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Summary: Amazing
Review: Chomsky and Herman transcend the argument of 'liberal' or 'conservative' media to bring a well documented, amazingly detailed account of how the media is neither 'left or right' but adheres to elite opinion and the government line.Enlightening! People caught up in the partisan media argument might want to give it a read, and read his sources as well. 5 Stars! Never read Herman before, now my interest is piqued, and this is one of the best works I've read involving Prof. Chomsky.
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Summary: Chomsky's linguistics expertise put to honorable use.
Review: I would say that this book is one of the most important books, even 15 years later. It dissects the mass media in a way that no other book can do. It goes into the concentration of mass media and how the media is slanted towards giving a viewpoint of the elite who controls the flow of information. There are other books out there about this phenomenon but this book has the best case examples and hits like a hammer.
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Summary: I felt the same way when I was in eighth grade.
Review: When I was in eighth grade, I knew everything. That was when it dawned on me that since wealthy people owned the television networks, book publishing companies, movie studios, magazines, and newspapers, nothing would ever get published or otherwise see the light of day without the ruling class's approval. And I came to this conclusion intuitively, without doing any "research," because it "made sense." Later, I grew up, realized I didn't know everything, and decided this was an extremely, overly-simplified opinion that could easily take the place of a religious dogma. How strange it is to be an adult, and see not only "adults" believing the silly things I believed when I was in junior high school, but "adults" with PhD's at that. (They don't quip about "piled high and deep" for nothing.)
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Summary: What Liberal Media?
Review: This volume does an excellent job of debunking many popular media myths. The one thing that MUST be said is that the authors extensively document their points, using a trail of facts that are at times astounding in showing how the media's coverage reflects our society's "best interests" as determined by the powers that be. I was most struck by how the media essentially reports U.S. government sources as being infallible, but questioning the motives of our "rivals." While the entire book had very interesting points, I found the section on Latin America most accessible, as I was best able to recall the news coverage at the time and how it really fit the... model proposed by the authors quite closely. Don't dismiss this book because its authors are labeled as "liberal" -- check out the book and decide for yourself based on the facts presented within.
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Summary: The media is a battleground too!
Review: Manufacturing Consent is a great work. I have to thank Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman for doing all the research and asking all the right questions.
I've read Chomsky say something along the lines that it is the most obvious questions - the questions that a child would ask - that are too often ignored. I agree with that. This book supports your inquisitive inner child, but treats you like an adult. Like you can handle the truth. And the sheer respect between reader and author that results creates a healthy dialogue. Chomsky and Herman invite skepticism. I don't think they would have it any other way, since they are natural born skeptics themselves.
To me, this mutual respect is the most important part of the book. I don't think Chomsky and Herman could easily pull the wool over your eyes even if they were trying, because they are talking about something we are all familiar with: ideas and the media that propagates these ideas. It surrounds us just like the air we breath. How many of us don't read a newspaper headline, catch a soundbyte on the news, or unintentionally check out an advertisement at least once a day? Close to none. Just to admit that the media is such a huge part of our daily lives in the US is to admit that it must play an enormous role in the way we think. But have you ever analysed what ideas are being presented by the media for you to think about? And is it a healthy spectrum of diverse sources giving you unbiased information by which to create your opinions? I think we could all agree that the media is anything but unbiased. Still, distracting our attention from this sense of bias many of us feel exists in the media, we also have contradictory ideas about journalistic integrity, democracy, and freedom of speech that our society hold as virtues of the media. Consider the New York Times motto, "all the news that's fit to print..." if a subject doesn't get into the NYTimes, then it can't be that important, right?
After reading Manufacturing Consent, experiencing the way mass media works, having noticed many pieces of what Herman and Chomsky are analysing, I too now question the journalistic integrity, democracy, and freedom of speech present in our national and local media. I don't think there's anywhere near as much as we would all like and is possible. We need more dissenters like Chomsky and Herman. People with a critical eye, who won't be satisfied until we all get what we deserve, our humanity fulfilled. Something better than this world where few rule and many suffer. None of us should be sheep. I truly believe that within everyone exists the means to understanding this world and we can help each other and ourselves feel less lost. Noam Chomsky particularly has been an excellent resource for me in this endeavor to understand what is going on in a seemingly crazy world. Read this, or see the movie (I found a place to rent the video, so you probably can too), and decide for yourself. And then add some feedback of your own.
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Summary: FACTORY OF LIES
Review: Manufacturig consent is an outstanding work reflecting the extent of compliance with power that the media's kept throughout the 20th century, with the purpose of clearing doubts among the audience through the exploitation of propaganda to guarantee that power's shaping of policies are indoctrinated upon the public while the same learns sitematically not to question them. The book also shows how the media, in a very unethical and subsirvient manner, fabricates an distributes pre-fabricated lies or half truths meant to be swallowed by the people, in order to facilitates the actions of powerful individuals through their subordinate agents in the government to make decisions for their own personal profit. To do that then, Chomsky argues that it's necessary to create n environment that would approach the population into accepting it through manipulation from their leaders, and at a substantial extent, that is done with the help of media anchors, spin hosts, reporters, idle TV shows, "intellectuals" who are more close to being PR practioners,and by other agents of propaganda. although the authors focus mostly on the US, it gives a clear indication of how the powerful uses different tools to control the population in general, as Chomsky assures that propaganda is to democracy what repression is to totalitarianism. The book does not offer however enough theorethical explanation to the authors' claims, it remarkably shows them with perfect examples detailed in six chapters, which include corporate profitability purposes of the media, the relevance of "worthy" and "unworthy" victims in other countries, the discreditation or glorifying of elections held in third world countries, exhaustingly pursuing investigations on the enemy's crimes while ignoring the ones comitted by the U.S. and its clients
and the covering of the Indochina wars among others. Without a doubt, Manufacturing Consent broaden the conventional and traditional way of how we come to understand a part of the structure of power, breaking barriers of limitations that kept us for so long blinded and vulnerable to propaganda control.
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Summary: More and more true every day.....................
Review: Given the nature of Chomsky's reputation (and backed up by the reviews here) this book will only appeal to a select slice of the public.
This is a pity because the author makes many excellent observations that one can track almost daily through the mainstream media. The modern 'media myths' are regularly exposed in many countries but remain hidden in the land of the free. The Gulf War's 'Patriot Missile' was estimated to have a success rate of 0% by Israel for example.
On being told that sanctions against Iraq had killed 500,000 children Madeline Albright said 'then it was worth it' - well publicised in Europe and perhaps explains why they do not wish to inflict more misery on the Iraqi's. Something to think about the next time you pump gas perhaps? While Chomsky gets bogged down a little in places the book is a page turner but sadly it will only appeal to those who already suspect the media isn't being wholly truthful with us. I noted a few very critical reviews of this book which I suspect were written by those with an axe to grind and probably didn't even read it.
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Summary: Plausible but Selective Indictment of Selective Media
Review: If you are interested in media analysis and criticism then this book is certainly worth reading, but beware of its inherent weaknesses and do not assume that it is an authoritative voice on the issues it raises. Herman and Chomsky have a strongly researched thesis that they call the Propaganda Model, and they apply it well to case studies in which the mass media have been found to distort the truth behind major stories to cater to elite interests. Note that this book was originally written back in 1988 so the then-current stories that the authors use to back up their Propaganda Model are no longer of much interest - such as Solidarity in Poland and US relations with Central America in the mid-80's. However, these stories are still useful and informative in relation to the Propaganda Model, and the authors show with very strong evidence that those stories were misreported (accidental) or disreported (on purpose). The reasons for this poor reporting by a supposedly free press mostly include pressure from elite corporate interests in the US (blowing away predictable complaints about a "liberal" press) and the unreasonable assumption that US government press reports are factual and can be taken at face value - when the authorities have a self-serving and self-protecting agenda like everyone else. The current edition does have a new introduction that extends the Propaganda Model into more current events, proving that the media bias is still alive and well, although the authors show a rather Luddite-like disdain for the internet. Unfortunately, after a strong start and a very believable premise, this book breaks down steadily as it goes along. First, the authors use a very limited sample of major media outlets in their studies of the coverage of the various news events. These major outlets may have shown improper reporting, but the authors usually use just this small sample to support their thesis, completely ignoring smaller and non-establishment outlets that may have shown a less reprehensible side of the media. Another problem is the academic writing style that is meant for the peer review process rather than the enlightenment of the public. Here it is more important to endlessly pile on repetitive evidence to avoid having colleagues shoot down your thesis. This may work academically, but the concerned public reader will find an incredibly repetitive case of information overload that is low on enlightening insights. The book takes a major downhill turn in the chapters dealing with Vietnam and Laos/Cambodia, in which the Propaganda Model is less visible in the analysis, and the authors have switched from media analysts to historians. Here it is evident that Herman and Chomsky wish to provide an alternative history of the Indochina Wars in order to make political statements, under the pretense of presenting evidence that was withheld by the biased media. These chapters are marred by unprofessional sarcasm, loaded words like "murderous" and "immoral" to describe US actions, and Chomsky's creeping conspiracy theories. The Laos/Cambodia chapter breaks down completely as the authors had already covered that area in a previous book. The chapter here ceases to be a media analysis and becomes a rebuttal of criticisms from other authors who disputed Herman and Chomsky's earlier claims. This includes a suspiciously longwinded and sarcastic debunking and condemnation of the journalist William Shawcross. In the end, the Propaganda Model postulated by Herman and Chomsky is indeed plausible and perfectly proves media bias, but **only in the examples covered in this study**. There is little evidence of a pattern that extends across all media in all situations, which is the authors' apparent goal. In fact, corporate and government pressure on the media to toe the propaganda line is indeed a serious problem in America, but the problem is more inherent or systemic within a social system where money equals power. Digging into these systemic issues would be far more difficult and complex, but would be more enlightening than trying to find supposed conspiracies.
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Summary: rigorous
Review: ... this is a detailed and cogent piece of political science. Indeed its central propositions are so obvious it is difficult to see how any rational subject could object. Basically, the book is answering the question of who owns and controls the media, how its agenda is set and what this agenda typically omits. The argument uses very concrete examples, such as the exemplary comparative treatment of the US media coverage given to atrocities in Cambodia and in East Timor (a US ally). "Media" is in fact a slight misnomer (do i get brownie points for using a latinate?). Since the vast majority of people are entirely dependent on newspapers and television for their news, its not like they can "compare" its representations with some realm of brute objective fact. To talk of newspapers etc as intermediaries is therefore completely wrongheaded. Another very useful contribution from NC, the efficacy of which can be gauged by the spiteful and mendacious polemics it elicits in response.
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Summary: Manufacturing Consent
Review: This study of governmental use of propaganda in the mass media as a force in engineering democratic consent by management of public opinion may look like a bit of media bashing from the Left, despite the authors' claims to the contrary. In reality, however, the book's intent is even more ambitious as links are portrayed between government decisions and the special interests that will benefit economically and politically from these actions. The authors first set up a propaganda model and show how the press operates as part of this establishment. For most readers, the real meat of the text will be the application of this theoretical model to the national media's actual reports and coverage of any number of topical issues: terrorism, U.S. policy in Latin America, Vietnam, etc. While the argument remains ideologically charged, the exposure of slanted, uneven, and biased coverage certainly deserves further attention, as does the whole concept of freedom of the press.
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