Transcript The Normal and the Weird

“… the norm is a belief that
freedom prevails, which is true
for those who have
internalized the required
values and perspectives.”
Chomsky and Herman,
Manufacturing Consent, p.
304.
Toronto Free Press, October 5-26, 2000
Lecture Summary
• Chomsky and Herman’s
“Propaganda Model”
• Hegemony (Antonio Gramsci)
• The West and the Rest - what has
taken the place of anticommunism
in the elite media?
Chomsky and Herman’s
“Propaganda Model”
• Noam Chomsky
• the “elite” (= bourgeois) media
• the role of the elite media is to
inculcate and defend the elite
agenda
The Five Filters
• ownership
• flak
• advertising
• anticommunism
• sourcing
– needs to be
replaced?
A “Free Market Model”
• There is no coercion
• There is no conspiracy
• Free press but within limits set by
consensus / “common sense”
• Unpalatable news is not
suppressed, but ignored or underreported
Structure and Intent
• Propaganda is structural
• Intent is an “unmeasurable red
herring”
– Hermann, p. 120
Media selectivity: Watergate
• Republicans spied on Democrats
• Democrats were solidly based in
the business community
• Media attacked the government
only when it threatened the
Democrats, not when it illegally
attacked the Socialist Workers
Party, black activists, etc.
Hegemony:
• “spontaneous” consent given by the
great masses of the population to
the general direction imposed on
social life by the dominant
fundamental group; this consent is
“historically”caused by the prestige
… which the dominant group
enjoys because of its position and
function in the world of production.”
– Antonio Gramsci
The West and the Rest
• Geopolitical divisions
–Not strictly geographic
• “West” coextensive with
bourgeois and pop culture?
–Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong
belong to the West?
Social networks in the “West”
• West – nuclear family; pop
culture supplies virtual
relationships (star system)
• the rest – premodern, political
factionalism overlaps with
family structure
Global and local capital
• conflict at the outskirts of the
West: the “emerging markets”
–Latin America
–India
–post-communist Russia
–Yugoslavia
A student in Belgrade after the fall of Milosevic
Hezbollah
• Western-style media “savvy”
combined with premodern
social networks
Issues:
• Is objective reporting possible?
• Is consent “false
consciousness”?
• Would people want something
different without the
propaganda?
• Is “manufacturing consent” not
better than jail and bullets?