2007 books
Jul. 3rd, 2007 12:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peteryoung
54) Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, 2002
A very approachable slim volume that shows how media manipulation in many ways amounts to an alternative totalitarian state, one in which the general public is not bludgeoned into backing foreign wars but instead, in a democracy, is coralled into fundamentally agreeing to that position by a naïve consensus of opinion. This results in events such as the International Court of Justice's condemnation of the United States for international terrorism in Nicaragua going unreported in the American media. The first edition of the book appeared in 1997, and Chomsky was wrong on one thing: the US's next military objective didn't turn out to be Cuba as he predicted (the CIA presumably holding back on regime change until Castro just falls off the perch instead), but there is still much else here that Chomsky explains with a simplistic clarity: it often reads like alcohol-fuelled bar-talk, even, but he's still very hard to fault. This second edition is appended with a post 9/11 talk on how the 'War on Terror' should be reported, but I'd say a third edition is already needed, one that includes at least some reference to both the Iraq War and the internet.
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Date: 2007-07-04 04:31 pm (UTC)