Precis: Manufacturing Consent

Manufacturing Consent

“The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace.” This is a definition by the author Noam Chomsky in the book Manufacturing Consent. It the job of the mass media “to integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society.” However, the world is wealthy and suffers from conflicts of class interest, the media uses systematic propaganda.
This occurs in countries, where the real power is by the government, state bureaucracies, who have monopolistic control over the media. Those include great corporations etc. They dominate, control the resources, and have influence on political system.

As a result, the media serves the dominant elite, which, like Chomsky said in an interview “is about 20% of the population”. The other 80% of the population are the people that get influenced by the media, not to think, those are the ones that pay the costs.

Those 80% are kept on course by emotionally potent oversimplifications by myth makers. One needs to control what people think, in order for the people not to go against the 20%, the government, the elite and so on.

The major idea in the book, where all examples are being used in service of this idea, is called the “propaganda model”. It consist of 5 filters, which include:
• Size, Ownership, and Profit orientation of the mass media
• The Advertising license to do business
• Sourcing mass-media news
• Flak and the Enforcers

These 5 filters are especially used by the national media, such as
• The New York Times
• The Washington Post
• NBC
• CBS
They set up the framework for the more local media, which then adapts to this kind of “style”.

This framework includes:
• Selection of topics
• Distribution of concerns
• Emphasis
• Framing of Issues
• Filtering of information
• Bounding of debate
By Determine, Select, Shape, Control and Restrict in order to serve the dominant elite groups. (The 20% of the people). For this reason, the rest of the 80% are the one that will suffer from the mass media.

The five filters are analyzed in the following manor. The first filter talks about the concentrated ownership, size and profit seeking incentive of the mass media. However, there is an example, how newspapers established that were concerned of the wants and needs of the working class. It “promoted a greater collective confidence by repeatedly emphasizing the potential power of working people to effect social change through the force of combination and organized action.” However this was seen as a major threat, because the ‘elite’ feared that the working class would take over. This changed the face of newspaper.

The major point taken is that since mass media is ruled by big corporations, the information presented is biased, because the newspaper needs to go after the interests of these corporations. They fear that when certain information is presented objectively, the profits could be affected. As a result, the corporations need to sacrifice their objectivity, in order to maintain their financial interests.

Advertising is the second filter in Chomsky’s theory of the propaganda model. In general, newspapers need to advertise, in order to maintain the great amounts of costs of production. In general, when a newspaper is advertising less, they are put at a serious disadvantage. The theory says that the people buying this product are the product themselves, because they are sold back to the business, which initially brought the space for advertisement. The explanation for this is that the readers, who buy the magazines, make educated decisions about the advertisement in the newspapers and take it with them. Stories that conflict with the ‘buying-mood’ of the readers, is ignored, in order to keep this buying mood maintained.

Sourcing of the mass media is the third filter. This simply says that it is impossible for even big media corporations to have reporters everywhere on this planet. For this reason, the corporations put their reporters to the “hot spots” of action, such as the white house etc. They assume that most of the interesting stories would come from there. However, people argue the credibility of these locations, because they fear that the information, the government gives out is only in service of great corporations that affect the 80% of the people.

The fourth filter is known as “flak”. In general the flak are people with negative responses to media statements. The most well known flak is the GCC, Global Climate Coalition. The GCC was started by Burson Marsteller, who is responsible for argue the credibility of climate change scientists. The flak is used, to discredit organizations, who disagree with the information the mass media gives out.

The fifth and last filter in their theory is anti-ideologies. The main goal of the media is to create fear and hatred. (Xenophobia). Chomsky gives the example of anti-communism, which was portayed as an endangering of freedom of speech etc.