Manufacturing consent
by Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky, John Pruden · first published 1988
44% recommend54% neutral2% critical
Why HN recommends it
Detailed, heavily footnoted analysis of how ownership, advertising and sourcing shape mass media coverage and push outlets toward elite viewpoints; suits readers wanting a framework to explain news bias.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Discusses the ways in which the mass media are manipulated to present the news according to an underlying elite consenus which affects the manner in which similar events in different parts of the world are presented.
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…media, and other popularity-based professions, there seems to be a very different arrangement of perspectives and emotions. In my opinion, this is an era where more people should be exposed to Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" and similar perspectives, but all we get is some sort of synthetic flock mentality. I was too young to notice all the details in people's behaviour in the post-2001 political climate (and I've never…
on “Ask HN: Why was it hard to criticize Freedom Fries hysteria while it lasted?” ↗Chomsky has written quite a bit about how this is the norm, and about how the media (including the New York Times) is usually complicit. I recommend his book Manufacturing Consent. It paints a vivid picture of the media consistently doing the government's* bidding by painting our mass murdering allies as heroes, while massively amplifying minor crimes committed by those we consider…
on “U.S. Stood by as Indonesia Killed a Half-Million People, Papers Show” ↗…books and music front, so I wish to ask about how you found your reading lists this year. What stood out? I didn't read as much as I'd have liked due to life complications, but I particularly enjoyed: * Manufacturing Consent (Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky) * The Psychedelic Experience (Timothy Leary) * Young Men and Fire (Normam Maclean)
on “Ask HN: What book(s) had the most impact for you in 2019?” ↗I think two things happened that are interesting: * Traditional mass media has failed at manufacturing consent (stealing Chomsky's title here because I like the book and it fits). Election was lost to a TV personality even though mass media was supposed to prevent it. Google and Facebook didn't waste any time…
on “Fake news is too big and messy to solve with algorithms or editors ” ↗…find it hard to imagine a world where the eccentric behaviors and personal lives of practicing scientists would receive newspaper coverage. Really? Such tactics are all over the media nowadays. Read Manufacturing Consent then look for all of the tactics in the western "propaganda model" of operation updated for 2020. The news has never been subtle about this sort of manipulation since at least the 80's. By comparison,…
on “Who Smeared Richard Feynman? (2014)” ↗…openly advocating it. Such is the power of propaganda. It is extremely effective and could turn pink into blue, and then yellow with some moderate effort. I suggest everyone read Chomsky and Herman's Manufacturing Consent. It was actual when it was written and just as actual even if not more today. Speaking of Chomsky, find his writings on NAFTA and globalization as well. It might also surprise you what he has to say.
on “Amazon Pitches Facial Recognition to Monitor Immigrants” ↗…politics, media, history and also whatever specific domain knowledge pertinent. You can't "question narratives" you see in the newspaper if you don't have a good theory of media like what's provided in Manufacturing Consent and even with that you can't "question [the] narrative" of some specific economics thought-piece in the Financial Times if you don't have the relevant domain knowledge in economics. If you think of the…
on “Education Is a System of Indoctrination of the Young (1989) [video]” ↗…simply choose to read proper sources and be informed of geopolitical events rather than parrot US propaganda. I learned to do so after reading a book by an American, often mentioned in HN (the book is Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman).
on “Russia sends troops to Kazakhstan to put down deadly uprising” ↗> It's scary to think that just 2 to 3 corporations have the power to construct a false reality around us I do believe it's been this way for a while. Noam Chomsky wrote Manufacturing Consent in 1988. (There's a movie out there created in 1992 if you don't want to read the book). Basically the same factors at work then are the same factors at work today -- just escalated with an algorithm.…
on “Zuckerberg says FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship” ↗Chomsky is one of the most eloquent people that I've ever come across. Manufacturing consent and Understanding power are indeed life changing books. They are in the sense that after reading them you will look at the media and politics in a new way and that that way will never leave you. It's…
on “Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life” ↗…Soviet Union as "not free" and the former American Cold War strategic assets as "free" Very good point. I think anyone interested in how "Free" press is used and how un-free it usually is, should read Manufacturing Consent by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. Hate them or love them, they provide a very good examples that are documented of "free" media bias. My favorite example is CNN recently. I think they at some point…
on “Internet Freedom Wanes as Governments Target Messaging, Social Apps” ↗Man some of you guys seriously need to read Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky. I'm as anti-Trump as it gets, but the idea that NYT or WSJ are bastions of reputable journalism is ridiculous. See, for example, the list of controversies associated with the output of Pulitzer…
on “Fake News Challenge” ↗…‘more or less totally irrelevant’. You can contest facts, he said, but not images. Noam Chomsky has some excellent work in this area. It can be very very dry reading, but very informative. Check out manufacturing consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent In the same vein and much more entertaining is this video that compares local news channels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI
on “Brave New World Revisited, Revisited” ↗…media in reporting accurately on the Russian Revolution of 1917--23. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.126489/page/n1... Other authors I'd recommend would be Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent (the title itself is a reference to Lippmann's work), Robert W. McChesney's many books on media, Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (cited in the famouse Google "Backrub" paper (http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html),…
on “The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”” ↗Well, then you can read the actual serious intellectuals and researchers like Chomsky, for example. Read "Manufacturing Consent", no ufo stuff there just the real deal. There is extensive literature and documentation of what is really going on, but its not going to be part of the narrative, you have to look for it. Assange's new…
on “Censorship Lift for “V for Vendetta” Shocks China” ↗