11/4/11
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media is a documentary film production that shows and explains Noam Chomsky's ideas related to the Media. Noam Chomsky is a linguistic and philosopher, considered one of the most important thinkers in our era.
The film illustrates the ideas shown on Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent, which basically consists on the analysis of today's media based on the propaganda model.
Its main thesis is that the Media, instead of serving the audience with reliable, true and balance information, is used as way of gaining profit and as an instrument for the elites to control the mass.
The documentary covers deeply some examples of this biased media, and Chomsky's arguments. For example, Chomsky shows how the media gives more coverage to one story than to another very similar to it, because of different reasons related to politics. This is the case of the coverage of the genocide in Cambodia, which was greatly covered by the American media, compared to a similar massacre that was going on at the same time in East Timor. East Timor was being invaded by Idonesia, with economical and military help of the United States. The Media did not want to cover a genocide in which the US was involved.
This and many other examples are given in the film, illustrating how the media in the democratic system shapes the image of the world's reality that the audience gets.
My opinion of the movie is that it helps us to look at the media with other perspective and shows the big corruption of it. But I also think that the documentary was dense and a bit too long, and at some points it gets boring for the average viewer.
Response to the statement that Noam Chomsky makes:
“Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.”
The statement focuses on the use of propaganda in the media of democratic governments (like the USA) to control the mass' ideas, comparing it to the violence used in a dictatorship to repress any kind of rebellion.
I think the statement has a very important and true content, because, although at first it seems exaggerated, the influence of propaganda in society is much bigger than we think, as the documentary shows. It shapes the population's way to look at the world and it creates false illusions in the people. After all, it is creating a repression, in a way.
However, I do not think that it would be the same as the violence used in a dictatorship because propaganda has a much more indirect effect in the society and, nowadays, the people do not have to be under its influence necessarily. What I mean is that we can fight agains the bias in the media and find alternate sources of information while in a dictatorship there is no choice.
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media is a documentary film production that shows and explains Noam Chomsky's ideas related to the Media. Noam Chomsky is a linguistic and philosopher, considered one of the most important thinkers in our era.
The film illustrates the ideas shown on Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent, which basically consists on the analysis of today's media based on the propaganda model.
Its main thesis is that the Media, instead of serving the audience with reliable, true and balance information, is used as way of gaining profit and as an instrument for the elites to control the mass.
The documentary covers deeply some examples of this biased media, and Chomsky's arguments. For example, Chomsky shows how the media gives more coverage to one story than to another very similar to it, because of different reasons related to politics. This is the case of the coverage of the genocide in Cambodia, which was greatly covered by the American media, compared to a similar massacre that was going on at the same time in East Timor. East Timor was being invaded by Idonesia, with economical and military help of the United States. The Media did not want to cover a genocide in which the US was involved.
This and many other examples are given in the film, illustrating how the media in the democratic system shapes the image of the world's reality that the audience gets.
My opinion of the movie is that it helps us to look at the media with other perspective and shows the big corruption of it. But I also think that the documentary was dense and a bit too long, and at some points it gets boring for the average viewer.
Response to the statement that Noam Chomsky makes:
“Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.”
The statement focuses on the use of propaganda in the media of democratic governments (like the USA) to control the mass' ideas, comparing it to the violence used in a dictatorship to repress any kind of rebellion.
I think the statement has a very important and true content, because, although at first it seems exaggerated, the influence of propaganda in society is much bigger than we think, as the documentary shows. It shapes the population's way to look at the world and it creates false illusions in the people. After all, it is creating a repression, in a way.
However, I do not think that it would be the same as the violence used in a dictatorship because propaganda has a much more indirect effect in the society and, nowadays, the people do not have to be under its influence necessarily. What I mean is that we can fight agains the bias in the media and find alternate sources of information while in a dictatorship there is no choice.
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