in the private and public spheres. The national media would be failing to meet their elite audience's needs if they did not present a tolerably realistic portrayal of the world. Hot Import Model Pure But their "societal purpose" also requires that the media's interpretation of the world reflect the interests and concerns of the sellers, the buyers, and the governmental and private institutions dominated by these groups (p. 303). "