Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

by Edward S. Herman

Insofar as there is debate among dominant elites, it will be reflected within the media, which in this narrow sense may adopt an “adversarial stance” with regard to those holding office, reflecting elite dissatisfaction with current policy. Otherwise the media will depart from the elite consensus only rarely and in limited ways. Even when large parts of the general public break free of the premises of the doctrinal system, as finally happened during the Indochina wars, real understanding based upon an alternative conception of the evolving history can be developed only with considerable effort by the most diligent and skeptical. And such understanding as can be reached through serious and often individual effort will be difficult to sustain or apply elsewhere, an extremely important matter for those who are truly concerned with democracy at home and “the influence of democracy abroad,” in the real sense of these words.