Indexing State-Corporate Propaganda?
Indexing State-Corporate Propaganda?
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expressed in mainstream government debate about a given topic (Bennett, 1990:106).”
Jonathan Mermin (1999) has done some of the most recent and comprehensive work in
terms of evaluating the IM and summarizes with this elucidation, “the spectrum of debate
in the news, the IM asserts, is a function of the spectrum of debate in official Washington
The implications of indexing are important,
as Bennett wrote, “Evidence
supporting the indexing hypothesis would suggest that the news industry has ceded to
government the tasks of policing itself and striking a democratic balance” (1990:106).
Since the time Bennett first posited the “indexing hypothesis” and Mermin
comprehensively tested it, there have been scores of indexing case studies supporting its
main postulates, such as how criticism is limited and shaped by domestic officials
(Alexseev & Bennett, 1995; Bennett, 1990; Bennett & Manheim, 1993; Dorman &
Livingston, 1994; Eilders & Lüter, 2000; Nacos, 1990; Zaller & Chiu, 1996) and tends
more towards a procedural variety, than a substantive one (Entman & Page, 1994; Hallin,
1986, 1994; Hertog, 2000; Mermin, 1996).
Sourcing: the Key Link between Indexing and the Propaganda Model
Sourcing is a key theoretical link between indexing and the propaganda model. In
both models, sourcing tendencies are identified as a key factor for explaining the U.S.
news media’s coverage patterns and weaknesses. In terms of the PM, the updated edition
of the model (Herman and Chomsky, 2002) argued that this filter has significantly
strengthened while alluding to past scholarly work done by one of the leading political
economists of communications that buttressed this argument (McChesney, 2000).
Indexing’s utilization of sourcing tendencies as an explanation of news coverage,
however, is more elaborate and useful than what is offered by the PM. It captures the
Convention