> I think Chomsky is absolutely right to point out that American news outlets focus on American issues from an American perspective…

If by "American perspective" you mean that the news is complicit in spreading propaganda on behalf of advertisers and sources like the government, then sure, I agree. That's what Chomsky means. But I don't think you mean that, because that is not the American perspective.

Most Americans do not believe that they're being propagandized to the extent that they are, and would take issue with it if they knew the facts. If what the news reported was a simple extension of Americans' natural positions and perspectives, then there'd be no need for the propaganda in the first place.

For example, most Americans do not believe that the Vietnam war was an invasion, because it is instead reported as aiding an ally during a civil war. If we began reporting on Vietnam as an invasion and highlighting the relevant facts that made that case, do you think the natural American perspective would remain unchanged? I don't. It didn't take the German people long to feel shame for their actions in the second world war.

I think you're letting journalists off the hook here.

> But the media's action on My Lai and Watergate don't really seem to demonstrate the "exactly the opposite" of an adversarial media. The exact opposite would seem to be a media that doesn't report on these things at all.

That's an extreme standard. You're taking Chomsky's words "exact opposite" as literally as possible, when they are clearly meant to be hyperbole. He's not saying the machine is 100% effective. This isn't 1984. But it's still bad if it's even much less than that.

The media didn't cover My Lai the day after? It occurred in March 1968 and didn't gain extensive media coverage until a year and a half later in November 1969, despite extensive efforts by numerous people to publicize the story. By that time, there were already massive demonstrations in Washington and media attention was focused on antiwar protest. The cat was out of the bag, and needed to be reigned in.

Chomsky argues, convincingly, that massacres like in My Lai weren't particularly out of place, but in fact were part of a larger strategy that made such events more routine and normal than they ever should have been. In public scandal cases like these, the defense's strategy is always "scapegoat," and so you would expect the other atrocities and overall strategy to be downplayed while My Lai is highlighted and treated as exceptional, and some peon's head is offered up on a plate. And that's exactly what happened.

Rule #1 in every playbook is to offer a sacrificial lamb to the masses before they start demanding that more important heads roll. This is basic stuff. You see it in every company in crisis mode. What makes it nefarious here is that the media is complicit. The facts aren't difficult to dig up, and the American people by and large expect news outlets to report on this stuff accurately.

But they don't. They systematically filter out the stories, the facts, and even the journalists who push the wrong buttons and ask the wrong questions at inconvenient times.

It's not 100% fail proof. But it's systemic.