Manufacturing Consent

We all want a vigilant press, and I stirred up a little dust a while back asserting in USA the press is government controlled. Probably more accurate would be to say "the powers that be" control the press, and they control the government too. I am not too interested in conspiracy theories, nor are Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, who wrote Manufacturing Consent, a book that lays out the political economy of the mass media.

The book was published in 1988 and lays out a propaganda paradigm and shows how the powers that be have he media stick to the agenda, and how distorted our news is when finally delivered. The good news is we truly have no idea (although if we care we can find out) just what is going on in the world. If we have no idea, then we can hardly pay our taxes. It is a tribute to ourselves that the powers that be go to such lengths to keep us uninformed.

Herman and Chomsky take the reader through VietNam in the 50s, 60s and 70s, then into Cambodia into the 80s, and the Central American wars in the 80s. The authors were demonstrating how the recent history of falsification (as of the mid-80s) of the news, so fresh and clear at the time was being done presently regarding the central America wars. It is sad to note how the book can be read today, knowing now how the central American conflicts were so mischaracterized, just as readers knew then about the falsification of the news regarding the Vietnam war (which Vietnamese call the American War.)

The patterns work so well, even if widely known, that the powers that be can continuously apply them, and so it is astonishing to see the exact sam lies being touted now, as before, with the same results.

The upshot is the media is wide open for entrepreneurial activity. Matt Drudge was the first with the most, but there is limitless need for accurate reporting on any and all topics. A blog is s sort of news room, if only reporting on your business.

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