Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media Page #12

Now, they rely very crucially

on a very slim margin for survival

that's provided by dissidence and turbulence

within the imperial societies,

and how large that margin is

is for us to determine.

In today's On The Spot assignment,

we're going to see

just what's behind the making of movies.

The director and the crew

are shooting a documentary film.

Let's take a closer look.

Bob, this word "documentary",

what would you say is the difference between

a documentary film and a feature movie?

Well, there are a good many differences.

One would be length. Generally speaking,

documentaries are shorter than feature films.

Also, documentaries have something to say

in the way of a message.

They are informational films.

Also, another term that's used interchangeably

with documentary is the word "actuality".

Bob, is this the thing you hold up

in front of the camera before each scene?

This is a clapperboard, yes.

This identifies on the visual camera

the scene number and the take number.

And also, as you heard, on the soundtrack,

the editor back at the studio

puts the two pieces of film together,

matches where the lips of the clapper meet,

and there you are in synch.

Before the break, you were mentioning

the media putting forth the information

that the power elite want.

I'm not sure if I understand.

How does the power elite do this?

Why do we stand for it?

Why does it work so well?

Well, I think...

I mean, there are really two questions here.

One - is this picture of the media true?

And there, you have to look at the evidence.

I've given one example,

and that shouldn't convince anybody.

One has to look at a lot of evidence

to see whether this is true.

I think anyone who investigates it will find out

that the evidence to support it

is simply overwhelming.

It's probably one of the best supported

conclusions in the social sciences.

The other question is, how does it work?

- Noam Chomsky?

- I'm the... I'm the media guy.

What would you like?

I got you an International Herald Tribune.

Anything in a Western language which doesn't

include Dutch. What have you got?

- Financial Times.

- Financial Times, absolutely.

That's the only paper that tells the truth.

You get the one

where they've been debating back and forth?

NRC Handelsblad.

Handelsblad?

- Train to?

- Ammerswurth.

Well, this evening's programme

is scheduled as a debate,

which puzzled me all the way through.

There are some problems.

One problem is that

no proposition has been set forth.

As I understand "debate",

people advocate or oppose something.

Rather more sensibly,

a topic has been proposed for discussion.

Er... the topic is manufacture of consent.

It's unusual

for a member of the government

to debate with a professor in public.

It hasn't happened in Holland before.

I don't think it oten happens elsewhere.

Mr Bolkestein, the floor is yours.

Now, we all know

that a theory can never be established

merely by examples.

It can only be established

by showing some internal, inherent logic.

Professor Chomsky has not done so.

Professor Chomsky?

He's right to say you can't just pick

examples. You have to do them rationally.

That's why we compared examples.

The truth is that things are not as simple

as Professor Chomsky maintains.

Another of Professor Chomsky's case studies

concerns the treatment that

Cambodia has received in the Western press.

Here, he goes badly off the rails.

We didn't discuss Cambodia.

We compared Cambodia with East Timor,

two very closely paired examples.

And we gave approximately

in Political Economy of Human Rights,

including a reference to every article

we could discover about Cambodia.

Many Western intellectuals

do not like to face the facts

and balk at the conclusions

that any untutored person would draw.

Many people are very irritated

by the fact that we exposed

the extraordinary deceit over Cambodia

and paired it with the simultaneous suppression

of the US-supported,

ongoing atrocities in Timor.

People don't like that.

For one thing, we were challenging

the right to lie in defence of the state.

For another thing, we were exposing

the apologetics and support

for actual ongoing atrocities.

That doesn't make you popular.

Where did he learn

about the atrocities in East Timor

or in Central America,

if not in the same free press

which he so derides?

You can find out where I learned about them

by looking at my footnotes -

from Human Rights reports,

from church reports, from refugee studies,

and extensively, from the Australian press.

Nothing from the American press -

it was silenced.

Chairman, this is an attempt

at intellectual intimidation.

These are the ways of the bully.

Professor Chomsky uses

the oldest debating trick on record.

He erects a man of straw

and proceeds to hack away at him.

Professor Chomsky calls this

the "manufacture of consent".

I call it "the creation of consensus".

In Holland, we call it "Draagvlak",

which means "foundation".

Professor Chomsky thinks it is deceitful.

But it is not.

In a representative democracy,

it means winning people for one's point of view.

But I do not think

that Professor Chomsky believes

in representative democracy.

I think he believes in direct democracy.

With Rosa Luxemburg,

he longs for the creative, spontaneous,

self-correcting force of mass action.

That is the vision of the anarchist.

It is also a boy's dream.

Those who believe in democracy and freedom

have a serious task ahead of them.

What they should be doing, in my view,

is dedicating their efforts to helping

the despised common people

to struggle for their rights

and to realise the democratic goals

that constantly surface throughout history.

They should be serving not power and privilege

but rather their victims.

Freedom and democracy are, by now,

not merely values to be treasured.

They are quite possibly

the prerequisite to survival.

It's a conspiracy theory, pure and simple.

It is not borne out by the facts.

Mr Chairman, I have to go to Amsterdam.

If you'll excuse me, I'm leaving.

One thing is sure.

Their consent has not been manufactured

tonight.

There is nothing more remote from

what I'm discussing than a conspiracy theory.

If I give an analysis

of, say, the economic system,

and I point out that General Motors tries

to maximise profit and market share,

that's not a conspiracy theory.

That's an institutional analysis.

That has nothing to do with conspiracies.

And that's precisely the sense

in which we're talking about the media.

The phrase "conspiracy theory"

is one that's constantly brought up.

And I think its effect, simply,

is to discourage institutional analysis.

You think there's a connection

about what the government wants us to know

and what the media tell us?

It's not Communism,

but I think, to a certain point,

it is sensitised.

They don't always tell the truth,

the way it goes, huh?

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