Manufacturing Consent
I think the central premise of this book is extremely compelling, and it gives a large number of examples to prove its point. I guess I was a little surprised, as well, that the general philosophy is not particularly interested in assigning intent to the press it’s criticizing, and at times (although I think this was less well fleshed-out) explains some ways in which the manufacturing of consent, the “propaganda model”, is almost inevitable simply because of how the information ecosystem is managed by those in power.
It does spend a lot of time on specific events, which is fine but also I think left room for the criticism that there was an axe to grind. Even though it’s been updated and revised, it’s still largely focused on things half a century ago, and while I think the book made few excuses for the actions what could be considered ideological allies on the left (the main argument is generally “here are similar bad things that happened, one under a communist government, and one under that of a generally-right-leaning American ally, and here’s how coverage differed”) it did, at times, read as defense.
And for me, as someone who was born after much of this took place, I didn’t have solid footing for judging how much of the information coming my way had its own ideological slant, so I was forced to take much of it at face value. That worked best in cases where direct quotes were at play—for example juxtaposing a right-wing think tank’s criticism of Vietnam War coverage with the actual things people inside the US Government had been saying at the time, and showing that if anything, press coverage was rosier than the internal narrative.
I think that while the events discussed were from a different era, the most maddening thing in this book is watching how the right is still trying to work the refs in exactly the same way, and actually getting results—see, for example, the recent changes at CBS. It’s been longer than my lifetime that smart people have been pointing out the harm that things like access journalism can do, and the way in which the media is manipulated by the government and especially by right-wing and military interests; and yet we still have pillars of the news world standing firm on the idea that actually, the media has a left-wing bias problem. So much of the debate we’re hearing today was already well-trodden ground when this book was first published almost 40 years ago, and that’s … bleak.