Herman and Chomsky's structural account of how news gets shaped without a central conspiracy.
Manufacturing Consent argues that mainstream news is filtered by five structural forces: ownership (media are big businesses with owners' interests), advertising (advertisers are the real customers; audiences are the product), sourcing (reliance on official and corporate sources for cheap, steady content), flak (organized pushback that disciplines coverage), and a unifying ideology (formerly anti-communism). The key insight is structural, not paranoid: you don't need secret orders when incentives reliably produce slanted framing. The model is powerful and also criticized — for underrating journalistic independence and audience agency. Use it as a lens to ask 'whose interests does this framing serve?', not as a master key that explains everything.
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