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The Technocrat's Intellectual Review:

Manufacturing Consent

by Noam Chomsky

At the start of this book, Chomsky makes a number of claims. He claims that in this book he will examine how the American media only represents the view of the American ruling class, and how he will show that this is so in several different cases. He does not live up to his promises. He fails in two separate ways, and is indescisive in a third.

The first way in which Chomsky fails to live up to his promise is in the area of examining several different cases. He doesn't. He examines one case, the Cold War against communism. That's it. Now he could have claimed he was going to only examine one case, and then he would have lived up to his claims. Instead he got greedy and overreached himself.

The second area is that of insufficient proof. Chomsky probably can't really be blaimed here, he was writing for an audience that presumably had lived through the same times as he had. However it is now almost two decades later and his book is out of date. He relies a great deal on the reader remembering the news coverage of the various events he refers to. Well I can't remember, I wasn't even born for half these things.

So when Chomsky refers to the media coverage of the start of the Vietnam war, I have no idea whether his claim of a pro-war slant is correct or not. I know that since the start of the 1980s any media coverage was totally and completely ANTI-war, but it is claimed that this is because the American elite changed their minds.

Lastly there is the final point he refers to of the attempted assassination of Pope JohnPaul II. This last event I am old enough to remember, and my recollection doesn't match Chomsky's at all. According to him the whole thing was immediately blamed on Communists, with news media castigating the Bulgarians. My recollection was that Bulgarians weren't even mentioned till months later, and then most of the media were criticising and ridiculing the Intelligence agencies who claimed the Bulgarians were involved. Maybe the media in Australia are more leftwing than those in America.

I do know that since then all forms of mass media, with the exception of some internet sites, have been unfailling opposed to US foriegn policy except for a brief spell during the Gulf War. Even after the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York, the mainstream media was filled with "experts" proclaiming that it was all the fault of American foriegn policy and that no retaliation should be taken. Curiously it is precisely the privately owned Net sites that seem least opposed to American militarism, which is precisely counter to Choamsky's claim that pro militarism bias is due to Military contractor/mass media cross ownership.

So overall the out of date assumptions of the author about his readers means that most of his claims cannot be validated. Those that can be checked don't seem to work out. And more recent data seems in direct contradiction to his theorys.

And this is very strange. Because his explanation for the pro US military, anti left wing bias is a good one. The large media companies ARE owned by the same corporations as the big defense contractors. So why are the media apparently so biased AGAINST their own owners?

A couple of possible explanations spring to mind.

Lack of control. The big conglomerates just are not well run enough for the editorial policy to be dicated by the shareholders. This seems the most likely explanation to me. It meets the rule of "Never ascribe to malice what can just as easily be explained by incompetance". And if you still have doubts look at all the large corporations that lose billions in stupid deals and sometimes go broke. These aren't the well oiled machinery of total control that they are made out to be. (By the media that is meant to be on their side). Instead the news slant is determined by the journalists and editors (who used to be journalists). In other words a bunch of middle class arts graduates who find themselves very powerful, but not very well paid, and are pissed off about it. So they would tend to be very biased against people who are better paid (the hated "rich", ie anyone who earns more than a journalist) and against people who seem to have sources of power and respect to rival their own (the military, the churches, the scientists and engineers and doctors who run our technological society). That explains all the media bias I see.
A second explanation is that the media conglomerates figure they make more money from selling more newspapers with headlines opposing the American military than they would make from a few extra weapons sales. After all the anti-military bias doesn't seem to have sent the defense contractors broke.
Finally they may figure that no-one believes the media anymore these days. So it doesn't matter what they write.

You can see for yourself: Consent

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