Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
by Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky
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Book Summary Information
Author: Edward S. Herman, Noam ChomskyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2002-01-15
ISBN: 0375714499
Number of pages: 480
Publisher: Pantheon
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780375714498
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Book Review: PROPAGANDA
Summary: 1 Stars
PROPAGANDA
Many credit Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" with being the premier study of government propaganda. In Leftist circles it is hailed as a Bible, a rite of passage for any true activist to understand the system. But again, Chomsky's work, while appearing radical, is actually gatekeeper disinfo.
Chomsky spends the entire book attempting to prove that newspapers diminish American war crimes while exaggerating those of foreign governments. Such a point is easy to prove, and he does so in his own droll and methodical method.
Yet he stops there. Chomsky does not discuss the real elephant in the room: direct CIA collaboration with media outlets and journalists beginning in the 1950's under Operation Mockingbird.
Chomsky avoids writing about Mockingbird, the CIA program which covertly put major publishing, newspaper, and media outlets, as well as thousands of individual reporters under direct agency control. Agents included Ben Bradlee at Newsweek, Henry Luce of Time and Life, and Arthur Sulzberger of The New York Times, Alfred Friendly of the Washington Post, and Joseph Harrison Christian Science Monitor.
Shouldn't this a significant development for a historian authoring an honest study of propaganda? After all who is to say that this program doesn't still continue? The Bush administration has admitted spending hundreds of millions on fake newscasts and paying individual reporters like Armstrong Williams to push talking points in newspapers. What about the times they haven't been caught? Exactly how many mainstream commentary and news outlets work with the CIA and White House?
Perhaps this is the reason why the scripts of the nightly news on ABC, CBS, and NBC are almost exactly the same, while Newsweek, Time, and the New York Times push the elitist agenda on cue (as seen most prominently in the run up to the war in Iraq).
Furthermore Chomsky does not discuss collaboration between the Bilderberg Committee and the major media outlets. Shouldn't this concern the so-called radical anarchist, when media editors attend secret meetings calling for eugenics, world government, and a cashless society control grid?
Owners, editors and writers from Time, Newsweek, Economist, Washington Post, New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC and every news outlet in between have attended the world government meetings.
Furthermore, what about the influence of the CFR, which openly calls for a Panamerican Union and the end of American national sovereignty? The CFR counts amongst its members major editors, owners, and journalists in media outlets from PBS to CBS, CNN to News Corp., New Republic to U.S. News and World Report.
Aren't these the reasons that journalists push the propaganda Chomsky identifies? In "Manufacturing Consent," Chomsky takes limited aim at an easy target. But he fails to dig deeper and examine the actual reasons why the propaganda permeates the mainstream media opinion. Clearly the influence of the CIA, CFR, Bilderberg Committee, and White House have turned major media outlets into little more than docile commissars. Furthermore, the interlocking interests of media owners with the military industrial complex have served to sway content even further.
Chomsky's "classic" study is little more than a limited hangout project. He is merely shooting the messengers, blaming journalistic "bias" while failing to follow the trail of money, power, corruption, and black propaganda. Instead, he identifies some passive propaganda and is hailed as a brilliant analyst and purveyor of truth by the Leftist minions. But his true achievement is ignoring the reasons behind the lies, as he executes a masterful bait and switch tactic. Is it a coincidence that Chomsky's co-author for "Manufacturing Consent," Edward Herman, has also denied any government complicity in 9-11?
While claiming to expose propaganda, Chomsky has perfected the art.
Summary of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
In this pathbreaking work, now with a new introduction, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.Based on a series of case studies-including the media's dichotomous treatment of "worthy" versus "unworthy" victims, "legitimizing" and "meaningless" Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina-Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media's behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media's handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media's treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.
An absolutely brilliant analysis of the ways in which individuals and organizations of the media are influenced to shape the social agendas of knowledge and, therefore, belief. Contrary to the popular conception of members of the press as hard-bitten realists doggedly pursuing unpopular truths, Herman and Chomsky prove conclusively that the free-market economics model of media leads inevitably to normative and narrow reporting. Whether or not you've seen the eye-opening movie, buy this book, and you will be a far more knowledgeable person and much less prone to having your beliefs manipulated as easily as the press.
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