Chomsky Manufacturing Consent

Liberal Arts 101

23 November 2011

Consent and Buying the War

“Manufacturing Consent” is an eye-opening experience. The two authors Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, offer a unique analysis of the social and corporate media in a way that shows how facts in the news and newspapers can be misguided and filtered. The first chapter in particular, “A Propaganda Model,” explains and gives examples of how exactly filters are set in place and what affects these filters have on information when it is being broadcasted to the people via the media. The chapter names and explains five specific filters which are titled ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak, and anticommunism.

“Buying the War” is a documentary that was broadcasted from PBS and can be relates to Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” because it is also a analysis of the news media. But the main focus of the video is the dispute of President George W. Bush and his administration’s decision on the invasion of Iraq. It is narrated by Bill Moyers, and gives the perception from journalists who were investigated during the time up to the invasion of Iraq. The documentary goes into detail of where mistakes were made in terms of reporting and journalism from the media and information that was reported, had little to no evidence backing it up and yet nobody in the press questioned otherwise.

I will be focusing on both “Manufacturing Consent” and “Buying The War” and comparing them to each other. I will explain the five filters and how they affect the medias ability to deliver information to the public. By using examples from “Buying The War” not only are Chomsky’s five filters being displayed in modern times, but it shows how they actually can work in favor of who controls the filters. So well in fact that the country of United States supported a war in Iraq with little evidence to back the motive.

What exactly is a filter? A filter explained by Chomsky is propaganda that is controlled by rich and powerful...