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Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992)
Manufacturing Consent: Does this hold true in today's age of the Internet and Social Media?
The documentary film, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media made by the two Canadian filmmakers, Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick, give us an insight on the political views and life of Noam Chomsky, an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political critic and activist.
The 167 min film proves to be long for a documentary, however it goes on to illustrate and gives a perspective of how the mainstream U.S media works and why they perform as they do. The movie presents Chomsky's and Herman's theory that the media operates on the basis of set ideological premises and depends extensively on elite information sources. The corporate media is driven by the quest to making profits and their further agendas reflect the ideologies and interests of the dominant, elite groups in the society. The movie also asserts Chomsky and Herman's idea that information in corporate media passes through the five factors --ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak, and anti - communist ideology— which works as 'filters' and that individually or additively they have a great influence on media choices.
The movie emphasizes the fact that we are today living in a world where the mass media act as an important source of information of the happenings around the world. It is the most noticeable fact that the media is interested in some news more than the other, and this is kind of pushed down in the minds of the people consuming that news. It can be ironic to say that news media are just passively transmitting news and information. The choices of the daily and presentation are a reflection of the public's perception about the most significant news of the day. This model exemplifies a lot of examples where media has been biased in reporting. For e.g. there is an integral part in the movie which shows The New York Times' coverage on of the outrages committed in in the Indonesian occupation of East Timor and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. This according to Chomsky is the case where Media is unwilling to go against the elite, since the invasion was then supported by the US.
On the flip side, the propaganda model might not end up working in many situations and countries for the matter. The model may apply specifically to the US media where the media are owned and run by the elites (Corporates, MNC's). However to that effect in a country like India, where media are not necessarily owned by the elite, the question is that is this model still relevant? The propaganda model also denies the possibility that a public grown weary of an issue might exert its concern in the mainstream news as a collective voice to be heard. The model excludes the general public among its filters of news content. However, there are various instances which demonstrate the role human agency can play outside the formal news making setting. For e.g. An instance where the US news media reported on public dissent in the U.S./Iraq war campaign which surrounded the congressional midterm elections and later how public opinion in the form of a social movement born form dissent, actually ended up shaping the news product. The anti- corruption social movement in India driven by activist Anna Hazare was ridiculed at beginning by the mainstream media as being unrealistic and dramatic. The media acted as the mouthpiece the ruling party and wanted to subdue this entire story to protect its integrity. However when the collective voice of the citizens, who this time used internet and social media to raise their opinion spread like wild fire, the incident turned into a social upheaval, and in that case the dissent created by public against corruption became the prime news and media had no choice but to cover it. In this case as well, it was public opinion that ended up shaping the news product.
A further thought can be that in times of internet and social media, how persuasive or relevant is the Herman and Chomsky propaganda model, when media content can be almost created by anyone and is at disposal of the public. One can use easy, low-cost tools and multiple publishing platforms to create content. Now that citizen journalism has gained so much popularity in the recent, does media really have the power to enforce its set agendas? Today citizens are playing an active role in the collecting, processing, analyzing and disseminating of news and information. Modern/ New technology, together with social media and its convergence with different mediums has made citizen journalism accessible worldwide. Citizens have now the power to break the news well before any mainstream media can. A recent example of this would be the Arab spring where, youth turned to the unrestricted world of digital and social mediums to voice their concern against the government. Digital media was the major tool, where videos were shot by mobile phones and were sent to various satellite channels. Twitter became an alternative and powerful news medium for the youth. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and citizen journalism empowered young people to challenge the status quo. Today there are even abundant alternative sources to procure news. People are subjected to these sources, where it then comes back to the power that lies in the minds of the people to consume news which makes sense and holds true to them.
After all that is said, the movie still proves to be stimulating and helps you see things with a perspective. At the end it is important that we as citizens should not become passive listeners of news, and should be in capacities to question and criticize something that is not acceptable. We should take efforts in seeking alternative opinions and point of views to be aware of what really is happening around us, something we end up calling as "NEWS".