I’m often surprised that people who denounce the Mainstream Media as biased and under the thumb of vested interests are quite happy to uncritically absorb any old crap from obviously biased and frequently insane “independent” sources they happen to agree with.
It doesn't take high intelligence to spot lies in the former, whereas it often takes significant intelligence and a long history of following the news from a broad selection of sources to spot lies in the latter. One group are hobbyists, the other are professionals.
The more worrying part is the orders of magnitude larger group that essentially considers ~everything that the MSM prints is true, at least to the best of their ability. For most people (including smart people on sites like HN), the mere suggestion that this may not be the case will typically get you categorized as a member of the former group, regardless of the facts of the individual point of disagreement.
This seems to be simply the default nature of human psychology that is independent to some degree from intelligence. Changing it would require a significant organized effort of teaching people critical thinking skills, and the state seems uninterested in anything of the kind, despite their stated concerns about the crisis of fake news.
People conspire all the time, so shouldn't any sane person suspect some conspiracies?
Hijacking the word "conspiracy theorist" to mean nut job seems like exactly the twisting of reality you are advocating to avoid.
Thus (not having read it myself), Manufacturing Consent could show how emergent properties of mass media might lead to them pushing a certain incorrect world view, rather than proposing a theory that requires the teams behind them to all agree to conspire and none of them to make that public knowledge.
That is right. Chomsky proposes 5 filters through which this process happens. These filters operate, according to Chomsky, not just in media, but in all of society. From kindergarten to our deadbeds.
I think this was best illustrated with Chomsky's 1996 interview in "The Big Idea" on BBC by Andrew Marr. Chomsky is outlining how the filters make sure certain viewpoints are popularized, and Andrew Marr asks "How can you know that I'm self-censoring?". To which Chomsky replies "I'm not saying you're self-censoring. I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. But what I'm saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting."
The 30 minute episode[1] is well worth a watch, but the three minute clip of the above exchange is also available[2].
[1]: https://youtu.be/GjENnyQupow [2]: https://youtu.be/lLcpcytUnWU
Nope it is Comcast who has earned that distinction. The same one who while technically a rival to them advertises heavily with them. The same one whose past actions have made net neutrality not a theoretical matter. Nothing illegal but their actions are flagrantly self-interested.
The term "conspiracy theory" has always always been derogatory[1]
[1] https://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/nope_it_was_alwa...
The big agencies are pretty well versed on this, look at the system approach they take on this one: https://jfkfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Countering-W...
It is not the details of this specific conspiracy that is interesting, but the systematic approach to tackling it.
Let’s build toilets. If traditionally a locality has no toilets and you come in and want to do good and bring sanitation you’re still manufacturing consent, albeit for the good. Grassroots also manufactures consent if you have a main outside driver.
And it's not as much about the individual power structures, but how they influence the media to do it. The new players since the last publication are the tech companies and how they have tremendous power to selectively give voice or silence to push a certain narrative. They are slowly replacing the traditional media companies as primary player that manufacture consent. It seems there is a current battle between the two and I think the tech companies are winning so far.
The propaganda model does account for other non-governmental and non-media influences. This is talked about in the animation Al-Jazeera made.
I think in the past some of the news outlets sort of pretended to be unbiased. They could fool more people into believing that. Sure Fox News was mostly a one-party outlet, but others kept their bias behind the curtain. Since about 5-7 years ago, they stopped pretending as much.
At the same time, I think there is a perception that traditional media companies have failed to manufacture consent properly. There was this void created in that space and tech companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and others rushed in to fill that void. Their message is "come to us, we'll manufacture consent better than these old crusty companies". Then you can see some of the traditional media hitting back at Facebook and others. And there is this sort of a battle between them as to who is a better player at manufacturing and controlling "truth".
There's certain ways to effectively critically read newspaper articles that I was taught at a young age and it's definitely a learned skill that I wish the US education system did better with.