War Made Easy and The Five Filters

                War Made Easy discusses how American citizens have largely entered wars based upon deception. The media and governments have worked together to produce a media enterprise that produces a range of propaganda that influences the general public to support the cause of war. The Propaganda Model proposed by Herman and Chomsky has five filters that help to explain the deception and manipulation of the media.

                The first filter describes ownership within the media and the hierarchy that exists with a few large companies controlling the entire media landscape. This is not largely demonstrated in War Made Easy however it does mention several of the large news channels and corporations involved in presenting the war to the American public. The second filter is about advertising sponsorship. Again this filter is not mentioned explicitly in War Made Easy but references are made towards it.

                The third filter is shown very evidently in War Made Easy. This filter looks at the relationship between the media and its source of information. Often the media presents facts and information which it has been fed from governments or advertisers, very little investigation goes on.  A clear example of this in War Made Easy is the list of army officials from the Pentagon that one journalist produces as a form of evidence in support of the war. The official titles and locations of the news give the information prestige and authority and so make them more believable.  Another example is the journalist put in the field of war. As a viewer we expect them to be showing us the real information as they are part of the event however what they can report is closely monitored and controlled.

                One of the main ideas within War Made Easy is to link the troops and thus support the war and if you don’t support the war you are against the troops. We can apply flak to this as when we see any opposition towards the war it is attributed with negative connotations. In War Made Easy we can see the juxtaposition of images of those speaking against the war and images of young soldiers in the heat of war and are reminded regularly of the Twin Towers bombing.

                Finally in the fifth filter the media plays on public fear. In War Made Easy an example of playing on fear is the use of Islamic fundamentalism, which has become a fearful concept. The Twin Towers bombing is used as a regular reminder to justify the war and names such as Saddam Hussein become well known and links are made to other events whether they are involved or not. This creates a fearful concept that the public does not want to be part of. It is portrayed as something very different from American life and so as something unknown it is feared. In this way the media has created a “good guy” and a “bad guy” that is very simple and straight forward as the public wants to support the “good guy” naturally.