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BOOK REVIEW
MANUFACTURING CONSENT: THE POLITCAL ECONOMY OF MASS MEDIA
(BY EDWARD S HERMAN AND NOAM CHOMSKY)
1. Intro to the Authors
a. Edward S. Herman. was an American economist, media scholar and social critic, Often
associated with Noam Chomsky, Herman is best known for his media criticism, in particular his
propaganda model developed in conjunction with Chomsky. He held an appointment as Professor
Emeritus of finance at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania and a
media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy.
Ideologically, Herman has been described as a "dedicated radical democrat", an ideology which
opposes corporate control in favor of direct democracy while distancing itself from other radical
movements.
b. NOAM CHOMSKY. is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, social critic,
and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major
figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He holds a
joint appointment as Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) and laureate professor at the University of Arizona, and is the author of over
100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns
with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
2. Intro to the Book. In this path breaking work, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show
that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as belligerent, determined, and ever-
present in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the
economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society,
the state, and the global order. This end been reached after completion of various case studies.
Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda
Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance. What emerges from this work 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.
3. Contents
a. Propaganda Model. The propaganda model for the manufacture of public consent describes
five editorially distorting filters, which are applied to the reporting of news in mass communications
media:
(1). Size, Ownership, and Profit Orientation. The dominant mass-media outlets are large
profit-based operations, and therefore they must cater to the financial interests of the
owners such as corporations and controlling investors.
(2). The Advertising License to Do Business. Since the majority of the revenue of major
media outlets derives from advertising (not from sales or subscriptions), advertisers have
acquired extreme influence. News media must therefore cater to the political prejudices and
economic desires of their advertisers. This has weakening the press and hence attrition in
the number of newspapers.

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(3). Sourcing Mass Media News. The large bureaucracies of the powerful institutions
subsidize the mass media, and gain special access to the news by their contribution to
reducing the media’s costs of acquiring and producing, news. Editorial distortion is
aggravated by the news media’s dependence upon private and governmental news sources.
If a given newspaper, television station, magazine, etc., incurs disfavor from the sources, it
is subtly excluded from access to information. Consequently, it loses readers or viewers,
and ultimately, advertisers. To minimize such financial danger, news media businesses
editorially distort their reporting to favor government and corporate policies in order to stay in
business.
(4). Flak and the Enforcers. "Flak" refers to negative responses to a media statement or
program (e.g. letters, complaints, lawsuits, or legislative actions). Flak can be expensive to
the media, either due to loss of advertising revenue, or due to the costs of legal defense or
defense of the media outlet's public image. Flak can be organized by powerful, private
influence groups (e.g. think tanks). The prospect of stimulating flak can be a deterrent to the
reporting of certain kinds of facts or opinions.
(5). Anti-Communism / War on Terror. This was included as a filter in the original 1988 edition
of the book, but Chomsky argues that since the end of the Cold War (1945–91)
anticommunism was replaced by the "War on Terror" as the major social control
mechanism.
b. Worthy and Unworthy Victims. This chapter dives in specifically on the propaganda of
U.S. foreign policy, the media acted as if the government has said “concentrate on the victims of
enemy powers and forget about the victims of friends”. On this basis the concept of “worthy victim
i.e Polish priest Jerzy Popieluzko” and “unworthy victim i.e Arch Bishop Oscar Romero of El
Salvador” are developed. Coverage will be given extensively toward enemy victim as they are a
“worthy victim” in order to demonize the enemy. But when the same crime perpetrated by U.S.,
their client, or their friends, the coverage was virtually non-existent, they are regarded as
“unworthy victim”. The U.S. always shows their hypocrisy in its foreign policy, suppressing bad
news when their supported dictators cooperated, and denounced them once they fell.
c. Legitimizing Vs Meaningless Third World Elections. In this part propaganda on foreign
election result such as in Vietnam, Guatemala, and El Salvador is discussed i.e whenever the
result did not favor U.S. desired candidate the election result was not accepted and planted
observers by the U.S. government branded as “expert’ gave propaganda direction to media.
d. The KGB-Bulgarian Plot to Kill Pope. The attempted assassination of Pope John Paul
II took place on Wednesday, 13 May 1981, in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City. The Pope was shot
and wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca while he was entering the square. The Pope was struck four times
and suffered severe blood loss. Ağca was apprehended immediately. The American and western
media blamed KGB for planning this murder due to extreme opposition of Pope against the communist
USSR. However, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman instead term this as the spread of
"disinformation as news" as their was no evidence to support their claim.
e. The Indo-China Wars (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia). This part deals with Vietnam War,
the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, the massacre in East Timor, and the bombing of
Cambodia. Each country is extensively covered as Chomsky and Sherman carefully go through
countless examples of the media purposefully lying or neglecting the truth to instead report events
to coincide with the government’s narrative. This is particularly interesting considering how the

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media claims it helped sway the Vietnam war, but it seems they were much more supportive of it
when it was started.
f. Conclusion. In conclusion, both the authors have concluded that the media has failed to serve
their real “societal purpose”, that is to search of the truth independent from authority and enable
the public to assert meaningful control over the political process by giving them information
needed for intelligent discharge of political responsibilities. Instead the media functioned as an
ideological institution and state propaganda tool to defend the economic, social, and political
agenda of the elite group.
4. Recom. The book is recom to be read and thoroughly analysed by Fd offr of Pak Army to have better
understanding of how media works. Its guides the reader in understanding diff models used by media to
propagate propaganda.

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