Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements Of Propaganda

0.0

Media Control is Chomsky's classic on wartimepropaganda and opinion control that has been updated and expanded into atwo-section book. This new edition,available in India for the first time, includes "The Journalist fromMars", Chomsky's talk on the media coverage of America's "new war onterrorism". Chomsky begins by asserting two models of democracy - one inwhich the public actively participates, and one in which the public is manipulated and controlled. According to Chomsky"propaganda is to democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarianstate," and the mass media is the primary vehicle for delivering propagandain the United States. From an examination of how Woodrow Wilson's CreelCommission "succeeded,within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical,war-mongering population," to Bush Sr.'s war on Iraq, Chomsky examines howthe mass media and public relations industries have been used as propaganda togenerate public support for gong to war. Chomsky touches on how the modernpublic relations industry has been influenced by Walter Lippmann's theory of"spectator democracy", in which the public is seen as a"bewildered herd" that needs to be directed, not empowered; and howthe public relations industry in the United States focuses on "controllingthe public mind," and not on informing it. A highly engaging read.