Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman: The Role of the Mass Media

The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.

Noam Chomsky and Edwards S. Herman
Manufacturing Consent (1988)