Manufacturing Consent (film)

This article is about a documentary film. For the similarly named book, see Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.

1992 film

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

Film poster

Directed by|

* Mark Achbar
* Peter Wintonick

Starring|

* Mark Achbar
* Noam Chomsky

Release date

* 1992 (1992)

Running time

| 167 minutes
Countries|

* Australia
* Finland
* Norway
* Canada

Language| English

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media[1] is a 1992 documentary film that explores the political life and ideas of linguist, intellectual, and political activist Noam Chomsky. Filmmakers Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick expand the analysis of capitalism and mass media presented in Manufacturing Consent, a 1988 book Chomsky wrote with Edward S. Herman.

## Overview

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The film presents and illustrates Chomsky and Herman's propaganda model thesis that corporate media, as profit-driven institutions, tend to serve and further the agendas and interests of dominant, elite groups in the society. A centerpiece of the film is a long examination of the history of The New York Times' coverage of the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, which Chomsky says exemplifies the media's unwillingness to criticize an ally of the elite.

Until the release of The Corporation (2003), made by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan, it was the most successful feature documentary in Canadian history playing theatrically in over 300 cities around the world. It appeared in more than 50 international film festivals where it received 22 awards. It was broadcast on television in over 30 markets and translated into a dozen languages.

Chomsky confessed in an on-stage interview at the 2013 New York City Documentary festival that he has never actually seen the documentary because "I can't stand watching myself...but I'm told it was a pretty impressive film."[2] In a published conversation with Achbar and several activists, he stated that "the positive impact of it has been astonishing to me" but people mistakenly get the impression that he is the leader of a movement that they should join. He also criticizes The New York Times review of the film, which mistakes his message for being a call for voter organizing rather than for engaging in media critique and political action.[3]

## Companion book

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Mark Achbar edited a companion book of the same name.[4] It features a transcript of the film annotated with excerpts from referenced and relevant materials as well as several comments from Noam Chomsky interspersed throughout. Eighteen "Philosopher All-Stars" baseball cards (as seen in the film) are also included. On the back of each card is a short summary of the person, titles of their major works, and a series of quotations attributed to the individual. Chomsky is featured as a card in the set, as are René Descartes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Mary Wollstonecraft, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Sojourner Truth, Karl Marx, Sitting Bull, Rosa Luxemburg, Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Bertrand Russell, and Michel Foucault. The book made The Globe and Mail's national bestseller list in Canada.

The first half of the book, hyperlinked to the relevant portions of the film's audio, is available online from Z Magazine. The entire book is available as a PDF document on the Region 2 DVD of the film.

## See also

[edit]

* Concentration of media ownership
* Propaganda model
* List of films dealing with anarchism

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media. (21 February 2009). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/dom-25409-manufacturingconsentnoamchomsk
2. ^ 'Noam Chomsky on Peter Wintonick'
3. ^ Noam Chomsky (2002). An Exchange on Manufacturing Consent. In Understanding Power. The New Press.
4. ^ Peter Wintonick and Mark Achbar, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1995.

## External links

[edit]

* Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media at IMDb
* The first half of the book at the Library of Congress Web Archives (archived 2002-09-14)
* Zeitgeist Films (US distributor) page for the film at the Wayback Machine (archived 2004-10-09)
* NFB Web page
* The Herman-Chomsky Propaganda Model Twenty Years On Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 6(2), 2009

### Multimedia

[edit]

* Manufacturing Consent is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive

* v
* t
* e

Noam Chomsky

* Bibliography
* Chomsky hierarchy
* "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"
* Honorary degrees
* Political positions

Select
bibliography|

| Linguistics|

* Syntactic Structures (1957)
* Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (1964)
* Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965)
* Cartesian Linguistics (1966)
* Language and Mind (1968)
* The Sound Pattern of English (1968)
* "Remarks on Nominalization" (1970)
* "Conditions on Transformations" (1973)
* Reflections on Language (1975)
* The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (1975)
* Lectures on Government and Binding (1981)
* Knowledge of Language (1986)
* The Minimalist Program (1995)
* New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind (2000)

|

Politics|

* "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" (1967)
* American Power and the New Mandarins (1969)
* For Reasons of State (1973)
* Counter-Revolutionary Violence (1973), with Edward S. Herman
* The Fateful Triangle (1983)
* Manufacturing Consent (1988), with Edward S. Herman
* Necessary Illusions (1989)
* Deterring Democracy (1991)
* Letters from Lexington (1993)
* The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many (1993)
* World Orders Old and New (1994)
* Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship (1997)
* Hegemony or Survival (2003)
* Failed States (2006)
* Requiem for the American Dream (2017)

Collections|

* Class Warfare (1996)
* Middle East Illusions (2003)
* Imperial Ambitions (2005)
* Interventions (2007)
* Gaza in Crisis (2010)
* 9-11: Was There An Alternative? (2011)
* Making the Future (2012)
* Occupy (2012)
* On Palestine (2015), with Ilan Pappé

Academic
works about|

* Chomsky
* Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction
* Decoding Chomsky
* Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent
* The Anti-Chomsky Reader
* The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky
* The Kingdom of Speech

Filmography|

* Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992)
* Last Party 2000 (2001)
* Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times (2002)
* Distorted Morality – America's War on Terror? (2003)
* Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause (2003) (TV)
* Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land (2004)
* Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? (2013)

Family|

* William Chomsky (father)
* Carol Chomsky (deceased wife)
* Valeria Wasserman (wife)
* Aviva Chomsky (daughter)

Related|

* Chomsky–Foucault debate

Authority control databases

International|

* VIAF

National|

* Germany
* France
* BnF data

Other|

* IdRef

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