[calibraxis]

Thanks, I'll get a copy of your book. BTW, you might be interested in the work of media historian Bob McChesney (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._McChesney), if you haven't checked it out already.

One thing he argued is that before professional journalism, the media was much like today's blogs; everyone knew their content reflected the owner's biases. Then with the consolidation of newspapers (due to economic reasons), to the point where a city might have only a couple dailies, overt bias "stank like old fish", so professional journalism arose. (And journalism schools along with it.) With it came a neutral-sounding objective tone, which hid a number of biases (like what's covered — and what's not, reliance on "official sources" who are elites, and so on). But of course, the content reflects the owners and advertisers' general interests, as we'd expect from media corporations which like staying in business.

Given that, I'd wonder if good, carefully-researched professional journalism is more insidous than yellow journalism. I'll look more closely at your (and Sinclair's) work.

[jmtame]

+1 for the Robert McChesney reference. I remember taking the class Money, Media, and Power at UIUC which he instructs, and it was one of the most interesting classes I've taken in my 6 lengthy years in college.

[ryanholiday]

He wrote the intro to the republished edition of The Brass Check believe it or not.

(But to address your other point, it may be. Chomsky's media criticism focusing heavily on this)

[gruseom]

In a recent interview, Chomsky expressed ambivalence about the propaganda model that became so successful with Manufacturing Consent. It seems that he disagrees somewhat with the analysis of media content as a function of corporate interests, but is uncomfortable saying so too bluntly because it was largely the work of his friend Ed Herman. Chomsky's real opinion is that economic interests alone can't explain why intellectuals overwhelmingly serve power, since many intellectuals hold safe positions (e.g. in academia) that aren't subject to corporate bosses. I got the impression that Chomsky sees media propaganda as a special case of this more general pattern which he considers more fundamental. Don't have the link handy but can dig it up if anyone cares.

[calibraxis]

Do you have this in mind? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0D0E42AA4I&t=22m18s)

Some context: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0D0E42AA4I&t=16m30s)

[gruseom]

Yes! Thanks.

The whole interview is worth listening to if one can tolerate the (at times considerable) douchiness of the interviewer.