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    Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
    Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
    Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
    Ebook78 pages1 hour

    Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

    By Noam Chomsky

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    Noam Chomsky’s backpocket classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control begins by asserting two models of democracy—one in which the public actively participates, and one in which the public is manipulated and controlled. According to Chomsky, "propaganda is to democracy as the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state," and the mass media is the primary vehicle for delivering propaganda in the United States. From an examination of how Woodrow Wilson’s Creel Commission "succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population," to Bush Sr.'s war on Iraq, Chomsky examines how the mass media and public relations industries have been used as propaganda to generate public support for going to war. Chomsky further touches on how the modern public relations industry has been influenced by Walter Lippmann’s theory of "spectator democracy," in which the public is seen as a "bewildered herd" that needs to be directed, not empowered; and how the public relations industry in the United States focuses on "controlling the public mind," and not on informing it. Media Control is an invaluable primer on the secret workings of disinformation in democratic societies.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSeven Stories Press
    Release dateJan 4, 2011
    ISBN9781609800154
    Author

    Noam Chomsky

    Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia in 1928 and studied at the university of Pennsylvania. Known as one of the principal founders of transformational-generative grammar, he later emerged as a critic of American politics. He wrote and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues. He is now a Professor of Linguistics at MIT, and the author of over 150 books.

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    Reviews for Media Control

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    • 4/5
      An enjoyable book by Noam Chomsky, the first I have read by him. We live in a world where propaganda drives us, and it is almost impossible to know what the truth is. Noam Chomsky spent the first pages describing how propaganda began around World War I.

      Most of his examples are American, but if you read well, you will draw lessons for your own country. Since the book was published, social media's rise has made propaganda even more effective and insidious.

      In the second section of the book, which is a talk he gave, he assumes a Martian has come to earth and is reporting everything he sees. There is a delicious irony in this section, which is worth reading

      The book is an essential read, especially for the times we live in.
    • 5/5
      READ IT!!!!

      That really is all that needs to be said and, for once, the use of a plethora of exclamation marks is justified: indeed, one could argue that I haven't used nearly enough.

      Having said that 'Read It!!!' is all that needs to be said, I have never let the superfluity of my words halt a stream of verbiage, and I am not about to start. This is more a pamphlet, than a book, reaching only 100 pages. Do not let this fool you, I have struggled through works of a thousand plus pages and been less enlightened at the conclusion. The section upon the early history of propaganda is only two pages but, were I to learn it word for word, my input to any discussion of media control would be improved exponentially.

      The author, Noam Chomsky, is American and the book concentrates upon American media. This would usually be a downside to the arguments but, in this case, the parallels between Britain and US media control are so close that the points are accentuated rather than diminished. This really is a must read work.
    • 5/5
      This little book (more of a pamphlet, actually) might be my favourite one by Chomsky. It is an introduction to a subject that is extremely important for modern America. Due to the lack of examples, notes and appendices, it is much more concise and readable than Chomsky's other works on media and propaganda. Of course, the readability comes at a cost - this is not one of Chomsky's typically thorough academic treatments. One should still have a look at his more comprehensive works to become familiar with all of the evidence supporting his claims in Media Control.
    • 5/5
      Around 2005 I cataloged a video for the library where I work. In 1990 Edward Bernays, the creator of public relations as we presently understand it, spoke at my school. He was about 100 years old at the time and died a few years later. He gave a fascinating talk and although all that happened was a staionary camera focused on him as he told stories for a couple of hours I took a bit longer to catalog the tape for having found myself taken up with the narrative. He told a story about World War I in which he mentioned, only in passing, that at the time he was doing some "work as a civilian advisor' to the War Department. He did not say "the Creel Commission," which leads me to believe that he at least had some idea that many view his work as something other than noble or admirable. If he thought his work good and honorable, why did he talk about anything else but how he helped invent propaganda and worked to bring the United States into the First World War.

      This book by Chomsky provides the background and context to help understand how one of the father's of propaganda would evade credit (or blame?) while telling the story of public relations. Unlike his longer books, this one proves very easy to read and much more straight-forward. Small independent presses have, over the last 10 years or so, published short, pocket sized, books of Chomsky's thoughts on a given theme. When heavily edited, Chomsky comes across as far more accessible and understandable than in any of his larger works, such as Necessary Illusions or Manufacturing Consent.

      The word "Propoganda" has acquired a pejorative meaning. Those creating and disseminating it have a need to avoid having their life's work recognized for what it is. As such you read and hear numerous definitions of "propaganda" and various self-serving explanations of what does and does not constitute this type of communication. Chomsky takes most of the book to describe and define propaganda and place it in the context of U.S. history.

    Book preview

    Media Control - Noam Chomsky

    MEDIA CONTROL The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

    THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA in contemporary politics forces us to ask what kind of a world and what kind of a society we want to live in, and in particular in what sense of democracy do we want this to be a democratic society? Let me begin by counter-posing two different conceptions of democracy. One conception of democracy has it that a democratic society is one in which the public has the means to participate in some meaningful way in the management of their own affairs and the means of information are open and free. If you look up democracy in the dictionary you’ll get a definition something like that.

    An alternative conception of democracy is that the public must be barred from managing of their own affairs and the means of information must be kept narrowly and rigidly controlled. That may sound like an odd conception of democracy, but it’s important to understand that it is the prevailing conception. In fact, it has long been, not just in operation, but even in theory. There’s a long history that goes back to the earliest modern democratic revolutions in seventeenth century England which largely expresses this point of view. I’m just going to keep to the modern period and say a few words about how that notion of democracy develops and why and how the problem of media and disinformation enters within that context.

    EARLY HISTORY OF PROPAGANDA

    Let’s begin with the first modern government propaganda operation. That was under the Woodrow Wilson Administration. Woodrow Wilson was elected President in 1916 on the platform Peace Without Victory. That was right in the middle of the World War I. The population was extremely pacifistic and saw no reason to become involved in a European war. The Wilson administration was actually committed to war and had to do something about it. They established a government propaganda commission, called the Creel Commission, which succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population which wanted to destroy everything German, tear the Germans limb from limb, go to war and save the world. That was a major achievement, and it led to a further achievement. Right at that time and after the war the same techniques were used to whip up a hysterical Red Scare, as it was called, which succeeded pretty much in destroying unions and eliminating such dangerous problems as freedom of the press and freedom of political thought. There was very strong support from the media, from the business establishment, which in fact organized, pushed much of this work, and it was, in general, a great success.

    Among those who participated actively and enthusiastically in Wilson’s war were the progressive intellectuals, people of the John Dewey circle, who took great pride, as you can see from their own writings at the time, in having shown that what they called the more intelligent members of the community, namely, themselves, were able to drive a reluctant population into a war by terrifying them and eliciting jingoist fanaticism. The means that were used were extensive. For example, there was a good deal of fabrication of atrocities by the Huns, Belgian babies with their arms torn off, all sorts of awful things that you still read in history books. Much of it was invented by the British propaganda ministry, whose own commitment at the time, as they put it in their secret deliberations, was to direct the thought of most of the world. But more crucially they wanted to control the thought of the more intelligent members of the community in the United States, who would then disseminate the propaganda that they were concocting and convert the pacifistic country to wartime hysteria. That worked. It worked very well. And it taught a lesson: State propaganda, when supported by the educated classes and when no deviation is permitted from it, can have a big effect. It was a lesson learned by Hitler and many others, and it has been pursued to this day.

    SPECTATOR DEMOCRACY

    Another group that was impressed by these successes was liberal democratic theorists and leading media figures, like, for example, Walter Lippmann, who was the dean of American journalists, a major foreign and domestic policy critic and also a major theorist of liberal democracy. If you take a look at his collected essays, you’ll see that they’re subtitled something like A Progressive Theory of Liberal Democratic Thought. Lippmann was involved in these propaganda commissions and recognized their achievements. He argued that what he called a revolution in the art of democracy, could be used to manufacture consent, that is, to bring about agreement on the part of the public for things that they didn’t want by the new techniques of propaganda. He also thought that this was a good idea, in fact, necessary. It was necessary because, as he put it, the common interests elude public opinion entirely and can only be understood and managed by a specialized class of responsible men who are smart enough to figure things out.

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