It has saved my life once, via weather report. It has let me know that there was a disaster in the area where I knew people I cared about greatly were, enabling me to prep some support. And once, it told me that a project my then-company was working on was indirectly doomed by the advent of this little thing called the iPhone. Off the top of my head.

I think Chomsky is fairly correct, but a bit blinkered.

Your turn: How to you think Manufacturing Consent applies to message boards like this? Does that tell you anything about human behaviour, whether or not mediated by institutional imperative?