I've been a journalist for 15 years now, and I've often wondered how it is that the mass media in the United States manage to project the image of being defenders of democracy while actually deterring it.Having just read "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media," by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, I finally understand as thoroughly as I've always wanted to.Where to begin ... for starters, have you ever heard of worthy and unworthy victims?Did you know that the press was far less the watchdog it was praised for being in covering the Watergate scandal?Remember that Vietnam War "documentary" filmed by an entity called Freedom House that essentially argued the media were responsible for losing the war in Vietnam because they were too negative and anti-government and biased and anti-war? In some circles, that argument still holds weight, having taken root in the American Mind as an almost obvious given. It's total and complete bullshit, as Chomsky and Herman show.To say the authors are scrupulous in taking on the above issues - and much more - is an understatement. This book is a true work of scholarship, extremely well-researched, heavily foot-noted and filled with ample evidence to back up its central argument that the mass media in the U.S. operate on a foundation of systematic propaganda.Chomsky and Herman write: "The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda."The maddening thing about this system is that, unlike a totalitarian state or one in which power is largely concentrated in some monopolistic, bureaucratic form, it is much more difficult to see a propaganda system hard at work where there is no formal censorship and media are largely privately held.This explains why media compete and sometimes expose corporate or government corruption, and portray themselves, via their own channels of advertising, as looking out for the little guy. But, as Chomsky and Herman write, "What is not evident (and remains undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature of such critiques, as well as the huge inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access to a private media system and on its behavior and performance."A propaganda model, the authors argue, focuses on the inequality of wealth and power and "its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public."The essential ingredients of the U.S. propaganda model are as follows: "1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth and profit orientation of the dominant mass media firms; 2) advertising as a primary income source of the mass media; 3 )the reliance of the media on information provided by 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) 'anticommunism' as a national religion and control mechanism."In example after example, Chomsky and Herman show how these ingredients interact and reinforce each other. Take the issue of worthy and unworthy victims. The mainstream press (New York Times, Time Magazine, etc.), spoon-fed by government officials, finds the stories of victims of Soviet oppression to be worth heavy and sustained coverage. But when a U.S. client state (Guatemala, El Salvador), friendly to American business, brutalizes and terrorizes and murders its civilian population, the mainstream media look the other way or, when they do pay attention, they water down their coverage, banish it to a brief on the back page or simply report verifiably false information. Not exactly the work of a free and independent press.The Vietnam War is another case example. Contrary to the popularly held notion that the mass media turned the public against the war, the media actually favored the war from its inception, failing to raise even the most fundamental questions of morality in the beginning and then, as the war escalated, publishing the outright lies of the Nixon Administration. If you read the media then (and perhaps even today) you'd think America was righteously defending South Vietnam from the communists in North Vietnam. Utterly false, and the authors meticulously lay out the facts to prove it.Even the most exhaustive of retrospective media documentaries about the Vietnam War stay true to the propaganda model, calling the war a "tragic error" despite all of the evidence of criminal aggression by the U.S. The authors write: "Our point is not that the retrospectives fail to draw what seem to us, as to much of the population, the obvious conclusions; the more significant and instructive point is that principled objection to the war as 'fundamentally wrong and immoral,' or as outright criminal aggression - a war crime - is inexpressible. It is not part of the spectrum of discussion. The background for such a principled critique cannot be developed in the media, and the conclusions cannot be drawn. It is not present even to be refuted. Rather, the idea is unthinkable.""Manufacturing Consent" was published in 1988, and the copy I read was a reprint from 1994. I believe there is an updated, expanded version, and I kind of wish I had purchased that one instead of looking for the cheapest buy. That's because I imagine the latest version delves into the right-wing hysteria propagated by the likes of Fox News, and because I imagine it also takes on the role of the Internet in fragmenting media and, arguably, democratizing it by allowing essentially anyone to become a publisher.At least, I imagine the latest version does these things. Maybe it doesn't. So I urge anyone interested in reading this most important work - perhaps the best and most incisive dissection of media I have ever read - to buy the most current edition. And then tell me about it.In any case, prepare to have the fog of our propaganda model - and its central message that America is just great and, with the exception of a few minor tactical errors, is always on the side of freedom and democracy - lifted from your brain. While Chomsky and Herman offer hope in the form of nonprofit and public TV and radio programs, and the dissident press, they are under no illusions about the political economy of the mass media: "In sum," they write, "the mass media of the United States are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without significant overt coercion. This propaganda system has become even more efficient in recent decades with the rise of the national television networks, greater mass media concentration, right-wing pressures on public radio and television, and the growth in scope and sophistication of public relations and news management."

listen, i'm disassociating as i write this and it's likely that i was in a similar state of mind half of the times i picked up this book but i'll wipe my own slate. i admit didn't read the entire book, i got up to the part about the pessimistic coverage of the Tet Offensive, so page 240? it was a good book, don't get me wrong. this book is absolutely brimming with quotes, real life events, and references. it's thoroughly researched and in the end that's what made me stop reading it. it's so academic and stiff! which is perfectly fine. however there was little context for historical events, even if they served a macro-purpose in shaping the world as we know it. Noam assumes the majority of his readers are well educated in matters of history and that's probably right. if you pick up this book bear in mind that it's incredibly valuable! but you'll need to know your history.

Politicians are like hookers. You can't be one unless you can pretend to like people while you're fucking them. In summary the propaganda model works like this: Bullshit politician with biased information is seen as an expert. Expert gives bullshit to news organization to inform the public. News organization repeats bullshit with cute voices and opinions. We all become stupid, except Chomsky. He writes this book. You read it. Become depressed and kill yourself. I don't think I can do a serious review on this book.