[Reading Notes] Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Noam Chomsky / Edward S. Herman


2025 08 25    |    etc    no date    2024 +    2025    entries    home

I'm still in the bowels of the introduction of this book, so all these notes are in regards to that. It's a damned long introduction - and then there's a preface.

“They who have put out the people's eyes, reproach them of their blindness." - John Milton


  • The above was part of the dedication section of the book, and will no doubt play an enormous role in anything I say about media manipulation, or any manipulation at all - which is absolutely the point of the quotation.


Introduction, XI

Structural factors are those such as censorship and control, dependence on other major funding sources (notably, advertisers), and mutual interests and relationships between the media and those who make the news and have the power to define it and explain what it means.


  • As I sit here thinking about what remains of what we could conceive of as independent news media or journalism and how we could, if at all, protect it, I think about where we could house archives and production sources like websites and social media. And it hit me with some shame that Canada could not be trusted to house and protect such things. We are as guilty of the propagandisation of news as any other power with enough sway to swing a narrative or buy one off, or even go so far as to shut one up entirely.


The basic principles and ideologies that are taken for granted by media personal and the elite, but are often resisted by the general population [...] the same underlying power sources that own the media and fund them [...] often play a key role in fixing basic principles and the dominant ideologies.


  • I don't yet know what's being referred to here as the "basic principles and ideologies", but the first thing that leapt to mind was the concept that the news media as fed to us, reporting and journalism, should be unbiased. But this would not apply to those making the news, only those consuming it.
  • It is, of course, absolutely impossible to create the type of news we consume without a bias. All humans have bias. I've always thought it was an unreasonable expectation to demand as much bias, however insincerely, from journos as we do. One should always consume with the idea there's a bias, but learn to find/see the bias and filter news accordingly, along with seeking out multiple sources.
  • Should news sources offer their stories as objectively as they can? we'd certainly like them to. But a slant is always going to be there, whether from the journo themselves or their paymasters.
  • One wonders if that concept has either been built deliberately to foster a false sense of security and trust amongst the populace, or was it simply allowed to exist and evolve in that way and the media simply road its coattails. It occurs to me that I do not actually know the source of the idea that journalism/reporting (specifically) is supposed to be unbiased.


Introduction, XIV

The culture and ideology fostered in this globalization relate largely to "lifestyle" themes and goods and their acquisition; and they tend to weaken any sense of community helpful to civic life.


  • Capitalism, especially in the US, was ever thus - doing whatever it can to further itself - and with the over-push on individualism, more money can be wrested from a person for that which fills gaps left by the lack of community.
  • On top of that, seemingly communal things can also still be sold - commodification has replaced service provision (by the government).
  • I had a tiny fracas one time with someone who refused to comprehend that product placement doesn't have much, if any/or the same sort of, impact on me that it has on the average other. I'm legally blind. I don't always see big things right in front of me, nevermind anything else, anything "cleverly" placed.


... account[s] in the late 1990s documents the fascination, even the obsession, of the world's middle class youth with consumer brands and products.


  • Hardly surprising, when you have a class of people raised on consumerism (which existed even in their entertainment as children), and social gaps left by eroding family time because of working parents, etc. Consumerism is a way to increase a sense of elitism or social superiority - the concept of "keeping up with the Jones'" transferred to acquisition hunger in young people who want to wear the "right" brand of jeans, and so forth. The rise of the middle class created a need for things to foster and uphold the middle class. One opened the door for the other.
  • None of this is all that surprising given that the major third space for youth of that time was the mall.


The global media's "news" attention in recent years [...] hyas been inordinately directed to sensationalism.


  • Clickbait fuels consumption, as do dopamine hits and any high key emotion of any sort. Though we do seem to enjoy too much having our baser instincts tickled.


Introduction, XV

The global balance of power has shifted decisively toward commercial systems.


  • Everything has become commodified, even our joy. This is a more than nauseating situation, given that very few people will ever benefit from the commodification, or ever could.


... the "malling" of public broadcasting.


  • The merging of networks, the adoption of commercial "habits" to compete, has eroded any difference between public and commercial services. Stifling homogeneity leaves no real difference from one commercial service to another.


Some argue that the internet and the new communications technologies are breaking the corporate stranglehold on journalism and opening an unprecedented era of interactive democratic media [...] the internet has increased the efficiency and scope of individual and group networking.


  • While this was true for a time, it's only partially true now. Yes, the internet opens up communications abilities to more and more people, allowing more and more groups to communicate with each other in a way that had previously been impossible. But, since most internet access is now in the hands of the same commercial conglomerates that news media is, the freedoms are not there as readily as we'd like them to be. These groups have very specific agendas, so there is no guarantee of real freedom of expression for anyone, including the journos. Social media sites regularly censor certain material. Case in point: sites that remove, silence, throttle, or outright bury pro-Palestinian content from average users. The sites run by major news organisations and their paymasters publish the same agenda noise online that the put into print and broadcast on air.
  • The day big money realised the internet was more than an ungoverned backwater for nerds and university students...


Look up:

Ben Bagdikian
James Ledbetter

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