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NOAM CHOMSKY
American linguist and media critic in
the libertarian socialist tradition, e.g., see his Manufacturing
Consent, co-authored with Edward S.
Herman.
Chomsky holds to the "propaganda model" of the media's place in society
(see, e.g., Necessary Illusions). His position is that the media essentially are tools of the ruling elites of
capitalism and have little or no true basis to be considered
truly independent or neutral. For example, since c. 60 percent of mass
media "news" output is originated by P.R. firms, the media is often
little more than an extension of the nation-state/corporate public
relations industry.
The media, according to this
propaganda model, play a central role in enabling the powerful ruling
elites to manufacture the consent of the ruled in a
"democracy," and thereby control everything. (The term "Manufacturing
Consent" actually comes from Walter
Lippmann's 1922 work, Public Opinion. Lippmann, like his
contemporaries Harold
Lasswell and Edward Bernays, was no fan of mass,
representative democracy.)
The manufacturing of consent is
done because the public are too stupid to be left
to make the really important decisions about running the country. They
must therefore be fed the "necessary illusions," which act as
emotionally potent but misleading oversimplifications that obscure the
real reasons for government policy (a bit like false consciousness).
Thus when America and the West went to war against Iraq over the
invasions of Kuwait, the stated reason was to protect Kuwaiti freedom
and democracy, not to preserve cheap oil for the West. Thus the
running of the country is left to the rich and the powerful, following
the principle that, in the words of John Jay -- one of the Founders of
the American Republic and an author of the Federalist Papers --
"those who own the country should run it."
Chomsky's model
is often criticized for being oversimplistic and
overdeterministic. His message does, however, resonate with many
of those who see the constantly expanding corporatization of American
(and global) media as a real problem. Unfortunately, Chomsky is unable
to propose a clearly effective antidote to this capitalist control of
mass media, and ultimately he relies on media critics' power to
disclose the extent of media propaganda, together with support for
alternative media and other collective forces for change in society,
as the only available counters. Neither of these forces seems to be
making a significant impact on the status quo, however.
Before his foray into media studies,
btw, Chomsky was known for pursuing a structuralist
approach to language
formation. This approach ultimately presents and accepts the
impossibility of using language to study language, of examining
culture while one is a part of that culture. Its adherents include,
among others, Claude
Levi-Strauss, as well as poststructuralists
such as Jacques
Derrida.
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USEFUL
EXTERNAL
LINKS
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None Entered Yet: Refer
to |
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Kiss's "Beyond"
section |
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for external
links |
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See also kiss links:
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LE CORBUSIER
Well-known and oft-quoted French architect and
planner; instigator of Modernist architecture's prime tenet, which
held that form should always follow function.