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If you judge Chomsky by his fans, it is easy to dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist. That's not what he's doing. He's presenting another view of the world whe
by neilk 14y ago
If you judge Chomsky by his fans, it is easy to dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist. That's not what he's doing.
He's presenting another view of the world where, even in a free and democratic society, the media has institutional, structural weaknesses that cause it to serve power. To amplify certain messages, and attenuate others.
It's an attempt to explain how a free society could have committed such atrocities as the Vietnam War, and later, gotten suckered into the Iraq War.
I have seen the debate about this shift in my lifetime. In the early 90s, when the Manufacturing Consent movie came out, I was in a journalism program and even interviewed the makers of that film. Many of the other students in my classes found the film bewildering. They quite honestly believed the media were just serving the people in the great engine of democracy.
Nowadays everyone is aware of how badly the media is failing the public. There are satirists who make this point on a literally Daily basis.
Of course, the general public's cynicism is often unsophisticated, and manifests itself as accusations of intentional bias. But there is more and more awareness of how the structure of the media itself affects what gets covered - perhaps because the Internet offers a counterexample.
- jacquesm 14y ago> Nowadays everyone is aware of how badly the media is failing the public. I so hope that you are right about that one.
- rooshdi 14y agoHere's a recent survey that shows the media's credibility has dropped in the double digits over the past decade: http://www.people-press.org/2012/08/16/further-decline-in-credibility-ratings-for-most-news-organizations/ http://www.people-press.org/2012/08/16/further-decline-in-cr...
- twoodfin 14y agoPer Chomsky, suckered into both Gulf Wars and Afghanistan. It would help Chomsky's case a lot if he identified a post-WW2 "good war". Does he think intervening in Korea was a good idea?
- rosser 14y agoIt would help Chomsky's case a lot if he identified a post-WW2 "good war". It would help him identifying a "good war" if there were one. EDIT: I'm not saying there's no such thing as a "good war", though I probably have a vastly higher bar for what might qualify for that than most. Instead, I'm saying that the "wars" the US has engaged in post-WWII have largely been motivated by cynical self-interest, and often at the expense of everyone involved, including — perhaps even especially — itself.