This year marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Herman and Chomsky's now classic, if still controversial, study puts forward a "propaganda model" for analyzing and explaining U.S. press performance and behaviors.

Briefly stated, the propaganda model identifies five factors -- ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak and anticommunist ideology -- that act as "filters" through which information is processed by news workers and organizations. In turn, these filters affect how news stories are selected and framed for presentation to the American public.

When it first appeared, some critics dismissed Manufacturing Consent as just so much conspiracy theory. Others hailed the book as a groundbreaking analysis of the structural factors that shape U.S. journalistic institutions and practices.

Notwithstanding two decades of critique and refinement, recent events underscore the continued relevance of the propaganda model for understanding how and why U.S. news media operate as they do.

With so much going on in media and politics these days, it's difficult to settle on any single topic to write about. So I haven't. Instead, here are a few thoughts on what is, and isn't, making headlines these days.

I want to believe

Ever since he clinched his party's nomination, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has been battered by charges of flip-flopping on a range of issues: from gun control and late-term abortion to public campaign financing and troop withdrawal from Iraq.

The extent to which Obama's position has changed on any of these issues is debatable. After all, one of his great strengths is his willingness and ability to discuss public policy in a thoughtful and nuanced fashion. In an age of sound-bite politics, this is an admirable quality in any candidate for elected office.

But Sen. Obama's about-face on the Bush administration's electronic surveillance program -- with its controversial provision of retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies -- was a textbook example of politics as usual.

Scott McClellan's memoir What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception continues to make headlines nearly two weeks after the former White House press secretary released his tell-all book about the Bush Administration's efforts to manipulate public opinion on the war in Iraq. No small feat when you consider that two weeks is an eternity in the modern news cycle -- not to mention the fact that there have been a few dramatic developments in the Democratic presidential primary race in recent days.

McClellan's revelations are not simply an indictment of the Bush administration's deceptions. He argues that mainstream media were complicit in selling Bush's war to the American people like so much snake oil. According to McClellan, "The national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House." Further, he argues that by "enabling" the administration's propaganda efforts, the press failed to fulfill its critical role as a watchdog of the powerful.

As with most high-profile news stories these days, this one has generated more heat than light. Not surprisingly, the Republican attack machine has been operating at full throttle to discredit McClellan -- and the press dutifully records all of it. Likewise, journalists and pundits have wagged incessantly about McClellan's motivations, how these revelations might affect the general election, and what all of this might mean for the Bush legacy.

This past week, as the world marked the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the corporate news media confirmed the latest Washington consensus on the war: mistakes were made, perhaps, but things are looking up.

It's plain to see why -- despite the historical record, let alone the "facts on the ground" -- the corporate press has such a rosy picture of the war: the US press corps' uncritical reliance upon elite news sources.

Action alerts regarding press coverage marking the anniversary of the war in Iraq issued this week by the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) confirm as much.

We assume that if you are regular readers of this paper and our column then you are probably advocates of free speech and free expression as tacit to a democratic society. But do you ever ask yourself just how to be heard?

The right of free speech and finding a forum in which to speak are two separate issues, but there is a solution: community radio. It's as simple as that. And Bloomington is fortunate to have its very own community radio station in WFHB.

Maybe you are already a listener, or maybe you've never heard of the station, but it has been around for nearly 30 years in one manifestation or another. WFHB was the first community radio station in Indiana, and over the past 15 years has evolved into a seriously representative and credible voice for the community.

It’s tough to keep track of how many times Congress has caved in to the Bush administration’s fear mongering over the past eight years. Still, this past week’s craven performance by the Senate represents a new low.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate passed a measure that would broaden the government’s domestic surveillance programs. Significantly, the legislation also gives the nation’s telecommunications industries retroactive immunity from criminal prosecution for their role in President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program.

It feels odd to be welcoming readers to the first edition of The Bloomington Alternative in the new year, given that it’s mid-January and all. But we’ve been on a much-deserved break and haven’t been around much since the calendar flipped. So, welcome.

I’ve been doing this too long to call what I’m about to share a “preview” of what’s to come in 2008. Far too much can happen in 12 months to be so presumptuous, and the year is already 1/24th gone. But I will give you some insights into our general bearing, anyway.

In terms of Web presence, I’m pleased to report the Alternative is growing rapidly. In December, we averaged one page being opened somewhere on our site every 20 seconds of every day. And now that folks have settled back into their daily routines, traffic thus far in January is up 35 percent over December.

The Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Dec. 18 decision to "relax" media ownership rules opens the door to a new wave of consolidation that will further erode the quality of U.S. news media.

According to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, the new rules will help the ailing newspaper industry compete with Internet news services for readership and advertising dollars by lifting a 30-year ban on newspaper-broadcast cross ownership. Martin contends that his "modest" proposal is limited to the nation's 20 largest media markets.

But as consumer advocacy and public interest groups, including Free Press and the Benton Foundation, have demonstrated, the ruling contains dozens of waivers and is riddled with loopholes that will have implications for media markets across the country.

Even though I know this piece is a farewell to some, it's really an announcement of a new phase in the ongoing experiment in new-media journalism called The Bloomington Alternative.

Yes, the Dec. 5 issue will be the last Alternative print edition. And I've heard from enough loyal readers who crave that newsprint in their hands to know that we're going to lose them if we don't keep a print publication on the street (an eventuality that has not been ruled out).

But while the thought of losing readers is an anathema to any writer -- it sets pinched nerve endings ablaze, actually -- the truth is, for a multitude of reasons, it's time to let go of the old media and more fully embrace the new.

The screenwriters' strike continues to grab headlines, right alongside big news stories like the military crackdown in Pakistan, the diplomatic letdown in Annapolis and the economic meltdown on Wall Street.

As the strike enters its fourth week, popular television programs like The Daily Show, Desperate Housewives and 24, among others, have closed shop.

Press coverage of the strike invariably frames the labor dispute in rather dire terms: apart from the financial implications a prolonged strike will have for writers and the film and TV studios alike, the American public will suffer the consequences of a television season littered with reruns and "reality" programming should the strike drag on for months.

These news stories reveal a great deal about the blind spots and blackouts that are common in U.S. press coverage of media and culture. Indeed, the sheer amount of coverage the writers' strike receives stands in stark contrast to another media-related news story - a blockbuster, in fact - that barely receives mention, let alone headlines.