Customer Reviews

Media Control, Second Edition: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda (Open Media Series)

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As a brief and pithy introduction to Chomsky's anti-imperialistic thinking about media control, and as a charged denunciation of mass propaganda in the modern world (particularly US), this is a very fast-paced, slim, and intriguing read. But if you are looking for material that substantiates his claims with hard, quantitative evidence, you'd do better with a somewhat more detailed treatise from Chomsky, e.g., "Manufacturing Consent".

This though is a somewhat embittered manifesto, spewing out bits on how administrations in the past from Wilson to Bush Senior have manipulated the public into war with unlikely, usually defenceless enemies. This edition sports a new speech "The Journalist from Mars," which lends a refreshingly dissident tenor to the chorus of patriotism. The 31 new pages are particularly relevant today as President Bush picks up where his father left off, once again calling a fear-ridden population to war.

Media Control might sound like a flaming rant but it is a good, crisp lead-in into Chomsky's thinking -- likely to be misinterpreted unless you are also familiar with his work otherwise. But his ideas are a welcome second opinion at a time when we should be questioning more than ever whether the spurious memes of "War on Terror", "Shock and Awe" etc are really about terrorism or tyranny at all, or a nearly-successful PR agenda pandering to the big few.

A highly engaging read.

Media Control is perhaps the best short introduction to Chomsky's thought on politics and propaganda around. Whereas books like 9-11 and "What Uncle Sam Really Wants" are choppy and prone to misunderstood interpretations by readers not already accustomed to Chomsky, Media Control is coherent, in depth and very easy and quick to read. The essay is from the time after the U.S. invasion of Iraq known as "Desert Storm" and traces the uses of propaganda and misinformation from that era back to the Wilson era and Walter Lippmann's theory of media control. Chomsky perhaps displays his dry wit in this short volume more than anywhere else, with his comparisson of the typical slogan "support our troops" to the absurd slogan "support the people in Iowa." What this makes clear, is the emptiness of the slogan. The question "do you support our troops?" cannot be answered with a "no" unless one is completely depraved. That question however masks the underlying question "do you support our policy?" which is something that elites in the govt. and media would prefer you not think about, because the answers would be more ambiguous and require real democratic discussion. The rulers and media heads would prefer to make those decisions for you, through what Lippmann dubbed "consent without consent". The mass media (now controlled largely by six major firms who all have holdings and enter into joint ventures with one another.) constrain debate on issues to within a moderate range, so of course most of the media will look to be at the "liberal" end of the allowed spectrum, but that only has the effect of cutting anything further to the "left" out of the discussion, so arguments many tend to go between something like the "hawks" who are for immediate war, unilaterally, and the "doves" largely represented in the media, who may tend to stand for "multi-lateralism" or waiting for more info. Thus, many who have other ideas on the subject are left out of mainstream debate, and thus seem to not exist. What we are left with is a host of false-dichotomies and debates that we don't even want to be in.
... Also, this new edition of Media Control is expanded to include transcript of a talk, previously printed in FAIR, which is a little thought experiment about how a journalist from Mars (which is what journalists who work with a critical edge are often treated like), who is highly trained at the best journalism schools in the U.S., would cover the "war on terrorism." It is interesting to read the current essay in light of the essay on the Iraq conflict ten years past. (and the new cover and print is much more attractive than the 1st edition).

One of the most to-the-point books I've read in ages. This book can be read within 45 minutes and not only gives real-life examples of modern propaganda uses and successes, but also gives a brief history of its use in the United States.

The details of Gulf War propaganda use reads prophetically... the same exact tactics used in the '91 Gulf War are being used today (2003). It's as if Chomsky sees the news reports before they're produced. The pattern of media control is made starkingly clear to the reader and is sure to upset you.

Few books have generated such emotion in me, and for a book this short to have such an effect speaks volumes. Highly recommended!

While high school classes tout the freedom of the press, Chomsky shows why this is not the entire story. The main focus of this book is propaganda--it's power and status and America--and how it functions as media control. Even so, the focus, even in the subtitle, is on the prevalence and power of propaganda, not on the intricate workings how propaganda, in turn, controls the media itself.

Chomsky's prose is simple and begs to be read in one sitting, but his evidence is cited well. This is definitely not aimed at graduate students but rather at any literate voter.

Reading this book will cause a paradigm shift for the reader who has gone through traditional high school government course. I think that those who believe there is no "media control" or propaganda will be forced to at least face some tough questions, and those who are more prone to agree with Chomsky will find such views expressed quite articulately.

Those interested in better understanding the many ways on which the electronic media manipulates public opinion would profit mightily from reading this rather short essay from Noam Chomsky concerning the myriad of methods used by what sociologist C. Wright Mills would have referred to as the power elite to shape and reduce the scope of what we know and how we see the world around us. In a wonderful quote from this essay lifted nearly verbatim from a public speech made to a recent Town Meeting for citizens interested in media coverage of foreign policy, Chomsky states that "propaganda is to a democracy what a bludgeon is to a totalitarian state". In this sense, he posits that the use of propaganda, and in particular what some pundits now refer to a political 'spin', is the single most useful device used by the power elite uses to keep the masses in line with their interests and world perspectives.

As the many faithful peripatetic readers of Chomsky's essays would expect, he adopts an academic approach to the issue, tracing the history of the use of propaganda in this country from the erudite yet deceptively rabble-rousing pro-intervention speeches made by President Woodrow Wilson, the similarly back-staged endeavors of FDR to draw American support for the embattled British position prior to the attack at Pearl harbor, and even the stage-managed and public-relations intensive efforts to portray the intervention in Kuwait in 1991 as an effort to free a brave democratic people, when the kingdom was in fact a petty fiefdom that was ruled with arrogance and imperious disregard for public comment.

As is usual for Chomsky, he is sometimes a bit over the top in the use of hyperbole, but there is a wealth of information and a few surprises in terms of how he illuminates some seemingly innocuous facts into a thesis supporting his overall hypothesis. For Noam, the important aspect of all this is the ways in which the blunt falsification of history (see historian Howard Zinn's volumes on the "History of the American People" for a good example of how badly others have warped it by overemphasizing the role of key elite figures and downplaying the contribution of ordinary people), the suppression of relevant information and the consequent selective publication of partial truths and outright falsifications, and the recent trend toward trivializing the news system through the concentration of the news media on entertainment, and the celebration of personalities and celebrities as opposed to attempting to inform and enlighten citizens regarding the crucial and valuable information they need to make informed decisions regarding their own lives. This is an interesting and worthwhile book, and one I can heartily recommend for the interested reader.

People often complain that Noam Chomsky is too erudite and intellectual in his arguments. Not so in this booklet--I don't think there's a single citation in the whole thing. In fact, I'd even call it low brow. Consider this a few levels above Michael Moore on the sophistication scale.

That having been said, everything Chomsky says in here has in fact been meticulously researched (from other, more substantial works he has written, such as Manufacturing Consent) and is argued in plain English. In many ways this is a vastly condensed, simpler, and rather sarcastic version of Stewart Ewen's brilliant work, PR! Overall it makes for a good, solid (if one-sided) introduction to the issues, especially so if you'd rather skip over the intellectual mumbo-jumbo and nit-picky historical details. I could have done with a bibliography, personally.

Noam Chomsky's description of US foreign policy often causes people to ask, "If this is true, why haven't I heard about it?" That led Chomsky to write about the mainstream news media. His explanation is simple enough to understand, but it needs a lot of documentation to back it up. So Chomsky wrote a short stack of heavily-footnoted books on the topic, such as Necessary Illusions and (with Edward Herman) Manufacturing Consent. But it can be intimidating to pick up one of those books, so Chomsky wrote this introduction.

The footnotes are gone (more or less). The basic picture of the US news media --- how it works and who it serves --- is here, but in condensed form. If you want the nuances, the sources, and the case studies, you'll have to read his other books. Once you have a grasp of the broad outlines, you can get into the specifics much more easily.

This second edition adds the transcript of a talk Chomsky gave a few years ago. It was printed in FAIR's media watchdog magazine, Extra. In it, Chomsky imagines a Martian as an outside observer, someone who can analyze human affairs without being inside it. The Martian idea works well because so many Americans feel outside the mainstream media's message --- as Chomsky describes the current war on terror from the Martian point of view, you find yourself in total agreement.

The rest of the book is just as good. Chomsky talks about the history of the media as a voluntary propaganda arm of the government, citing examples from World War I to the Gulf War. His ten-year-old comments on Iraq (including references to WMDs) show how the old news has been re-packaged for a new decade. It's a new century, but it's the same old lies..

A very dumb Senator from Kentucky said of "Free Speech," once upon a time, that ones ability to give money to a political party, or candidate, equals speech. To limit how much money one can contribute, is limiting ones speech. Essentually this means if you have not the bucks, you should not be heard, or cannot be heard, or will not be heard, or you have nothing to say worth listening to.

As we in this country allow the consolidation of our media, this is quickly becoming the case. Big corporations buy air time on the radio, or television, and showcase their products, or services, and there is no rebutal. In essence they can lie, which is what 98% of advertising is anyway, and there is no one with the bucks to buy airtime to say they are telling a lie. Cell phone carriers lie about the cost of their service, as do banks, and insurance companies.

"Media Control," is commenting on just this sort of an event. This is a major reason why the everyday citizen cannot hold a major political office, the cost of air time. That which makes political campaigning so very expensive. The more we allow a consolidation of media, the more one sided will be the tale you hear. Propaganda. The one huge reason Newt (Scrooge) Gingrich squealed so loudly aganist public broadcasting. It is all about MONEY.

Mr. Chomsky makes a good argument that this is a disasterous pratice, even more dangerous than the government having absolute control over media. This only means you can only be heard if you can pay for the time. People with varing opinions are for the most part shut out of the debate, because the FCC, like the FDA, only backs big business. We are not as free, or democratic as we might think.

Newspapers only reporting that which brings in money, and does not make big advertisers look bad. Just so much music being played on the radio, because some guy far removed from your community thinks we should have cookie cutter music. Examine if you will CNN, a once no nonsense news gathering organization, that is until Time Warner bought the network. Now you cannot get the news for the commercials. Thank God for a mute button. Besides we only get maybe 40% of the available news if that much as it is, and very, very little in the way of international news. Unless a Pope were to pass, or the true idenity of the person responsible for knocking up Anna Nicole were revealed.

A very good lesson in freedom lost, and how the accomplice is your own government, because we know more about Lindsay Lohan's parting habits than we know about what the White House, or Congress is up to.

Absorb this very compelling book, and divise a way out of this mess.

This book is an excellent read. I finished it in one sitting. Chomsky compares the textbook definition of what a democracy is to the modern reality of the state of democracy Americans live in yesterday, today. We will continue to live in the dark if we don't start paying attention. Right-Wingers will say this book is just attacking the current administration, untrue. This book takes an equal approach against all administrations that have forged an aggressive propaganda campaign during their stay in the Oval Office. Propaganda you say? No, of course not...especially in our democratic society- WRONG Propaganda has been implemented for decades and it is only more revealing now with this current Bush administration. It doesn't matter if you're pro or anti Bush. This book makes readers aware of what an administration can do (Democrat or Republican)in times of fear like the time we live in now...Read

Noam Chomsky explains perfectly how propaganda spectacularly achieved to turn 'real' democracy, where the public participates meaningfully in state affairs, into `spectator' democracy, where the public is occasionally allowed to elect one or another member of a specialized class.

Spectator democracy is based on the assumption that the stupid masses (`the bewildered herd') are too dump and incompetent to really understand their own interests. Only a small elite, the decision makers, can understand the common interest. The bewildered herd must be tamed by, among other means, propaganda.
But who benefits? How get the decision makers into their position? The answer is very simple: by serving people with real power, by defending the interests of private power and the state-corporate nexus.

Noam Chomsky dissects brilliantly the propaganda machine with its use of disinformation, falsification of history, and marginalization of dissident opinion.
He gives perfect examples of propaganda, like the Creel commission in WWI, which turned a pacifist majority of the people into a warmongering crowd, or the battle against the `Vietnam syndrome' (`the sickly inhibitions against the use of military force'), or the use of fear of enemies in order to hide real domestic problems (health, education, homelessness, joblessness, crime, soaring criminal populations, jails, deterioration in the inner cities).

Ultimately, the bewildered herd will never be tamed completely. It will have to choose between a real free society and a self-imposed totalitarianism where it will be marginalized.

A brilliant essay by a superb free mind.
We need Noam Chomsky's loud and clear voice.