Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

“There are, by one count, 20,000 more public relations agents working to doctor the news today than there are journalists writing it.” 

A popular conception is that intrepid journalists “discover” news stories by acting on anonymous tips or defying authority to root out corruption. In truth, much of the news comes from press releases or advertisers hawking products in the guise of legitimate news events. With companies slashing newsroom budgets in service to the bottom line, access to “cheap copy” becomes all the more alluring. 

“Furthermore, in a system of high and growing inequality, entertainment is the contemporary equivalent of the Roman ‘games of the circus’ that diverts the public from politics and generates a political apathy that is helpful to preservation of the status quo.”

The whole point of a free and independent press is to keep the public engaged and aware. The authors argue that it does just the opposite. The mainstream media, rife with “infotainment” (particularly egregious on social media) that serves to distract rather than inform, works like a sleight-of-hand trick, pulling eyes away from the real story to focus on the diversion. That distraction has arguably grown worse since the publication of Manufacturing Consent; the majority of Americans—86% according to a Pew Research poll conducted in 2020—now get their news from devices that provide access to so much decontextualized information, they serve as little more than distraction machines. 

“The Times was not alone in following a misleading party line, but it is notable that this paper of record has yet to acknowledge its exceptional gullibility and propaganda service.” 

When The New York Times erroneously reported that Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish man who tried to assassination Pope John Paul II, had ties to the Bulgarian secret police—and by extension to the Soviet Union—it did so not in the service of truth but of an anticommunist ideology. That The Times, considered one of the most reliable and oft-cited news sources in the world, is guilty of such a propaganda effort is disturbing indeed. If one cannot trust The New York Times, Herman and Chomsky imply, there are few sources one can.

“In the years since 1988, structural changes have not been favorable to improved performance, but it remains a central truth that democratic politics requires a democratization of information sources and a more democratic media.” 

Herman and Chomsky first published Manufacturing Consent in 1988—pre-Internet and pre-social media—although they have updated it for the 21st century and argue that the propaganda model still holds true. The “structural changes” to which they refer are loosened antitrust laws, which have permitted ever greater media conglomeration. The lifeblood of a healthy democracy is diversity of opinion, but that is in short supply when a handful of companies dictate what is and is not the news. The internet, while sounding a death knell for print journalism, might have supplied much of that diversity, but the internet is also a collection of businesses. Digital entrepreneurs have learned to monetize nearly everything online, including the news, which brings us right back to where we started—consuming only the news that doesn’t hurt the bottom line. 

“The raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print.”

This succinct description of the propaganda model and its filtering process expresses precisely the dangers of the current media system. Reliable and important news must risk being uncomfortable and challenging to the status quo. Change only happens in the face of adversity, and the job of an independent press is to report on that adversity with open eyes. A “cleansed residue” leaves people comfortable, satisfied, and easily distracted by whatever the media dangles in front of them. The use of the words “fit to print” is a not-so-subtle dig, once again, at The New York Times and its motto, “All the news that’s fit to print.”

“With advertising, the free market does not yield a neutral system in which final buyer choice decides. The advertisers’ choices influence media prosperity and survival.” 

Before advertising, newspapers relied on sales alone to cover production costs. When newspapers began to charge for ads, they had a big financial advantage—they could charge less and sell more, which drove out of business papers that could not attract advertisers. Of course, the ad revenue model came at a price—papers were no longer independent. Beholden as they were to the whims and priorities of their advertisers’ bottom line, and fearful that any negative press might cause an advertiser to withdraw their support, news outlets gradually became champions of big business and the government rather than their adversary.

“It is very difficult to call authorities on whom one depends for daily news liars, even if they tell whoppers.” 

Journalists rely on sources for inside information and quotable material. A quote is the news equivalent of a peer-reviewed source in academic writing. This is how consumers know—as much as they can know—that the reporter isn’t fabricating the information. If a journalist finds their “official” source engaged in deception, they may suppress or tone down that criticism for fear of losing access. Being able to quote, say, a Pentagon insider is extremely valuable to a reporter’s credibility; if that insider is leading the reporter astray, they risk severing that connection in service to the greater good.

“This is a good point, and one that we stress throughout this book: villainy may be constrained by intense publicity. But we also stress the corresponding importance of a refusal to publicize and the leeway this gives murderous clients under the protection of the United States and its media, where the impact of publicity would be far greater.” 

When the killers of Polish priest Jerzy Popieluszko were indicted and tried shortly after the crime, The New York Times attributed the swift carriage of justice to “agitation at home and abroad that put a limit on villainy” (44). The Times was partially responsible for this agitation thanks to its constant drumbeat of outrage and demands for justice. Conversely, the media’s muted response to similar killings in Central America had the opposite effect—delaying the arrest and conviction of the killers when ample evidence of their identities existed. The media gave the U.S.-supported military responsible for the killings in Central America leeway to evade responsibility, and it is this hypocrisy that the authors deplore.

“As with other right-wing satellites, ‘improvement’ is always found at money-crunch time.” 

When the U.S. supports oppressive regimes, it must occasionally own up to the harsh truth of its clients’ behavior. It would be an obvious lie to claim, for example, that the Duarte regime in Guatemala was untainted by corruption or state terror. To do so would cast doubt on the government’s credibility. A more effective strategy is to acknowledge “problems” but then claim “progress” in the face of challenging conditions. Note that “challenging conditions” is so vague as to shift responsibility away from the client themselves. This strategy is particularly useful when presenting an optimistic face for Congress, which controls the funding to these clients. 

“With Guatemala, the United States invented the ‘counterinsurgency state.’” 

Guatemala holds a special place in the authors’ critical eye. Relentlessly brutal American “assistance” (police and military advisors, and the commission of ground troops) has kept the country in a constant state of terror. With unpopular governments—especially that of Jose Napoleon Duarte—always at risk of a populist coup, they have relied on the U.S. for strategic assistance to hold these rebellions at bay, usually by oppressing their own citizens.

“This illuminating document was ignored in our media sample, except the New York Times, which gave it a three-inch article on page 7 under the benign title “Rights Group Faults U.S. on Guatemala Situation.” 

The human-rights group Americas Watch issued a report on violence in Guatemala entitled Guatemala Revisited: How the Reagan Administration Finds ‘Improvement’ in Human Rights in Guatemala.” The study included an admission by the State Department that its support of Guatemalan strongmen, and by extension their terrorist tactics, had been a mistake. In a classic error of omission, most media outlets failed to report this significant part of the report. Only the Times mentioned it, but with a headline so benign (note the use of the neutral “Situation”) it doesn’t capture the true horror of the citizens’ daily experience.

“Central to demonstration-election management has been the manipulation of symbols and agenda to give the favored election a positive image.” 

Selling a foreign election to American audiences is important because the U.S. government must maintain the illusion that it is always on the side of decency. One of the key strategies is to use the word democracy when referring to elections in client states. The U.S. and its media allies create a narrative of courageous and resilient citizens braving dangerous conditions and fighting for the right to vote—a right heartily supported by the military government. In truth, however, the U.S. often aids and abets those dangerous conditions, and the “supportive” military is often more of a deterrent than a support system. 

“‘The United States is not obliged to apply the same standard of judgment to a country whose government is avowedly hostile to the U.S. as for a country like El Salvador, where it is not. These people [the Sandinistas] could bring about a situation in Central America which could pose a threat to U.S security. That allows us to change our yardstick.” 

This, from a “senior U.S. official,” highlights the blatant hypocrisy underlying much of America’s foreign policy in Central America. The U.S., the official argues, is free to apply one standard of treatment to a “friendly” country and another to a country it perceives as a threat. Of course, perceptions are arbitrary, and what the U.S defines as a threat may be simply a country exercising its independence from U.S. meddling. 

“In the propaganda framework, the security forces of client states ‘protect elections’; only those of enemy states interfere with the freedom of its citizens to vote without constraint.” 

The U.S.’s endorsement of elections as legitimate—or condemnation as illegitimate—ignores a host of on-the-ground conditions that determine the ease with which citizens are able to vote. Conditions like opportunities to register, dissemination of candidate information, the ideological diversity of candidates on the ballot, and the presence of voting restrictions all play a significant role in the legitimacy of an election. The media, however, too often doesn’t take these details into account when covering a foreign election, choosing instead to parrot the official government narrative with broad generalizations. 

“The article closes with a quote from an opposition figure: ‘[Sandinista leader Daniel] Ortega is not the last President in Central America who wears a military uniform, and the contrast is going to be evident.’” 

Stephen Kinzer, reporting on Nicaraguan elections for the New York Times, quotes a source opposed to the populist Sandinista leader. His reference to a leader in military garb is a rhetorically potent one to an American audience. It brings up associations with another communist leader in uniform—Fidel Castro, a longtime foe of the U.S.—while reinforcing the image of Central America as a place governed by military strongmen. Kinzer leaves out some important context: both Ortega’s popularity with the poor and the fact that the U.S. willingly supported other military leaders in the region with far more oppressive records than Ortega.

“LASA [Latin American Studies Association] actually contacted the major mass-media outlets and tried to interest them in doing a story on their report. LASA was turned down by every major outlet.” 

LASA, a professional association whose mission is the study of individuals and institutions in Latin America, issued a report on the contrasting elections in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Contrary to the U.S. government/mass media narrative, the report found that by a variety of metrics, the election in Nicaragua was more open, fair, and “pluralistic” than those in either El Salvador or Guatemala. This undermined the legitimacy of elections in U.S. client states, and therefore, the mass media was not interested. 

“As one network official told one of the authors, if a critic of the Bulgarian Connection were allowed on the air, the official would ‘have to make sure that every i was dotted and t crossed; but with Sterling, there were no problems.’”

Writing for The Reader’s Digest, journalist Claire Sterling promoted the unsubstantiated theory that Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish extremist who shot Pope John Paul II, had received training and support from the Bulgarian secret police. This was a favored narrative because it cast Bulgaria and its benefactor, the Soviet Union, in a bad light. In one of the subtler workings of the Propaganda Model, Sterling’s allegations were taken at face value while opposition voices were subject to intense scrutiny. 

“Douglas Pike assessed indigenous support for the NLF at about 50 percent of the population at the time—which is more than George Washington could have claimed—while the United States could rally virtually no indigenous support.”

Pike, the “leading U.S. government specialist on Vietnamese Communism” (180), conceded that the insurgency movement in South Vietnam desired a political rather than a military solution. This was a smart strategy for the NLF (National Liberation Front), which enjoyed great popular support. In a clever bit of rhetoric, the authors equate the support of George Washington—assumed by most Americans to be widespread—with that of the NLF. This undermines the official narrative of the U.S. as having the support of the South Vietnamese against the communist invaders. 

“The United States was ‘defending South Vietnam’ in the same sense in which the Soviet Union is ‘defending Afghanistan.’” 

The publication of Manufacturing Consent (1988) coincided with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a war seen by the West as aggression against a weaker foe with little provocation. The authors argue there was little difference between Soviet aggression in Afghanistan and U.S. aggression in Vietnam, despite the dichotomous treatment in the press and the outrage from the Reagan administration, which failed to recognize the similarities. 

“Recourse to violence was the only feasible response to the successes of the Viet Minh, reconstituted as the National Liberation Front (NLF), in organizing the peasantry, which left the United States only one option: to shift the struggle away from the political arena, where it was weak, to the arena of violence, where it was strong.”

The authors argue consistently that, despite official declarations and media support, the U.S. had little popular support for its favored regime in Vietnam. The American government understood this, which is why it undermined a political settlement, subverted attempts to hold free elections, and encouraged a ground war. With no hope for a peaceful solution in its favor, the U.S. resorted to a military one, which it mistakenly assumed it could win with superior firepower. Ironically, the U.S. made the same mistake as the British did when they assumed their superior army could easily stamp out an insurgency in the American Colonies. 

“Only the most ardent researcher could have developed a moderately clear understanding of what was taking place in Indochina.” 

Foreign affairs are intricate and complicated. Much of what the public sees is the result of behind-the-scenes wrangling, negotiating, and coercion. It is unrealistic to expect the average citizen with only average access to information—primarily from the mainstream media—to have a full understanding of events on the other side of the world. This is why an independent press is so crucial. The authors, both academics, have spent years analyzing the minutiae of media coverage of Vietnam, but most people don’t have the time or the inclination to do that. Naturally, public opinion on the war largely dovetailed with media reporting on it. 

“‘The relative bloodlessness of the war depicted on television helps to explain why only a minority in the Lou Harris-Newsweek poll said that television increased their dissatisfaction of the war’; such coverage yielded an impression, Epstein adds, of ‘a clean, effective technological war,’ which was ‘rudely shaken at Tet in 1968.’” 

Vietnam has been called the first “televised war.” For the first time in history, citizens not directly involved in the conflict could see footage up close. Like text, however, video images can be sanitized for public consumption. The masses only see what editors (or the Pentagon) choose for them to see, which creates the impression of totality. If the evening news only shows American GIs casually socializing with Vietnamese children, for example, those images reinforce the propaganda that the U.S. is on a mission of mercy. Not until footage of the Tet Offensive was broadcast did Americans get a realistic idea of the brutality and bloodshed of the war. Similar charges resurfaced during the first Gulf War, in which grainy images of “smart” bombs leveling buildings (with no visible carnage) created the impression that no one was killed during those bombing runs. 

“In summary, the national media, overcome by jingoist passion, failed to provide even minimally adequate coverage of this crucial event, although appropriate skepticism would have been aroused in the mind of the reader of the foreign or ‘alternative’ media.” 

Herman and Chomsky claim that the media utterly mishandled the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the catalyst that prompted America to send ground troops into Vietnam. The American mainstream media omitted key facts and ignored important opposition voices, all in service to a hawkish administration that saw no option but a military one. On the other hand, European media such as Le Monde and alternative media such as The National Guardian did report the facts accurately and asked relevant questions. Unfortunately, few Americans read the foreign press or the left-wing journals.