Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

(Written by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky, 1988)

Continuing our exploration of the media’s role in the war machine; We bring this trailblazing book by Chomsky that took the world by storm upon its release in 1988; arguing that the media operates as an ideological institution that employs a system of filters and biases that function to limit public imagination and discourse in order to maintain the prevailing status-quo. Herman and Chomsky outline their ‘Propaganda Model’ of US corporate media, as well as their Five Filters of Media Bias, revealing mass media as merely an exploitative tool for the powers that be, rather than a true Fourth Estates serving public interests. Throughout the book, the authors eviscerate the idea that American journalism is a bulwark against governmental overreach, arguing that the media ultimately act as a rubber stamp, justifying and reinforcing the worst excesses of US hegemony and imperialism while co-opting dissident voices that are deemed ‘too extreme. Interestingly enough, Herman and Chomsky had first-hand knowledge of the press’ reactionary censorship, as their first collaboration together, a book called Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact & Propaganda, was prevented from release when Warner Publishing shut down its subsidiary who planned to print the book. Fortunately, by the time Manufacturing Consent was released, Herman and Chomsky had enough academic influence to see the book through, unleashing a powerful critique of US empire that still proves incredibly useful to this very day.