Within the topic of Noam Chomsky, it will therefore be useful to indicate how outlets or the government to achieve their goals uses media. The extent, to which Chomsky's assertion reaches the outermost regions of communication is both grand and far-reaching that contemporary media outlets utilize such propagandist components as yellow journalism and agenda setting speaks to the distorted nature of information purveyors and how they skew the truth to satisfy ulterior motives. A common enemy, a bogeyman to fear, helps corral public opinion.Noam Chomsky's Media Control is an exercise in propaganda: How mass media have successfully fleeced the general population into believing everything they print or report. To manufacture consent, you need an enemy - a target. When the story is inconvenient for the powers that be, you’ll see the flak machine in action discrediting sources, trashing stories and diverting the conversation. When the media – journalists, whistleblowers, sources – stray away from the consensus, they get ‘flak’. If you want to challenge power, you’ll be pushed to the margins. So, those in power and those who report on them are in bed with each other.

They make themselves crucial to the process of journalism. They feed media scoops, official accounts, interviews with the ‘experts’. They know how to influence the news narrative. Governments, corporations, big institutions know how to play the media game. Journalism cannot be a check on power because the very system encourages complicity. The establishment manages the media through the third filter. They are also selling advertisers a product - YOU.”

And so it isn’t so much that the media are selling you a product - their output. And what are the advertisers paying for? Audiences. Media costs a lot more than consumers will ever pay. The second filter exposes the real role of advertising. Naturally, critical journalism must take second place to the needs and interests of the corporation. And so it’s in their interests to push for whatever guarantees that profit. Often, they are part of even bigger conglomerates. Short video on Manufacturing Consent, seminal work on mainstream journalism and its role in the mechanics of power.Īccording to Chomsky, media operate through five filters: ownership, advertising, the media elite, flak and the common enemy.

Media Control by Noam Chomsky