Herman and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent is an important piece of political analysis of the American project. I agree with the overall breakdown of the arguments and evidence and the author’s conclusions, and surely this was a landmark work in the media analysis at the time it was written.
To me, reading this in 2025, I kind of already understood a lot of the arguments and analyses. It was very interesting to learn about how manufacturing consent through the media reached its height during the Cold War (though that “height” is debatable), during a time when basically everybody was on board with the existential fight against communism. Works like this are crucial to understanding how the media shapes our opinion of the world, bends reality, and works to sway public opinion.
Honestly, though, the process of reading it was a bit of a chore. I got more out of the very long updated introduction, which summarizes most of the main points for the post-Soviet world. Now that I am done reading this, I am going to go watch Coca Cola commercials on Youtube.
3/5