Chomsky and the media

Chomsky has become a big figure. Politically speaking he has challenged the status of the general believe that the mass media communication enterprises provide information. Instead he has pointed out that their main product is to ‘construct consent’.

What in earth that means? Well in my very limited understanding of the problem I believe that it is the utilisation of the tools communication industry provides to influence and direct public opinion, either in favour of someone’s cause or against that of other’s.

==Chomsky and the media



Next is a sample of Chomsky’s book chapter one, ‘Necessary Illusions
Thought Control in Democratic Societies’. Full version of the book can be read from Chomsky’s website at: http://www.chomsky.info/

Democracy and the Media

Under the heading "Brazilian bishops support plan to democratize media," a church-based South American journal describes a proposal being debated in the constituent assembly that "would open up Brazil's powerful and highly concentrated media to citizen participation." "Brazil's Catholic bishops are among the principal advocates [of this]...legislative proposal to democratize the country's communications media," the report continues, noting that "Brazilian TV is in the hands of five big networks [while]...eight huge multinational corporations and various state enterprises account for the majority of all communications advertising." The proposal "envisions the creation of a National Communications Council made up of civilian and government representatives [that]...would develop a democratic communications policy and grant licenses to radio and television operations." "The Brazilian Conference of Catholic Bishops has repeatedly stressed the importance of the communications media and pushed for grassroots participation. It has chosen communications as the theme of its 1989 Lenten campaign," an annual "parish-level campaign of reflection about some social issue" initiated by the Bishops' Conference.

The questions raised by the Brazilian bishops are being seriously discussed in many parts of the world. Projects exploring them are under way in several Latin American countries and elsewhere. There has been discussion of a "New World Information Order" that would diversify media access and encourage alternatives to the global media system dominated by the Western industrial powers. A UNESCO inquiry into such possibilities elicited an extremely hostile reaction in the United States.2 The alleged concern was freedom of the press. Among the questions I would like to raise as we proceed are: just how serious is this concern, and what is its substantive content? Further questions that lie in the background have to do with a democratic communications policy: what it might be, whether it is a desideratum, and if so, whether it is attainable. And, more generally, just what kind of democratic order is it to which we aspire?

The concept of "democratizing the media" has no real meaning within the terms of political discourse in the United States. In fact, the phrase has a paradoxical or even vaguely subversive ring to it. Citizen participation would be considered an infringement on freedom of the press, a blow struck against the independence of the media that would distort the mission they have undertaken to inform the public without fear or favor. The reaction merits some thought. Underlying it are beliefs about how the media do function and how they should function within our democratic systems, and also certain implicit conceptions of the nature of democracy. Let us consider these topics in turn.

The standard image of media performance, as expressed by Judge Gurfein in a decision rejecting government efforts to bar publication of the Pentagon Papers, is that we have "a cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press," and that these tribunes of the people "must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know." Commenting on this decision, Anthony Lewis of the New York Times observes that the media were not always as independent, vigilant, and defiant of authority as they are today, but in the Vietnam and Watergate eras they learned to exercise "the power to root about in our national life, exposing what they deem right for exposure," without regard to external pressures or the demands of state or private power. This too is a commonly held belief.

There has been much debate over the media during this period, but it does not deal with the problem of "democratizing the media" and freeing them from the constraints of state and private power. Rather, the issue debated is whether the media have not exceeded proper bounds in escaping such constraints, even threatening the existence of democratic institutions in their contentious and irresponsible defiance of authority. A 1975 study on "governability of democracies" by the Trilateral Commission concluded that the media have become a "notable new source of national power," one aspect of an "excess of democracy" that contributes to "the reduction of governmental authority" at home and a consequent "decline in the influence of democracy abroad." This general "crisis of democracy," the commission held, resulted from the efforts of previously marginalized sectors of the population to organize and press their demands, thereby creating an overload that prevents the democratic process from functioning properly. In earlier times, "Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers," so the American rapporteur, Samuel Huntington of Harvard University, reflected. In that period there was no crisis of democracy, but in the 1960s, the crisis developed and reached serious proportions. The study therefore urged more "moderation in democracy" to mitigate the excess of democracy and overcome the crisis.

Putting it in plain terms, the general public must be reduced to its traditional apathy and obedience, and driven from the arena of political debate and action, if democracy is to survive.

The Trilateral Commission study reflects the perceptions and values of liberal elites from the United States, Europe, and Japan, including the leading figures of the Carter administration. On the right, the perception is that democracy is threatened by the organizing efforts of those called the "special interests," a concept of contemporary political rhetoric that refers to workers, farmers, women, youth, the elderly, the handicapped, ethnic minorities, and so on -- in short, the general population. In the U.S. presidential campaigns of the 1980s, the Democrats were accused of being the instrument of these special interests and thus undermining "the national interest," tacitly assumed to be represented by the one sector notably omitted from the list of special interests: corporations, financial institutions, and other business elites.

The charge that the Democrats represent the special interests has little merit. Rather, they represent other elements of the "national interest," and participated with few qualms in the right turn of the post-Vietnam era among elite groups, including the dismantling of limited state programs designed to protect the poor and deprived; the transfer of resources to the wealthy; the conversion of the state, even more than before, to a welfare state for the privileged; and the expansion of state power and the protected state sector of the economy through the military system -- domestically, a device for compelling the public to subsidize high-technology industry and provide a state-guaranteed market for its waste production. A related element of the right turn was a more "activist" foreign policy to extend U.S. power through subversion, international terrorism, and aggression: the Reagan Doctrine, which the media characterize as the vigorous defense of democracy worldwide, sometimes criticizing the Reaganites for their excesses in this noble cause. In general, the Democratic opposition offered qualified support to these programs of the Reagan administration, which, in fact, were largely an extrapolation of initiatives of the Carter years and, as polls clearly indicate, with few exceptions were strongly opposed by the general population.
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However, I would have to say that not all people working inside the media industry pursue the aim Chomsky clearly explains. A good couple of examples are these following videos; the first is a bout Jean Dominique Louissaint a journalist whose struggle focused on bringing information to Haitian people. As Jean described these activities, it was a ‘risky business’ in which journalist at radio Haiti own life was at stake. Jean’s life was often targeted until; finally some assassin bullets reached him. However, and as frequently happens when somebody honest dies, his example serves to Haitians as a guide in their fight for their freedom. It is an excellent documentary.

Here is the documentary,

==The agronomist,



The other example I wanted to refer to is an investigation on a massacre leaded by US personnel. The documentary shows Afghan Taliban fighting Afghan soldiers supported and leaded by US and British soldiers. This battle is the outcome of an uprising of Taliban prisoners who managed to kill guards and start the rebellion. Those prisoners came to gave up and were secured and promised to take to jail where no one was going to hurt them.

Despite all that, after the uprising warlords were angry at them and decided otherwise. Thousands were killed in containers while transferring to a prison and their bodies spread all over a big deserted land.

Of course, the official truth by US government is that they didn’t know anything about those events and that their personnel have no involvement in any massacre. Afghan government, in turn, shows some desire in bringing warlords to ‘justice’ but its tragedy is that it is too weak to challenge the real power in Afghanistan: the warlords. As with Saddam, United States sponsor those men and provide full ‘technical support’.

The journalistic part of the documentary moves in a very dangerous terrain. The researcher of the team in Afghanistan was beaten while trying to get some incriminatory videos of the killings.

==Afghan massacre by US personnel video



All in all, it seems to me that Chomsky makes the most important point in finger pointing mass media as a sort of machinery for brainwashing. Our point, and it is not attempting to challenge but to contribute to what Chomsky have said is that at the margins of that industry there are few valuable efforts that bring a bit of hope for the general opinion in having alternative views of the world we live in,… or rather we die in,…