" 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. 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). " Empirical support Following the theoretical exposition of the propaganda model, Manufacturing Consent contains a large section where the authors seek to test their hypotheses. If the propaganda model is right and the filters do influence media content, a particular form of bias would be expected — one that systematically favors corporate interests. Hottest Import Model Noam Chomsky said, "the first way we tested the model in Manufacturing Consent was to submit it to what is really its harshest possible test: we let the opponents select their own ground. [. "

" The authors claim that the importance of ownership filter is the fact that corporations are subject to shareholder control in the context of a profit-oriented market economy. The theory then argues that maximizing profit means sacrificing news objectivity, and news sources that ultimately survive must be fundamentally biased, with regard to news in which they have a conflict of interest. Funding The authors also argue that the mainstream media depends heavily on advertising revenues to survive. A newspaper like the New York Times, for example, derives 75% of its revenues from advertisements. The authors suggest that this filter is best seen by adopting a traditional business framework. They argue that a newspaper, like any other company, has a product which it offers to its audience (or customer base). In this case, however, the product is composed of the affluent readers who buy the newspaper — who also comprise the educated decision-making sector of the population — while the audience includes the businesses that pay to advertise their goods. Asian Import Model Picture According to this "filter", the news itself is nothing more than "filler" to get privileged readers to see the advertisements which makes up the real content, and will thus take whatever form is most conducive to attracting educated decision-makers. Stories that conflict with their "buying mood", it is argued, will tend to be marginalized or excluded, as will information that presents a picture of the world that collides with advertisers' interests. "