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243 of 265 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
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.
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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Valuable Tool for Framing the Behavior of the Mass Media, November 15, 2005
As one can see by the quantity and voracity of the commentary on this book, it is an important and controversial work that deserves a read (though from misstatements in their commentary, I question whether some of the critics actually read it, however).
Nearly two decades after its first publication, Chomsky and Herman's "Manufacturing Consent" stands the test of time surprisingly well in spite of the myriad far-reaching geopolitical shifts that have taken place. This is largely due to the open-ended nature of "Consent's" market analysis which rejects the notion of a large, unwieldy body of conspirators or the notion that the media is monolithic. Chomsky and Herman readily concede that exceptions to their theory can and do occur.
"Manufacturing Consent" is an academic exercise, so it lacks much of the flair and pacing of popular current affairs literature. It is, at times, droll and tedious. What it lacks in style, however, it more than makes up for in substance as a critical lens with which to frame the behavior of the mass media. As an academic exercise, its assertions are well-sourced and it adheres closely to the standards of intellectual honesty.
Chomsky and Herman begin with a thesis; that the behavior of the media can be understood (and even predicted) within the context of a "market analysis" of five "filters";
"(1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business and "experts" funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) `flak' as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) `anticommunism' as a national religion and control mechanism."
The latter, "anticommunism", has since been revised slightly (noted in this edition of the book) given the fall of the Soviet Union, as Herman has elsewhere noted;
"the fifth filter - anticommunist ideology - is possibly weakened by the collapse of the Soviet Union and global socialism, but this is easily offset by the greater ideological force of the belief in the `miracle of the market.' There is now an almost religious faith in the market, at least among the elite, so that regardless of evidence, markets are assumed benevolent and non-market mechanisms are suspect."
The rest of the book serves to provide examples that bolster this thesis as Chomsky and Herman illustrate the various ways in which the "Propaganda Model" plays out in the "agenda-setting media." They cover well-established paradigms in the social sciences like "worthy and unworthy victims."
Some have criticized "Consent" as being "selective". This is certainly true; however it is not selective in any sort of deliberately manipulative way. "Consent" could easily be a 60-volume set - but the demands of concision require that the authors be selective about what examples they cite lest their work turn into the phone book. Anyone who has read Chomsky's other works knows how voluminous his body of work is and how many additional writings he's penned since 1988 that serve as still more evidence for the basic thesis of the Propaganda Model.
Ever the skeptic, I used Manufacturing Consent as the basis for my Master's Thesis to test its application in the modern era; a content analysis of US media coverage of the simultaneous conflicts in Kosovo and East Timor. After pouring over 6,000 articles in print - my research provided me with another compelling example that corroborated the Propaganda Model.
Those interested in broadening their understanding of the concepts Chomsky and Herman present would do well to also read "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays and "Public Opinion" by Walter Lippmann (from whose writings the title of "Manufacturing Consent" was derived).
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133 of 156 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Common Person's Review (for the non-intellectual), January 7, 2003
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.
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