Was it better when we were manufacturing consent?
Perhaps.
1. Manufacturing consent
Anyone with a slight interest in political science has heard about Noam Chomsky's and Edward S. Herman’s book, Manufacturing Consent. In their writings, the two authors, present a groundbreaking analysis of the role of traditional media in shaping public opinion by introducing the concept of the "propaganda model," which asserts that large media outlets, despite claims of independence, often serve the interests of powerful elites.
To validate their point they identify a set of variables (that they call filters) that influence the creation of news content, favoring narratives that align with corporate and governmental agendas.
a. Ownership
Establishing a media company with significant reach necessitates a substantial amount of capital, and investors typically seek returns on their investment. Consequently, news content is influenced by affluent individuals and profit-driven motives. Quoting directly from the book “The dominant media firms are quite large businesses; they are controlled by very wealthy people or by managers who are subject to sharp constraints by owners and other market-profit-oriented forces; and they are closely interlocked, and have important common interests, with other major corporations, banks, and government. This is the first powerful filter that will affect news choice”.
b. Advertising
Advertisers essentially hold de facto licensing authority over established news corporations, thereby exerting influence on the news. Indeed, without the income obtained from running ads, news outlets cease to be economically viable. Advertisers “ buy and pay for the programs -they are the"patrons" who provide the media subsidy. As such, the media compete for their patronage, developing specialized staff to solicit advertisers and necessarily having to explain how their programs serve advertisers’ needs”.
c. Sourcing
Sourcing refers to the selection of news sources and the reliance on official sources. Established news organizations -partly to maintain the image of objectivity, but also to protect themselves from criticisms of bias and the threat of libel suits- need material that can be portrayed as presumptively accurate, so they usually rely on government statements or corporate press releases. Directly from the book: “This is also partly a matter of cost: taking information from sources that may be presumed credible reduces investigative expense, whereas material from sources that are not prima facie credible, or that will elicit criticism and threats, requires careful checking and costly research.”
d. Flak
Flak refers to negative responses or criticism that media organizations can face from powerful entities or interest groups, “Flak from the powerful can be either direct or indirect. The direct would include letters or phone calls from the White House to Dan Rather or William Paley, or from the FCC to the television networks asking for documents used in putting together a program, or from irate officials of ad agencies or corporate sponsors to media officials asking for reply time or threatening retaliation. The powerful can also work on the media indirectly by complaining to their own constituencies (stockholders, employees) about the media, by generating institutional advertising that does the same, and by funding right-wing monitoring or think-tank operations designed to attack the media”.
e. Fear Ideology
Chomsky and Herman use fear ideology to refer to a cohesive and self-perpetuating fuzzy creed that serves as the Face of Evil. It aids media organizations in presenting news in a manner that opposes the fear ideology and helps brand the radicals. In the initial edition of the book, the fear ideology was identified as anticommunism, while in the 2002 revised version, it took the form of the war on terror.
Through case studies, Chomsky and Herman illustrate how these filters operate, shaping the news and limiting the diversity of perspectives presented to the public.
2. A Filter Free Media
Upon revisiting the book in preparation for this article, I found myself nodding along in agreement with its explanations supporting the central claim: established media is subject to structural constraints that inherently bias it in favor of the government and large institutions.1 The mainstream media does not merely enable the public to assert meaningful control over the political process by providing them with neutral information used for the discharge of their political responsibilities, it nudges the public towards certain narratives while subtly discouraging others.
Yet, something about the whole thing was troubling me deeply.
Nowadays, a formidable challenger to traditional media has stepped onto the stage: alternative media. Alternative media operates outside the constraints of legacy newsrooms and corporate oversight, offering perspectives and content that promise to be rawer, more authentic, and, above all, divergent from the sanitized consensus peddled by establishment outlets.
Alternative media is frequently generated by private individuals or small independent organizations with minimal initial capital requirements, utilizing platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. As a result, the -typically modest- ownership is liberated from most internal pressures.
Sourcing is not a concern for most alternative media, as the only constraints on what might be deemed newsworthy are the preferences of the alternative media 'reporter' and their personal code of ethics.
Flak is also a less significant force and is often welcomed under the motto 'any publicity is good publicity.' In fact, in certain corners of the content-creation world, negative feedback isn’t just tolerated—it’s actively courted.
Moreover, alternative media isn’t bound by a single, unifying fear ideology; instead, it sprawls chaotically across the political spectrum, finding its home especially at the radical fringes. It’s an ecosystem where wildly opposing theories can coexist, often thriving on the shared conviction that whatever the mainstream says must be wrong.
The only filter that meaningfully exerts its influence on alternative media is advertisement, which usually manifests its presence through the community guidelines for inappropriate content adopted by sharing platforms. But even in the case of ads, there are now online venues like Rumble, Kick, and X that tolerate political views outside the establishment's overtone window. Meanwhile, crowdfunding sites like Patreon allow creators to sidestep the advertising bottleneck entirely, appealing directly to their audiences for financial support.
Unburdened from the stifling editorial constraints and labyrinthine bureaucracy that define mainstream media, one might have imagined, back in the 1980s, that alternative media would ride into the information landscape like a gallant knight. Free from the stodgy dictates of corporate overlords, unencumbered by the subtle nudges of government regulators, rogue commentators could finally deliver that rarest of commodities: the unvarnished truth.
But no, if mainstream media is biased, alternative media is the premeditated murder of reality.
Accuracy doesn’t go viral. Nuance doesn’t trend. A sober, balanced analysis of the latest economic crisis isn’t going to outperform an inflammatory, conspiratorial takedown of the lizard people who are running the Federal Reserve. The game isn’t about truth; it’s about engagement—the only real filter left. And engagement is a capricious and shallow deity, demanding spectacle over substance and outrage over understanding.
This isn’t a new problem. Socrates—ancient Athens’ original contrarian blogger—was already lamenting it thousands of years ago. In the mythical marketplace of ideas, where truth and reason are supposed to win out through a glorious dialectic of rigorous debate, who actually gets the most attention? It’s not the careful truth-teller with their graphs and citations. It’s the guy who’s charismatic, persuasive, and knows how to work a crowd. The Greeks called them sophists. Today, we call them podcasters. Progress!
But of course, now we’ve turbocharged the problem. Our digital marketplace of ideas has been optimized, refined, and distilled into a brutal Darwinian competition where the only metric that matters is clicks. The algorithms governing your news feed don’t care if what you read is true; they only care if it keeps you scrolling. Thus, we shouldn’t be surprised that using the internet as a primary source of political information has been linked to voting for populist parties. Perhaps it is not by chance that, globally, we have been electing a string of fascinating leaders with questionable haircuts. Only time will tell if our democracies can survive an information space that promulgates content based on how engaging it is.
Chomsky and Herman, in their analysis of the forces that govern traditional media, did not focus on the filters concerning ethical journalism practices (adopted by many large news organizations) such as steering clear of conflicts of interest, offering context, and promptly correcting or retracting information. Many mainstream news outlets also employ dedicated fact-checking teams, providing a certain level of assurance that their reporting adheres to reality - and that is more than can be said for alternative media.
Here, a disquieting thought emerges: perhaps certain filters on who gets to report the news—and how they do so—aren’t entirely bad. Maybe not everyone should have unrestricted access to the podium in the public square. In order for a democratic society to function effectively without filters on news production, it would require a populace deeply versed in good epistemic practices, capable of parsing truth from falsehood and navigating a sea of competing narratives. Given that the majority of the public is occupied with 9-5 jobs in an ever-complex world, achieving this goal would be challenging and time-consuming. However, time is a dwindling resource. On the 18th of November 2023, the polls weren’t looking too good.
And it’s hard to say, in the event of a Trump victory in the 60th presidential election, whether democracy will once again be performing a ceremonial Harakiri, as it so memorably did during a certain ill-fated stretch of the 20th century.
Although I did have some doubts about some of the case studies presented- but that is another story.
As I see it the three biggest problems are:
1: The general populace doesn't have the tools to critically engage with media
2: They also don't have enough *time* to critically engage with media
3: The media itself is in a constant rat race to pump out more low-brow content and can't stop to do actual investigative journalism or critically examine their sources
Problem 1 arises because of biology and can be addressed with better education.
Problems 2 and 3 arise because 'investigation' is a positive externality that a free market doesn't reward. The standard way to resolve positive externalities is by rewarding its creation with government subsidies. In this case that is not going to work since it would take way too much time and effort to track who provided how much insights (not to mention that this is kinda subjective and could let a government put their thumb on the scale). My solution is a UBI so that the people who want to investigate can actually afford to do so without starving.
You mention fact checkers as a good solution, but Chomsky would probably say it is a tactic of the media owners. I wonder if your article isn't also part of manufacturing consent. You do not like Trump and thus become an unpaid contributor of the main media narrative that Chomsky presents