Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Media:	Paperback
Author:	Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky
Publisher:	Pantheon
Release date:	15 January, 2002
List price:	~~$18.95~~
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Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Average rating: Stars

Ok as a thought experiment, also ok for questioning then reaffirming some assumptions...absolutely worthless as history.

Look up other works by Chomsky, Zinn and Ward Churchill and read the reviews. One surprisingly common theme among them is that many readers experience some kind of awakening to the "truth." These readers write as if they've awoken from a trance into a new reality, a new paradigm with which to view the world. I've heard similar exclamations about the ecstacy of spiritual awakening from Scientologists, born-again Christians and other cultists. Well in this book, Chomsky weaves a conspiracy-theory-type tale that exposes the media as the master hypnotists keeping the public (particularly in the US as media outlets in other parts of the world seems to be less insidious than those in our country and our public seems to be considerably dumber) from realizing the true evils committed by our government at home and abroad.

Now depending on Chomsky's motives, this book is either a really interesting academic exercise on the power of words in the realm of history and politics...or a sick joke. If his intent was to take much of recent history, change a few key adjectives here and there (i.e., instead of a "police action", US involvement in Indochina was an "invasion"; vigorously contested battles being lopsided "massacres") and see how easily perspective on the same events can be wildly altered, then this book is great. Read this book along with some older, more conventional histories dealing with the late 20th century and it's Rashomon all over again. Seen in this light, Chomsky truly exposes the power of words in historical discourse. However, if he's any at all serious, Chomsky should retreat into his ivory tower over at MIT and leave the writing of history to historians. In any case, I'll write the rest of the review under the assumption that he's actually serious.

The beginnings of this work seemed plausible enough. His earlier points were at least arguable. When he proceeded to blame the genocide perpetrated by the khmer rouge in Cambodia on a few B-52 strikes my head began to spin. After making this assertion he goes on to skewer the media for failing to make this link, however I think it's much more likely that the media didn't address the link because it simply didn't exist. In writing my undergraduate thesis, I compared the role of culture and norms of resistance to foreign occupation in both the Vietnam and Afghanistan interventions by the US and Soviet Union respectively, so it's not like I'm uninformed on the subject. I've also read extensively about the killing fields, and much of the blame rests squarely with pol pot himself, his cronies, as well as the North Vietnamese and Vietcong. The khmer rouge had run amok to the point in which their ideological cousins, the newly-unified communist Vietnam, felt compelled to intervene against them.

In the western (read - US) media, Chomsky sees a wicked cabal controlled by powerful corporate interests. I see people merely trying to sell papers, advertising spots, air time etc. Chomsky would have us believe that these two aims are one in the same. However, they're clearly not. For example, Chomsky goes to great pains to expose the supposed media conspiracy surrounding the attempted assassination of the pope. He claims that the media persisted in reporting on an alleged connection linking the assassin to the Bulgarian government in an attempt to discredit Bulgaria, other members of the Eastern Bloc and godless leftists everywhere. A much more plausible explanation would be that a story of international intrigue and back-alley meetings of spies and assassin was simply going to sell more papers and keep people glued to their TV. A lone wingnut acting on his own? That's boring!

Where Chomsky sees cabal, I see, at worst, laziness and perhaps a little greed. Media outlets tend to exhibit a herd mentality. When one outlet starts to follow a story, other outlets come sniffing around. Once they come sniffing around they've already expended resources and may feel compelled to make a mountain out of a molehill. If the story has got any hint of sex, murder, power and intrigue (preferably a combination of these things), the media stampedes over and camps on it for months (a la Lewinski). It must also be remembered that it's cheaper to purchase bylines off the AP wire than to send your own reporter out into the field complete with a bottomless expense account.

A simple rule of thumb I learned in law school is that when a case is brought before a judge, fairness and "objectivity" in reaching a decision will end with everyone on all sides pissed off to some degree. It's always funny to go to a bookstore and see Anne Coulter's Slander sitting a few inches away from this book. The right sees the left-wing media elite, the left sees the right-wing corporate media construct acting as a mouthpiece for rich guys sipping cognac and wearing power ties. The rule applies as much to the media as it does to the courtroom....as long as both sides are crying bloody murder, the media is probably doing its job.

Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky

Very good book

Pros:

1. Chomsky does a very solid job documenting media bias. For instance, in section after section of the book he compares reporting on state-sanctioned terror activites of nations affiliated with the former Soviet Union (e.g. the former Polish communist governement) with reporting on state-sanctioned terror activites conducted by nations affiliated with the United States (e.g. El Salvador). By reviewing those publications he shows how state terror in Poland was thoroughly covered in and denounced by the Western press while state terror in El Salvador was minimized by the Western press. Oftentimes, he will review every single media article written about a given terrorist act. Those reviews consistently show - not that the media is a watchdog of the government - but rather the media's general ineffectiveness in revealing government complicity in wrongdoing.

2. Chomsky's book provides tools for spotting media bias in the reporting of current events. For instance, he will note that when the media wishes to denounce a foreign government, it will provide graphic details of the personal suffering of the people afflicted by that government's actions - such as stories of torture and imprisonment. However, when the media covers the wrongdoing of a govenment friendly to the United States the same types of acts will be glossed over quickly while the news report will focus, instead, on broad geopolitical statements about the incident. This diverts the reader's attention from the reality of the individual suffering involved. If one reads present day articles with this in mind, it becomes easier to recognize distortions in media coverage.

3. The book provides tables showing the results of comparisons of the reporting of such issues by virtually all mass media publications. These tables confirm skewed reporting by reference to qualitative and quantative criteria which confirm Chomsky's thesis with telling force.

Cons:

1. Chomsky does not write very well and the book is often difficult to read. He will sometimes write in a reportorial style (just telling the facts) and then shift to a sarcastic style (mimicing the evasiveness of certain reporters). He does this without telling you that he has shifted styles and that sometimes makes it very difficult to get the drift of what he is trying to convey.

2. Sometimes he gets hung up on his personal disputes with some members of the press. While his anger appears justified, he bores the reader with details of things not central to his thesis.

3. I think that the book provides an inadequate explanation of the "why" of skewed media reporting. Chomsky does provide many cogent reasons for the existence of media bias. However, I think he misses factors such as misguided patriotism, self reinforcing "conventional wisdom", an ineffective educational system and things of that nature which contribute to the problem.

Overall, despite its shortcomings, this is an important work. It is extremely useful in helping citizens understand what they can and cannot trust in mainstream media's reporting of political events. I would strongly recommend it to anyone seeking to understand the actual role of media in the United States.

Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky - Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Quality Paperback Book Club

This is a fictional introduction to an interview with Noam Chomsky. All the quotes and facts are non-fiction.

"Good evening. My name is Bernie Dwyer. Tonight we have with us a man the New York Times calls 'arguably the most influential intellectual alive,' Noam Chomsky.

Indeed, there is a wide consensus in the United States regarding Chomsky's importance and influence. According to the NNDB database, Chomsky is "a profoundly influential voice". The New Statesman argues, "For anyone wanting to find out more about the world we live in...there is one simple answer: read Noam Chomsky." In addition, we all must agree with the words of Business Week, which says "With relentless logic, Chomsky bids us to listen closely to what our leaders tell us--and to discern what they are leaving out."

Mr. Chomsky is an extremely popular lecturer around the United States, speaking on U.S. foreign policy, Mid East politics, and related subjects. He has authored more than 30 books on political subjects, and has been a political icon for three generations of the American Left. For example, The Village Voice notes "Chomsky's early books criticizing U.S. policy in southeast Asia were bibles of the Vietnam anti-war movement." His book "For Reasons of State," concerns the upheavals in domestic and international affairs of the 1970s. The New York Times Book Review noted that it "Displays those qualities which exemplify the finest traditions of intellectual responsibility." An anthology of his writings, "The Essential Chomsky" has sold more than 45,000 copies, and was lauded by The Quality Paperback Book Club.

In over 30 years of writing, Chomsky's antipathy toward the U.S. government has never wavered.

His political thought has been the subject of several serious monographs, among which are M. Rai, Chomsky's Politics (London: Verso, 1995); P. Wilkin, Noam Chomsky: On Power, Knowledge and Human Nature (New York: St. Martin's Press Inc., 1997); A. Edgley, The Social and Political Thought of Noam Chomsky (London and New York: Routledge, 2000).

He is not merely an ivory-tower intellectual, however. As the socialist website MarxMail.org has stated, "The Marxist movement can learn much from Chomsky, most of all how to speak to the ordinary citizen."

His message is spread on tapes and CDs; he is promoted at rock concerts by superstar bands such as Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, and U-2 (whose lead singer Bono called Chomsky a "rebel without a pause"). He is the icon of Hollywood stars like Matt Damon whose genius character in the Academy Award-winning film Good Will Hunting is made to invoke Chomsky as the go-to authority for political insight.

On the Web, there are more chat room references to Noam Chomsky than to Vice President Dick Cheney and 10 times as many as there are to Democratic congressional leaders Richard Gephardt and Tom Daschle.

In short, according to The Observer, he is "the Elvis of Academia."

Uniquely among political writers, Mr. Chomsky has three books in Amazon.com's Top 2000.

Mr. Chomsky's book "9-11" is a best seller (it has made the best-seller lists of The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Village Voice and Amazon.com) with over 300,000 copies sold. According to Michael Massing, the book's genesis was the huge number of interview requests made to Mr. Chomsky after the attacks of 9/11. He was unable to keep up with all the media demands on his time, and so published an anthology of interviews on the subject.

In fact, there seems to be a great demand among the heretofore slumbering American public for works critical of their government. I am happy to report that "9-11" is just one successful book, according to The Village Voice, among many that "assail the Bush administration as hypocritical, incompetent, and corrupt. Stupid White Men by Michael Moore now has 500,000 copies in print and is still number five on the New York Times Top 10." It is a very good sign that publishers see the opportunity to make money off the criticism of Bush's policies. As one publisher said, "No one wants to miss the next Stupid White Men."

Another example of this hopeful trend is "The Best Democracy money can Buy: The Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization and High-Finance Fraudsters," written by Greg Palast. The Village Voice quoted Palast as saying, "What I'm happy about is that with no money, no marketing, and a completely amateur operation, you can get 40,000 copies sold in the U.S.-- if you've got something to say." Palast has just sold the paperback rights to his book to American publisher Penguin Putnam for an undisclosed, but reportedly very high, amount.

In summary, Palast's story can be seen as emblematic of a new generation of American political critics. As the Village Voice puts it, "The rise of Palast's media star--he's putting his Observer column on hold to work on films and books, and will be contributing to Harper's--is coinciding with the expanding of America's appetite for unsanctioned perspectives."

Chomsky's "9-11" has been more successful than these other two books, however, perhaps because of his higher profile and more intense media coverage of his work in general. (Chomsky's publisher keeps its eyes on the bottom line: even the small pamphlet "What Uncle Sam Really Wants" has sold over 160,000 copies.) Mr. Chomsky's publisher took out front-page ads in national newspapers and magazines, and, according to The Village Voice, the book "received prominent placement in bookstores upon its release." In light of its controversial claims,

"...the mainstream media came calling on the
iconoclastic Chomsky. After profiles ran in The New York
Times and The Washington Post in May 2002, he faced off with
arch-conservative Bill Bennett on CNN's American Morning
With Paula Zahn, an appearance that created a definite spike
in sales, according to Greg Ruggiero, Chomsky's editor."

Chomsky's book "Manufacturing Consent," published in 1988, was also wildly popular. The book bravely identifies the fact that "America's government and its corporate giants exercise control over what we read, see and hear." The book was reviewed very favorably in the New York Times, which called it "[A] compelling indictment of the news media's role in covering up errors and deceptions in American foreign policy of the past quarter century."

Four of his books have been made into films, among which "Manufacturing Consent" has been called (by Inroads magazine) "among the most viewed documentaries of all time."

Chomsky is among the American media's 100 most-cited intellectuals, according to Inroads Magazine. According to the Chicago Tribune, Noam Chomsky is "the most often cited living author. Among intellectual luminaries of all eras, Chomsky placed eighth, just behind Plato and Sigmund Freud." In fact, an entire network of left-wing media - Z Magazine, Pacifica Radio, South End Press - repeat virtually his every word.

He is a winner of the Orwell Award for "Distinguished Contributions to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language." (Ted Koppel of ABC News is another distinguished recipient.)

Mr. Chomsky's main thesis, in all his political works, is that the American media filters out points of view that are critical of the United States government.

Mr. Chomsky, thanks for being with us tonight."

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