num_pages: 103
description: Noam Chomsky’s backpocket classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control begins by asserting two models of democracy—one in which the public actively participates, and one in which the public is manipulated and controlled. According to Chomsky, "propaganda is to democracy as the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state," and the mass media is the primary vehicle for delivering propaganda in the United States. From an examination of how Woodrow Wilson’s Creel Commission "succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist population into a hysterical, war-mongering population," to Bush Sr.'s war on Iraq, Chomsky examines how the mass media and public relations industries have been used as propaganda to generate public support for going to war. Chomsky further touches on how the modern public relations industry has been influenced by Walter Lippmann’s theory of "spectator democracy," in which the public is seen as a "bewildered herd" that needs to be directed, not empowered; and how the public relations industry in the United States focuses on "controlling the public mind," and not on informing it. Media Control is an invaluable primer on the secret workings of disinformation in democratic societies.From the Audiobook Download edition.
language: English
title: Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
titlecomplete: Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
characters: Clayton Keith Yeutter, Fidel Castro, Adlai Stevenson II, Alexander Cockburn, Walter Lippmann, Barbara Boxer, Edward Bernays, Henry B. Gonzalez, Norman Podhoretz, Armando Valladares, John Dewey, George H.W. Bush, Reinhold Niebuhr, George F. Kennan, Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Joseph Goebbels, Manuel Noriega, Herbert Anaya, Woodrow Wilson, José Napoleón Duarte, Harold Lasswell
genres: Political Science, American, Society, Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, History, Journalism
ratings_count: 7510
places: Cape Town, Golan Heights, Johnstown, Pennsylvania
publisher: Seven Stories Press