Manufacturing+Consent

In //Manufacturing Consent// by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky the topic of what is deemed news is discussed. The book discusses the different ways in which the news is filtered. There are five filters that make up Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model. The first is the size, concentrated ownership, and the owner wealth, and profit of major mass-media firms. The second is the fact that advertising accounts for the primary income of the mass media. The third filter discusses the media’s reliance on the government, businesses, and experts for information. The fourth discusses entities which discipline the media and the fifth filter discusses using anticommunism as a means to control.

The book states that because we live in a monopolistic society those with money have control over what the media tells us as well as what is censored. There are few media outlets that solely criticize corporate entities or the government because they do not have the funds to get their message across. The government, for example, sends out large amounts of information on certain topics and that is the information journalists use to base their facts and create their pieces. Because the government is presumably credible due to money and status is it easier and less costly for a journalist to receive information from it without question. Information coming from government officials does not cause criticism or threats for news outlets. However, information which challenges what government officials say must be thoroughly checked and requires costly research. Also, few media outlets want to go against commonly held opinions on a regular basis because they will lose advertisers and thus lose their main source of income.

Because the media gets their information from the societal elite, they elite can then take advantage of this dependency. The elite can manipulate the media by providing various outlets with stories that create a certain public opinion on a matter. Also, the elite can provide information worthy of a story to phase unwanted stories out of the public eye and the media. The elite provide information which fosters commonly held opinions. Anyone who does the research to support these commonly held opinions becomes an expert. However, if another person, just as intelligent and who has done the same amount of research goes against commonly held opinions, they are not considered an expert. Furthermore, certain organizations try to attack the media using “flak”, which is a negative response to the media. They do this to ensure that the media reports on what they want the public to know and also to ensure that the media does not report on what the elite do not want society to know. No news can ever truly be trusted one hundred percent because it has been filtered in many different ways. The elite of society control the news and seemingly the elite always have an agenda.   **This is a good precis because you offer close description of key ideas here. But you don't identify what specific part of this book you are summarizing. Is this from Chapter 1?**  **Criteria for Evaluation**  +You have made an appropriate choice of reading matter that relates in some way to your research project. - can't tell what part you are summarizing since you don't include a citation  +Your precis offers a specific summary of the key arguments, information and ideas.  +You have followed the guidelines about writing a precis.  +The quality of the writing is perfect with no spelling, usage or grammatical errors  +Your precis is about 250 - 400 words in length.  GRADE: A-