- What did Noam Chomsky mean by manufacturing consent?
Usually, governments have more information available to them that the public simply cannot access for obvious reasons. But because of this, governments can “manufacture consent” from the public by releasing statements on a certain issue that is of current status right now. An example would be the word war within North Korea and United States, where North Korea would constantly throw out threats, and the United States government would express displeasure or retaliation threats, which the public would then approve of the following actions that they may possibly take without having second thoughts.
- Who are the ones responsible for manufacturing consent? Whose consent are being won over?
Simply put, during times where the government of a certain state would need to take somewhat concerning issues, they would happen to manufacture issues that the public would agree on via official statements or “leaked intel”, so they would not have to worry about public backlash. (Let’s Make America Great Again)
- What are “necessary illusions”? How does this relate to the manufacturing of consent?
Necessary illusions are the news/leaked information that the public would happen to come across in news (or in today’s age, the internet, where leaked information is much more prevalent nowadays) that people would take with a grain of salt, and depending on the reaction of the public, the government may then adjust the manufactured news in an official statement in order to gain the public’s consent.
- What are examples of necessary illusions as cited in the film? How does these illusions lead to “irrational attitudes of submission to authority?”
One of the more striking necessary issues cited in the film would be the Vietnam War. Sure, it was one of the more relevant wars that the United States participated in during the Cold War era, but there was another on-going war that was happening at the same, which was the Cambodian War, which was a war that was just as gruesome as the Vietnam War. But people have forgotten about the other war due to the media covering the Vietnam War just as much, so you can infer from that alone was with how the Vietnam War got more support. The soldiers in Cambodia were just silently forgotten about, which is a terrible thing to happen to you if you were deployed there, only with support from the military, but then, were also allocating more resources towards Vietnam.
- What is the model of journalism being assumed by mainstream news media as argued by Chomsky? What are the ways in which this model of journalism is being carried out by the mainstream news media? Enumerate examples stated in the film.
The model of journalism being assumed would have to be that mainstream press is owned by corporations, and with corporations come with business in their minds, so a corporate mindset to the news is not uncommon among most major corporations, such as Time Warner and the New York Times. So with this mindset, the governments would often bribe the corporations who control the news publications in order to publish the news that they want to, often with news reports being doctored (oftentimes the news article being rewritten to an entirely different story, hence that surgery scene of the news article in the documentary) One example would also happen to be the issue of the Vietnam War also being the main focus of the media publications at the time compared to the Cambodian war.
- Do you agree with the arguments being put forth by Noam Chomsky?
After watching the film, it dawned on me with how a lot of things line up and connect, such as the misleading leaks happening to align with how the audiences would react, seemingly “fabricated” news articles that seem to be hiding something (as if they were lacking in content or it feels off when you read the article), it can be possible (and it most likely is) that the governments are exploiting the media to gain consent of the public on controversial decisions, as such where the power of the public can take a government down, so they oftentimes have to play tricks in order to carry out what they desire. There are a lot of things that we (the public) do not know at all.
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