Media output is uniform despite the abundance of sources and outlets.

Evidence

Although one depends on them a great deal, television, newspapers, radio, and magazines are not our only source on “Islam.” There are books, specialized journals, and lecturers available whose views are more complex than the essentially fragmented and immediate things delivered by the mass media. Also, it is important to say that even in newspapers and on radio and television, there are a host of variations to be observed, as between one editorial line and another, or between different “op-ed” viewpoints, or between alternative or countercultural images and conventional ones. We do not, in short, live at the mercy of a centralized propaganda apparatus, even though a great deal of what is really propaganda is churned out by the media and even by reputable scholars. Yet despite the variety and the differences, and however much we proclaim the contrary, what the media produce is neither spontaneous nor completely “free”: “news” does not just happen, pictures and ideas do not merely spring from reality into our eyes and minds, truth is not directly available, we do not have unrestrained variety at our disposal. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 178

Categorization

• XREF: Complements Herman and Chomsky’s ‘Manufacturing Consent’ propaganda model while explicitly rejecting a centralized conspiracy.
• SEED: Angle: how a plural, non-censored media system nevertheless converges on a single reductive frame — the ‘propaganda without propagandists’ mechanism.

Related

• News conventions and profit motive reduce complex reality to uniform stories. (similarity 0.83)
• Media Islam images derive from geopolitical experts, not academic scholarship (similarity 0.83)
• A small anti-Muslim expert clique dominates US media coverage of Islam (similarity 0.82)
• Media consensus on national identity shapes news without conspiracy or coercion. (similarity 0.81)
• Media coverage of Islam systematically obscures Western actions against Muslims (similarity 0.81)
• Islamic studies’ marginality lets media spread racist caricatures unchecked (similarity 0.81)
• The media is not the origin or sole source of Islamophobia (similarity 0.80)
• Objectivity and factuality in news are unattainable ideals, not achievements. (similarity 0.79)
• Media coverage replaces lived events, reducing people to walk-on roles. (similarity 0.79)
• Media coverage of Islam succeeds through political influence, not accuracy. (similarity 0.78)