I guess I would read some of his books: Profit over People and the one on Media. He has a 1997 talk at northeastern on youtube where he addresses it a bit during question time.
There are some good thoughts and complaints in there about propaganda and nepotism, but isn't this old news? Isn't it also pervasive throughout society? I mean, there are even blatant industry-wide propaganda agendas such as Harvard scientsts lying about sugar, MIT scientists lying about climate change, and scientists lying before courts about leaded gasoline... Of course always after payments from profit-seeking industry.
There are countless examples. Of course Walmart is known for both nepotism, and brainwashing their employees about union membership. And of course they are also close with the top-echelon of politicians at state and federal levels.
Like the article mentions, companies say they are progressive, and for an example， promote gender equality, but their engineering divisions tell a completely different story. And then if you really take a moment to stop and look around the world we live in, we are in a society full of propaganda. Of course the War on Drugs, War on Terror, and War on Poverty all increased poverty, poor outcomes related to drugs, and removal of liberties and prosperity that terrorists sought for.
Over the last year, MSNBC covered Stormy Daniels on average >1/day. War in Yemen? 0 times. Or, here is Wolf Blitzer saying that arms sales to Saudis is a "moral issue" because defense contractors will "lose jobs."
Propaganda is part of our daily lives. My favorite Einstein quote is: "Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."
I think if you read Chomsky you will find that we've been lead this way for a long time. It is modus operandi.. aka meet the new boss same as the old boss. It's useful to understand the world and why it is the way it is. And in fact the more interesting idea is that we the people can actually exercise our democratic rights to change the situation.
Matt Taibbi in collaboration with Chomsky is writing a sequel to Manufacturing Consent, discussing history and the media environment since its publication. I'm not suggesting he is an heir, only that interested readers might check out.
This was very insightful for me. I enjoyed how he interpreted Manufacturing Consent and pointed out that the obvious interpretation is mistaken i.e. that the media peddles lies. The thesis is more subtle than that.
