"Manifacturing Consent" is a book written by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. They discuss the propaganda model of communication in much broader sense.
Simulacra and Simulation. And other works by Jean Baudrillard. His philosophy focuses on the unreal nature of contemporary culture due to mass communication and mass consumption.
Richard David Precht is a poor caricature of a French public intellectual figure and loves to create outrage to stay relevant. He lives off the same mainstream media that he criticizes.
Precht doesn't seem particularly French to me. He is a solid craftsman. I associate French intellectuals more with esprit and a certain craziness.
His earlier books had a slightly penetrating American style, popular science peppered with human interest stories.
Precht, however, is willing to make himself unpopular, but he is also one of the few intellectuals who can afford to do so. Many media workers probably don't like to read how strong the pressure to conform is, they prefer to suppress that.
> "The Engineering of Consent" is an essay by Edward Bernays first published in 1947,