Propaganda

•  A word often used about countries viewed as authoritarian through the lens of the Western media (i.e. North Korea, Kazakstan, Iran)

Press Freedom / Freedom of Thought 

• Often used when talking about democracies (i.e. The U.S., France, Australia)

Noam Chomsky's legacy “Manufacturing Consent” (published 1988) blasted apart the notion that media acts as a check on political power, that media informed the public, served the public, so that we can better engage in a political process. 

• In fact, media manufacture our consent. They tell us what those in power need them to tell us, so we can fall in line. 

Democracy is staged, with the help of media that work as propaganda machines

Media operate through 5 filters:

• Ownership

  • Mass media firms are big corporations

    • Often part of even bigger conglomerates

    • Their end game: Profit 

      • It’s in their interest to push for whatever guarantees that profit

        • Critical journalism takes 2nd place to the needs and interests of the corporation 

• Advertising ​

  • Media costs a lot more than consumers will ever pay. 

    • Who who fills the gap? Advertisers

  • What are the advertisers paying for? Audiences 

  • It isn’t that the media are selling you a product (their output) their also selling advertisers a product: You. 

• The Media Elite 

  • How does the establishment manage the media? 

  • Journalism cannot be a check on power, because the very system encourages complicity. 

  • Governments, corporations, big institutions know how to play the media game, how to influence the news narrative, feeding media scoops, official accounts, interviews with the “experts,” etc. 

    • They make themselves crucial to the process of journalism, so those in power and those who report on them are in bed with each other.

    • If you want to challenge power, you’ll be pushed to the margins, your name won’t be down, you won’t be getting in, you’ll lose your access, you’ll lose the story

  • When the media (journalists, whistleblowers, sources) stray away from the consensus, they get flattened. 

• Flack

  • When the story is inconvenient for the powers-that-be, the following counteractions (flack) are taken:

    • discrediting sources

    • trashing stories

    • diverting the conversation 

• The Common Enemy 

  • To manufacture consent, you need an enemy, a target. 

    • Communism

    • Terrorists

    • Immigrants, etc. 

  • A common enemy, a boogie man to fear, helps corral public opinion.

These 5 filters comprise this theory: Consent is being manufactured all around you, all the time.