Manufacturing Consent
Noam Chomsky & Edward S. Herman
412 pages, including index and notes
published in 1988
Manufacturing Consent is one of those books that makes clear things you already half know yourself and puts those half formed concepts into context. It is one of those books I now wish I'd read years ago, as it explained so much I had been groping towards over the past few years myself. So many times during the news coverage of e.g. the war on Iraq, I had been enraged by the blatant and unchallenged falsehoods broadcasted by the newsmedia, so many times things that were obvious to me were twisted and presented as beyond the pale, without me having more than a glimmering of how and why this was happening. Manufacturing Consent was the book that could've explained all this.
In Manufacturing Consent Chomsky and Herman explore the thesis that while America, and other advanced western societies may have a nominally free press, in reality it is constrained in its reporting by a series of factors, which together result in the news nedia functioning as a defacto propaganda arm of the government. They call this thesis the "propaganda model".
In a dictatorship, the government decides official truth and, if the dictatorship is strong enough, all conflicting opinions are driven underground. However, in such a dictatorship it is relatively easy to see that this official truth is propaganda, as there is no need for the state to be subtle about it.
The United States is of course not a dictatorship; theoretically it probably has the most abbsolute freedom of speech; anybody is free to share their opionion with others. However, in reality there are powerful filters that will only allow a narrowed range of opinion and news to become widely known.
The first filter is that of ownership: who owns the media determines largely what will be talked about. In the US as in all western democracies, the mass media are huge companies which operation from a profit motive. It costs quite a lot of money to set up even a regional newspaper, let alone a national newspaper or tv channel: to get back these enormous costs, to even have a chance of survival, you have to be ruthlessly profit orientated. At the same time, quite a few media companies are now just a part of a large conglomerate and if ABC is owned by General Electric, how much criticism of the latter will it allow in its news bulletins? At the same time, these large media companies are continuously involved in relationships with the government, lobbying Congress for favourable legislation, having to comply with FCC regulations, etc. All of which means these companies have good reasons not to rock the boat.
The second filter reinforces the first: media needs advertisement to surive, to make a profit. Advertising acts as a subsidy, mfitlersaking a newspaper cheaper to buy and keeping tv and radio free. Obviously, advertisers will be more likely to purchase adverts in newspapers which does not attack them, rather than in radical magazines. If Microsoft is a major advertiser in your computer magazine, how much will you critice the latest Windows release?
The third filter is where the news comes from, the news sources. The media need a steady flow of raw news material, which means governmental press releases, press conferences, p.r. fodder from large companies, etc. On its own, these sources already have an advantage because they come from recognised institutions. At the same time, it is easier and cheaper to assume these reports are factually correct than to investigate them --and you cannot be sued for accurately reporting what others said. Having acces to these sources then is having a hidden subsidy, as it lowers the cost of reporting news. Being denied access to these sources then directly threatens a media company's profitability and even survival, which assures that criticism is muted and dubious stories will be reported on, so as to not disturb this profitable relationship. Reinforcing this tendency is the simple fact that journalists are not omniscient, will often need expert knowledge and the best place to find experts is at the government, large companies or at their subsidised think tanks; the latter having the distinct advantage of being "independent".
These three filters are not perfect; criticism and unwelcome stories do slip through the net, at which point flak will do dmage limitation: organised or spontaneous criticism of the story in question. Critical stories may just be ignored by the wider media where you'd expect them to get mass attention, inevitably the government will be asked for its view, which often will be more widely reported on than the original criticism or more direct ways of punishment will be used: advertiser boycott, pressure by government officials, withdrawal of sources, etc.
The final filter is the use of anticommunism as a control mechanism. If all else fails, excuse critics of being communists (or more recently, "objectively proterrorist"). Having communism, or that modern standin, terrorism, as the ultimate enemy makes the population at large more willing to swallow injustices both at home and abroad, helps put political enemies on the defensive (witness the Democrats indecision about Iraq) and can be used against any critic, no matter how ludicous the accusation is.
Having defined their propaganda model, Herman and Chomsky dedicate the rest of Manufacturing Consent to case studies of the model in action. In the second chapter, "worthy and unworthy victims", the coverage of outrages committed by an official enemy is compared with much worse outrages by an official enemy. In the first case, the victims are humanised and the guilt not just of the actual perpetrators, but of the entire country is known in advance; in the second case, these are regretable incidents, not worthy of much comment and not indicative of wider policies.
The third chapter compares how elections are used as a messure of legitimacy, with elections in Guatamala and El Salvador hailed as proof of the good will and intentions of the country's rulers, no matter what happened inbetween elections. In fact, the authors demonstrate that in reporting the violence in these countries it is largely shown as uncontrolled and spontenous, without going into the roles of the governments themselves, let alone that of the US. Elections in Nicaragua meanwhile were reported as farce, corrupted, with any criticism, no matter how minimal, seized upon as evidence of corruption.
The fourth chapter shows how even absurd stories can be reported seriously, as long as they fit the offical narratives, by concentrating on the story of the alleged Bulgarian/KGB plot to kill the pope, after a Turkish nationalist militant attempted to kill Pope John Paul II. It becomes clear quickly that the whole Bulgarian connection is so much nonsense, but the story was still reported on as truth long after the facts where known.
Chapters 6 and 7 look at the media's reporting on the Indochina wars and how its distortions of reality helped shape and justify America's policies on the war and its aftermath. It is these chapters that have the most relevance to current events, as much of what is described here we see in the current coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well.
In all, I found Manufactoring Consent to be invaluable in confirming what I was already groping towards on my own and clarify what I had been seeing in the media since the September 11 attacks. The media are not neutral reporters of news, but actively shape it, shape our perception of the world in service of the status quo and powerful interests in business and government. Most of this is done only semi-consciously, but it still underscores why blogs and other independent grassroot reporting efforts are so important.
