Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media Page #5

do not have any legitimacy,

in fact which oten

strike at fundamental human rights,

and your understanding

of fundamental human nature and rights.

Well, what are the major things, say today?

There are some

that are being addressed in a way.

The feminist movement is addressing some.

The civil rights movement is addressing others.

The one major one

that is not being seriously addressed

is the one that's really

at the core of the system of domination,

and that's private control over resources.

And that means an attack

on the fundamental structure of state capitalism.

I think that's in order.

That's not something far off in the future.

Your life work.

The alphabet has only 26 letters.

With these 26 magic symbols, however,

millions of words are written every day.

Nowhere else are people so addicted

to information and entertainment

via the printed word.

Every day the world comes thumping

on the American doorstep,

and nothing that happens anywhere

remains long a secret

from the American newspaper reader.

It comes to us pretty casually, the daily paper,

but behind its arrival on your doorstep

is one ofjournalism's major stories.

How it got there.

There is a standard view about democratic

societies, and the role of the media within them.

It's expressed for example

by Supreme Court Justice Powell

when he spoke of the crucial role of the media

in effecting the societal purpose

of the First Amendment,

namely enabling the public to assert

meaningful control over the political process.

That kind of formulation

expresses the understanding that

democracy requires free access

to information, and ideas, and opinion,

and the same conceptions hold

not only with regard to the media,

but with regard to educational institutions,

publishing, the intellectual community generally.

It is basic to the health of a democracy

that no phase of government activity

escape the scrutiny of the press.

Here reporters are assigned to stories

fateful not only to our nation, but to all nations.

"Congress", says the First Amendment,

"shall pass no law

abridging the freedom of the press".

And the Chief Executive himself

throws open the doors of the White House

to journalists representing papers

of all shades of political opinion.

But is worth bearing in mind

that there is a contrary view,

and in fact the contrary view is very widely held,

and deeply rooted

in our own civilisation.

It goes back to

the origins of modern democracy,

to the 17th-century English revolution

which was a complicated affair

like most popular revolutions.

There was a struggle between Parliament

representing largely

elements of the gentry and the merchants,

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