/lit/ - Literature

>>19895588
I think independent media, obviously.

I'd add that Chomsky's point is not that everything the media says is false. One example is reporting during the Vietnam War. There were journalists who were trying to do honest work, and they reported on war atrocities by the U.S. military, but the propaganda through-line in the stories -- which they had to include to get them published -- would be a narrative framing that "this goes against our values" and so forth. Understanding the difference between the facts and the propaganda line is how to critically analyze the news media. The opposite of doing this is to do what, say, Alex Jones does, which is to reject facts in the news media as the propaganda line -- but he's selling a different kind of propaganda line.

Another point Chomsky makes, though, is that journalists are constrained by the system they work in, which selects people who will reproduce status-quo ideology and this starts from kindergarten (or more precisely, filters out the people who will be disobedient or rebellious). And this is unconscious. He said this to a journalist who interviewed him once, "I'm sure you believe everything you're saying, but if you didn't believe it, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting."

The Russiagate story in the media is a great contemporary example, because the story was baloney, but the journalists who published those stories -- fed to them by intelligence "sources" and so forth -- were promoted. So, you don't get punished for being wrong, necessarily, you get promoted for being wrong as part of a pack... and at the right time. Being right at the wrong time, on the other hand, means you might not have a career in journalism. And now those Russiagate stenographers in the media are selling stories about "Havana Syndrome."

https://youtu.be/lLcpcytUnWU