Library:Manufacturing Consent
| Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media | |
|---|---|
| Author | Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky |
| First published | 1988 |
| ISBN | 978-0-375-71449-8 |
| Role | Analysis |
| Domains | Politics & Elections Technology & Media |
| Tactics | Propaganda Technique |
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky.
Summary
Edward S. Herman, an economist, and Noam Chomsky, the linguist and political critic, published this study of the American news media in 1988. It sets out the "propaganda model," an argument that a free press can still systematically serve powerful interests without any censorship or central coordination. The title borrows a phrase from Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion.
The five filters
The model proposes that news passes through five filters before reaching the public. The first is ownership: major outlets are large, profit-driven corporations whose interests shape coverage. The second is advertising: outlets earn most of their revenue from advertisers, so their real customers are businesses, not readers. The third is sourcing: journalists depend on a steady supply of material from government agencies, corporations and approved experts, which gives those sources outsized influence. The fourth is "flak": organized criticism and pressure that punishes coverage powerful groups dislike. The fifth, in the original edition, was anticommunism as a national ideology; later commentators have substituted other organizing fears, such as terrorism.
Structure, not conspiracy
Herman and Chomsky stress that the model does not depend on conspiracy or on journalists lying. Reporters can be honest and still produce coverage that stays within boundaries set by the institutions around them. The filters shape which stories get told, which sources are trusted and which questions are never asked.
The evidence
The book tests the model with paired case studies. Its best-known comparison concerns "worthy and unworthy victims": the murder of a Polish priest by Communist security forces received vastly more American coverage than the killings of many religious figures by US-backed governments in Latin America. Other chapters compare coverage of elections in US-allied and US-opposed Central American states, examine the reporting of the Indochina wars, and analyse the widely reported claim of a Soviet-Bulgarian plot to kill Pope John Paul II.
Debate
The model remains contested. Critics argue it understates genuine dissent and adversarial reporting within mainstream outlets, and that its predictions are hard to test because coverage that challenges power can be explained as a safety valve. Supporters argue its core claims about sourcing and commercial pressure have only grown more relevant.
Relevance to Bullshitopedia
The book shows how distortion can come from omission and emphasis, with no single false statement. Whatever one makes of its politics, the questions it teaches editors to ask, about who owns a source, who funds it and whose voices it relies on, apply across the spectrum.