It was my first day of graduate school in the Ateneo and I honestly did not know what to expect. To my surprise, my COM 257 class started off as normal as any class would have been. Introductions were made and a short discussion of the course objectives and requirements were given. Only being a total of eight students in the class, it took us less than thirty minutes to complete our brief monologue’s describing ourselves and the reasons why we decided to take up comm. In order to make use of the remaining hour and a half left that we had; we were to view the documentary entitled Manufacturing Consent, directed by Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick.
The documentary Manufacturing Consent is about the communication theories of the intellectual, Noam Chomsky. The documentary focuses on one of the most well known concepts Professor Chomsky is know for – the propaganda model. He explains in the documentary that government and private corporations use media to control society. Professor Chomsky used various examples -such as the invasion of East Timor and the war in Vietnam- to explain in the film that the media filters the information they release to the public. He rationalizes that the reason why media filters information is for the economic profit of corporations and for political gain of the government. Chomsky justifies that by manipulating people to think and act a certain way, both government and the private sectors get to fulfill their own selfish interests.
After watching the documentary I must confess that I do find some of professor Chomsky’s concepts rather radical and sometimes a little biased. Radical in the sense that he blames media for filtering and sensationalizing all information they release to the public. While watching the film I could not help but imagine a room of producers and writers secretly brain storming and strategizing ways on how to manipulate society in order for them to achieve their mission. The picture professor Chomsky left in my head was that the media –which is made up of the government and corporations- is a top-secret organization that operates much like the CIA and FBI.
Asides from being radical, I also felt like professor Chomsky –at some portions of the documentary- was being a little biased and for the lack of a better term, hard headed. Although I do believe that the media may filter and sensationalize most of the information they let out to the public, I do also believe that not everything is modified by them. I think that at the end of the day people will believe what they want to believe and think in a way that makes them distinctly who they are. Media may give them selected information but when it comes down to it, it is up to every individual to decide what he or she thinks regarding a certain matter.
Manufacturing Consent was definitely an enlightening documentary. It presented professor Chomsky and his theories in an understandable and coherent way. I also appreciated the cinematography of the film. It represented and delivered the message and content of the documentary in a quirky yet understandable way.
I suppose we can never really know for sure if media can be trusted. What’s best is that we stay vigilant and concerned about the issues that affect our society at large. Being misinformed is unintentional, but being ignorant is a choice. Lets all choose to stay correctly up-to-date.
