Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

In "Manufacturing Consent" there are too many concepts to list in this critical and influential work by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. Anyone who receives information from any form of media should read this book. If you're curious and/or question the information that you're bombarded with every single day and night of your life, check out "Manufacturing Consent." So many questions, and more importantly so many answers, supported by data. Backed by facts. Who decides and chooses what we read and don't read? What we see and don't see? What we hear and don't hear? The power of the media and its influence often stems from not only what is reported but what is *not* reported. This, is power. And, who actually owns the major media conglomerates? What we, the common people, discuss over a cup of coffee or beer at the dinner table is spoon-fed to us. The "topics of the day," week, or year, are handed to us on a dish. And naively, we eat what's on the plate. This book is one of Chomsky's most influential and heuristic books. And, there is a reason why Noam Chomsky is blacklisted from the (MSM) mainstream media in the United States, while being the 8th most cited author in the world for over 20 years. WORTHY VS. UNWORTHY VICTIMS The concept of the "worthy" vs. "unworthy" victim is statistically studied in "Manufacturing Consent." A worthy victim is abused or murdered in an enemy country by a perceived or actual enemy, whereas an unworthy victim is abused or killed in a "friendly" country. Whether a nation or movement is an "enemy" or "friend" is defined by the mainstream media, which is no doubt firstly influenced by the U.S. government, whose foreign policy establishes the rules, or teams, if you will. One example of a worthy victim noted was Polish priest and solidarity supporter Jerzy Popieluszko. A perfect example of news creation and news management of propaganda. The Polish secret police abducted, bound and gagged, and murdered Popieluszko and threw his body into a reservoir. The media response and coverage of this was comprehensive, emotional front-page news. But this case, is compared to others. Who chooses to run a story front-page? For how many days? Yes, Popieluszko was a worthy victim to be reported on, but why were so many other "worthy victims" ignored. Ideological management by the mainstream media. Another more detailed example example of this is in the section covering The Indochine Conflicts in Laos and Cambodia in "Manufacturing Consent." After reading "Manufacturing Consent" we can recognize our new "heroes" and "worthy victims" of today: with the recent Iraq conflict the media is using the "Cult of the Fallen Soldier," which a concept originally created by the Germans, hundreds of years ago. Further reporting includes adjectives used to describe the "heroism" and "bravery" of soldiers in military conflict. The specific acts are almost never specifically detailed, nor the details corroborated. Weazel Words. This was very common in Vietnam and now is used in Iraq. Some individual fighting for the "good guys" is labeled a "hero," but we are not informed of the heroic act(s) that he did. Was it documented? As for the term "brave," Perhaps he or she was. We don't know, because we're not told. A recent example is the case of Jessica Lynch. This does not only apply to the false myth of Jessica Lynch, but is used throughout these military-media campaigns to cover all of the participants, be they military, military families, civilian, bureaucrats, (e.b. Paul Bremer) and politicians. "Manufacturing Consent" is timeless, and we see the mainstream media today function exactly the same way today as it did when this book was written. it's just that the "bad guys" who "threaten" the US and it's 5,100+ nuclear warheads have changed. The fact that this book was written in the late 1980s reinforces the facts that only the players have changed, yet the game remains the same. Many citizens of the world view "reality" that is carefully constructed for them, and often through an "ideological" lens. There is comprehensive and pervasive censorship in America. The filtering of the info was receive is not about the false "Left vs. Right" paradigm. It's about the paradigm of perception.

This book really should be considered mandatory reading for any person that is going to vote in any election. The main thing that I learned from this book is that the media in its presentation is 1 sided and it should not be considered to be accurate or complete. What’s really remarkable is that this has been going on for decades when it comes to propaganda. I only wish that we had the ability to be honest about the history of this nation not just from the perspective of an enemy but from the perspective of self accountability as being the enemy. I can’t rate this book high enough other than giving it five stars. I only hope that you regard this comment is a great incentive for you to read it study it and periodically re review it before an election!

If you liked this book or if you’re considering buying this book, go buy a Michael Parenti book by the name of, “Inventing Reality” otherwise this is a good read

Pros: 1. Chomsky does a very solid job proving 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 extensively reviewing media reports 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 ineffectiveness in revealing government complicity in wrongdoing. 2. Chomsky's book provides tools for spotting media bias in the reporting. 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 comparing the reporting on such issues and events by virtually all mass media publications. These tables clearly demonstrate skewed reporting by reference to qualitative and quantative criteria. They 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 (mimicking the distortion of facts found in classic cases of mis-reporting). He does this without telling you that he has shifted styles and that can make 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. At times Chomsky overstates the defects of the American media. Chomsky's ample documentation show that his criticisms are indeed well justified, however, he gives inadequate credit to those occasions where the media did its job. 4. 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.

"They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them of their blindness." (John Milton; from epigraph to Manufacturing Consent). In 1917, Woodrow Wilson established an independent agency, known variously as the Committee on Public Information (CPI) and the Creel Committee, whose purpose was to control public opinion in the US with an eye towards generating support for the war effort in general and cultivating a deep seated and abiding hatred of everything German in particular. Further, this bias propagating "machine" did not scruple to arouse fear and hatred of German-Americans as well--that was then manifest by the public at large--so effective was it at compelling prejudice via a calculated use of various media, including print and film. And, although the CPI had been dissolved within two years, the all-important lesson of methodological mind control of the masses was not lost upon those facilitators of media propaganda Wilson had employed, most famously Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays. Lippmann was to develop his ideas related to the establishing of opinion within the rank and file, which collective he deemed to be inherently deficient in participating in that American polity coming into focus in the aftermath of a world war--and amidst a burgeoning labor movement in early twentieth century America, i.e., the worker-collective response to the exploitative industrial age [Wiki]. As Noam Chomsky has remarked, the system of coercion of the masses striving for improved working conditions would now prescind from the overt brutality and blood letting witnessed at Ludlow, Colorado and Lawrence, Massachusetts--which brutality functioning with the connivance of a State attuned to the prerogatives of the investor class, but notably less sensitive to the realities of the "lower classes" struggling in many cases to meet basic needs--in favor of a subtle but nonetheless effective means of monitoring and influencing the "bewildered herd," as the populace was envisioned by elitist social theorists like Lippmann, Bernays, et al. And that now subtle "means" as propaganda-of-choice was defined alternately as--via Lippmann's metric--the "manufacturing of consent" or consent's "engineering" (via Bernays). In the now-famous scholarly work, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky develop a model used to demonstrate the existence of bias in the media and, specifically, the manufacturing of consent as verity ensuring the socio-political and economic status quo. The model is tested via the five "filters" they have identified, which filters news must acknowledge before emerging in print or other media as "journalism." The filters which inform the "propaganda model" in Manufacturing Consent are explained as: "(1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media forms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by the 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) `anti-communism' as a national religion and control mechanism" [MC, 2]. They trace the development of print media in Great Britain and the US throughout the nineteenth century as beginning with newspapers disseminating practical information to a nascent working class, papers of relatively modest size and means by today's standards but, more importantly, unhindered in the type of coverage they may furnish to labor. Owing to the more manageable size of readership and, therefore, production outlays, and as the early news resources were not reliant upon advertising revenues to carry the day-to-day operating costs--and, therefore, less restricted in their coverage of non-market oriented information and views--a freer dissemination of the news to that social strata was sustainable. As industry, commerce, print technology, and populations develop and expand through the nineteenth, and into the early twentieth centuries, however, the operating costs of early news resources becomes more prohibitive, with the eventual outcome being that only large-scale entities, i.e., corporations and conglomerates, can afford to maintain coverage of what is now an increasingly global field of news interest. Further, as news dissemination becomes a more corporatized affair, information resources for labor in America and Great Britain are now found to be virtually non-existent as the development of union organization is at cross purposes with the State-sanctioned corporate agenda and ideal. I. Industry's quantum leap forward--and the media follow suit... The first filter of the propaganda model that Chomsky and Herman define argues to the unremitting increase in size of media concerns, implying, therefore, patent corporate control, corporate agenda and, invariably, news bias at large among what amounts to twenty-four or so mass-media conglomerates functioning in the US today. This fact of corporate presence--and, of course, domination--marks the first significant inroads of the business sector and the investor class into a nation's news media. In addition to the new media-as-industry profile of news outlets there emerges a linking up of government and media via the need for regulation and oversight of this newly-massive venture. As a result, the State establishes its influence upon news content via the need for media licensure and, consequently, the caution exercised to avoid alienating those in charge of both issuing said media charters as well as effecting media oversight. "Another structural relationship of importance is the media companies' dependence on and ties with government. The radio-TV companies and networks all require government licenses and franchises and are thus potentially subject to government control or harassment. This technical legal dependency has been used as a club to discipline the media, and media policies that stray too often from an establishment orientation could activate this threat. The media protect themselves from this contingency by lobbying and other political expenditures, the cultivation of political relationships, and care in policy" [MC 13]. The "news" being disseminated to the readership rarely, if ever, contradicts the verities of a commerce-driven socio-political order, thus guaranteeing--via a State-endorsed vicious cycle--the maintenance of the status quo in favor of those in possession of capital and, therefore, in "possession" of the political influence needed to sustain their prerogatives as well. Of the influence upon media objectives by investors, major stockholders, and members of the finance community underwriting media affairs, Chomsky and Herman note: "These holdings, individually and collectively, do not convey control, but these large investors can make themselves heard, and their actions can effect the welfare of the companies and their managers. If the managers fail to pursue actions that favor shareholder returns, institutional investors will be inclined to sell the stock (depressing its price), or to listen sympathetically to outsiders contemplating takeovers. These investors are a force helping press media companies toward strictly market (profitability) objectives" [MC 11-12]. All of the outside influence from the finance and investment collective serves to limit the occasion of dissent from the received, "party" line, i.e., it serves the maintenance of the socio-economic status quo, which influence careful to uphold the prerogatives of privilege and Power, both in the private sector and the precincts of the State, one working in tandem with the other to achieve corporate goals and prevent capital flight. "...the dominant media firms are quite large businesses; they are controlled by very wealthy people or by managers who are subject to sharp constraints by owners and other market- profit-oriented forces; and they are closely interlocked, and have important common interests, with other major corporations, banks, and government" [MC 14]. II. Advertising revenues and the marketing of a readership... The second filter of the propaganda model refers to the rise of a news media underwritten solely by advertising dollars--as opposed to, e.g., the prevalence of left-leaning news resources of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries functioning entirely on copy circulation sales as income, with the income derived from the per-issue price covering both production costs and profit. The point to be considered, though, is that advertising is not a benign presence merely underwriting the day-to-day operating costs of the news outlet without material effect upon the news content at large. That is, the media's reliance upon advertisers for their financial well-being translates into content stress, i.e., market priorities precede those of the news-buying public. "With advertising, the free market does not yield a neutral system in which final buyer choice decides. The advertisers' choices influence media prosperity and survival" [MC 14]. There inheres now a disseminating of news designed to attract the massive advertising revenues needed to prevail in the highly-competitive media market. The idea stressed, though, is that news media now must "sell" a readership to advertisers marketing goods and services--i.e., "sell" readers as potential consumers--with the Power-based initiative of commerce and investment all but displacing the realities of dissident journalism, and, in turn, labor and its pressing concerns--which concerns perennially contradicting those of the investor class and the business sector, i.e., a "nuisance" to be kept in check. With the advent of advertising revenues, therefore, the per-issue price of newspapers is reduced--offered below cost--thus eroding the market share of those outlets without advertising who must sell at a much higher per-issue price in order to function, much less compete. The result is the decline and eventual displacing of media outlets serving the labor force, leaving the finance and market-biased media as the only news resource to the community. Chomsky and Herman: "From the time of the introduction of press advertising, therefore, working-class and radical papers have been at a serious disadvantage. Their readers have tended to be of modest means, a factor that has always affected advertiser interest. One advertising executive stated in 1856 that some journals are poor vehicles because, `their readers are not purchasers, and any money spent on them is so much thrown away'" [MC 15]. Yet, they note, although market-biased news outlets will tend towards a readership equally inclined towards market interests, investment, and commerce, "they easily pick up a large part of the `down-scale' audience, and their rivals lose market share and are eventually driven out or marginalized" [MC 14-15]. Then, too, the news outlet--i.e., print or other media-will cater to the commercial interests and political leanings of the advertisers by promoting consumerism while declining news critical of, e.g., the corporation as adversary of American labor, or the State as corporate functionary via campaign funding and K Street liberality. The program content of network media reflects those interests even as it avoids content analyzing, e.g., corporate malfeasance, the drive to defeat the EFCA bill, or the channeling of taxpayer dollars to financial interests "too big to fail"--which dollars, an alternative news outlet would argue, might be spent to develop jobs and improve social services for the elderly and other less economically advantaged groups. "Advertisers will want, more generally, to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies that interfere with the `buying mood.' They seek programs that will lightly entertain and thus fit in with the spirit of the primary purpose of program purchases--the dissemination of a selling message" [MC 17-18]. Further, those news outlets who fail to garner their share of the advertising market owing to, e.g., a readership known by advertisers as economically disadvantaged--and, therefore, not "viable"--will be displaced by its market-biased competitors, with the upshot being that labor now lacks a media outlet favorable to their cause. Citing the research of media analyst James Curran regarding the failure of three newspapers favorable to a working class and its concerns in London, Chomsky and Herman note conclusions similar to their own, arguing: "...the loss of these three papers was an important contribution to the declining fortunes of the Labour Party, in the case of the Herald specifically removing a mass-circulation institution that provided `an alternate framework of analysis and understanding that contested the dominant systems of representation in both broadcasting and the mainstream press.' A mass movement without any major media support, and subject to a great deal of active press hostility, suffers a serious disability, and struggles against grave odds" [MC 15-16]. III. Mutuality and influence: the media industry and the news-source bureaucracies The third filter informing the propaganda model as analytical tool is the necessity of a consistently credible--by corporate media standards--source of information distributed as news by the mass media outlets, i.e., "the reliance of the media on information provided by the government, business, and `experts' funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power." Chomsky and Herman note the extensive news vacuum which media outlets must now fill in order to sustain both the industry as consistent source of news and--more to the point--its advertiser-revenue flows, on a day-to-day basis. The commerce-driven proliferation of news as exchange value commodity is manifest in the now cumbrous mass media, whose needs will be met via repetition of the received view, with said view shored up by the acquiring of "experts"--e.g., academics who proffer their credentials as "verification" of their argument to the news-buying public and are compensated, in exchange, by the corporate media outlets. "The relation between power and sourcing extends beyond official and corporate provision of day-to-day news to shaping the supply of `experts.' The dominance of official sources is weakened by the existence of highly respectable unofficial sources that give dissident views with great authority. This problem is alleviated by `co-opting the experts'--i.e., putting them on the payroll as consultants, funding their research, and organizing think tanks that will hire them directly and help disseminate their messages. In this way bias may be structured, and the supply of experts may be skewed in the direction desired by the government and `the market'" [MC 23]. The ready supply of processed spin is to be found within both the State and corporate regimes, those bureaucracies providing the daily fodder with which the corporate media outlets fill out their printed matter and evening-news time slots. The unremitting exchange of "news" as commodity has a convenient resource in the State and corporate regimes equally intent upon serving the prerogatives of the investor class as well as hindering dissent and limiting the occasion of meaningful social reform. "In effect, the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access by their contribution to reducing the media's costs of acquiring the raw materials of, and producing, news. The large entities that provide this subsidy become `routine' news sources and have privileged access to the gates. Non-routine sources must struggle for access, and may be ignored by the arbitrary decision of the gatekeepers" [MC 22]. The policy of what one media executive referred to as the need for "concision" in the relaying of news, i.e., a brief retelling of the received view as party line with minimal deviation from the preferred program is also standard procedure within the mainstream media, and this is particularly the case with network "journalism." Alternative assessments require substantiated data and facts to support dissent and criticism of the party line, which policy of concision conveniently disallowing that necessary additional time allotment. The outcome is predictable and approved, by both advertiser and news outlet, and the policy is strictly observed in the service of the market agenda. IV. Right-wing antagonists: a State/corporate bludgeon... The fourth filter refers to the existence of agencies funded by the corporate regime whose purpose is to criticise, censure and otherwise attack the media for any perceived lapse in adhering to the received, politically correct view as defined by the corporate regime, i.e., "`flak' as a means of disciplining the media." Said agencies exist in tandem to the State's censure of "lapses" by a media occasionally critical of, e.g., faulty policy or legislation pursued for reasons of lobby influence versus ethical necessity. One such agency, Accuracy in Media (AIM) is typical of the aggregate right-wing edifice of control of the media via large infusions of funds from those whose interests are being secured from criticism--and even analysis--when said examination may serve to cast the enterprise in a less than favorable light. Chomsky and Herman: "AIM was formed in 1969 , and it grew spectacularly in the seventies. Its annual income rose from $5,000 in 1971 to $1.5 million in the early 1980s, with funding mainly from large corporations and the wealthy heirs and foundations of the corporate system. At least eight separate oil companies were contributors to AIM in the early 1980s, but the wide representation in sponsors from the corporate community is impressive. The function of AIM is to harass the media and put pressure on them to follow the corporate agenda and a hard-line, right-wing foreign policy....It conditions the media to expect trouble (and cost increases) for violating right-wing standards of bias" [MC 27-28). The fall-out occasioned by these attacks from the right may be manifest in litigation, propaganda against the offending media outlet, or withdrawal of advertising revenues, all costly deterrents to any perceived departure from the mainstream media's assigned role of defending investor-class privilege and entitlements, whether in the press or network news outlets. V. News taboo: the ideological line that is not crossed The fifth propaganda model filter pertains to the anti-communism mindset as secular religion in the US. With the demise of the Soviet Union, however, that "religion" is now practiced as merely another ideological bias, i.e., an unquestioned belief in "the System," that being the virtually sacrosanct place in the US of capitalism and business as "the American Way." And, Chomsky and Herman note, "Journalism has internalized this ideology." And, to sustain the analogy, just as communism was perceived to be a haunting dynamic and ideology throughout Europe in Marx's nineteenth century and manifest in the October Revolution and the left-of-center labor activism in Europe and the US---i.e., an unremitting drive to deliver the workers of the world from thrall to industry---so, too, is capitalism and the market economy seen as inevitable and the prevailing "spirit" informing the market's version of democracy---quote-unquote. It is the fifth filter through which news in the US is refracted, the not-to-be-questioned reality informing Empire. Or, as Coolidge avowed, "the business of America is business," i.e., the generating of capital is what we are about. As those who espoused labor activism as a means to achieve worker's rights were once stigmatized as being un-American, so, too, are those who question the free-market ideology of, e.g., Alan Greenspan---or, latterly, Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner---seen to be un-American adherents of, e.g., Socialism, or, more radically, libertarian socialists as virtual enemies of the State, a view fostered by the market-biased media with few exceptions. Chomsky and Herman: "A final filter is the ideology of anticommunism. Communism as the ultimate evil has always been the specter haunting property owners, as it threatens the very root of their class position and superior status. The Soviet, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were traumas to Western elites, and the ongoing conflicts and the well-publicized abuses of Communist states have contributed to elevating opposition to communism to a first principle of Western ideology and politics. This ideology helps mobilize the populace against an enemy, AND BECAUSE THE CONCEPT IS FUZZY IT CAN BE USED AGAINST ANYBODY ADVOCATING POLICIES THAT THREATEN PROPERTY INTERESTS....It therefore helps fragment the left and labor movements and serves as a political control mechanism" [MC 29; stress added]. Therefore, and even though the Red scare of the fifties has all but been dismissed, with, e.g., the fall of the Berlin wall, there persists a line in the media establishment beyond which corporate news outlets are not fain to cross, i.e., a left-of-center éminence grise is assumed present and threatening to subvert the values held inviolable by those interests the media is to safeguard. Whether that threat is labor activism contending for fair wages yet perceived as a nuisance to the reified market and investor class, or a political activist in the Dominican Republic working to establish a participatory democracy--in contradiction, e.g., to the wishes of policy makers in DC unnerved by the possibility of a functioning democracy in its proximate sphere of influence--the media filter takes precedence over unbiased coverage of those events of the day. Coda: the lessons of the Creel Committee Chomsky and Herman delineate with meticulous and thoroughgoing research the bias present in the mainstream media, and the effect of this predisposition to favor and sustain market and investor-class interests upon those groups kept out of view because their issues, concerns, and needs inconveniently contradict the status quo of wealth and privilege. As the Creel Committee was established to galvanize opinion and "manage consent" during a time of war, so, too, is there a perceived need to manage the consent of the "bewildered herd" in this ongoing class war between, on the one side, the investor, entrepreneurial, and finance regimes, and in contradistinction to privilege and its entitlements, American labor, its workers and families.

Is the media free? According to this book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, it is far from free. They argue that the media in America serves to promote the agenda of the elite class in American society. In other words, the media only provide one-sided news coverage. Their main point is that while the misdeeds of enemy nations are widely criticized, the misdeeds of America and American client states are rarely publicized. It's sad when Americans wonder why they are hated by those in other countries. They wonder because they simply don't know what's going on in the world in the name of the American people. The press refuses to print it, not due to any direct control by the government, but because those who control the halls of power are a small elite, and the chiefs of media are a part of that small circle. They have the same boss--multinational corporations. Let's look at one the examples from the book--Central America in the 80's. During this period, the media spent a lot of time demonizing the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Herman and Chomsky claim this focus was hypocritical considering the conditions in nearby El Salvador and Guatemala, both ruled by American-supported military governments. In these American client states, there were government-controlled death squads which terrorized and killed political opponents in a bloodbath beyond imagining. If you were going to start labelling terror states, these two states at the time would have been at the top of the list. However, the coverage of these atrocities was weak because it's easy to do business with a tightly-ontrolled military government. On the other hand, Nicaragua, with a type of communist government, was difficult to do business with, so we get lots of negative reports about Nicaragua even though the level of violence wasn't anywhere near the level of violence in the American client states, and if you didn't notice, the majority of violence against Nicaraguan citizens was committed by American backed Contras. So much for America's support of liberty and freedom across the globe. I guess the freedom that really matters is the freedom to grow cheap bananas for the world's supermarkets. As an American citizen myself, I'm worried about such media propoganda leading us down the wrong road. For example, if the media had bothered to do its job before the Iraq War, they would have done a little more investigation inot the Bush administration's bogus WMD claims and its close ties with the oil industry. We would have saved a lot of American and Iraqi lives. I recommend reading this book so that you can see what is really going on with the coverage of the American government's activities overseas. Don't let a few bad men ruin our international reputation.

It's a hard book to listen to via audio - so I bought the physical copy in hopes that I can follow along easier.

This book changed the way I see my country, and its place in history. The specific information it gives about US involvement in S. America clarified events that had been on my radar, but that I had never taken the time to read about specifically. The virtual side-by-side comparison of the media's treatment of the rape and murder of four US citizens working as nuns in the a US client state and the torture and murder of a Polish dissident priest is typical of the method by which they highlight how the media favors "worthy"victims, (coincidentally all murdered by regimes not friendly to us) and "unworthy" victims, sadly, unavoidably, somehow made victims of the disorder in our client states. Other examples include comparing media coverage of E. Timor to that of Kosovo, and how the media narratives and meta-narratives shifted over the course of US involvement in Vietnam and Cambodia. That said, the book was a challenge to read. I find history and politics quite interesting, but the authors belabored their points (as an academic might, understandably, need to) far beyond the patience of a person reading the book in his spare time might be willing to tolerate. I eventually finished it, but just this once I'm excusing myself from the appendices. I feel the points they had to make were well made by page 70, and while it was all informative and solidly researched, I'm nearly giddy to close the cover on this one.

Excelentt producto, excedds my expectations

Although this is a great books you can't just straight away read and finish this , requires some prior knowledge about the concerned subject here

This is the classic work published by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in 1994 that explains how the function of the news media is to manufacture political consent rather than to report actual news. This is not to say that the media do not report news, but what they report or don't report—and how it is reported—depends largely upon whether or not it works to manufacture public consent to the "narrative" (as it's called nowadays) being pushed by national governments. The subtitle of the book is "The Political Economy of the Mass Media" suggesting in part that the behavior of those media is in large part money-driven. This was not a new idea when the book was written; it's value lies rather in the nature and depth of the authors' analysis. It is definitely worth reading, although the situation has worsened considerably since 1994, largely in the degree to which the corporate media resort to outright lying rather than "creative distortion and selectivity" compared to the days of yore; they are evidently driven to this by the extraordinarily and insanely fantastic—and therefore inherently fragile—nature of the "narrative" which it is currently their mission to defend. It's a shame that Chomsky is now 96 years old, because we need a new book that goes on for where Manufacturing Consent left off and he's probably too tired of it all to write it.

Das Buch ist inhaltlich sehr tiefgehend und setzt sich kritisch mit Medien und gesellschaftlichen Strukturen auseinander. Es bietet viele Denkanstöße und eröffnet neue Perspektiven. Der Schreibstil ist nicht immer leicht zugänglich und erfordert Konzentration, dafür wird man mit fundierten Analysen belohnt. Gerade wenn man sich für Politik, Medien oder gesellschaftliche Zusammenhänge interessiert, ist das Buch sehr empfehlenswert. Fazit, kein leichtes Lesen, aber inhaltlich stark und absolut lohnenswert.

Great book