Manufacturing Consent
50 pages • 1 hour read
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
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Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction-Chapter 1
Chapters 2-4
Chapter 5-Conclusions
Key Figures
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Discussion Questions
Introduction-Chapter 1 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction-preface summary.
Herman and Chomsky state their thesis in the first paragraph: Through the careful selection of editor advocates and the “internalization of priorities and definitions of newsworthiness” (xi), the U.S. news media serves the agenda of its elite patrons rather than fulfilling its sworn mission of objective reporting. The authors define this function as the “propaganda model.” This model also includes the media’s selection of “experts” chosen to represent the institution’s predetermined biases, as well as its use of “flak”—a strategy to discredit other news organizations that disagree. The authors concede that, within very limited boundaries, some elements of the media—some reporters, some organizations—are allowed to disagree with the established agenda, but that narrow margin of opposition only creates the appearance of diversity and is not enough to truly challenge the party line. They further acknowledge that the propaganda model only defines the way the media functions, not necessarily the effectiveness of that function.
This updated version of Manufacturing Consent takes into account the growing centralization of mass media as well as the monopolization of corporate control. Fewer corporate owners now control a greater percentage of news outlets across a wider array of platforms (TV, movies, magazines, books, and social media feeds). This centralization has occurred with little government regulation. In only seven years (1983-1990), the number of global conglomerates controlling almost all mass media shrunk from 50 to 23. Since then, nine corporations have owned nearly all major media outlets: Disney, AOL Time Warner, Viacom, News Corporation, Bertelsmann, General Electric, Sony, AT&T-Liberty Media, and Vivendi Universal. This overwhelming control over what news is reported “raises troubling questions about the individual’s role in the American democracy” (xiii).
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With the help of governments and global institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), these media giants have increased their transnational reach. The media’s primary objective, the authors argue, is the expansion of consumerism and its focus on sensational news: celebrity deaths and sexual scandals, for example. Further, increased financial pressure has forced independent news outlets to commercialize or spend an inordinate amount of time fundraising. The internet, the authors admit, has allowed previously ignored news stories to find a platform and challenge the mainstream media’s official line. Its limitations, however, are sizable: As a tool of mass communication, the internet works best for those already in power, and the concentration of that power—through corporate mergers and cross-platform integration—will likely only increase. Herman and Chomsky predict that in this new digital ecosystem, the news media will prioritize commerce over in-depth reporting.
With the increased concentration of media power in fewer hands and the staff reductions at many traditional print publications, smaller and less well-funded outlets must rely on sourcing from the bigger media firms. These firms increasingly generate news in public relations (PR) departments rather than through inquisitive journalism. These developments conform to the ideology of “the market”—an ideology that presupposes the market always works for the betterment of society. Unfortunately, the public has had little choice in the prioritization of entertainment over news. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), whose mission has been to ensure the news media keeps its priorities straight, has never fulfilled that mission.
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The authors cite a variety of news stories—described in greater detail in later chapters—and analyze how coverage differs based on the subject matter’s favorable or unfavorable status. For example, assassinations of religious figures receive far more coverage in countries the U.S. deems hostile to its interests than in allied countries. This bias allows the U.S. to denounce those “wicked” countries while tolerating similar behavior in its allies. Even the media’s use of the word “genocide” follows this pattern of bias. Countries deemed unfavorable to the U.S. (Iraq, Cambodia) engage in “genocide,” while allies or clients (Turkey, Indonesia) engage in “repression” (or, at the very least, the term genocide appears less frequently). When 500,000 Iraqi children died as a result of U.S. sanctions in the 1980s-90s, media coverage was sparse.
During the Reagan years, the media too easily accepted the official line, especially with regard to the Soviet Union. When Mehmet Ali Agca shot Pope John Paul II and blamed Bulgaria and the KGB for instigating the assassination plot, the media neglected to question the many weaknesses in Agca’s story. Several years later, investigations into Bulgarian secret service files failed to turn up any evidence of Bulgarian or Soviet involvement, but the mainstream media did not report these findings.
Herman and Chomsky also argue that the media’s coverage of the Vietnam War did little but serve U.S. interests in that region. Despite U.S. use of force to support an unpopular and undemocratic regime, the media “rarely if ever found U.S. policy there to be other than highly moral and well-intentioned” (xxix). The number of Vietnamese killed as well as the massive amounts of chemical agents deployed in the war (affecting primarily civilians and small children) contradict the media’s official stance. The few news reports criticizing the war effort came early on and soon faded away.
The propaganda model predicts that post-war assessments will focus on justification of the war—for example, the necessity of stopping the spread of communism, or South Vietnam’s “invitation” to the U.S. to fight on its behalf, both of which received ample media coverage. The millions of Vietnamese killed did not. The 1980s also witnessed a cultural revisionism in which the press portrayed U.S. POWs as noble victims of a sadistic Vietnamese military.
Subsidiary damage from the Vietnam War included 2 million tons of ordnance dropped on neighboring Laos, and U.S. support of ousted Cambodian leader Pol Pot. While the press rightly condemned Pol Pot for the death of 1.5 million Cambodians, it barely mentioned the American support he enjoyed. Decades later, however, when Pol Pot “was no longer a useful instrument of anti-Vietnam policy” (xxxviii), the media discovered his war crimes anew, and either diluted or buried any support the U.S. had rendered. Herman and Chomsky then compare news coverage of Pol Pot’s reign with those of similar dictators supported by the U.S. While Pol Pot was a “mass murderer” and “blood-soaked,” the hundreds of thousands of Indonesians who died under the hand of Suharto were “purged.” The authors note the use of passive voice , which holds no agent directly responsible for the killings.
Political scientist Thomas Ferguson argues that powerful elites of both parties control the levers of “deliberation and expression” (xli), and that those levers are out of reach of ordinary citizens. Unions, Herman and Chomsky point out, have traditionally been a point of access to those deliberations, but their power has declined in recent decades. As a result, broadly popular positions have little influence on government. For example, polls have shown that most Americans favor cuts to the military budget and a shift in funding to education and other “civil functions.” Those wishes are often ignored in favor of political posturing over which party is “strong on defense.” Military spending serves business interests both through military contracts as well as through the support of transnational corporate expansion that the military enables.
In the mid-1990s, while most Americans opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the majority of news media only cited “experts” who favored it. Opinions from labor organizers were mostly excluded. Further, when protesters in Seattle and Washington, D.C. expressed opposition to the global economic policies of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, news media portrayed the protesters as “all-purpose agitators” and “terminally aggrieved” (xliii). Likewise, when the protests turned violent, reports blamed the protesters for instigating the violence and paid little attention to police harassment. Similarly, the media has either turned a blind eye to or tacitly supported union decline, rising income inequality, and inadequate regulation of the chemical industry. The media often takes industry at its word when it claims it is self-regulatory, or when the industry’s own scientists argue that its products’ safety is a matter of “sound science.”
The authors argue that in the years since the book’s first edition (1988), the media has become more, not less, centralized. This is problematic for the healthy functioning of a democracy, which requires dissemination of information free of the meddling of special interests. Whatever censorship the media applies, Herman and Chomsky argue, is merely internal adjustments within the organization to suit “the realities of source and media organizational requirements” (lx)—in other words, self-censorship in service to a higher power.
Chapter 1 Summary: “A Propaganda Model”
Herman and Chomsky define the media’s principal role as one of entertainment and information, but on a subtler level, it provides the rules by which citizens integrate into society. This second role, they argue, requires propaganda, and in a society that champions a free press with no overt censorship, the behind-the-scenes machinations can be difficult to spot. They outline five “filters” the media uses to present only the information it chooses in the way it chooses to present it:
- The size, concentrated power, and profit motive of the dominant media firms
- Advertising
- The media’s reliance on “experts” with industry or government connections
- “Flak,” which is used to marginalize dissent
- The dogma of “anticommunism”
These filters are so ingrained in the system that well-intentioned journalists use them without realizing it.
The authors trace the history of media control back to 18th-century England. When a “radical press” emerged, unifying the working class and giving it a voice , elites were understandably anxious. However, market forces in England so severely marginalized this radical press that by the mid-20th century, it was all but silent. By this time, the “industrialization of the press” necessitated large amounts of capital (4), which in turn concentrated the press in the hands of wealthy elites. That concentration is even more pronounced today: As of 1988, “[T]he twenty-nine largest media systems account for over half of the output of newspapers, and most of the sales and audiences in magazines, broadcasting, books, and movies” (4). Further, the top “tier” of the wealthiest media companies supplies much of the news to the lower tiers, creating a top-down control mechanism. With most of the top-tier companies are worth more than $1 billion, stockholder pressure to maintain or increase profits is intense. Loosening of already weak regulations has driven competition to a fever pitch.
These media elites are a very small group—often colleagues—who, in defiance of conflict-of-interest considerations, may sit on more than one board of directors at a time; an executive, for example, may sit on the board of an investment group as well as on the board of a media company in which that investment group owns stock. Current law does not forbid this. Corporate diversification also creates conflicts of interest. When General Electric owns both NBC and weapons manufacturing concerns, a threat to one of its industries is a threat to all. It seems a reasonable strategy for GE to use its media arm as a public relations cudgel to garner support for its subsidiary businesses. Further, the media’s close ties with government allow it to successfully lobby against regulation that might stymie these practices.
The media’s reliance on advertising comprises the second “filter.” Media that attracts advertisers has an advantage over its non-ad competition. Advertising is a de facto subsidy allowing those newspapers, magazines, and TV shows to charge substantially less and thus push competition to the margins or drive it out of business altogether. Since consumers of radical or alternative media tend to be lower income, advertisers don’t see them as a valuable audience , investing their dollars instead in mainstream corporate media. This has far-reaching implications, since without some kind of media support, any non-mainstream social or political movement is at a serious disadvantage. Herman and Chomsky cite examples of advertisers cutting funding to TV stations that air programming in opposition to advertisers’ interests. These advertisers tend to shun controversial or complex programs in favor of “feel good” content that facilitates “the buying mood” (17). Challenging content is often relegated to the margins, if it is aired at all.
Herman and Chomsky’s third filter, “sourcing,” refers to the experts the media relies on to provide information, context , and analysis. News outlets must necessarily pick and choose which stories to cover, and their sources influence those choices. Because the media considers large bureaucracies like the government credible sources of information, it often treats these institutions’ claims without adequate skepticism or scrutiny. This is partly a cost-saving measure—fact-checking and investigation cost money, but treating an “official” claim as fact does not. Bureaucracies understand this, and they spend a great deal of money—hundreds of millions of dollars by the Pentagon alone—in “public information outreach” (20). The Pentagon issues press releases, film clips, and radio programs, as well as publishing over 1,200 periodicals (in 1982); all are tailored to present a specific image, and all are considered credible sources of information. The military budget for this outreach dwarfs that of its competition—mostly non-profits with oppositional viewpoints. Large corporations—the only other entities with budgets close to the military’s—also spend vast sums on public relations efforts. By 1984, corporate spending on outreach and lobbying had reached $1.6 billion.
Apart from providing the appearance of credibility, PR and lobbying personnel “go to great pains to make things easy for news organizations” (22). This ease of access lowers news organizations’ costs and thus creates a mutually beneficial relationship from one that should be adversarial. In the case of the Pentagon, the authors point out, taxpayers fund these efforts, so the public is in effect paying for its own propaganda. In order to maintain this access, the media may be reluctant to challenge its sources’ claims. The authors then cite several examples of official sources refusing access to media that included alternate points of view.
Another propaganda tactic is to flood news organizations with information that supports a favored argument; this saturation creates the appearance of truth. When dealing with dissident or contradictory sources, special interests simply co-opt them, bankrolling their research and establishing academic think tanks in order to craft their messaging while maintaining the imprimatur of credibility. By pushing their agenda consistently with “credible” sources, the elite interests are able to “keep debate ‘within its proper perspective’” (24). A final class of expert is the ex-radical who now promotes the establishment viewpoint. Their repentance, the authors argue, gives them added credibility despite the fact that, prior to their switching sides, the media tended to shun them.
“Flak,” the fourth filter, refers to pushback against an unfavorable news story. It may take the form of written complaints, consumer boycotts, or even litigation, and entities with the resources to marshal a serious threat, like big corporations, can be intimidating indeed. Since the 1970s, there has been a steady growth in institutions designed to produce flak: the American Legal Foundation, the Media Institute, and Accuracy in Media (AIM) to name a few. These institutions engage in a range of activities, from issuing reports on “the failure of media to portray business accurately” (27), to suing media outlets for libel, to outright harassment.
The fifth and final filter is the ideology of anticommunism. Global communist revolutions, the authors contend, have been deeply traumatizing to Western elites and have created a fear of communism so entrenched it has become a guiding ideological principle. With communism an easy target, fascism (or other oppressive -isms the U.S. may support) becomes morally relative by comparison. The mere charge of communist sympathy can be enough to send even the most progressive politician scrambling for cover. The authors cite the Kennedy and Johnson administration’s support of right-wing coups in both the Dominican Republic and Brazil. This us-versus-them mentality receives reinforcement from a media eager to prove its devotion to the national cause.
In summary, mainstream news is siphoned through at least one of these five filters in order to promote a select agenda. A government’s repression of labor unions, for example, is a human rights abuse in a communist country but not worth mentioning in an ally. These hypocrisies may serve as diversions or justifications for a corporate agenda (e.g. an arms buildup). Either way, the filters serve the interests of the powerful while marginalizing dissent.
Introduction-Chapter 1 Analysis
In their lengthy and comprehensive introduction, Herman and Chomsky state their premise and offer a good deal of supporting evidence. The mass media in the United States, they argue, is less an objective, fact-gathering body than a propaganda machine beholden to the rich and powerful, serving their interests through carefully selective reporting. This “propaganda model” applies to almost any major mainstream media outlet, although the authors focus much of their critical scrutiny on The New York Times. As “the paper of record,” the Times has one of the most revered reputations in the news business. It is one of the most frequently cited news sources, and The New York Times Syndicate provides content to other news organizations around the world ( Bloomberg ). If indeed the Times is little more than a tool of propaganda, consumers may feel they can’t trust any news source. It can be especially disheartening in a society that champions its “free press”—an institution that has done admirable work in the past (Watergate, the Pentagon Papers , exposure of the Iran-Contra deal and the My Lai massacre)but whose need for profit holds it in servitude to the hand that feeds it.
Herman and Chomsky, while finding corruption in every political corner, hold the Reagan administration particularly culpable. Reagan’s tenure was a perfect storm of aggressive foreign policy and industry deregulation that allowed media companies to merge into corporate behemoths with little oversight. With news outlets becoming more centralized and controlled from the top down, the loss of journalistic independence was inevitable. While the media doesn’t necessarily engage in outright falsehood, it doesn’t have to. It simply chooses what to cover and what to ignore. Like so many institutions in a capitalist economy—health care, news, the prison system—injecting a profit motive is thus a recipe for corruption. When dollars trump health, truth, and human welfare, society becomes less informed and less equitable.
The authors then detail specifically how this propaganda machine operates. By sifting the news through one or more filters—ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak, and anticommunism—the media presents a cohesive message that favors the interests of powerful elites while ignoring marginalized voices. While journalists often assert their own autonomy, claiming that no editor or CEO tells them what to write, the system often works more subtly than that. A journalist may write about an issue that runs counter to the interests of one of the organization’s benefactors, but that story may be carefully edited or buried on a back page, or the credibility of the story’s sources may be questioned. The propaganda works because the mainstream media constitutes the worldview of the majority. It has, in effect, a ready-made audience . To see beyond the propaganda requires diligence and skepticism.
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Conclusions
Edward herman & noam chomsky, excerpted from manufacturing consent , 1988.
The organization and self-education of groups in the community and workplace, and their networking and activism, continue to be the fundamental elements in steps toward the democratization of our social life and any meaningful social change. Only to the extent that such developments succeed can we hope to see media that are free and independent.