To sum up, Understanding Media Propaganda in the 21st Century: Manufacturing Consent Revisited and Revised is a hugely important addition to the critical literature on mainstream journalism.When it comes to the U.S. With forensic precision, Simon Foley dissects the consequent journalistic perfidies perpetrated in media coverage of some of the most egregious “Big Lies” of our time, including the fables of Russia-gate, allegations of Syrian chemical weapons attacks, the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal, “Russian Bounty” payments and others.

“Despite the abundant evidence of media scholarship over many decades-famously presaged by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their 1988 study, Manufacturing Consent-the majority of citizens in the NATO orbit, and too many beyond it, subscribe to a picture of the world that depends on mainstream media presumptions, fallacies, and fantasies, pedalled to journalists by people in power, usually including State intelligence agencies whose very business is deception. For students (in the broadest sense of the term) of media studies, journalism, communication studies and sociology, it provides both a compelling critique of Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model, while at the same time proffering a new explanatory model to understand why MSM output typically replicates the ‘stenographer for power’ playbook. To this end, this book is a radical-in the true critical sense of the word-intervention into the propaganda/fake news debate. As a result of the ‘journalistic’ cultural revolution that ensued, it argues that the Propaganda Model needs to be overhauled if it is to retain its epistemological bona fides. The conceit underpinning Understanding Media Propaganda in the 21st Century: Manufacturing Consent Revisited and Revised is that the election of Trump in 2016 constitutes the proverbial ‘year zero’ for fourth estate journalism. Consequently, a key question that needs to be addressed is whether Manufacturing Consent is still fit for purpose. However, a lot has changed in the subsequent thirty-something years.

The analytical heart of Manufacturing Consent lies in what it calls ‘The Propaganda Model.’ According to this model, there are five filters which all newsworthy stories have to pass through before reaching the public sphere. First published in 1988, Herman and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent remains the go-to book for those interested in understanding why the mainstream media act as vehicles for power-elite propaganda.

Chomsky propaganda book