Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.

HERMAN, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky.

Item Number: 72059

New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.

First edition of this groundbreaking work. Octavo, original cloth. Lengthily inscribed by Noam Chomsky on the half-title page, “For John The Mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general public Noam Chomsky.” Near fine in a very good dust jacket with some wear and tear. Jacket illustration by Mirko Ilic. First editions are scarce, especially signed.

In this work, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order. Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy” versus “unworthy” victims, “legitimizing” and “meaningless” Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. "[A] compelling indictment of the news media's role in covering up errors and deceptions in American foreign policy of the past quarter century" (Walter LaFeber, The New York Times Book Review).