Manufacturing Consent (film)

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Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media
Manufacturing Consent movie poster.jpg
Film poster
Directed by
Starring
Release date
  • 1992 (1992)
Running time
167 minutes
Countries
  • Australia
  • Finland
  • Norway
  • Canada
LanguageEnglish

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media [1] is a 1992 documentary film that explores the political life and ideas of linguist, intellectual, and political activist Noam Chomsky. Canadian filmmakers Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick expand the analysis of political economy and mass media presented in Manufacturing Consent , a 1988 book Chomsky wrote with Edward S. Herman.

Contents

Overview

The film presents and illustrates Chomsky and Herman's propaganda model thesis that corporate media, as profit-driven institutions, tend to serve and further the agendas and interests of dominant, elite groups in the society. A centerpiece of the film is a long examination of the history of The New York Times' coverage of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, which Chomsky says exemplifies the media's unwillingness to criticize an ally of the elite.

Until the release of The Corporation (2003), made by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan, it was the most successful feature documentary in Canadian history playing theatrically in over 300 cities around the world. It appeared in more than 50 international film festivals where it received 22 awards. It was broadcast on television in over 30 markets and translated into a dozen languages.

Chomsky confessed in an on-stage interview at the 2013 New York City Documentary festival that he has never actually seen the documentary because "I can't stand watching myself...but I'm told it was a pretty impressive film." [2] In a published conversation with Achbar and several activists, he stated that "the positive impact of it has been astonishing to me" but people mistakenly get the impression that he is the leader of a movement that they should join. He also criticizes The New York Times review of the film, which mistakes his message for being a call for voter organizing rather than for engaging in media critique and political action. [3]

Companion book

Mark Achbar edited a companion book of the same name. [4] It features a transcript of the film annotated with excerpts from referenced and relevant materials as well as several comments from Chomsky interspersed throughout. Eighteen "Philosopher All-Stars" baseball cards (as seen in the film) are also included. On the back of each card is a short summary of the person, titles of their major works, and a series of quotations attributed to the individual. The people featured as cards in the set are: René Descartes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Mary Wollstonecraft, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Sojourner Truth, Karl Marx, Sitting Bull, Rosa Luxemburg, Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Bertrand Russell, Michel Foucault, and Noam Chomsky. The book made the Globe and Mail national bestseller list in Canada.

The first half of the book, hyperlinked to the relevant portions of the film's audio, is available online from Z Magazine . The entire book is available as a PDF document on the Region 2 DVD of the film.

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>Manufacturing Consent</i> Non-fiction book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. It argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication. The title refers to consent of the governed, and derives from the phrase "the manufacture of consent" used by Walter Lippmann in Public Opinion (1922). The book was honored with the Orwell Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noam Chomsky</span> American linguist and activist (born 1928)

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and an Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, and politics. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.

Z Communications is a left-wing activist-oriented media group founded in 1986 by Michael Albert and Lydia Sargent. It is, in broad terms, ideologically libertarian socialist, anti-capitalist, and heavily influenced by participatory economics, although much of its content is focused on critical commentary of foreign affairs. Its publications include Z Magazine, ZNet, and Z Video. Since early November 2022, they have all been regrouped under the name ZNetwork.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Propaganda model</span> Conceptual model in political economy

The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky to explain how propaganda and systemic biases function in corporate mass media. The model seeks to explain how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social, and political policies, both foreign and domestic, is "manufactured" in the public mind due to this propaganda. The theory posits that the way in which corporate media is structured creates an inherent conflict of interest and therefore acts as propaganda for anti-democratic elements.

<i>Public Opinion</i> (book) 1922 book by Walter Lippmann

Public Opinion is a book by Walter Lippmann published in 1922. It is a critical assessment of functional democratic government, especially of the irrational and often self-serving social perceptions that influence individual behavior and prevent optimal societal cohesion. The detailed descriptions of the cognitive limitations people face in comprehending their sociopolitical and cultural environments, leading them to apply an evolving catalogue of general stereotypes to a complex reality, rendered Public Opinion a seminal text in the fields of media studies, political science, and social psychology.

Edward Samuel Herman was an American economist, media scholar and social critic. Herman is known for his media criticism, in particular the propaganda model hypothesis he developed with Noam Chomsky, a frequent co-writer. He held an appointment as Professor Emeritus of finance at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania and a media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy. He also taught at Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

<i>The Corporation</i> (2003 film) 2003 Canadian film

The Corporation is a 2003 Canadian documentary film written by University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan and filmmaker Harold Crooks, and directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. The documentary examines the modern-day corporation. Bakan wrote the book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, during the filming of the documentary.

Mark Achbar is a Canadian filmmaker, best known for The Corporation (2003) and Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1994).

Peter Kenneth Wintonick was a Canadian independent documentary filmmaker based in Montreal. A winner of the 2006 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts, former Thinker in Residence for the Premier of South Australia, prolific award-winning filmmaker, he was one of Canada's best known international documentarians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Political positions of Noam Chomsky</span> Views of the linguist on organized society

Noam Chomsky is an intellectual, political activist, and critic of the foreign policy of the United States and other governments. Noam Chomsky describes himself as an anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian socialist, and is considered to be a key intellectual figure within the left wing of politics of the United States.

<i>The Anti-Chomsky Reader</i> 2004 book edited by Peter Collier and David Horowitz

The Anti-Chomsky Reader is a 2004 anthology book about the linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky edited by Peter Collier and David Horowitz. Its contributors criticize Chomsky's political and linguistic writings, claiming that he cherry-picks facts to fit his theories.

<i>Orwell Rolls in His Grave</i> 2003 American film

Orwell Rolls in His Grave is a 2003 American documentary film directed by Robert Kane Pappas and written by Pappas and Tom Blackburn.

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.

This is a list of writings published by the American author Noam Chomsky.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antidote Films (Australia)</span> Australian film distributor

Antidote Films is a Brisbane-based independent film distributor, formerly known as Gil Scrine Films, specialising in arthouse films and social documentaries. Established in 1973 as a vehicle for distributing the documentaries of Gil Scrine, today the company is the Australian distributor for award winning films from all over the world.

Supportive selling environment is an environment which allows for commodities to appear in attractive light. The term was used by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their analysis of the propaganda model.

This is a bibliography of advertising.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cambodian genocide denial</span> Disbelief in Khmer Rouge atrocities

Cambodian genocide denial was the belief expressed by many Western academics that claims of atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge government (1975–1979) in Cambodia were much exaggerated. Many scholars of Cambodia and intellectuals opposed to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War denied or minimized the human rights abuses of the Khmer Rouge, characterizing contrary reports as "tales told by refugees" and U.S. propaganda. They viewed the assumption of power by the Communist Party of Kampuchea as a positive development for the people of Cambodia who had been severely impacted by the Vietnam War and the Cambodian Civil War. On the other side of the argument, anti-communists in the United States and elsewhere saw in the rule of the Khmer Rouge vindication of their belief that the victory of Communist governments in Southeast Asia would lead to a "bloodbath."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1992 Toronto International Film Festival</span>

The 17th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada between September 10 and September 19, 1992. Léolo was selected as the opening film.

<i>Requiem for the American Dream</i> 2017 book by Noam Chomsky

Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power is a book by political activist and linguist Noam Chomsky. It was created and edited by Peter Hutchinson, Kelly Nyks, and Jared P. Scott. It lays out Chomsky's analysis of neoliberalism. It focuses on the concentration of wealth and power in United States over the past forty years, analyzing the income inequality. The book was published by Seven Stories Press in 2017.

References

  1. Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky And The Media. (2009, February 21). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/dom-25409-manufacturingconsentnoamchomsk
  2. 'Noam Chomsky on Peter Wintonick'
  3. Noam Chomsky (2002). An Exchange on Manufacturing Consent. In Understanding Power. The New Press.
  4. Peter Wintonick and Mark Achbar, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1995.

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