A linguist by training, Chomsky has argued, with a compelling command of the relevant facts, that the dominant newspapers and broadcast media outlets are captives of corporate interests. In so doing, he successfully dispels the liberal-democratic notion that the mass media is effectively constrained by the ruling class' own needs for factual information about politically significant events. The following is a transcript of Ben's interview with Noam Chomsky. My research in these areas is usually connected to talks that I'm giving all over the place. Perhaps the most common theme is popular sovereignty - to what extent do people have the capacity, or are they going to be granted the capacity, to influence what happens in their own lives.
Sovereignty shows up in various areas.
In the domain of international order where the question has to do with interactions among states and military intervention, oppression by a state of its own population and so on. There are many current cases. The two most dramatic cases last year were East Timor and Kosovo. That's what the Seattle demonstrations were all about. There are many, many aspects of all these questions and those are ones that I've been writing on and speaking about constantly.