Herman and Chomsky- Manufacturing Consent

In this article it talks about how monopolistic control and official sensorship give the dominant elite a opportunity to use propaganda. And in a private, non censored media form it is less likely to see propaganda. This immediately made me think of sateillite radio and the absence of censorship in that form of media. The two bigger programs that will be talked about are: The Oppie and Anthony Show and The Howard Stern Show. Both programs were limited in their programing by the FCC, ased on topics and language. The had to avoid certain topics such as bad mouthing the President or government otherwise face a fine. Now that they have moved to a private uncensorsed form of communication they will be able to talk about whatever topic and use any language they want. These two programs were targeted by the government because it was indecent programming. The government couldn't change them and didn't want that type of programming to be listened to because it went against what the government was trying to propagandise.

I also liked the way the authors broke this article up into sections of the different filtersof the mass media. In the first three sections they gave charts to back up their concepts on and in sections four and five they use many interesting facts to justify themseleves. But in the final section: Dichotomization and Propaganda Campaigns, I got confused very easily. The were talking so much about Poland and Vietnam and then Nazi German, that I was confused at times which example they were currently talking about.

This was a very informative article yet it was a little hard to understand towards the end and it took me a couple of times to read through to completely understand the key points.