Manufacturing Consent The Political Economy of the Mass Media

by Herman, Edward S.; Chomsky, Noam

• ISBN13: 9780375714498
• ISBN10: 0375714499
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-01-15
• Publisher: Pantheon

Summary

In this pathbreaking work, now with a new introduction, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order. Based on a series of case studiesincluding the media's dichotomous treatment of "worthy" versus "unworthy" victims, "legitimizing" and "meaningless" Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against IndochinaHerman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media's behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media's handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media's treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.

Author Biography

Edward S. Herman is Professor Emeritus of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. <br><br>Noam Chomsky is Professor, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
Preface	lix
A Propaganda Model	1	(36)
Worthy and Unworthy Victims	37	(50)
Legitimizing versus Meaningless Third World Elections: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua	87	(56)
The KGB-Bulgarian Plot to Kill the Pope: Free-Market Disinformation as ``News''	143	(26)
The Indochina Wars (I): Vietnam	169	(84)
The Indochina Wars (II): Laos and Cambodia	253	(44)
Conclusions	297	(12)
Appendix 1 The U.S. Official Observers in Guatemala, July 1-2, 1984	309	(4)
Appendix 2 Tagliabue's Finale on the Bulgarian Connection: A Case Study in Bias	313	(8)
Appendix 3 Braestrup's Big Story: Some ``Freedom House Exclusives''	321	(10)
Notes	331	(64)
Index	395