Letter

In response to Social media takes over as main source of news as trust falls

Manufacturing consent

A worthwhile analysis, but to get a deeper understanding it needs to have some context. In that respect, I would recommend two ground-breaking books that set out very clearly that context. The first is Taking the Risk out of Democracy by a brilliant but now sadly deceased Australian academic Alex Carey and the other, even more detailed, is Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman.

Both provide a compelling reason why faith in the MSM has been in constant decline for the last century: the concentration in control of that mass media in the hands of economic elites and their intention to use it to control the “bewildered herd” as their spokespeople have described the rest of us.

Those elites have always had concerns about what they describe as “an excess of democracy”, that reduces their capacity to ensure we think and act as they wish us to. Their analysis could equally be applied to the rapidly developing online media which those elites feared at the beginning of their development and which they have largely successfully sought to control as well.

— Les Macdonald from Balmain NSW