29 Noam Chomsky Quotes on Media

Noam Chomsky quotes on media

11. ...jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you're trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them.

46. On September 1st of last year, the Soviet Union shot down Korean KAL 007, killing 269 people, and the immediate response here was that this proves that the Russians are the most barbaric people since Attila the Hun or something, and therefore we have to step up the attack against Nicaragua, set in MX missiles, put Pershings in West Germany, and increase the military system. In fact, the immediate main reaction here was great euphoria on Wall Street, where commentators pointed out that defense stocks have never looked better, you know, the big rise in defense stocks. All of this was because of this barbarous act, which is the worst thing that ever happened in human history. The story was given unbelievable coverage. Not only the story, but the American government interpretation of it, which is roughly what I've just said, was given the kind of coverage that I doubt has ever been given to any story in history... Just to give you an indication, the New York Times publishes an index volume, very densely printed thing, you practically need a magnifying glass to read it, big pages... For the month of September alone, the index volume is 7 pages, just on this... And it's all from the standpoint of the government, namely, here're these unbelievable monsters, for no reason other than sadistic love of massacre, killed 269 innocent people. Well, the government story gradually eroded and collapsed, and now basically nothing's left of it, except some funny questions. Like, what was that Korean airliner actually doing over the most sensitive area of Russian airspace? And why didn't the American reconnaissance jets nearby, RC-135 or... Why didn't they signal to the plane, as they certainly had the ability to do, to get out of the region? And what was it doing there in the first place, how come it was on a great circle route? It's very hard to imagine by a navigational error. There're all kinds of questions like that, and those questions have essentially collapsed the government case, as was sort of quietly admitted in the small print after the political capital has been made. But there're some other things, which are never discussed, which I think are even more important. So let me mention a couple. Right in the middle of all of this furor about the Korean airliner, on November 11th in fact, there was a 100 word item in the New York Times, devoted to the interesting fact that UNITA, which is a group that we call 'freedom fighters', supported by us and South Africa, in Angola, they took credit for shooting down a civilian Angolan jet, killing 126 people. Now, there was no RC-135 in the area, confusing the issue, maybe jamming radar. It was just pure, plain, premeditated murder. Got 100 words in the New York Times. February 9th this year, UNITA took credit for downing another civilian jet. That one wasn't even mentioned, you gotta read the foreign press to find that one out. Now, under the very confused circumstances of KAL 007, if that was the worst atrocity in human history, well, what about the freedom fighters that we support along with South Africa? Who did something much worse, they just purposely shot down a civilian jet. I mean, granted, the only people killed were black or something, but putting that aside, why is it any different? In fact, it's a lot worse. And in fact, since we're the ones who support them, we're the worst barbarians in history, way worse than the Russians. So let's go back a little further, those who have a little bit of memory could remember some other cases. For example, in October 1976, a Cubana airliner was blown up, with 76 people killed, including the Olympic gold medal winning fencing team of Cuba, and the bomb was placed on the plane by the CIA. It was placed by a CIA agent, he's known, he continued to be a CIA agent, continued to carry out other atrocities... Or let's go back a little further. In February 1973, Israel shot down a civilian jet over the Sinai, killing 110 people. The plane was lost in a sand storm. It was about 2 minutes flight time away from Cairo. No confusion, no ambiguity. The orders came from the highest center of the high command. Now this was sort of noticed, there were a couple of references to this in the middle of the KAL 007 business. Predictably, a series of lies were produced, in the New York Times and elsewhere, saying that the situation was totally different because Israel has taken responsibility and paid compensation. If you look back, you find that Israel did not take responsibility, and refused to pay compensation. They agreed to something else, what's called ex gratia compensation, meaning just sort of pure humanitarian aid, which is easy enough because we paid for it. But they refused to pay compensation, because that would imply responsibility, and they refused any responsibility. In fact, what they did is exactly what the Russians did: they put a couple of pilots on television, and they told how what they did was exactly right and just, and they tried to blame the French pilot, he didn't know how to fly... Couple of days after that, Golda Meir came to Washington. She was asked no embarrassing questions about this; the press didn't bother. And she returned home with new military aircrafts. That's the way we responded in that case. There was also editorial comment. The New York Times, which was outraged beyond anything about the Russians, it also had something to say in this case. It had an editorial saying that 'No useful purpose is served by acrimonious debate over assignment of blame'. That was the phrase in this situation of tension... Well, if you look back a little further, you can find other things too. For example, in 1955 an Air-India plane was blown up, with many people killed. In fact, including the people killed was the whole Chinese delegation to the Bandung Conference, the neutralist conference that was held in Indonesia. Turned out the bomb was planted by a CIA agent, who later defected and told the story... The purpose of the operation was to kill Zhou Enlai, who was supposed to be on the plane but by accident had gotten off. So they killed the rest of the delegation, plus everybody else, but not him... And if you bother, you'll find other cases too. All of this is ignored. The one case which was even mentioned, the Israeli one, was falsified... While we have this huge hysteria whipped up about the worst monsters in history... And the press went along with this, virtually 100%. The LA Times is the only newspaper in the US that I know of, that published an honest account of the Israeli case, by Robert Scheer. He published a straight factual account, which gave essentially what I've just said. The other cases were never mentioned -- maybe there's something that I've missed -- but the rest of the press didn't mention any of this stuff. Now, here is an example of the way a really well-disciplined propaganda system works. Total obedience, total subservience to state propaganda. When the state says, 'Whip up hysteria against the evil empire', everybody starts yelling, jumping up and down, and screaming about the evil empire... [Q: how do you pull that off?] That's a very interesting question. See, if it happened in, say, Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, we know how they pulled it off. Namely, an order came from the Ministry of Truth, and everybody had to obey it. Now that didn't happen here. Here it happened in the way American propaganda always works: by servility and cowardice and class interest. In other words, we have a relatively centralized media, and there are great advantages to subordinating yourself to external power, which in fact represents your interests anyhow. The mass media are basically big corporations, and they share the interests of other major corporations, which means the interests represented by the state. So it's not too surprising that they'd tend to support state power; what is interesting is the uniformity, the virtual lack of deviance. The fact that in a country as complex as this, one article should appear, referring to one of these incidents, and the others I suppose were barely reported at all. This is something that you find over and over again when looking at the American propaganda system. So for example, take the invasion of South Vietnam. How did we succeed, for 22 years, in preventing essentially 100% of scholarship from referring to a historical event that occurred. Namely, the American invasion of South Vietnam. There is no such event. Take a look in the encyclopedias, the history books, the specialized monographs, and you'll see that there's no such event as the invasion of South Vietnam in 1962, or aggression against South Vietnam - it's just not there... We have a very intricate system, and it does it with consummate skill, and with great success. So on major issues, you just get no deviation at all.

47. The uniformity and obedience of the media, which any dictator would admire, [...]

49. ...Board of Directors have to make certain kinds of decisions, and those decisions are pretty narrowly constrained. They have to be committed to increasing profit share and market share. That means they're going to be forced to try to limit wages, to limit quality, to use advertising in a way that sells goods even if the product is lousy. Who tells them to do this? Nobody. But if they stopped doing it, they'd be out of business. Similarly, if an editorial writer for the New York Times were to start, say, telling the truth about the Panama invasion -- which is almost inconceivable, because to become an editorial writer you'd already have gone through a filtering process which would weed out the non-conformists -- well, the first thing that would happen is you'd start getting a lot of angry phone calls from investors, owners, and other sectors of power. That would probably suffice. If it didn't, you'd simply see the stock start falling. And if they continued with it systematically, the New York Times would be replaced by some other organ. After all, what is the New York Times? It's just a corporation. If investors and advertisers don't want to support it, and the government doesn't want to give it the special privileges and advantages that make it a 'newspaper of record,' it's out of business.

50. ...the point of public relations slogans like 'Support Our Troops' is that they don't mean anything [...] that's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody is gonna be against and I suppose everybody will be for, because nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. But its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something, do you support our policy? And that's the one you're not allowed to talk about.

55. [The 'liberal media'] love to be denounced from the right, and the right loves to denounce them, because that makes them look like courageous defenders of freedom and independence while, in fact, they are imposing all of the presuppositions of the propaganda system.

56. I don't say you're self-censoring - I'm sure you believe everything you're saying; but what I'm saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting.

59. Stability means we run it. There are countries that are very stable. Cuba is stable, but that's not called stability.

61. Remember that the media have two basic functions. One is to indoctrinate the elites, to make sure they have the right ideas and know how to serve power. In fact, typically the elites are the most indoctrinated segment of a society, because they are the ones who are exposed to the most propaganda and actually take part in the decision-making process. For them you have the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and so on. But there's also a mass media, whose main function is just to get rid of the rest of the population -- to marginalize and eliminate them, so they don't interfere with decision-making. And the press that's designed for that purpose isn't the New York Times and the Washington Post, it's sitcoms on television, and the National Enquirer, and sex and violence, and babies with three heads, and football, all that kind of stuff.

64. In my view Columbia completely disgraced itself, as did the media and commentary generally... The morning of Ahmadenijad's speech at Columbia, the university welcomed the President of Turkmenistan for a speech at a world leaders conference; an outstanding democracy, with a stellar human rights record -- and, incidentally, plenty of natural gas that the US covets. As Ahmadinejad visited New York, Pakistani riot police were beating lawyers and other demonstrators protesting the dictator Musharraf's organization of his forthcoming election -- which might remind us of President Bollinger's effusive praise for the dictator in introducing him for a talk at Columbia. Of course Pakistan is not suspected of developing nuclear weapons. Rather, it developed them, while the Reagan administration politely looked the other way and pretended it did not know, and also harbors the leading nuclear proliferator, Abdul Qadeer Khan. And if we go farther back, we can recall the warm welcome Columbia gave to the Shah of Iran, right after the tyrant was installed in power by a US-UK military coup, overthrowing the parliamentary government. The Shah was presented with an honorary degree as he delivered the Gabriel Silver Lecture Dedicated to International Peace, in which he urged that 'We must be strong enough internally and externally so that the temptation of subversion from within, supported from without, can be obliterated.' Delightful timing... Since Ahmadinejad was not as offensive as was hoped, the press had to seize on his silly remark about homosexuality (see, e.g., the infantile New Yorker cover) -- deeply offensive to countries like ours and Britain that have been so supportive of gay rights since they gained independence centuries ago. For example when the British government forced the great mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing to undergo 'hormone therapy' to cure his disease, leading to his suicide. Just at about the time that the US-UK were installing the Shah and Columbia was inviting him to present deep thoughts on the dangers of 'subversion from within, supported from without.' It was a pathetic display.

80. The Tet Offensive in January of 1968 [...] made the war unpopular. American corporate elites decided at that point that it just wasn't worth it, it was too costly, let's pull out. So at that time everybody became an opponent of the war because the orders from on high were that you were supposed to be opposed to it. And after that every single memoirist radically changed their story about what had happened. They all concocted this story that their hero, John F. Kennedy, was really planning to pull out of this unpopular war before he was killed and then Johnson changed it. If you look at the earlier memoirs, not a hint, I mean literally.

101. After September 11th I had tons of interviews everywhere, except the United States of course, and often it was national radio and TV. A couple of times it turned out to be Irish television and BBC back to back, and the difference in reaction was startling. If I said this much on Irish TV, OK, discussion over, everyone understands what I'm talking about. You try to say it on BBC, you have to go on for like about an hour to explain to them what you mean. The Irish sea is a chasm, and it just depends who's been holding the whip for 800 years and who's been under it for 800 years.

122. An extensive and detailed poll was released by ABC, BBC, and Japan's NHK, on September 10. The media had to labor overtime to keep it out of sight, because it sharply contradicted the message presented by the divine Petraeus in the carefully staged extravaganza timed -- by mere coincidence -- on Sept. 11, one day later. If Maliki reflected the will of the people he would be denouncing the 'surge' because it undermined security everywhere, calling on the US to withdraw either now or soon, and supporting attacks on US soldiers.

132. If, say, you say that Iran is a terrorist state, you don't need evidence. If you say that the US is a terrorist state, you need plenty. Here, that is. In Iran it's reversed.

137. Cuba has probably been the target of more international terrorism than the rest of the world combined and, therefore, in the American ideological system it is regarded as the source of international terrorism, exactly as Orwell would have predicted.

142. Israel is an embattled country. They rely very heavily on U.S. support. So they have developed a very sophisticated system of propaganda. They don't call it propaganda. They call it hasbarah. It is the only country I know of in the world that refers to propaganda as explanation. The Ministry of Propaganda is the Ministry of Explanation. The idea being that our position on everything is so obviously correct that if we only explain it to people, they will see that it is right.

150. On the moral implications, the plans were reported on Feb. 14 in the front-page lead story in the New York Times. Two days earlier, the Times published a blistering review of Osama bin Laden's 'morally outrageous' pronouncements, which reached the ultimate depth of depravity in 2002, with a message that put forth 'the perverse claim that since the United States is a democracy, all citizens bear responsibility for its government's actions, and civilians are therefore fair targets.' The reviewer, law professor Noah Feldman, is correct in describing this as ultimate depravity. The Feb. 14 story, and subsequent ones, have provided details on how the US and Israel have adopted Osama's 'perverse claim,' descending to ultimate depravity, and are proceeding to implement it. The announced plans are intended to impose suffering and starvation on Palestinian civilians because they voted the wrong way, and to ensure that others do not come to their relief (the goal of a trip to the Middle East by Condoleezza Rice, according to the Times). We may also note that this is nothing new. Osama's 'perverse claim' has been official US policy for at least 45 years, often formulated in virtually his words.

153. In order to make it look dramatic, they staged what was ridiculed by some Israeli commentators, correctly, they staged a national trauma... There was a huge media extravaganza, you know, pictures of a little Jewish boy try to hold back the soldiers destroying his house... And a lot of the settlers were allowed in, so there could be a pretense of violence, though there wasn't any... The withdrawal could have been done perfectly quietly. All that was necessary was for Israel to announce that on August 1st the army will withdraw. And immediately the settlers, who had been subsidized to go there in the first place, and to stay there, would get on to the trucks that are provided for them and move over to the West Bank where they can move into new subsidized settlements. But if you did that way, there wouldn't have been any national trauma, any justification for saying, 'never can we give up another 1 mm? of land'. What made all of this even more ridiculous was that it was a repetition of what was described in Haaretz as 'Operation National Truama 1982'. After Israel finally agreed to Sadat's 1971 offer, they had to evacuate northeastern Sinai, and there was another staged trauma, which again was ridiculed by Israel commentators. By a miracle, none of the settlers who were resisting needed a Band-Aid, while Palestinians were being killed all over the place.

168. If we try to keep a sense of balance, the exposures of the past several months are analogous to the discovery that the directors of Murder, Inc. were also cheating on their income tax. Reprehensible, to be sure, but hardly the main point.

175. There's one aspect of the right-wing fury about cutting off Imus that I agree with. They argue, I suppose rightly, that Imus was pulled off because of pressure from advertisers. Correct me if I missed something, but in the coverage and debate over this matter I failed to notice the observation that it is indeed wrong for advertisers to have any influence whatsoever on media content, one of the aspects in which the media depart very far from any ideal of freedom of press.

188. I've often been struck by the extensive knowledge that people have of sports, and particularly, their self-confidence in discussing it with 'experts.' While driving, I sometimes turn on radio talk shows on sports, and am always struck by this. People calling in have no hesitation in criticizing the coaches, the judgments of the people running the shows, etc. In contrast, when discussing matters of concern to human lives -- their own and others -- people tend to defer to 'experts,' though for the most part the expert knowledge is no more beyond them than how the local professional sports team should play their next game. That's where the indoctrination comes in: in the intensive training that brings people to feel that they must defer to alleged 'experts' on matters of very direct concern to them, far more so than sports. I do, however, agree that there can be negative aspects to the heavily promoted frenzy on spectator sports, loyalty to the home team, etc. Depends very much on how it is carried out.

194. We're not analyzing the media on Mars or in the eighteenth century or something like that. We're dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving because of policies that we are involved in, we as citizens of democratic societies are directly involved in and are responsible for, and what the media are doing is ensuring that we do not act on our responsibilities, and that the interests of power are served, not the needs of the suffering people, and not even the needs of the American people who would be horrified if they realized the blood that's dripping from their hands because of the way they are allowing themselves to be deluded and manipulated by the system.

207. Reading Chomsky is like standing in a wind tunnel. With relentless logic, Chomsky bids us to listen closely to what our leaders tell us--and to discern what they are leaving out. The answers become clear enough, he says. The catch is they won't be the ones we want to hear. [...] Chomsky, as he often does, has a voice problem. He is shrill and sarcastic--chiefly because he's angry with what he sees as rampant American hypocrisy. [...] If there is anything new about our age, it is that the questions Chomsky raises will eventually have to be answered. Agree with him or not, we lose out by not listening. --BusinessWeek, April 17, 2000 [189]

214. Those who challenge the 'Right to Lie', as Chomsky describes it, can expect to be met with vilification and distortion. Such vilification campaigns succeed by making the accusation against the critics the topic of debate. By forcing critics into an endless defence of their position, the propaganda system distracts attention from the substantive issues. --Milan Rai, Chomsky's Politics, 1995 [195]

233. Chomsky is an irresistible example of the quality problem that besets the market for academic public intellectuals. --Richard Posner, 2001 [214]

237. It is tempting to follow a policy of malign neglect toward Chomsky's latest screed. But ignoring the book may foster the false impression that Chomsky's revelations are somehow too explosive to be challenged in a major newspaper. A far wiser course is to point out the inconsistent arguments and shrill assertions that are Chomsky's contribution to the public debate. [...] It would be unfortunate if Chomsky's momentary popularity overshadows infinitely more reasoned critiques of Bush administration policies. There are serious questions that should be weighed as America girds for final war against Saddam Hussein and dispatches military advisers to nations like the Philippines. Chomsky and his camp followers do not have a monopoly on dissent. The best response to the frenzied e-mailed dispatches from this left-wing crank remains public disclosure and ridicule. --Walter Shapiro, May 7, 2002 [218]

238. He defended Faurrison. He championed the Khmer Rouge. His condemnations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are one hundred percent one-sided, based on the (obviously) false notion that the Arab nations and the Palestinian people have been trying to arrange a peace with Israel for decades. He viewed the rescue mission undertaken in Kosovo as nothing more than the extension of imperial power. He accuses the United States of perpetrating a holocaust in Afghanistan and thinks that the mistaken attack on the pharmaceutical factory in Somalia [sic] was as bad if not worse than the attack on the Twin Towers. One could go on, but it all adds up to, I fear, the mirror image of the ignorant jingoism of Bennett, Krauthammer, Kelly, Will, etc. And I find it amazing that intelligent people take it seriously. --Eric Alterman, June 2002 [219]

239. What we hear in Europe or elsewhere in the world, despite CNN and my son watches CNN every morning, is President Bush saying that the United States is the greatest country on earth, almost every day. And Noam Chomsky saying, the United States is the worst country on earth. And we don't hear a great deal of all those liberal internationalists, critical voices in between. Whether this is the job of an officially funded public diplomacy or of other forms of media, I don't know, but it does seem to me terribly important that the voices of those other Americans should be heard across the world. --Timothy Garton Ash, December 5, 2002 [220]

270. I really don't believe [that Pat Tillman opposed the war in Iraq and was going to meet Noam Chomsky], and I think you got it from one of those documents Mary Mapes handed to Dan Rather. --Ann Coulter, September 27, 2005 [251]