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.
Given that at some points in the book the authors treat having to tell your audience what they want to hear as one of the reasons for manufacturing consent, something alternative media is absolutely subject to given numerous instances of things like audience capture, I think it’s just plain unavoidable to have some level of manufacturing of consent, which I think was made clear in Walter Litman’s introduction of this phrase. The only thing which can be done is to be aware of these dynamics and keep them in mind when processing news or when advising others how to read news. In fact, a lot of the things Chomsky et al point to like using credible sources, make the media more accurate and allow more investigation to be done by saving resources even though they introduce a bias. If some media source doesn’t use these, they are going to be less accurate, even if they don’t have this bias. At the end of the day, I think the most useful Takeaway from the book is to just correct for certain biases when reading the news instead of concluding that all these practices are bad.
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
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.
Given that at some points in the book the authors treat having to tell your audience what they want to hear as one of the reasons for manufacturing consent, something alternative media is absolutely subject to given numerous instances of things like audience capture, I think it’s just plain unavoidable to have some level of manufacturing of consent, which I think was made clear in Walter Litman’s introduction of this phrase. The only thing which can be done is to be aware of these dynamics and keep them in mind when processing news or when advising others how to read news. In fact, a lot of the things Chomsky et al point to like using credible sources, make the media more accurate and allow more investigation to be done by saving resources even though they introduce a bias. If some media source doesn’t use these, they are going to be less accurate, even if they don’t have this bias. At the end of the day, I think the most useful Takeaway from the book is to just correct for certain biases when reading the news instead of concluding that all these practices are bad.
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