Manufacturing Consent: The Mass Media Analysis

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“Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.” –Noam Chomsky

Introduction On August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, Michael Brown, an 18 year old, was shot ten times by Police Officer Darren Wilson, over a piece of stolen candy. However, the store that Michael Brown had bought the candy from, had not reported any theft, so reports claimed that Michael had been shot and killed for Jay walking. Michael Brown’s body was left in the streets, uncovered for four hours before being picked up by a black SUV. The reports state that there was a struggle over Darren Wilson’s weapon with Michael Brown, but that was not that case. Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown ten times, including once execution style, which there was
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Chomsky analyzes the work of the media saying that there is a huge use of propaganda in the news and that broadcasts given to use is filtered by what the media thinks we need to know (Robinson, J). Chomsky looks at who is in charge and who has the authority to make the decisions and laws that decide how we as a society are able to function. The economic and political influences that are shown to society hold a great deal of guidance and power when it comes to who has the wealth and makes important decisions for our society. All decisions that society makes is something society as a whole believes the government would approve of. When it comes to understanding our society, the government and media hold the highest position when understanding what makes the world …show more content…
The first filter; Size and Concentration of Ownership, states that mainstream media firms are incredible large, controlled by wealthy people, and are benefited by big profit organizations (Robinson, J). This filter relates to the issue in Ferguson because most of the media that covered Michael Brown’s shooting was censored to have the viewer’s only have access certain stories. The second filter, Advertisers, states that advertisers have authority over mainstream media (Robinson, J). This means that people are more likely to believe the well-known and paid for sites than those that are free. When listening to the news of Ferguson, many people would believe the more high up information as opposed to the social media information, though social media was more accurate with the information. This leads the viewers to have little or no understanding of the news and information, (whether political, economic or social,) that is given to them (Robinson,

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