Manufacturing consent
Discusses the ways in which the mass media are manipulated to present the news according to an underlying elite consenus which affects the manner in which similar events in different parts of the world are presented.
Stats for nerds
179recommend
592mentions
407people
2008–2026years
42% recommend57% neutral2% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Yes, it's been true for a long time. See the book "Manufacturing Consent" for example, but there's been lots of research since. There are numerous ways that the western media biases news to build support for the objectives of those in power.
- It does reflect the will of the people, but the causal chain doesn’t stop there.
The will of the people is the result of the corporate interests that control the democratic system.
Manufacturing Consent is an excellent read - and don’t stop at Chomsky, read Bernays, who pretty much codified the system as it runs today. Propaganda is a good place to start.
- The word "terrorist" is almost always used in a propaganda context. There's a good book you should check out, that surveys media mentions and provides hard statistical evidence for this: Manufacturing Consent.
- Have you ever read Manufacturing Consent? A conspiracy is not necessary for wide-spread propaganda campaigns—just a confluence of incentives that act against the common interest (even in the US) but work in the interest of the ruling class.
- I'm not trying to redefine the word for everyone, I'm speaking to you, I'm trying to get you to be more critical of your own personal usage of the word. When you adopt/parrot someone's claim about terrorism, that is not a neutral territory, and certainly isn't "fact-based". Especially if your other claims/deductions are downstream of the word "terrorism". It is almost always used as a propaganda term, commonly to justify horrific things, clearly it's been effective on you as well. There's a good book that spends a huge amount of time dissecting the use of the word terrorism you should check out: "Manufacturing Consent".
Besides I don't think you can neatly cleave the world, or this website, or the news, into "facts" and "emotions" as you seem to think.
- > That was more than 20 years ago. It's hardly relevant to the journalism landscape in 2026.
It is actually very relevant. If you read Chomsky & Herman's 'Manufacturing Consent', you'll get examples from the 1970s and 1980s, another 20 years earlier, and you will find that "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".
