Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992)

A film about the noted American linguist/political dissident and his warning about corporate media's role in modern propaganda.

Directors:

Mark Achbar, Peter Wintonick

Stars:

Noam Chomsky, Mark Achbar, Karin Aguilar-San Juan

4 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Credited cast:
Mark Achbar	...	Himself - Interviewer
Karin Aguilar-San Juan	...	Herself - South End Collective
Paul Andrews	...	Himself - The Seattle Times
William F. Buckley	...	Himself (archive footage) (as William F. Buckley Jr.)
Noam Chomsky	...	Himself
Robert Faurisson	...	Himself
Jeff Greenfield	...	Himself (voice) (archive footage)
Jeff Hansen	...	Himself (voice) (archive footage)
Loie Hayes	...	Herself - South End Collective
Edward S. Herman	...	Himself
Arnold Kohen	...	Himself - Journalist
Robert MacNeil	...	Himself (voice) (archive footage)
Bill Moyers	...	Himself (archive footage)
Yossi Olmert	...	Himself - Tel Aviv University (archive footage)
Lydia Sargent	...	Herself - Z Magazine

Storyline

This film showcases Noam Chomsky, one of America's leading linguists and political dissidents. It also illustrates his message of how government and big media businesses cooperate to produce an effective propaganda machine in order to manipulate the opinions of their populations. The key examples featured for this analysis are the simultaneous events of the massive coverage of the communist atrocities of Khmer Rouge regime of Cambodia and the suppression of news of the US supported Indonesian invasion and subjugation of East Timor.

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Plot Keywords:

media | east timor | manufacturing consent | media criticism | critical thinking | 

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Taglines:

A Primer In Intellectual Self-Defense

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Genres:

Documentary | Biography | War

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

Necessary Illusions [Canada] Zeitgeist Films [United States]

Country:

Australia Finland Norway Canada

Language:

English

Release Date:

6 November 1992 (Australia)

Also Known As:

Chomsky, les médias et les illusions nécessaires

Filming Locations:

American University - 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, District of Columbia, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Humanist Broadcasting Foundation,National Film Board of Canada (NFB),Necessary Illusions Productions Inc.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

167 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This film is an expansion of Noam Chomsky's earlier book 'Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media' which he co-wrote with Edward S. Herman.

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Quotes

[first lines]
[title card: They who have put out the peoples eyes reproach them of their blindness. - John Milton, 1642. ]
EMTV video host: Three, two, one, take two. Good morning!... My name is Kevin Flook, and I'm your video host all day here at EMTV.

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Crazy Credits

Canadian and U.S. copyright laws allow "fair dealing" and "fair use" of a copyrighted work for purposes such as comment, criticism, reporting, teaching, scholarship, research, review and quotation.

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Connections

Features The Journal (1986)

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Soundtracks

People Get Ready
Written by Curtis Mayfield
Courtesy of Curtom Records
Performed by Four The Moment
Courtesy Jam Productions Ltd.
By Arrangement with Warner Special Products
© Warner Chappell Music Inc.

User Reviews

Chomsky once again blows off the blinders...

Well, not the blinders of those who like to cast aspersions like "paranoid" and "delusional" in his direction...but they'll never escape their tunnel vision, so why should Noam labor against futility?

Let's start by getting something out of the way. Though he'd laugh at me for saying this, Noam Chomsky is one of the most intelligent and (an important distinction here) knowledgable human beings on the planet. Not only is he gifted with incredible intellect...he has used that intellect to absorb volumes upon volumes of information that most people have never been privy to...let alone memorized and analyzed, as Chomsky has. That said, let's move on.

Chomsky is an anarchist. And the fact is that while everybody in the world thinks that they know exactly what an anarchist is, in reality, it seems that, for the most part, the only people who understand anarchism are anarchists. Everything the media has ever said about anarchists is a lie. Their use of the word "anarchy" to describe chaotic situations and chaos in general is an utter corruption of the word anarchy, which, from its very roots, means quite simply "absence of a governing body"...nothing in there about chaos that I can see.

Chomsky subscribes to many of the ideals put forth by Michael Bakunin, a contemporary (and fierce opponent) of Karl Marx, and the recognized father of international anarchism. So, because Chomsky is an anarchist, he will obviously be viewed by many as a delusional paranoid. Then again, those who classify him as such wouldn't recognize Big Brother if he was bulldozing their homes to build a new shopping center.

What you will find in this film (and in Chomsky's book, which is far superior) is compelling evidence (based not on delusions, but on facts) that American media is controlled by a corporate elite who use it essentially for propaganda purposes in order to, if I may lift a phrase from Chomsky, "control the public mind." Once you realize how consolidated the corporate media really is, and how they twist the facts in order to pump disinformation into the homes of unsuspecting citizens, you'll never be able to look at CNN the same way again.

As for the critics, who feel much safer and infinitely more free than they have any reason to...their dismissals of Chomsky as a left-wing crackpot who doesn't know what he's talking about (despite the fact that he's studied extensively and most of his critics have gotten the bulk of their information from the same media sources he proves unreliable) only further strengthen his case. Not only does the corporate media distort the facts in order to lull the masses into a false sense of security...quite obviously, they're doing a tremendous job.