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manufacturing consent noam chomsky and the media | Year: 1993 Classification: Documentary Directed: - Mark Achbar - Peter Wintonick Actors/Actresses: - Noam Chomsky Intellectual Self-Defence With the recent media frenzy surrounding Michael Moore's documentary, Fahrenheit 911, it is interesting to observe how the controversy currently swirling around it (Disney backed it financially but won't distribute it) has been documented in the press. It makes a film like Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media all the more relevant more than ten years after its release. Chomsky is a soft-spoken professor at MIT who has become quite a vocal political activist and critic of the American media. He believes that ordinary people can comprehend and act on the issues he raises, but this is not always an easy task because of the thick web of doublespeak that the government creates to blind us from what he calls the "elementary truths" that are right in front of us. However, people are indoctrinated to be apathetic so that they don't want to make the effort that is needed to see what is really going on. And the media doesn't help either. In fact, one might say that they promote this sense of apathy by showing redundant, repetitive sitcoms and reality shows that turn us into mindless couch potatoes. Now, you might be thinking, this sounds like a lot of conspiracy theory garbage, but Chomsky does not look, act or speak like some crazed conspiracy nut. He is an intelligent man who talks to a BBC reporter the same way he would talk to an ordinary person. Chomsky is a clear and concise speaker who backs up everything he says with an ample supply of facts and unfaltering logic. He is a man dedicated to uncovering the deception and atrocities that are committed by governments all over the world and teaching others how to become aware of and act on these acts. With funding from the National Film Board of Canada, Peter Wintonick and Mark Achbar followed Chomsky around the globe for five years. The result was a two hour and forty-five minute documentary that explored Chomsky's view of the media and his relationship with it. The film acts as a sort of "stepping stone" to Chomsky's books, which are filled with pretty heavy concepts and a lot of information to absorb. The film doesn't water down his ideas, but rather represents them on a visual level so that they are a bit easier to grasp. In Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky reveals that all major decisions over what happens in our society are controlled by a heavily concentrated network of corporations, conglomerates and investment firms. This network also has considerable influence over positions in the government. Just looking at the big Savings and Loans scandals that plagued the U.S. a few years ago reveals this link. Corporations also own the media and therefore decide what we watch and hear for the most part. They control the resources and as a result show only what is in their best interests. This is achieved by propaganda or the "manufacturing of consent," a term borrowed from political philosopher and journalist, Walter Lippmann. Manufacturing consent is a technique of control over t Does what it says on the tin. Noam Chomsky is a revolutionary linguist whose ideas about how language structures are learnt by people led him into thinking about the workings of the mass media. His findings radicalised him politically, and he because the most famous counter-cultural academic in the US, a leading anti-Vietnam activist, and consistently critical of US foreign policy. To simplify his argument would be to fall into the 'soundbite' or 'concision' traps set by the media that he talks about, but basically, he suggests that the mass media, owned by a handful of major corporations whose representatives hold major decision-making positions in the American government, manipulate and deliberately limit the information the public receives. Exhaustive research has shown him that the leading newspapers and TV stations toe the government line, giving much space to the subjects it wants promoted, and little or none at all to matters it wants kept secret or to which it is hostile. This, of course, means a silencing of dissent or alternative voices, but it also means the business of power (and potential corruption) is kept private. The most powerful example he gives concerns two atrocities that took place in Asia in the 1970s. One was the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia, which led to the genocide of a third of the indigenous population, the massacring of dissidents (including foreign journalists), the systematic destruction of millenia-old ways of life, and the enforced plantation of Indonesian settlers. The second was the Khmer Rouge terror in Cambodia. Because Indoneia were allies with America, the first invasion and genocide was ignored by the US media - especially the inconvenient fact that the US had asked the Indonesians to delay the invasion, so that a Presidential visit to the region wouldn't be unduly embarrassing. Because the Khmer Rouge were linked to the Soviets, endless column inches were devoted to their tyranny, with statistics distorted, photos staged and lies made fact. Chomsky argues that from Vietnam through Central America to the Gulf War, the media are, under the terms of the Nuremberg trials, as complicit in war crimes as the forces that carried out the killings, either by evasion or propaganda [with the subsequent explosion of the Internet and the current 'war' on 'terror', we have our own opportunity to put Chomsky's theories into practice]. This nexus carries over all aspects of American life, from domestic government to civil rights to sport (the latter is inculcated at an early age to encourage submission to authority, the group and jingoism!). Chomsky shows how the manipulation of the media is also crucial in the construction of history - the major source of historical record in the States are back issues of the New York Times, making today's lies tomorrow's facts. The situation seems bleak, but Chomsky sees some hope in the activities of protest groups and alternative media who try to bring to light news suppressed by the mainstream. 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