Journalism is conceptualized in terms of accounting, and explored in probabilistic terms. The predictions of the Propaganda Model (PM) are scrutinized with a battery of recognised tests. This paper proves that journalism on the Assange case in the Swedish nation-wide press is propaganda. The hypothesis of pre-emptive openness, i.e. less than 10 % deviations from strict obedience to the elite opinion, is accepted. This paper employs a comprehensive dataset of 2362 news items 2010-2016 from the largest Swedish outlets. Parametric estimation of random samples suggest an overall concentration of departures around 3 % from the predictions of the PM – without significant improvement over time. Non parametric simulations point to a concentration about 1.4%. The hypotheses derived from the PM under pre-emptive openness, could not be rejected on the key issues of the case. Furthermore, many facts which have been systematically misrepresented in the press are made accessible.

Summary and Conclusions

The analytical approach to journalism in this paper is a footnote with several methodological and theoretical contributions, and provides a basis for further inquiry. The first step was to introduce an accounting perspective, from which hypotheses could be derived from a minimalistic setup. An immediate result is that trendy alternatives about polarization, influenced by the behavioral sciences, are not plausible overarching explanations. This topic will be given more attention in forthcoming Footnotes.

A lean probabilistic articulation based on propaganda accounting is enough to capture the essentials of a propaganda model in particular, and to make exact predictions. Especially, it is possible, and indeed reasonable, to test the theory of Herman & Chomsky (2002) with two hypotheses. It follows that it is possible to accept (not merely fail to reject) the hypothesis of a propagandistic press. This is feasible for more general formalised theories with predictions of parameters just a few percentage points apart.

I also prove that journalism on the Assange case in the Swedish nationwide press is propaganda, in the simple and correct sense that the proposition has to be accepted in view of overwhelming evidence. The proportions on the aggregate, and in specific topics are skewed to the extent that probabilities at the subatomic scale have to be grasped, especially if independent, truth-telling professionals are assumed. As a rule of thumb, it was far more likely for a person 2011-2016 to suffer severe trauma as a victim of space debris, than the proposition that journalism on Assange was accurate or anti-establishment.

This paper is related to WikiLeaks' Unforgivable Liberalism and On the Limits of Non-Profit Firms