Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Answers to the dilemmatic questions we ask ourselves about media freedom can be found in this book. Even concrete cases of manufacturing public opinion through media propaganda.

In this book, two of today's world-renowned authors, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, analyze how the media: "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a propaganda function supporting the system, relying on market forces, internal assumptions and self-censorship, and without overt coercion, through the propaganda model of communication".

In countries where the levers of power are in the hands of a state bureaucracy, monopolist control over the media, often supplemented by official censorship, makes it clear that the media serve the interests of a dominant elite. It is much harder to see a propaganda system at work when the media are private and official censorship is absent. This is especially true where the media actively compete, periodically attack and expose the misdeeds of corporations and governments, and aggressively portray themselves as spokespersons for free speech and the general interest of the community.

What is not visible (and remains undiscussed in the media) is the limited nature of such criticism, the great inequality in command of resources, and its effect both on access to a system of private media and on its behavior and performance.