Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media [Paperback]

Edward S. Herman (Author), Noam Chomsky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2002

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Herman of Wharton and Chomsky of MIT lucidly document their argument that America's government and its corporate giants exercise control over what we read, see and hear. The authors identify the forces that they contend make the national media propagandisticthe major three being the motivation for profit through ad revenue, the media's close links to and often ownership by corporations, and their acceptance of information from biased sources. In five case studies, the writers show how TV, newspapers and radio distort world events. For example, the authors maintain that "it would have been very difficult for the Guatemalan government to murder tens of thousands over the past decade if the U.S. press had provided the kind of coverage they gave to the difficulties of Andrei Sakharov or the murder of Jerzy Popieluszko in Poland." Such allegations would be routine were it not for the excellent research behind this book's controversial charges. Extensive evidence is calmly presented, and in the end an indictment against the guardians of our freedoms is substantiated. A disturbing picture emerges of a news system that panders to the interests of America's privileged and neglects its duties when the concerns of minority groups and the underclass are at stake. First serial to the Progressive.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (January 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375714499
• ISBN-13: 978-0375714498
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.2 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (101 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,272 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Edward S. Herman is professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and has written extensively on economics, political economy, and the media. Among his books are Corporate Control, Corporate Power; The Real Terror Network; The Political Economy of Human Rights (with Noam Chomsky); and Manufacturing Consent (with Noam Chomsky). David Peterson is an independent journalist and researcher based in Chicago.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

286 of 310 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ciritical to understanding press censorship in America., April 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Paperback)

Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's 1988 analysis of press censorship in America, is an insightful look at the ways public opinion and choices can be molded by dominating interests in a free society. Its value lies in the model Herman and Chomsky develop and test to account for this censorship; while they limit their investigation to a few specific cases -- three 1980s Central American elections, the alleged 1981 KGB-Bulgarian plot to kill the Pope, and the Indochina Wars -- their model is testable and can be applied and modified to a variety of events.

Obviously, not all happenings in the world can fit between the covers of the New York Times. Herman and Chomsky outline five filters, interrelated to some extent, through which these events must pass in order to become newsworthy. First, huge transnational businesses own much of the media - a fact probably more true now than in 1988 with Disney, Westinghouse, and Microsoft bullying in on the news markets. The corporate interests of these companies need not, and probably do not, coincide with the public's interests, and, consequently, some news and some interpretations of news stories critical of business interests will probably not make it to press.

Secondly, since advertising is crucial to keeping subscription costs low, media will shape their news away from serious investigative documentaries to more entertaining revues in order to keep viewer or reader interest and will cater to the audience to which the advertising is directed; before advertising became central to keeping a paper competitive, working class papers, for example, were much more prevalent, leading to a much broader range of interpretations of events (and thus more room for a reader to make up his own mind) than can be found by perusing the pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe.

Thirdly, media depend crucially on sources and these sources will inescapably have their own agendas. Reliability of information should be important (although it may not be as shown by the tabloidization of the mass media in Monica Lewinsky affair), but the press also needs a steady stream of events to make into news. This leads to a reliance on the public relations bureaucracies of government and corporate agencies for whom some measure of accepted credibility exists and who will also probably have a statement about major happenings. However, by relying substantially on the statements these parties, the media becomes less an investigative body and more a megaphone for propaganda; independent confirmation of facts as well as interpretation eludes it.

Fourthly, there are costs to producing an incendiary news item -- one which attacks powerful interests whether they be advertisers, government agencies, corporate bodies, or public interest groups. According to the previous three filters, the media relies on these interests for its survival and cannot afford their sustained censure. While none of these filters guarantee that a news item attacking one of these interested parties will not appear, the story is likely to be spun in a way to minimize fallout or flak which may compromise its integrity.

Since they wrote at the end of the Reagan years, Herman and Chomsky's final filter is anti-communism, but it may be any prevailing ideology. The assumptions behind ideologies, almost by definition, are rarely challenged; ideologies organize the world, constructing frames into which news events can be placed for easy interpretation: Communism is evil; the domino effect is an actual phenomenon; America is right. This past February there was no hint in the domestic press that there could be any response to Iraq's intransigence other than bombing, making the contrary opinions of the vast majority of the world unintelligible. In domestic affairs, article after article praises various organizations on increasing the diversity of their membership -- diversity being always ethnic and racial diversity without ever asking why racial and ethnic diversity is necessarily relevant in the first place (as opposed to diversity of political opinion, for example).

Mark Twain said, "It was a narrow escape. If the sheep had been created first, man would have been a plagiarism." Manufacturing Consent asks us to challenge our assumptions about the way the world works, urges us to conscientiously separate the agendas behind the news we consume from the facts within, and demonstrates the danger of a monopolistic media cartel to purported American ideals of popular governance. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to break out of the flock and construct her own informed opinions about world affairs.

171 of 199 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Common Person's Review (for the non-intellectual), January 7, 2003

By 

kevin rivera (Orange County, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Paperback)

If you're looking for a very scholarly and academic review of this book thats laden with a bunch of big words, etc., read one of the other reviews.

This is for the interested kid or student or person inclined towards radical politics who maybe doesn't have a Phd degree, or who doesn't sit around discussing the scholarly implications of books for the sake of showing off their superior intellect.

First of all, don't be scaired by the 400 pages of the book. Its actually just barely above 300, with about 100 pages of appendixes and footnotes.

It is a very readable book for anyone who has at least a vague idea of recent world affairs (of the past 3 decades or so). And even if you don't have much familiarity, after finishing this book, you certainly will. Some parts may be a bit overwhelming, but they are few and far between.

The basic premise of the book is that the mainstream American corporate media (the big networks, the big newspapers, news magazines, etc)serve to uphold the interests of the elites in this country (political and economic). Chomsky and Herman acknowledge that we do have a "liberal" press, (what does it really mean to be 'liberal' in America today anyways?), but that the liberalness is kept within acceptable boundaries. Basically, the mainstream press may give a liberal slant on what the dominant institutions and systems are doing...but they will not question the very nature of the institutions and systems themselves.

For example, today's Los Angeles Times (January 6,2003) had a page 2 story on the U.N sanctions against Iraq. Now, the typical reader may see the story, and figure that since the LA Times is even reporting on the impact of sanctions against Iraqi civillians, this is demonstrative of their 'liberal' leanings. However, the story leaves untouched the most crucial issues regarding UN sanctions against Iraq, such as:
1)the U.S. and U.K. are the sole countries who sit on the UN Secutity Council who refuse to lift the sanctions against Iraq, despite the pleas of the other member nations (such as Russia, France, China, etc).
2)UN estimates have put the death toll from the sanctions at nearly one million civillians.
3)Two consecutive UN Humanitarian Coordinators have resigned in the past five years in protest of the effect of the sanctions, with the first stating "We are in the process of destroying an entire society."

Basically, the mainstream corporatized press will leave the most crucial questions unanswered, if they portray American power in a bad light.

The last chapter on Laos and Cambodia are a bit tedious and confusing, but by the time you get to that chapter, the previous ones will have more than made their case.

Overall, this is an excellent book, even for the non-academic, and will fundamentally alter the way you look at the media, and the 'facts' they are reporting.

112 of 131 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A tour de force, December 17, 2000

By 

Marco Polo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Paperback)

A tour de force, co-authored by one of the world's leading experts on language and meaning.�@In this book, Herman and Chomsky put forward a "propaganda model" to explain the bias in Western (mostly US) media on international affairs. Their thesis is that, although the US is not a dictatorship where a single leader can censor the press, the very market forces that lead people to believe in the freedom of their press actually work to create a self-imposed censorship which creates a biased media, more intent on delivering audiences to their advertisers and vital corporate sponsors than in providing their readers with balanced and informed news.�@The authors back up their theory with a large number of examples, and focus on 3 main topics: Latin America, Vietnam and the attempt on the life of the Pope in 1981. Using extensive quotations from US contemporary media reports, and comparing them with official sources such as government documents, White House memos, State Department press releases, as well as reports in non-US-based media, Herman and Chomsky are able to bolster their thesis of a propaganda model, and show that US media reports are nearly always skewed to show the US and its allies as the "good guys", and other (enemy) states as the "bad guys". When "they" do it, it's called "terrorism", when "we" do it, it's called "fighting for democracy and freedom."

Such a statement seems too blatantly simplistic to require serious consideration; nevertheless, the authors do give it very serious consideration, and the evidence they have scrupulously collected is hard to refute. Moreover, their propaganda model helps to explain why and how this can be so, even (indeed, particularly) in a "free democracy": a number of filters act to screen out unwelcome aspects of news.

A startling eye-opener, very well researched and cogently, passionately argued. These authors care intensely about lives lost due to state-sponsored violence, whether that state is the US or the Soviet Union or anywhere else. A must-read for students of media and communication, and indeed any intelligent reader curious about the forces that shape what actually appears in their newspapers and television news.