Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

by Edward S. Herman

In a country whose citizenry values acknowledgement of sin and repentance, the turncoats are an important class of repentant sinners.

“Flak” refers to negative responses to a media statement or program.

It may take the form of letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits, speeches and bills before Congress, and other modes of complaint, threat, and punitive action. It may be organized centrally or locally, or it may consist of the entirely independent actions of individuals.

Television advertising is mainly of consumer goods that are readily subject to organized boycott.

The ability to produce flak, and especially flak that is costly and threatening, is related to power.

It therefore helps fragment the left and labor movements and serves as a political-control mechanism.

If the triumph of communism is the worst imaginable result, the support of fascism abroad is justified as a lesser evil.

Opposition to social democrats who are too soft on Communists and “play into their hands” is ra...

It should be noted that when anti-Communist fervor is aroused, the demand for serious evidence in support of claims of “communist” abuses is suspended, and charlatans can thrive as evidential sources. Defectors, informers, and assorted other opportunists move to center stage as “experts,” and they remain there even after exposure as highly unreliable, if not downright liars.113

Reports of the abuses of worthy victims not only pass through the filters; they may also become the basis of sustained propaganda campaigns.

Propaganda campaigns in general have been closely attuned to elite interests.

Conversely, propaganda campaigns will not be mobilized where victimization, even though massive, sustained, and dramatic, fails to meet the test of utility to elite interests.

If the other major media like the story, they will follow it up with their own versions, and the matter quickly becomes newsworthy by familiarity. If the articles are written in an assured and convincing style, are subject to no criticisms or alternative interpretations in the mass media, and command support by authority figures, the propaganda themes quickly become established as true even without real evidence. This tends to close out dissenting views even more comprehensively, as they would now conflict with an already established popular belief. This in turn opens up further opportunities for still more inflated claims, as these can be made without fear of serious repercussions. Similar wild assertions made in contradiction of official views would elicit powerful flak, so that such an inflation process would be controlled by the government and the market. No such protections exist with system-supportive claims; there, flak will tend to press the media to greater hysteria in the face of enemy evil.

If the theme collapses of its own burden of fabrications, the mass media will quietly fold their tents and move on to another topic.128

We would anticipate the uncritical acceptance of certain premises in dealing with self and friends—such as that one’s own state and leaders seek peace and democracy, oppose terrorism, and tell the truth—premises which will not be applied in treating enemy states.

Our hypothesis is that worthy victims will be featured prominently and dramatically, that they will be humanized, and that their victimization will receive the detail and context in story construction that will generate reader interest and sympathetic emotion. In contrast, unworthy victims will merit only slight detail, minimal humanization, and little context that will excite and enrage.

In sum, a propaganda approach to media coverage suggests a systematic and highly political dichotomization in news coverage based on serviceability to important domestic power interests.