Everyone should take the time to watch, in its entirety, Manufacturing Consent. Here’s some background.
Then describe, as in a summary, what you see followed by a reaction — what do you see that you didn’t know before? what do you FEEL?
4 thoughts on “Manufacturing Consent”
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Manufacturing Consent was definitely disturbing. I was aware that the media was biased and corrupt at certain levels, but it shook me to the see the magnitude of issues that were completely ignored by the American media, and are still largely left unknown. In East Timor, in 1978, at the height of the genocide, there was 0% media coverage in the U.S and Canada. And even to this day, more than thirty years later, this is still glossed over in most history classes and not at all part of the public’s general knowledge, despite it being “the worst act of genocide since the Holocaust” (Chomsky).
The genocide of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia is something that most Americans know about, and that the media spent a lot of time covering. But I was shocked to learn about the 600,000 deaths prior to the involvement of the Khmer Rouge, deaths that were caused by U.S bombing and U.S sponsored wars! It is even believed that 1 million more deaths occurred in the aftermath of this, because of related issues of poverty and disease. Chomsky says that this American genocide probably lead to peasant support of the Khmer Rouge in the first place!
If genocide has U.S involvement and there is profit to be made (in East Timor, 90% of Indonesian arms were supplied by the U.S!) than the media will either ignore the issue or manipulate facts till the story is hardly recognizable. If the genocide involves “the enemy”, than media coverage is vast and even supplemented (I was shocked to read that some of the photos of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia were staged!). It was a revealing image to see the 70 inches of New York Times news roll about East Timor compared to the 1,175 inches about Cambodia in the period of 1975-79. Of course, Chomsky says, it is more important for us to be concerned and responsible for our countries actions, and that the reason genocides in places like East Timor can go on is because nobody knows about them!
One quote that really hit me was this:
“We’re dealing with real human beings because of policies we are involved in. The media is assuring we do not act on our responsibility and that the interests of power are served, not the needs of suffering people, and not even the needs of the American people who would be horrified to realize the blood dripping from their hands because of the way they’re allowing themselves to be diluted and manipulated by the system.”
My question now is, what can we do? How does one find reliable news? Maybe multiple sources? I thought it was interesting that many people in the video that they interviewed said they knew the newspaper they were reading and the news shows they were watching were biased! It seems to me that there is literally no way to avoid unbiased, un-manipulated news and media.
The second thing that came to my mind was: is this a problem of the United States? The video mentioned that when Chomsky went overseas, he was given access to media that he did not receive in the U.S. Also, the article about Cambodia that the New York Times “edited” was from London! Is the problem exacerbated in the U.S purely because of the power the U.S has in international affairs? I know in France and other European countries, strikes and debate are a normal part of citizenship. But in the U.S there is so much pressure and incentive for favored “truths” to go unchallenged.
And finally, I thought the Nightline study was absolutely fascinating. Chomsky made a really good point that I had never thought of before. To be on a talk show like Nightline, and to spread information to the U.S public, one has to be concise (the TV host said it himself!) But, the problem is, to say anything unconventional and possible outrageous requires evidence. And one cannot support radical or unconventional claims in a 10 minute time period! Where does this leave us? With a system that recycles the same old conventional ideas over and over, un-stimulating, safe, and exactly what the people in power want. I think this represents a shift in how Americans are willing to receive their news. Back when most news came through the radio, I think people spent a lot more time listening to in-depth programs. In my history class we learned that families used to gather around the radio to hear the president’s speeches! Nowadays, most Americans don’t even listen to the full speeches, and people want their news in the fastest form possible. A lot of people have given up on keeping up with the news altogether! But, if horrible things can continue in this world because people are not informed, there has to be a way to for people to access current events in an unbiased way. How can we fix a system that is so broken, and that puts the interests of the most powerful first?
By using the example of the genocide in East Timor, Manufacturing Consent highlighted the control that the media has over the information that the American public receive. Chomsky states in the beginning of the film how democracies have to control the media because they are not able to control the minds of people through fear any longer. For the last few years I have been observing the agendas that different media outlets have, they are, after all, money making ventures and they want to give people what they want to hear so they will continue to subscribe or tune in. The fact that Rupert Murdoch owns and influences so much of what America sees on a day to day basis is a little scary. I was pretty shocked that in my education I never heard about the genocide in East Timor. Chomsky did leave a general feeling of mistrust towards the media in general in me but most of all left me with the overall question of where should I get my information. If the government isn’t going to tell the American people and they are going to influence to media into not telling us then where can we go to find the truth about situations. There is such an enormous amount of world news that what can we do as a single human being with other obligations and time constraints to become rightly informed.
As we talked about in class earlier last week, the American public lets the media culture run our lives. We watch, learn and regurgitate the news that is presented to us every morning and every night. Its the only thing that most people in this generation have ever known. In regards to Chomsky’s argument, I am in agreement. Although the american public has become hooked and often tricked by the american media, we are used to this system, in which we are presented the “most important” news everyday in a condensed segment. But all too often, the news touches on extremely important subject, but changes their focus by the time they get to the next news loop. One example of this is presented in Noam Chomsky’s Manufactured consent when he talks about the area of East Timor and the struggles that it went through. In the documentary, it says that the news coverage about East Timor at the time when the killings were the worst, was 0%. That means that at the time in which East Timor needed the most help, it was receiving no attention. Another example of this irresponsible media attention is in New Orleans, where the media coverage was great at the time of the disaster, but slowly faded as time went by. This gives the american public the false premonition that New Orleans is getting better, when in fact it was getting worse. I feel as though I am being tricked by these major corporations in a way that causes me to act and feel a different way. It is a little sickening to think about, that several major news companies can impact hundreds of millions of people all over the world. Each company has their own political, economic and environmental stance, and they convey the news in ways that benefit their ideas. An unbiased news source is near impossible to find these days, but it is necessary for the american public to have if they want to have an educated view of the world.
The fact that I have taken two modern history courses analyzing the 20th century and talked about East Timor for ten minutes is a result of Noam Chomsky’s “manufactured consent”. And the only reason our teacher did mention Timor was because it is the newest country in the world. Until I viewed this video, I was oblivious that the Timor genocide was the worst since the Holucaust. Ironically, the US had direct involvement in this atrocity, as did most of the Western world. Either my teacher was not well educated or he, just like me, is a product of the media’s propoganda model. Chomsky argues that the media manufactures consent through the creation of necessary illusions that marginalize the public point of view so they don’t intefere or challenge the beliefs of the political elite. Essentially, the media appeals to the political, educated class of America, which Chomsky denotes as 20% of the American population, while propogating a “whitewash” behavior of manipulating what the other 80% of Americans, or followers read, hear, or see. And we, the Americans have been cast under a acceptance of fornicated illusions to benefit the views of the political elite. Chomsky declares that every post-war President would be murdered by pre-Revolutionary Americans because of hidden foreign involvements, like that of Timor, which clearly oppose our value of democracy. I agree with Chomsky entirely. Essentially, because we as Americans are subject to the media at almost every moment of our lives, we must make the decision to preserve the democracy our country prides itself upon or give up to this political elite in the media. Giving up our freedom and democracy is far more convenient. Pesimistically, we really have no hope of changing how the media presents its news because behind each corporation lies politics that hold an overwhelming amount of political plight. Therefore, what can we believe? Can we even trust that the news being presented is actually happening or should we assume that news of atrocites like Timor will never land in front the American public’s eyes? This manufactured consent that has a spell on every American directly correlates to our idealogical faulters as a material obsessed group of followers. Even if the media were to reverse their propoganda model, I don’t think our feelings towards our actions on the world would change. We are too enthralled in our own material, financial-based lives to even care if America is supporting a mass genocide thousands of miles away.