[[Noam Chomsky]] Source : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11933489-manufacturing-consent It is our view that, among their other functions, the media serve, and propagandize on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 105-106 --- We believe that what journalists do, what they see as newsworthy, and what they take for granted as premises of their work are frequently well explained by the incentives, pressures, and constraints incorporated into such a structural analysis. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 116-118 --- The beauty of the system, however, is that such dissent and inconvenient information are kept within bounds and at the margins, so that while their presence shows that the system is not monolithic, they are not large enough to interfere unduly with the domination of the official agenda. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 123-125 --- It requires a macro, alongside a micro– (story-by-story), view of media operations, to see the pattern of manipulation and systematic bias. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 1148-1149 --- He contends that these “constitute a new Private Ministry of Information and Culture” that can set the national agenda. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 1189-1190 --- And they exercise the power of this strategic position, if only by establishing the general aims of the company and choosing its top management. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 1418-1419 --- These holdings, individually and collectively, do not convey control, but these large investors can make themselves heard, and their actions can affect the welfare of the companies and their managers.29 If the managers fail to pursue actions that favor shareholder returns, institutional investors will be inclined to sell the stock (depressing its price), or to listen sympathetically to outsiders contemplating takeovers. These investors are a force helping press media companies toward strictly market (profitability) objectives. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 1437-1440 --- In sum, the dominant media firms are quite large businesses; they are controlled by very wealthy people or by managers who are subject to sharp constraints by owners and other market-profit–oriented forces;40 and they are closely interlocked, and have important common interests, with other major corporations, banks, and government. This is the first powerful filter that will affect news choices. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 1685-1688 --- In short, the mass media are interested in attracting audiences with buying power, not audiences per se; it is affluent audiences that spark advertiser interest today, as in the nineteenth century. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 1733-1734 Notes: 1) the medi are taretting certain segment of population only --- Television networks learn over time that such programs will not sell and would have to be carried at a financial sacrifice, and that, in addition, they may offend powerful advertisers. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 1767-1768 --- It conditions the media to expect trouble (and cost increases) for violating right-wing standards of bias. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 2053-2053 --- propaganda campaigns will not be mobilized where victimization, even though massive, sustained, and dramatic, fails to meet the test of utility to elite interests. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 2164-2165 --- 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. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 2187-2188 --- Using a propaganda model, we would not only anticipate definitions of worth based on utility, and dichotomous attention based on the same criterion, we would also expect the news stories about worthy and unworthy victims (or enemy and friendly states) to differ in quality. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 2198-2200 --- Official observers Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 3525-3525 --- Their real function, however, is to provide the appearance of fairness by focusing on the government’s agenda and by channeling press attention to a reliable source.3 Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 3526-3527 --- Now the stress is on the hidden motives of the sponsors of the election, who are trying to legitimize themselves by this tricky device of a so-called election. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 3555-3557 --- candidates—attention is now shifted to the basic parameters that were off the agenda in the sponsored election. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 3559-3560 --- If we ask the deeper question of why these experts should predominate in the first place, we believe the answer must be found in the power of their sponsors and the congeniality of their views to the corporate community and the mainstream media. Their messages passed quite easily through the filters of a propaganda system. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 5151-5153 --- Our concern in this book has been to inquire into the relation between this image and the reality. In contrast to the standard conception of the media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and their independence of authority, we have spelled out and applied a propaganda model that indeed sees the media as serving a “societal purpose,” but not that of enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process by providing them with the information needed for the intelligent discharge of political responsibilities. On the contrary, a propaganda model suggests that the “societal purpose” of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 8189-8195 --- As we have stressed throughout this book, the U.S. media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit—indeed, encourage—spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalized largely without awareness. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 8289-8292 --- institutional bias of the private mass media “does not merely protect the corporate system. It robs the public of a chance to understand the real world.” Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 8305-8306 --- In essence, the private media are major corporations selling a product (readers and audiences) to other businesses (advertisers). Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 8309-8310 --- Given the imperatives of corporate organization and the workings of the various filters, conformity to the needs and interests of privileged sectors is essential to success. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 8315-8316 --- the norm is a belief that freedom prevails, which is true for those who have internalized the required values and perspectives. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 8325-8326 --- The result is a powerful system of induced conformity to the needs of privilege and power. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 8360-8361 --- the mass media of the United States 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 significant overt coercion. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 8362-8364 --- The public sector has continued to decline and suffer a forced integration into the commercial sector.4 Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 8409-8410 --- A further structural development that affects the applicability of the propaganda model is the growth of inequality. Inequality of income and wealth have both increased fairly steadily over the past several decades, through both Democratic (Clinton) and Republican (Reagan, Bush I and Bush II) administrations. Between 1983 and 2004 the wealth of the top 1 percent increased by 77.8 percent, while that of the bottom 40 percent fell 58.7 percent; and between 1982 and 2004 the income of the top 1 percent rose by 67.6 percent, while that of the bottom 40 percent rose by only 4.3 percent. Edward S.;Noam Chomsky Herman, Manufacturing Consent, loc. 8414-8418 ---