Media Control: The Spectacular Achievement of Propaganda

Description

Chomsky’s classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control has been updated and expanded into a two-section book, following the acclaimed format of his anti-war bestseller, 9-11. This new edition of Media Control, available for the first time, includes “The Journalist from Mars” Chomsky’s talk on the media coverage of America’s “New War on Terrorism”.

Chomsky begins by asserting two models of democracy—one in which 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 totalitarian state” and the mass media is the primary vehicle for delivering propaganda in the United States. From an examination of how Woodrow Wilson’s Creel Commission “succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population” to Bush Sr.’s war on Iraq, Chomsky examines how the mass media and public relations industries have been used as propaganda to generate public support for going to war.

Chomsky touches on how the modern public 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 how the public relations industry in the United States focuses on “controlling the public mind” and not on informing it.

Author Biography

Noam Chomsky is a world-renowned political activist, writer, and professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Noam Chomsky was born on December 7, 1928, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His undergraduate and graduate years Were spent at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his PhD in linguistics in 1955. During the years 1951 to 1955, Chomsky was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard University Society of Fellows.

Chomsky joined the staff at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (now the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy). From 1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship of Modern Languages and 41. Linguistics. In 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor.

During the years 1958 and 1959 Chomsky was in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey. In the spring of 1969 he delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford; in January 1970 he delivered the Bertrand Russell Memorial Lecture at Cambridge University; in 1972, the Nehru Memorial Lecture in New Delhi; and in 1977, the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden, among many others. He has received many honorary degrees.

Chomsky’s efforts for greater democracy are celebrated by peace and social justice movements worldwide. He is also the author of many books. His most recent, 9-11 (also available by Natraj) has been published in twenty-six countries.