Manufacturing Consent

Noam Chomsky - Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Part 1, Mar. 15, 1989. from pdxjustice Media Productions on Vimeo.


Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book written by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, in which the authors propose that the mass communication media of the U.S. "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 overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication. The title derives from the phrase "the manufacture of consent," employed in the book Public Opinion (1922), by Walter Lippmann (1889–1974).
 
Chomsky credits the origin of the book to the impetus of Alex Carey, the Australian social psychologist, to whom he and co-author E. S. Herman dedicated the book. Four years after publication, Manufacturing Consent: The political Economy of the Mass Media was adapted to the cinema as Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992), a documentary presentation of the propaganda-model of communication, the politics of the mass-communications business, and a biography of Chomsky.


Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky & the Media -Part 1- from Dissidència on Vimeo.


Manufacturing Conent: Noam Chomsky & the Media -Part 2- from Dissidència on Vimeo.


The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy to explain how propaganda and systemic biases function in corporate mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social, and political policies is "manufactured" in the public mind due to this propaganda. The theory posits that the way in which corporate media is structured (e.g. through advertising, concentration of media ownership, government sourcing) creates an inherent conflict of interest that acts as propaganda for undemocratic forces.
First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the propaganda model views private media as businesses interested in the sale of a product—readers and audiences—to other businesses (advertisers) rather than that of quality news to the public. Describing the media's "societal purpose", Chomsky writes, "... the study of institutions and how they function must be scrupulously ignored, apart from fringe elements or a relatively obscure scholarly literature". The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. 

These five classes  (see below) are: Ownership of the medium, Medium's funding sources, Sourcing, Flak, and Anti-communism or "fear ideology".
The first three are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important. In versions published after the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001, Chomsky and Herman updated the fifth prong to instead refer to the "War on Terror" and "counter-terrorism", although they state that it operates in much the same manner.

Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles that the model postulates as the cause of media biases.

Five filters of editorial bias

The propaganda model for the manufacture of public consent describes five editorially distorting filters, which are applied to the reporting of news in mass communications media:

1. Size, Ownership, and Profit Orientation: The dominant mass-media outlets are large companies operated for profit, and therefore they must cater to the financial interests of the owners, who are usually corporations and controlling investors. The size of a media company is a consequence of the investment capital required for the mass-communications technology required to reach a mass audience of viewers, listeners, and readers.
2. The Advertising License to Do Business: Since the majority of the revenue of major media outlets derives from advertising (not from sales or subscriptions), advertisers have acquired a "de facto licensing authority". Media outlets are not commercially viable without the support of advertisers. News media must therefore cater to the political prejudices and economic desires of their advertisers. This has weakened the working class press, for example, and also helps explain the attrition in the number of newspapers.
3. Sourcing Mass Media News: Herman and Chomsky argue that “the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access [to the news], by their contribution to reducing the media’s costs of acquiring [...] and producing, news. The large entities that provide this subsidy become 'routine' news sources and have privileged access to the gates. Non-routine sources must struggle for access, and may be ignored by the arbitrary decision of the gatekeepers.”
4. Flak and the Enforcers: "Flak" refers to negative responses to a media statement or program (e.g. letters, complaints, lawsuits, or legislative actions). Flak can be expensive to the media, either due to loss of advertising revenue, or due to the costs of legal defense or defense of the media outlet's public image. Flak can be organized by powerful, private influence groups (e.g. think tanks). The prospect of eliciting flak can be a deterrent to the reporting of certain kinds of facts or opinions.
5. Anti-Communism: This was included as a filter in the original 1988 edition of the book, but Chomsky argues that since the end of the Cold War (1945–91) anticommunism was replaced by the "War on Terror" as the major social control mechanism.

Following the theoretical exposition of the propaganda model, Manufacturing Consent contains a large section where the authors seek to test their hypotheses. If the propaganda model is right and the filters do influence media content, a particular form of bias would be expected—one that systematically favors corporate interests.

They also looked at what they perceived as naturally occurring "historical control groups" where two events, similar in their properties but differing in the expected media attitude towards them, are contrasted using objective measures such as coverage of key events (measured in column inches) or editorials favoring a particular issue (measured in number).

Examples of bias given by the authors include the failure of the media to question the legality of the Vietnam War while greatly emphasizing the Soviet war in Afghanistan as an act of aggression.

Other biases include a propensity to emphasize violent acts such as genocide more in enemy or unfriendly countries such as Kosovo while ignoring greater genocide in allied countries such as the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. This bias also said to exist in foreign elections, giving favorable media coverage to fraudulent elections in allied countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala, while unfavorable coverage is given to legitimate elections in enemy countries such as Nicaragua.
A study found that in the lead up to the Iraq War, most sources were overwhelmingly in favor of the invasion.

Chomsky also asserts that the media accurately covered events such as the Battle of Fallujah but because of an ideological bias, it acted as pro-government propaganda. In describing coverage of raid on Fallujah General Hospital he stated that The New York Times, "accurately recorded the battle of Fallujah but it was celebrated... it was a celebration of ongoing war crimes". The article in question was "Early Target of Offensive Is a Hospital".

The authors point to biases that are based on only reporting scandals which benefit a section of power, while ignoring scandals that hurt the powerless. The biggest example of this was how the US media greatly covered the Watergate Scandal but ignored the COINTELPRO exposures. COINTELPRO (acronym for COunter INTELligence PROgram) (1956-1971) was a series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations. FBI records show that COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed subversive, including the Communist Party USA, anti-Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights movement or Black Power movement (e.g. Martin Luther King Jr., Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), feminist organizations, independence movements (such as Puerto Rican independence groups like the Young Lords), , and a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left. The program also targeted white supremacist groups including the Ku Klux Klan. Nationalist groups including Irish Republicans and Cuban exiles were also targeted. The FBI also financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former Minutemen, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization that targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts.

While the Watergate break-in was a political threat to powerful people (Democrats), COINTELPRO harmed average citizens and went as far as political assassination. Other examples include coverage of the Iran–Contra affair by only focusing on people in power such as Oliver North but omitting coverage of the civilians killed in Nicaragua as the result of aid to the contras.

In a 2010 interview, Chomsky compared media coverage of the Afghan War Diaries released by WikiLeaks and lack of media coverage to a study of severe health problems in Fallujah. While there was ample coverage of WikiLeaks there was no American coverage of the Fallujah study, in which the health situation in Fallujah was described by the British media as "worse than Hiroshima".

Since the publication of Manufacturing Consent, Herman and Chomsky have adopted the theory and have given it a prominent role in their writings, lectures and theoretical frameworks. Chomsky has made extensive use of its explanative power to lend support to his interpretations of mainstream media attitudes towards a wide array of events, including the following:
 

Gulf War (1990), the media's failure to report on Saddam's peace offers.

Iraq invasion (2003), the media's failure to report on the legality of the war despite overwhelming public opinion in favor of only invading Iraq with UN authorization. According to the liberal watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, there was a disproportionate focus on pro-war sources while total anti-war sources only made up 10% of the media (with only 3% of US sources being anti-war).
    

Global warming, the media gives near equal balance to people who deny climate change despite only "about one percent" of climate scientists taking this view. Chomsky commented that there are "three sides" on climate change (deniers, those who follow the scientific consensus, and people who think that the consensus underestimates the threat from global warming), but in framing the debate the media usually ignore people who say that the scientific consensus is unduly optimistic.

On the rare occasions the propaganda model is discussed in the mainstream media there is usually a large reaction. In 1988, when Chomsky was interviewed by Bill Moyers there were 1,000 letters in response, one of the biggest written reactions in the show's history. When he was interviewed by TV Ontario, the show generated 31,321 call-ins, which was a new record for the station. In 1996, when Chomsky was interviewed by Andrew Marr the producer commented that the response was "astonishing". He commented that "[t]he audience reaction was astonishing... I have never worked on a programme which elicited so many letters and calls".

In May 2007, Chomsky and Herman spoke at the University of Windsor in Canada summarizing developments and responding to criticisms related to the model. Both authors stated they felt the propaganda model is still applicable (Herman said even more so than when it was introduced), although they did suggest a few areas where they believe it falls short and needs to be extended in light of recent developments.

Chomsky has insisted that while the propaganda role of the media "is intensified by ownership and advertising" the problem mostly lies with "ideological-doctrinal commitments that are part of intellectual life" or intellectual culture of the people in power. He compares the media to scholarly literature which he says has the same problems even without the constraints of the propaganda model.

With the emergence of the Internet as a cheap and potentially wide-ranging means of communication, a number of independent websites have surfaced which adopt the propaganda model to subject media to close scrutiny. Examples of these are, Free Press and FAIR.