[BugBrother]

I shocked the educated English guy next to me at work, when I gave a reference to "The harrowing of the north".

Not exactly the most obscure part of English history, but still not well known. Control of information isn't new.

The fun part will all the Chomsky thing is that in my native Sweden, you have totally different influences on the news media than USA. E.g. left wing extremists have a large space, political discussion are often done by interviewing political left extremists (Gardell, Hubinette, Guillou, etc).

But you see lots of "manufactured consent", lots of head line news stories at BBC/NY Times just doesn't show up. Etc.

[BugBrother]

I should add -- what I meant was, the filtering of the news is very different but still filtered. E.g. pro-Israel stuff (Pallywood, torture between palestinian groups, antisemitism in the muslim world etc)often just doesn't get printed.

Sometimes you see a story at the BBC/NY Times. After it has grown to a headline item, it is grudgingly made news in Sweden a couple of days later.

I assume this is because the left wing extremists really care about Israel.