The Media's Role in Influencing Public Opinion

Far and Wide's post about the way in which some key members of the media abandoned Dion once the Harper attack ads began to air in early 2007 got me thinking about the media's role in influencing public opinion.

I started to do a little digging and I came across this video -- The Myth of the Liberal Media: The Propaganda Model of News -- featuring Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, and Justin Lewis.

The video talks about how a myth can be shaped by putting the spotlight on one side of an argument or proposition and ignoring any evidence to the contrary. (Doesn't that sound familiar?) It doesn't take long for that "myth" to take on the power of "fact," even though it may be totally untrue.

Comments

[Melanie]

Chomsky has been my touchstone to logic in all things political (and more) for as long as I can remember. It's nice to see you're spreading the word.

[The Militant Liberal]

I love your blog, especially the quotes. Everytime I read anything by Ghandi I think, "wow is that ever true" And "why cant I be more like that"

[The Militant Liberal]

Is There anything that Chomsky doesn't know? If we could just get the world to read more Chomsky it wouldn't be long till we were all holding hands and singing Kumbaya. I'm not being sarcastic.