Book SummaryManufacturing Consent, by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Manufacturing Consent

In Manufacturing Consent, authors Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman explore how the American media frames events and creates narratives that serve the interests of the nation’s political, economic, and social elite.

They argue that control of the media in the United States does not take the form of direct state censorship or a formal conspiracy to manage the news. Rather, there is a powerful set of informal restrictions and controls that limit what journalists cover—and how they cover it.

The authors argue that this co-opting of the media happens through an informal, decentralized, yet highly effective propaganda model. They support this theory by exploring the media’s close connections to the nation’s social and economic elite, the financial incentives of big media conglomerates, how news outlets source their stories, and how the mainstream press suppresses divergent and nonconformist views.

Journalists Also Face Formal Government Censorship

Although Chomsky and Herman are mainly concerned with informal, non-state-directed control of the media, there have been recent incidents that have featured the United States government directly interfering with journalists. In 2013, the Obama administration subpoenaed the phone records of close to 100 Associated Press journalists as part of a probe into a story about a CIA operation in Yemen. The Trump administration likewise tried to obtain journalists' communications by seeking email records from New York Times reporters and then placing a gag order on the newspaper, forbidding it from revealing the request.

Incidents like this show that the media is not immune to governmental interference, but Chomsky and Herman’s focus on the more informal pressures that media outlets face implies they believe these pressures are perhaps more dangerous because they're less visible.

Noam Chomsky is a leading public intellectual, linguist, historian, political activist, and social critic. A major figure in the study of language, Chomsky is an intellectual pioneer of groundbreaking linguistics theories such as universal grammar and generative grammar. Long known for his left-leaning political views,...

Manufacturing Consent Summary The Media Is a Tool of Elite Control

Chomsky and Herman assert that the free press is crucial to the success of a democratic system of government. After all, citizens in a representative democracy need timely and accurate information to make well-informed decisions and participate in self-government.

But, they argue, the American press has failed to meet this need. Instead of working to properly inform the public, the media’s coverage of events reflects and reinforces the political and economic views of the nation’s ruling class.

The authors argue that powerful interests—like politicians, military officials, wealthy media executives, and advertisers—act as media gatekeepers by wielding both financial and political power, thus determining what news is reported, what the public is allowed to see, and the range of opinions that can be expressed and represented in mainstream news outlets.

The Decline of Media Gatekeepers and the Rise of Misinformation

The indirect censorship of media content by political and economic elites can be dangerous to the healthy functioning of a free press and a democratic society. But recent developments have shown that the opposite can also pose a threat to a stable...

Manufacturing Consent Summary The Financial Incentives of the Media Business

Chomsky and Herman argue that the elite control of the media has only grown stronger as media companies have merged into powerful corporate conglomerates, thereby reducing competition and giving powerful economic interests a strong incentive to control what the media reports.

The Rise of Mass Media

According to Chomsky and Herman, large media conglomerates are a powerful filtering system for what does and doesn’t get reported. They argue that this censorship function of for-profit media can be traced back to the 19th century and the rise of the first mass daily newspapers in Europe and the United States.

During this era, the print news business began to grow increasingly profitable. This was in large part due to rising urbanization as a result of the Industrial Revolution, which consolidated potential subscribers into more geographically compact cities and large towns, where it was easier, more cost-effective, and more scalable to deliver newspapers than it was to sparsely populated rural communities. Likewise, rising literacy rates created vast new pools of potential customers.

In such a market, large, well-funded papers had an advantage because they could exploit...

Manufacturing Consent Summary The Need for Sources and Content

Chomsky and Herman write that mass media relies on political and economic elites for sources and content, giving these groups another means by which they can shape news content.

Media outlets need enough content to fill airtime in a competitive, 24-hour news environment, but even the biggest media outlets can’t have reporters and camera crews stationed in all places at all times to record anything newsworthy that might be happening.

Therefore, reporters heavily rely on sources that can consistently provide content—namely, members of Congress, the White House, large corporations, the Pentagon, and other centers of economic and political power. These large, powerful institutions are able to provide consistent content because they have the financial resources to run sophisticated public relations departments dedicated to issuing press releases and hiring spokespeople. In this way, they provide a crucial component that the business model of the...

Manufacturing Consent Summary The Suppression of Adversarial Media

The authors argue that powerful government and corporate figures have multiple tactics at their disposal to discredit, harass, intimidate, and, ultimately, suppress media outlets and individual journalists that threaten them.

Tactic #1: Cutting Off Access

Chomsky and Herman write that when media outlets or individual reporters produce coverage that portrays powerful institutions or individuals in a positive light, they’re rewarded with more access—scoops, credentials to press conferences, soundbites, and exclusive interviews. This gives these journalists a competitive advantage over their rivals.

Likewise, powerful institutions and individuals can punish media sources they dislike by cutting off their access to exclusive content, allowing them to be scooped by their rivals. For example, in 2017, Trump administration press secretary Sean Spicer barred multiple mainstream news outlets from White House press briefings, citing what he deemed as unfavorable and biased coverage against the administration. The barred outlets included the New York Times, Politico, CNN,...

Shortform Exercise: Analyze Your Media Consumption

Think about how and where you get your news.

Where do you primarily get your news from (television, print media, social media)?

Shortform Exercise: Explore Media Manipulation

Think about how the government and powerful corporations influence the media.

Do you think it’s possible for the news to achieve some standard of objectivity or truth, or do you think news coverage is inevitably biased? Explain your answer.