A recent interview with Noam Chomsky has this explanation of “propaganda system”:
…
For the propaganda model, notice what we explain there very explicitly is that this is a first approximation – and a good first approximation – for the way the media functions. We also mention that there are many other factors. In fact, if you take a look at the book ‘Manufacturing Consent’, about practically a third of the book, which nobody seems to have read, is a defence of the media from criticism by what are called civil rights organisations – Freedom House in this case. It’s a defence of the professionalism and accuracy of the media in their reporting, from a harsh critique which claimed that they were virtually traitors undermining government policy. We should have known, on the other hand, that they were quite professional.
The media didn’t like that defence because what we said is – and this was about the Tet Offensive – that the reporters were very honest, courageous, accurate, and professional, but their work was done within a framework of tacit acquiescence to a propaganda system that was simply unconscious. The propaganda system was ‘what we’re doing in Vietnam is obviously right and just’. And that passively supports the doctrinal system….
As an example of the current propaganda system that holds the media in thrall, the next question wasn’t:
Would you say the current propaganda system can be captured by: ‘what we’re doing against terrorism/ISIS is obviously right and just’.
Instead, the interviewer, to demonstrate his failure to understand the propaganda model?, follows with a question about Snowden/Greenwald as counter-examples to the propaganda model. Chompsky says no and points out that the propaganda model doesn’t explain all things. Of course, an interviewer who had read and understood “Manufacturing Consent” would have known that.
If anything, the reporting on terrorism and ISIS is even more lopsided than reporting in the Vietnam era. The media spasms at every email or phone threat and creates “news” that will race around the globe, such as bomb threats against airliners.
Chompsky himself falls prey to the mainstream propaganda model in his identification of a leading sponsor of terrorism: the leading state sponsor of terrorism, with the sub-title:
U.S. covert operations routinely resemble acts of terrorism.
Freed from the propaganda model it would read:
U.S. covert operations are acts of terrorism.
Death randomly falling out of the sky and killing innocent civilians is by its very nature a terrorist act. (full stop) Whatever you may think is a justification for it, it remains an act of terrorism, committed by terrorists.
Test the propaganda capture of the media for yourself. Count the number of times reporters in stories or interviews, point out the non-danger to the average American from terrorism. Do they ask for facts when that is denied? Do they confront government officials with contrary data? See: The Terrorism Statistics Every American Needs to Hear. As Chompsky would say, there are members of the media who are doing their professional jobs. Unfortunately it is too few of them and most fail to confront the contemporary propaganda system effectively.
(Chompsky interview: Noam Chomsky: Why the Internet Hasn’t Freed Our Minds—Propaganda Continues to Dominate by Seung-yoon Lee, Noam Chompsky.)