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  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407054056
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 464

Manufacturing Consent

The Political Economy of the Mass Media




An updated, twentieth anniversary edition of the classic dissection of modern mass media, reissued to coincide with Chomsky's 80th birthday.

We normally think that the press are cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in its search for truth. In Manufacturing Consent Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky show how an underlying elite consensus largely structures all facets of the news. Far from challenging established power, the media work hard to discover and mirror its assumptions. The authors skilfully dissect the way in which the marketplace and the economics of publishing significantly shape the news. They reveal how issues are framed and topics chosen, and contrast the double standards underlying accounts of free elections, a free press, and governmental repression. The authors conclude that the modern mass media can best be understood in terms of a 'propaganda model'. News and entertainment companies dedicate themselves to profit within the established system. Their interests require that they support the governing assumptions of state and private power. The propaganda model provokes outrage from journalists, editors and broadcasters, but twenty years after first publication, Manufacturing Consent remains the most important critique of the mass media.

  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781407054056
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 464

About the authors

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. A member of the American Academy of Science, he has published widely in both linguistics and current affairs. His books include At War with Asia, Towards a New Cold War, Fateful Triangle: The U. S., Israel and the Palestinians, Necessary Illusions, Hegemony or Survival, Deterring Democracy, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.

Noam Chomsky was recently named the world's number-one public intellectual in a poll by Prospect magazine. He is the author of numerous bestselling political works, including Hegemony or Survival, Imperial Ambitions and Failed States, all of which are published by Hamish Hamilton and Penguin. Noam Chomsky is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT, and is widely credited with having revolutionized modern linguistics.

http://www.chomsky.info

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Noam-Chomsky/294468630182

https://twitter.com/daily_chomsky

Edward S Herman

Edward S. Herman is Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Corporate Control, Corporate Power; The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda; Demonstration Elections: U. S.-Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam and El Salvador (with Frank Brodhead), The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection (with Frank Brodhead) and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (with Noam Chomsky).

Praise for Manufacturing Consent

Noam Chomsky is one of the most significant challengers of unjust power and delusions; he goes against every assumption about American altruism and humanitarianism.

Edward Said

Chomsky ranks with Marx, Shakespeare, and the Bible as one of the ten most quoted sources in the humanities-and is the only writer among them still alive.

Guardian

Chomsky is arguably the most important intellectual alive.

New York Times

Not to have read [Chomsky] is to court genuine ignorance.

Nation

A rebel without a pause.

Bono