Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
A bold and eye-opening exposé on how power and propaganda distort the news, now more relevant than ever • With an updated introduction
“[A] compelling indictment of the news media’s role in covering up errors and deceptions in American foreign policy.”—The New York Times Book Review
Renowned scholars Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky reveal how U.S. news media, far from being independent watchdogs, often function as tools of elite influence. With probing analysis, they present their Propaganda Model, a framework that explains how systemic bias shapes the stories we’re told, the voices we hear, and the truths that remain hidden.
Through deeply researched case studies, from the Vietnam War to coverage of “worthy” vs. “unworthy” victims, Manufacturing Consent exposes the structural forces that drive news organizations to reinforce power rather than question it. It’s a sobering portrait of a media system more interested in maintaining order than informing the public.
This edition includes an introduction updating key examples and expanding the Propaganda Model’s relevance to issues like the coverage of NAFTA, the media’s treatment of global protests, and environmental regulation.
Manufacturing Consent 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.
Whether you’re a student, activist, or citizen looking to see beyond the headlines, this book will transform how you understand the media—and the world around you.
“[A] compelling indictment of the news media’s role in covering up errors and deceptions in American foreign policy.”—The New York Times Book Review
Renowned scholars Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky reveal how U.S. news media, far from being independent watchdogs, often function as tools of elite influence. With probing analysis, they present their Propaganda Model, a framework that explains how systemic bias shapes the stories we’re told, the voices we hear, and the truths that remain hidden.
Through deeply researched case studies, from the Vietnam War to coverage of “worthy” vs. “unworthy” victims, Manufacturing Consent exposes the structural forces that drive news organizations to reinforce power rather than question it. It’s a sobering portrait of a media system more interested in maintaining order than informing the public.
This edition includes an introduction updating key examples and expanding the Propaganda Model’s relevance to issues like the coverage of NAFTA, the media’s treatment of global protests, and environmental regulation.
Manufacturing Consent 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.
Whether you’re a student, activist, or citizen looking to see beyond the headlines, this book will transform how you understand the media—and the world around you.
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
The notion that the mass media operates under a propaganda model is one vaguely accepted by many but seldom understood from a systematic manner. I myself have a shallow understanding on the topic, so this was a revelatory read. Herman and Chomsky’s groundbreaking book takes a relentless jab at exposing the veins of American mass media propaganda through examples of coverage on a few broad events, such as the Vietnam war and 1980s Central American elections.
Curiously enough, the work I was thinking of the most while listening to this was Frederick Wiseman’s 1975 documentary masterpiece Welfare, a painstaking 3.5-hour exposé of another tarnished American institution. Both works are so exhaustive in their research that they become almost labyrinthian and entrapping. This structure makes sense in both cases. In Welfare, the dejected underclass is trapped for hours on end within a welfare center that is all but ready to deny them their basic needs; in Manufacturing Consent, the walls slowly close on the American promise for democracy and decentralized access to information.
Responses seem split on whether this book fully holds in the internet era. On one hand, media conglomerates have consolidated even more power, with six media companies owning a huge chunk of traditional broadcast networks. On the other hand, I think there is truth in the claim that independent voices on the internet, including but not limited to social media, often operate outside of that oligarchical structure. Reading up on Chomsky’s views on this, he seems to believe that the internet has not exactly democratized the system, but has decentered the propaganda model in such a way that it now has to rely on such things as inconsistent algorithms. It’s probably worth mentioning too that, while the statistic of media consolidation sounds (rightfully) scary, it’s hard to prove exactly to what extent that translates into actual media bias. All that to say, the changes brought along by the internet probably call for another book on the topic that is as exhaustively well-researched as this.
Lastly, the point about an advertising-driven media inevitably leading to a more skewed and biased media is so disconcerting because it just further proves how much this country is run by money. A friend of mine pointed out that it seems so intuitive yet so easy to miss or even think about. A mass media driven primarily by subscriptions lends political power not just to independent sources, but also to the people through their agency of choice. Conversely, advertising is entirely driven by money. The authors argue that under such a model, mass media has “stopped selling news to audiences and started selling audiences to advertisers”. And now other juicy occurrences, such as the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC supreme court ruling that granted personhood rights to corporations, have further strengthened the hegemony of capital.
Probably a must-read.
Curiously enough, the work I was thinking of the most while listening to this was Frederick Wiseman’s 1975 documentary masterpiece Welfare, a painstaking 3.5-hour exposé of another tarnished American institution. Both works are so exhaustive in their research that they become almost labyrinthian and entrapping. This structure makes sense in both cases. In Welfare, the dejected underclass is trapped for hours on end within a welfare center that is all but ready to deny them their basic needs; in Manufacturing Consent, the walls slowly close on the American promise for democracy and decentralized access to information.
Responses seem split on whether this book fully holds in the internet era. On one hand, media conglomerates have consolidated even more power, with six media companies owning a huge chunk of traditional broadcast networks. On the other hand, I think there is truth in the claim that independent voices on the internet, including but not limited to social media, often operate outside of that oligarchical structure. Reading up on Chomsky’s views on this, he seems to believe that the internet has not exactly democratized the system, but has decentered the propaganda model in such a way that it now has to rely on such things as inconsistent algorithms. It’s probably worth mentioning too that, while the statistic of media consolidation sounds (rightfully) scary, it’s hard to prove exactly to what extent that translates into actual media bias. All that to say, the changes brought along by the internet probably call for another book on the topic that is as exhaustively well-researched as this.
Lastly, the point about an advertising-driven media inevitably leading to a more skewed and biased media is so disconcerting because it just further proves how much this country is run by money. A friend of mine pointed out that it seems so intuitive yet so easy to miss or even think about. A mass media driven primarily by subscriptions lends political power not just to independent sources, but also to the people through their agency of choice. Conversely, advertising is entirely driven by money. The authors argue that under such a model, mass media has “stopped selling news to audiences and started selling audiences to advertisers”. And now other juicy occurrences, such as the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC supreme court ruling that granted personhood rights to corporations, have further strengthened the hegemony of capital.
Probably a must-read.
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