Manufacturing Consent in modern life

What is Manufacturing Consent?

Manufacturing Consent (1988) is a book by Noam Chomsky and David S Herman . They think Mass Media existed to protect the power and keep the powers work properly and continually rather than the restraint of powers. With the development of Internet and Technology, I find our communication is turned from direct communication to mediated communication, for example, we have more accesses to get news not just in reality with the newspaper

Whether five ‘filters’ for the news can also be useful for the modern life?

In Manufacturing Consent, the filters include

1. The size, concentrated ownership;
2. Advertising;
3. Establishments such as government, business and so on;
4. ‘Flak’;
5. ‘Anticommunism‘.

To make it more accessible to you, I would like to choose the CCTV as an example.

The limitation on ownership of media with any substantial outreach by the requisite large size of investment was applicable a century or more age, and it has become increasingly effective over time.(Chomsky, Herman 1988:1-35) In other words, many news systems are dependent on large state-owned companies and news agencies, which have a greater need for government licences and concessions. CCTV is a news media founded and operated directly by the state, and as China’s largest news media, it is directly subordinate to the state and subject to the control and restrictions of the national government.

As a news media, its media costs are always higher than what consumers spend, so they needs advertisers to fill the cost gap to make a profit. In this case, it is not only the advertisers who are selling to the viewers but also the news media who are providing the advertisers with viewers. In CCTV it has a complete list of advertising prices for the news channels. The high figures are a good demonstration of advertising as a filter.

CCTV, as a state-founded news media, naturally has the most official and authoritative source of information, which is recognised and trusted by the viewers. As Fishman says’This amounts to a moral division of labor: officials have and give the facts; reporters merely get them.'(Ibid.,p.90.)

As a government-owned news media, CCTV sometimes acts as a kind of general direction guide and command for other domestic news media. When some local media report news that deviates from the established line of behaviour, CCTV will also become a representative of the government’s Flak used to attack the threat and correct the media.

As for the last filter, I don’t think it can be used over the news media in countries belonging to the communist form, as it applies to the West to fragment the left and labour movements and as a mechanism of political-control mechanism.

Conclusion

The current news media may still be able to apply the vast majority of the functions of the propaganda model, but not in some particular ways. As in the case of CCTV, which I have used as an example, there may be specific environmental situations where different news media follow different propaganda approaches.

Reference

1. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner (2006). Media and cultural studies : keyWorks. Malden Etc.: Wiley-Blackwell, pp.257–294.
2. Pirak, P. (2022). Is mass media still ‘manufacturing consent’ in the internet age? | Aeon Videos. aeon.co. Available at: https://aeon.co/videos/is-mass-media-still-manufacturing-consent-in-the-internet-age [Accessed 17 Oct. 2022].
3. Couldry, N. and Hepp, A. (2018). The Mediated Construction of Reality. John Wiley & Sons, pp.15–17.