RESEARCH < posted November 24, 2001 >


Noam Chomsky — Political Activist, Public Intellectual and Anti-Theorist

Excerpts from a class discussion
(Discussion held on 11.15.2001 in CMS.800, Theories of Media at MIT taught by Henry Jenkins.)

Noam Chomsky is linguist, a political activist and a public intellectual who is well known for his criticism of the mass media. However, he's not trained as a media scholar, nor does he reference media theory in his work. As a result, his theory is something of a blunt instrument.

Much of Chomsky's writing about the mass media focuses on how ownership of media affects media coverage — in particular, what gets covered and what gets left out. His position is very much that of a structuralist. He takes the view that the media is a well organized, powerful entity that carefully controls the information made available to the public, based on choices that are bound up in the media's corporate economic self-interest. As a result, he suggests that the truth is often sacrificed for the sake of corporate profits.

Due to his position as a structuralist, there are some factors that Noam Chomsky overlooks. They include some of the following:

1. He gives very little weight to the notion of agency or the power of individuals or groups to create their own meaning out of media messages. He seems to assume that the population at large is easily duped by the mass media and rarely questions what it presents to them. (One exception, however, might be his belief in the potential of the political activist.)

2. Chomsky assumes that the media is fully aware of what they are doing, that media corporations are all working together in a very coordinated fashion distorting the news that they present. In reality, this degree of coordination has proven almost impossible to achieve by such large and diverse media conglomerates which include subsidiary organizations that frequently operate with a great deal of autonomy from their parent corporations.

3. Chomsky's views are extremely polarizing. He's very much a marginal figure. He seems to project the notion that once you hear what he has to say, your only choice is to strive to become a radical political activist, realizing that you've been duped and led around by the nose as a part of an unquestioning public at the mercy of an immensely powerful media system. This doesn't allow for moderate stances or compromise positions of any kind.

4. In his writing, Chomsky never addresses the notion that the media might have different goals than the government. This too seems overly simplistic. In the wake of September 11, it has been clear that the news the government wants to make public is much more limited than what the mainstream press would choose to publish.

5. The examples Noam Chomsky cites as proving his point about the coercive power of the media are all events that happened outside of this country. He talks about foreign conflicts and readers assume that his claims are transferable to domestic issues when they frequently are not. They are events that very few Americans were directly affected by or had any personal experience with and that distance is part of the reason for the public's lack of knowledge about the issues he raises. When things happen within our country, they are generally more widely publicized because they have a greater impact on the media's target audiences. Events that happen close to home are frequently more widely discussed, debated and understood by American media consumers. For example, as we learn about Afghanistan, very few of us have any first hand personal experience with the place, the people, the economic situation, the living conditions, the governmental structure, etc. It is a blank slate in many people's minds, so being a critical consumer of news is much more difficult. In contrast, many more of us have traveled within our own country, and have experiences and understanding of how things work here that allow us to question news reports and form our own understanding of events and conflicts being reported on by the media.

6. Chomsky uses facts to prove his arguments and his facts are uncontested. He's a meticulous researcher. What he misses by speaking only about facts, however, is that news is not just about reporting facts, it is about framing those facts, giving them context, layering analysis and additional information onto them. Ultimately, reporting the news is as much as about creating stories that viewers and readers will be able to understand and relate to as it is about reporting facts. In seeking to understand political conflicts we look for narrative perspectives, we seek to identify protagonists and antagonists, we try to understand why things are happening based on preceding events. So, you can't contest Chomsky's facts, but the facts are not the whole story. As Henry Jenkins said, "Consent isn't manufactured by facts, its manufactured through the way facts are framed and the way stories are told."

7. Chomsky uses the same tools to tell his stories that he vilifies the media for using. He presents his point of view as a powerfully framed narrative in which he plays David to the media conglomerate's Goliath.

8. Chomsky doesn't address the fact that the news is packaged in this country. He overlooks the fact that news is put together to appeal to viewers and target audiences, that it is packaged to fulfill a demand for emotionally engaging, compelling coverage of stories that are relevant to viewers. He overlooks the fact that the media will sell consumers nearly anything that they think the public will want to hear and will ultimately pay for, even if those stories are sometimes counter to the media's own interests.

Although there are blindspots in Noam Chomsky's writing and commentary, he is nonetheless an important figure and a powerful public voice about the effects of corporate media ownership. He brings the debate about the power of the American media to an audience eager to hear his message, he encourages alternate media voices and he also helps to illuminate more moderate positions through the presentation of his own more extreme views.