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NOAM CHOMSKY - TOP 10 MEDIA MANIPULATION STRATEGIES
The journalistic tendency to balance stories with two opposing views leads to a tendency to ‘build stories around a confrontation between protagonists and antagonists’ (Ricci 1993: 95). Issues such as garbage and sewage sludge only get coverage, despite their importance, when there is a fight over the siting of a landfill or incinerator and the coverage is then on the ‘anger and anguish of affected citizens, or the conflicting claims of corporate spokesmen, government regulators and environmental activists’ rather than the issues and technical background to them (Gersh 1992: 16).
The job of media is not to inform, but to misinform: Divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by the political and economic elites, by the technique of flood or continuous flood of distractions and insignificant information.
The primary element of social control is the strategy of distraction which is to divert public attention from important issues and changes determined by the political and economic elites, by the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.
Distraction strategy is also essential to prevent the public interest in the essential knowledge in the area of the science, economics, psychology, neurobiology and cybernetics.
“Maintaining public attention diverted away from the real social problems, captivated by matters of no real importance. Keep the public busy, busy, busy, no time to think, back to farm and other animals”
2. Create problems, then offer solutions
This method is also called “problem -reaction- solution.”
It creates a problem, a “situation” referred to cause some reaction in the audience, so this is the principal of the steps that you want to accept.
For example: let it unfold and intensify urban violence, or arrange for bloody attacks in order that the public is the applicant’s security laws and policies to the detriment of freedom.
Or create an economic crisis to accept as a necessary evil retreat of social rights and the dismantling of public services.
3. The gradual strategy
Acceptance to an unacceptable degree, just apply it gradually, dropper, for consecutive years.
That is how they radically new socioeconomic conditions (neoliberalism) were imposed during the 1980s and 1990s:
• the minimal state
• privatization
• precariousness
• flexibility
• massive unemployment
• wages
• do not guarantee a decent income,
...so many changes that have brought about a revolution if they had been applied once.
Another way to accept an unpopular decision is to present it as “painful and necessary”, gaining public acceptance, at the time for future application.
It is easier to accept that a future sacrifice of immediate slaughter.
• First, because the effort is not used immediately
• Then, because the public, masses, is always the tendency to expect naively that “everything will be better tomorrow” and that the sacrifice required may be avoided
This gives the public more time to get used to the idea of change and accept it with resignation when the time comes.
5. Go to the public as a little child
Most of the advertising to the general public uses speech, argument, people and particularly children’s intonation, often close to the weakness, as if the viewer were a little child or a mentally deficient.
The harder one tries to deceive the viewer look, the more it tends to adopt a tone infantilizing.
Why?
“If one goes to a person as if she had the age of 12 years or less, then, because of suggestion, she tends with a certain probability that a response or reaction also devoid of a critical sense as a person 12 years or younger.”(see Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars)
Making use of the emotional aspect is a classic technique for causing a short circuit on rational analysis, and finally to the critical sense of the individual.
Furthermore, the use of emotional register to open the door to the unconscious for implantation or grafting ideas , desires, fears and anxieties , compulsions, or induce behaviors …
“The quality of education given to the lower social classes must be the poor and mediocre as possible so that the gap of ignorance it plans among the lower classes and upper classes is and remains impossible to attain for the lower classes.”(See Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars).
To let individual blame for their misfortune, because of the failure of their intelligence, their abilities, or their efforts.So, instead of rebelling against the economic system, the individual auto-devaluate and guilt himself, which creates a depression, one of whose effects is to inhibit its action.And, without action, there is no revolution!
TOP SECRET : SILENT WEAPONS FOR QUIET WARS >>>
Experience has prevent that the simplest method of securing a silent weapon and gaining control of the public is to keep the public undisciplined and ignorant of the basic system principles on the one hand, while keeping them confused, disorganized, and distracted with matters of no real importance on the other hand.
- Unrelenting emotional confrontations and attacks (mental and emotional rape) by way of constant barrage of sex, violence, and wars in the media - especially the T.V. and the newspapers.
- Giving them what they desire - in excess - "junk food for thought" - and depriving them of what they really need.
Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
Noam Chomsky and Jeremy Scahill on the Russia-Ukraine War, the Media, Propaganda, and Accountability
Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and public intellectual widely recognized as "the father of modern linguistics." Over a career spanning more than seven decades at MIT and the University of Arizona, his work fundamentally reshaped our understanding of human language, cognitive science, and modern political media.
His contributions span two distinct but major domains:
1. Linguistics & Cognitive Science
Chomsky revolutionized linguistics in the 1950s by challenging the prevailing behaviorist view (led by B.F. Skinner) that language is acquired purely through habit and environmental conditioning.
Universal Grammar: He proposed that humans possess an innate, biologically determined language capacity—a set of cognitive principles hardwired into the human brain that allows children to rapidly acquire language despite limited initial exposure.
Generative Grammar: He developed mathematical models showing how the human mind produces an infinite array of grammatically correct sentences from a finite set of rules and vocabulary.
The Chomsky Hierarchy: In computer science and formal language theory, he classified grammars into four distinct levels (Type 0 through Type 3), which remains foundational for theoretical computer science and compiler design.
2. Political Criticism & Media Analysis
Parallel to his scientific career, Chomsky became one of the world's most influential anti-war intellectuals and systemic political critics.
The Propaganda Model (Manufacturing Consent): Co-authored with Edward S. Herman in 1988, this media theory details how mass media in democratic societies uses five structural filters (such as corporate ownership, advertising dependence, and official sources) to shape public consensus in favor of elite interests.
Foreign Policy & Imperialism: Beginning with his opposition to the Vietnam War in his 1967 essay The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Chomsky has documented and critiqued U.S. foreign interventions, hegemony, and state power.
Political Philosophy: He aligns with libertarian socialism and anarcho-syndicalism, advocating for workplace democracy, decentralized organization, and the questioning of all non-justifiable hierarchies.
Key Works
| Domain | Major Work | Focus / Significance |
| Linguistics | Syntactic Structures (1957) | Introduced transformational grammar and launched the cognitive revolution in linguistics. |
| Linguistics | Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965) | Formalized concepts of deep vs. surface structure in language processing. |
| Political Criticism | American Power and the New Mandarins (1969) | A seminal critique of intellectual complicity in state violence and the Vietnam War. |
| Media Theory | Manufacturing Consent (1988) | Outlined the structural mechanics of mass media propaganda in liberal democracies. |
Manufacturing Consent
In their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky argued that mainstream media doesn't manipulate the public through top-down government censorship or secretive conspiracies. Instead, it relies on market forces and institutional incentives that act as filters, sifting out dissent and shaping coverage to serve elite economic and political interests.
Before a story reaches the public, it passes through these five structural filters:
1. Mass Ownership & Profit Orientation
The largest news outlets are massive, profit-driven corporations owned by parent conglomerates or ultra-wealthy individuals. Because these institutions operate within the same corporate system as major financial powers, their leadership naturally shares the same broader economic interests. Coverage that threatens corporate profits or challenges private wealth accumulation is inherently discouraged.
2. Advertising as the Primary Income Source
News organizations don't primarily sell news to readers; they sell audiences to advertisers. Because advertisers fund the business, media outlets are wary of publishing stories that offend major corporate sponsors or create a disruptive, non-consumer-friendly environment. Outlets or perspectives that challenge corporate capitalism struggle to attract advertising revenue and are marginalized.
3. Sourcing and Reliance on Official Experts
Investigative journalism is expensive and time-consuming. To maintain a steady stream of cheap, reliable daily content, newsrooms rely heavily on official press releases and briefings from government agencies (the White House, the Pentagon, local police departments) and corporate PR firms. Because these sources are treated as authoritative by default, official narratives set the news agenda while critical or independent voices face a much higher burden of proof.
4. Flak (Disciplined Counter-Responses)
"Flak" refers to negative feedback aimed at news organizations when they publish stories that challenge powerful interests. This can take the form of angry phone calls, legal threats, advertiser boycotts, press releases from corporate-funded think tanks, or public smear campaigns. The fear of costly flak forces editors to self-censor and steer clear of controversial stories that disrupt elite consensus.
5. The Common Enemy (Anti-Ideology)
To mobilize public support and quiet internal debate, the system relies on an external, overarching threat or ideological bogeyman. During the Cold War, this was anti-communism. In modern times, it has adapted to focus on Islamic terrorism, foreign dictators, or generic "threats to national security." By framing world events as an existential struggle against a evil enemy, dissenters can be easily dismissed as unpatriotic or sympathetic to the adversary.
The Core Takeaway: Chomsky and Herman emphasized that journalists usually aren't lying or intentionally suppressing truth. Rather, the media system self-selects for journalists and editors who have already internalized these elite values, ensuring the news naturally stays within acceptable boundaries.
Universal Grammar
Before Noam Chomsky published his landmark critique of B.F. Skinner in 1959, the dominant view in psychology was that human language is merely a learned habit. Chomsky turned this on its head, arguing that language is not a skill we pick up from scratch—it is a biologically hardwired human capacity.
1. The Behaviorist View: Language as a Habit
Championed by psychologist B.F. Skinner in his 1957 book Verbal Behavior, the behaviorist framework treated the human mind at birth as a tabula rasa (blank slate).
Mechanism: Children learn language through operant conditioning—a cycle of imitation, trial, error, and reinforcement.
Example: A baby babbles "ma-ma." The parent smiles, claps, or gives food (positive reinforcement). The child associates the sounds with the reward and repeats them, gradually chaining words together into sentences through habit.
Under behaviorism, language is no different from any other trained behavior, like a pigeon learning to peck a lever for food.
2. Chomsky’s Theory: Universal Grammar
Chomsky argued that behaviorism fails to explain how fast, accurately, and creatively children master language. He proposed that all humans are born with an innate Language Acquisition Device (LAD)—an internal biological module containing Universal Grammar (UG).
Universal Grammar isn't a specific set of rules for English or Japanese; rather, it is an abstract blueprint or genetic operating system shared by all human languages.
Principles and Parameters: UG supplies universal principles (like the fact that all languages have nouns, verbs, and structural hierarchies). The child's environment merely sets the "parameters" (e.g., whether adjectives come before nouns as in English, or after as in Spanish).
Maturation over Learning: In Chomsky’s view, children don't "learn" language the way they learn chess; language grows in the mind automatically, much like physical organs develop during puberty, triggered by hearing speech around them.
3. Why Chomsky Rejected Behaviorism
Chomsky raised several decisive arguments showing why imitation alone could not explain language acquisition:
A. The Poverty of the Stimulus
The language input children hear (the "stimulus") is messy, full of false starts, incomplete sentences, and slips of the tongue. Yet, despite this poor input and little to no explicit grammar instruction, every neurotypical child rapidly develops a complex, mathematically precise grammar.
B. Infinite Generativity
Humans can construct and understand an infinite number of brand-new sentences they have never heard before (e.g., "The fluorescent flamingo played the cello on Mars"). Behaviorism cannot explain how we produce novel structures through simple imitation.
C. Overgeneralization Errors
Children routinely say things like "I runned away" or "Two mouses."
Adults almost never use these incorrect forms, meaning children could not have learned them through imitation. Instead, these errors prove that the child's mind is actively applying internal rules (add "-ed" for past tense) to new vocabulary.
| Aspect | Behaviorism (Skinner) | Universal Grammar (Chomsky) |
| Mind at Birth | Blank slate (tabula rasa) | Hardwired with language blueprint (LAD) |
| Primary Driver | External environment (rewards/punishment) | Internal biological maturation |
| How Language Learns | Habit formation & imitation | Setting structural parameters from speech triggers |
| Explanation for Errors | Unreinforced bad habits | Active testing of internal grammatical rules |
| Uniqueness | Language is just another learned behavior | Language is a unique, species-specific cognitive trait |





