4 ms·

One thing I've never been able to work out is, if this model were true, how would we ever hear about it? Why would Random House publish the book by Herman and

One thing I've never been able to work out is, if this model were true, how would we ever hear about it? Why would Random House publish the book by Herman and Chomsky? Why would Al Jazeera produce this video and why would YouTube host it? These are all large media companies. edit: I hope this question doesn't come across as petty or rude. I am a fan of Chomsky and intrigued by his thoughts on society. It's an honest question that I really have a hard time getting past.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
Does he every imply that the filters are 100% airtight?
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> Why would Random House publish the book by Herman and Chomsky? It's in #1. "Their end game? Profit." Corporations don't need to manipulate people into buying things they wanted anyway.
mnky9800n 3y ago
Suppression is a good way to make ideas more acceptable. Chomsky is allowed to say these things because he's also considered a communist in the common enemy sense.
bordercases 3y ago
In this case tenure would work out in Chomsky's favor, and Al Jazeera may as a large media company benefit from signalling that other large media companies are not like itself, by way of providing a costly signal at risk to itself. YouTube wouldn't care, it prioritizes demonization based on legal fallout. Talking about flak is not a flak topic.
kneel 3y ago
I don't think they meant it as all encompassing. The major players in media need access to policymakers to publish stories, they tend to go along with whatever narrative is being pushed in exchange for this access. You wouldn't expect Greenwald to have WH press credentials for instance.
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  That sounds a hell of a lot (to me) like a missing check/balance in terms of the contract between administration and media.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    So what is a realistic, effective solution?
    - Obscurity4340 3y ago
      How is it done everywhere else?
nkh 3y ago
I wondered that initially as well. There are many factors at play: 1. Doing that would juice it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect 2.Each of these institutions brands itself on providing quality information, and in the US we pride ourselves on the first amendment. So the brand hit for censoring isn't worth it. 3. Chomsky is/was tenured and couldn't be fired the same way a journalist could If you look at manufacturing consent, they make it clear that good stuff can get through media. It is just so much harder, and therefore there is less of it overall. But that doesn't mean nothing can get through.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  > If you look at manufacturing consent, they make it clear that good stuff can get through media. Arguably, the manufacturing only works if 51% or more is generally good stuff. Obviously propaganda outlets don't keep a lot of eyes, e.g. Fox News' viewership has been declining faster than demographics says it should be. 90% can be spot on, entertaining, and wholly or mostly truthful; it's the 10% makes it work.
  - fmajid 3y ago
    How much of Fox' decline is due to their occasionally going against Trump, and firing commentators that go beyond even their pale like Tucker Carlson? They forgot their business is reinforcing confirmation bias (as is all mainstream media, to a large extent, just with different demographics).
SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
Why would Al Jazeera produce this video? I think that's important to keep in mind as you watch it. The video begins by pointing towards "western media" as the source of problems, which is a pretty advantageous message for a non-western media outlet to send. They suggest that "press freedom" is just a buzzword for how media operates in democracies, which is quite convenient for an outlet owned and funded by a non-democratic country. And why might they have wanted to use an abstract fifth filter instead of the very specific one Chomsky wrote in his book? There's a nihilistic "the media are liars and everything you read is a lie" take that bounces around the Internet a lot, but I don't think that was Chomsky's original point.
lapphi 3y ago
I would assume it’s because he does not have the following to create any real issues. How many views do his videos/other works get compared to someone like Mr Beast or Joe Rogan? It’s that scene in Jurassic park. The general concept of intellectualism is derided by the public (I would argue precisely for the reasons outlined in the post) so it’s particularly necessary to single out chomsky and turn him into a martyr.
coldtea 3y ago
>One thing I've never been able to work out is, if this model were true, how would we ever hear about it? That's like saying "If there's air pollution why are we not all dead?" Nobody said this system has no holes at all - just that this defines the major vectors of news. >Why would Random House publish the book by Herman and Chomsky? Why would Al Jazeera produce this video and why would YouTube host it? These are all large media companies. Because this is the general propaganda mechanisms, not absolute control. Plus it doesn't cost them much. Reading it wont give you power, nor it's directly attached to some cause they actively promote or hurts their profit margins. If it became a movement, or it was against some of their private interests or those of their sponsors concretely, and not in the abstract, it would be a different story.
wolverine876 3y ago
Something doesn't need to be 100% true, in all times and places, to be valuable or essential. That expectation overlooks the complexity of reality - there may be reasons that Random House, etc. are exceptions, and we just can't explicitly identify and define every complexity. It also can throw away 99% of the value of things. Classical mechanics, in physics, isn't true in all situations, but it's still pretty valuable. The value to something depends on what we can learn from it, not the flaws we can find, and how well it predicts things. If your expectation is perfection and then the theory doesn't meet it, the problem is with the expectation and not the theory.
goodbyesf 3y ago
> how would we ever hear about it? Why wouldn't we? What are we going to do about it? Nothing. It's just like youtube platforms videos discussing how bad social media is for your mental health. Or oil companies funding 'green' tech. Or a newspaper writing about how bad news is for you. 'News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier' https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro... Who cares? > These are all large media companies. They are all large media companies controlled by the same group of elites. In a totalitarian system, the elites carse about what you think. In a dystopian system, the elites don't care. So random house published herman and chomsky? And? What happened since? It's like food industry being paranoid about people finding out about how sausage is made. People find out. People keep on eating sausage. Heck it's free advertising.
UtopiaPunk 3y ago
The goal, or at least one of the goals, of Manufacturing Consent is to explain how the powerful elite can keep the general population in favor of the status quo without authoritarian measures. If the consent of the population can be manufactured sufficiently enough, then there's no need for authoritarian measures at all.
michael1999 3y ago
Chomsky is listing the filters, but not any countervailing forces. Al Jazeera is owned by people with different motivations than Disney. So they publish different things. But note -- this only reinforces Chomsky's point! It highlights the damage of concentrated ownership. Counting on the "benificence" of oil-sheiks seems like a bad plan for civil society. Remember too that Manufacturing Consent (1988 and Chomsky's thinking in general) precede mass-internet comms and the globalized infosphere. Mass-comms really did require large capital plants (towers, satellites, cable plants, etc.), and mass-media and big-capital were inseparable. This is less true today for new media. It is more true for the incumbent radio, tv, and newspaper businesses. Those have been concentrated into a very few hands over the last 40 years. I've not kept up with Chomsky enough to know his current thinking. I'd argue that 2 and 4 are even stronger on the internet. 5 is evergreen. And 4 is now an aspirational lifestyle - the "Influencer". If you consider that the average person hasn't read a book since high-school, and needs someone on the nightly news to tell them what happened on twitter yesterday, then this STILL hasn't reached "mass media".
- lamontcg 3y ago
  You still largely need money to become an influencer (and by becoming an influencer you gain lots of money, and you've probably done so by 'gaming'[*] an algorithm written by an insanely rich corporation). The democratization of social media is an illusion. [*] really the algorithm is just another media filter that controls who gets through it, talking about "gaming" an algorithm probably has it a bit backwards.
sfink 3y ago
I regret to inform you that you are due for your regular re-watching of The Matrix. You need to leave a relief valve, an opportunity for the malcontents to go express their need for rebellion in a wholly controllable way. They will then dig their own graves.

MichaelZuo 3y ago

Does he every imply that the filters are 100% airtight?

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

> Why would Random House publish the book by Herman and Chomsky? It's in #1. "Their end game? Profit." Corporations don't need to manipulate people into buying things they wanted anyway.

mnky9800n 3y ago

Suppression is a good way to make ideas more acceptable. Chomsky is allowed to say these things because he's also considered a communist in the common enemy sense.

bordercases 3y ago

In this case tenure would work out in Chomsky's favor, and Al Jazeera may as a large media company benefit from signalling that other large media companies are not like itself, by way of providing a costly signal at risk to itself. YouTube wouldn't care, it prioritizes demonization based on legal fallout. Talking about flak is not a flak topic.

kneel 3y ago

I don't think they meant it as all encompassing. The major players in media need access to policymakers to publish stories, they tend to go along with whatever narrative is being pushed in exchange for this access. You wouldn't expect Greenwald to have WH press credentials for instance.

Obscurity4340 3y ago
That sounds a hell of a lot (to me) like a missing check/balance in terms of the contract between administration and media.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  So what is a realistic, effective solution?
  - Obscurity4340 3y ago
    How is it done everywhere else?

nkh 3y ago

I wondered that initially as well. There are many factors at play: 1. Doing that would juice it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect 2.Each of these institutions brands itself on providing quality information, and in the US we pride ourselves on the first amendment. So the brand hit for censoring isn't worth it. 3. Chomsky is/was tenured and couldn't be fired the same way a journalist could If you look at manufacturing consent, they make it clear that good stuff can get through media. It is just so much harder, and therefore there is less of it overall. But that doesn't mean nothing can get through.

red-iron-pine 3y ago
> If you look at manufacturing consent, they make it clear that good stuff can get through media. Arguably, the manufacturing only works if 51% or more is generally good stuff. Obviously propaganda outlets don't keep a lot of eyes, e.g. Fox News' viewership has been declining faster than demographics says it should be. 90% can be spot on, entertaining, and wholly or mostly truthful; it's the 10% makes it work.
- fmajid 3y ago
  How much of Fox' decline is due to their occasionally going against Trump, and firing commentators that go beyond even their pale like Tucker Carlson? They forgot their business is reinforcing confirmation bias (as is all mainstream media, to a large extent, just with different demographics).

SpicyLemonZest 3y ago

Why would Al Jazeera produce this video? I think that's important to keep in mind as you watch it. The video begins by pointing towards "western media" as the source of problems, which is a pretty advantageous message for a non-western media outlet to send. They suggest that "press freedom" is just a buzzword for how media operates in democracies, which is quite convenient for an outlet owned and funded by a non-democratic country. And why might they have wanted to use an abstract fifth filter instead of the very specific one Chomsky wrote in his book? There's a nihilistic "the media are liars and everything you read is a lie" take that bounces around the Internet a lot, but I don't think that was Chomsky's original point.

lapphi 3y ago

I would assume it’s because he does not have the following to create any real issues. How many views do his videos/other works get compared to someone like Mr Beast or Joe Rogan? It’s that scene in Jurassic park. The general concept of intellectualism is derided by the public (I would argue precisely for the reasons outlined in the post) so it’s particularly necessary to single out chomsky and turn him into a martyr.

coldtea 3y ago

>One thing I've never been able to work out is, if this model were true, how would we ever hear about it? That's like saying "If there's air pollution why are we not all dead?" Nobody said this system has no holes at all - just that this defines the major vectors of news. >Why would Random House publish the book by Herman and Chomsky? Why would Al Jazeera produce this video and why would YouTube host it? These are all large media companies. Because this is the general propaganda mechanisms, not absolute control. Plus it doesn't cost them much. Reading it wont give you power, nor it's directly attached to some cause they actively promote or hurts their profit margins. If it became a movement, or it was against some of their private interests or those of their sponsors concretely, and not in the abstract, it would be a different story.

wolverine876 3y ago

Something doesn't need to be 100% true, in all times and places, to be valuable or essential. That expectation overlooks the complexity of reality - there may be reasons that Random House, etc. are exceptions, and we just can't explicitly identify and define every complexity. It also can throw away 99% of the value of things. Classical mechanics, in physics, isn't true in all situations, but it's still pretty valuable. The value to something depends on what we can learn from it, not the flaws we can find, and how well it predicts things. If your expectation is perfection and then the theory doesn't meet it, the problem is with the expectation and not the theory.

goodbyesf 3y ago

> how would we ever hear about it? Why wouldn't we? What are we going to do about it? Nothing. It's just like youtube platforms videos discussing how bad social media is for your mental health. Or oil companies funding 'green' tech. Or a newspaper writing about how bad news is for you. 'News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier' https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro... Who cares? > These are all large media companies. They are all large media companies controlled by the same group of elites. In a totalitarian system, the elites carse about what you think. In a dystopian system, the elites don't care. So random house published herman and chomsky? And? What happened since? It's like food industry being paranoid about people finding out about how sausage is made. People find out. People keep on eating sausage. Heck it's free advertising.

UtopiaPunk 3y ago

The goal, or at least one of the goals, of Manufacturing Consent is to explain how the powerful elite can keep the general population in favor of the status quo without authoritarian measures. If the consent of the population can be manufactured sufficiently enough, then there's no need for authoritarian measures at all.

michael1999 3y ago

Chomsky is listing the filters, but not any countervailing forces. Al Jazeera is owned by people with different motivations than Disney. So they publish different things. But note -- this only reinforces Chomsky's point! It highlights the damage of concentrated ownership. Counting on the "benificence" of oil-sheiks seems like a bad plan for civil society. Remember too that Manufacturing Consent (1988 and Chomsky's thinking in general) precede mass-internet comms and the globalized infosphere. Mass-comms really did require large capital plants (towers, satellites, cable plants, etc.), and mass-media and big-capital were inseparable. This is less true today for new media. It is more true for the incumbent radio, tv, and newspaper businesses. Those have been concentrated into a very few hands over the last 40 years. I've not kept up with Chomsky enough to know his current thinking. I'd argue that 2 and 4 are even stronger on the internet. 5 is evergreen. And 4 is now an aspirational lifestyle - the "Influencer". If you consider that the average person hasn't read a book since high-school, and needs someone on the nightly news to tell them what happened on twitter yesterday, then this STILL hasn't reached "mass media".

lamontcg 3y ago
You still largely need money to become an influencer (and by becoming an influencer you gain lots of money, and you've probably done so by 'gaming'[*] an algorithm written by an insanely rich corporation). The democratization of social media is an illusion. [*] really the algorithm is just another media filter that controls who gets through it, talking about "gaming" an algorithm probably has it a bit backwards.

sfink 3y ago

I regret to inform you that you are due for your regular re-watching of The Matrix. You need to leave a relief valve, an opportunity for the malcontents to go express their need for rebellion in a wholly controllable way. They will then dig their own graves.