ABSTRACT
In this extended interview, world-renowned academic Noam Chomsky discusses his and Edward Herman’s history in writing Manufacturing Consent, the attacks on it from the mainstream media, and what he would change about the model if he wrote the book today. Chomsky argues that the arrival of the Internet and social media have not affected his model very much as their content is drawn primarily from the mainstream media in the first place, characterizing the two mediums as fundamentally shallow. He also discusses the enormous power that companies like Google and Amazon wield over society and the negative consequences of their monopolies. He also shares this thoughts on current issues in modern media, including Russiagate, Syria and fake news in the era of Trump, claiming that a focus on Russia is distracting the public from Trump’s highly deleterious domestic policies that are “dismantling every element of the government that might help the general population.”
