Manufacturing Consent

In "Manufacturing Consent," Noam Chomsky propaganda model is explained with clips from lectures, interviews, and debates with Chomsky himself as well as outside footage. This outside footage and images mix with Chomsky's voice to emphasize some of his larger ideas.

Chomsky's propaganda model details the sort of filters that determine what news actually is presented to the public by the media. Media ownership, for example, is huge -- Chomsky talks about how the media is owned by just a few conglomerates, and thus what news is presented is biased with respect to the capitalist system these huge corporations are profiting off of. Similarly, there is funding through advertising, making the media something that is bargaining for your attention rather than trying to simply give quality news.

This idea is visually alluded to in frequent images of news media displayed on JumboTrons in a shopping mall, acting as a metaphor for the media selling a product -- the news. Furthermore, there are several other JumboTron images -- CNN on a JumboTron outside a building at night, another program on a JumboTron at a football stadium, etc. These images show the power of the mass media, and how difficult it is to escape the mainstream media. This idea is visually reiterated at the end of the film, where Chomsky talks about how difficult it is for the average American to find alternative forms of media -- it is far simpler to just go home and flip on the television and watch whatever is on. This monologue is paired with perhaps the most powerful image of the documentary, where the camera slowly pans out from Chomsky's face on a television monitor, and we see more and more monitors as the camera continues panning outwards. These monitors are flashing various news programs very quickly, to show the degree of which we consume the mass media's product.

Perhaps the most intriguing portion of the film was the discussion on two different atrocities: one in East Timor and one in Cambodia. History gave us a clear demonstration of the propaganda model, Chomsky argues, where the news media covered the atrocity in Cambodia fully and hardly covered the East Timor genocide. The US government, Chomsky says, was financially invested by the East Timor genocide and was able to profit from it, which is why it was not covered in the US media. Chomsky's discussion is heard over splices of video from the atrocities, but the big unusual technique that truly, visually shows the difference in coverage is the focusing in on print journalism. Various news publications were shown with phrases highlighted that corresponded to Chomsky's message, and at one point, the filmmakers roll out newspaper to show the actual amount of coverage each atrocity received. The vast amount of column inches Cambodia received compared to East Timor was startling and great backed up Chomsky's point.