this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
31 points (100.0% liked)
askchapo
23218 readers
231 users here now
Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.
Rules:
-
Posts must ask a question.
-
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
-
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
-
Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's not wrong, but I think the thesis itself has lost relevance. The main thesis of Manufacturing Consent is that corporate owned media trade favorable pieces and filter out dissenting voice through sets of soft incentives, mainly for access. Being in a Whitehouse Press Corps is one of the main example. This thesis might be relevant in the 80s or 90s, back when being journalist was still a working class job, but it is not relevant now.
Manufacturing Consent fail to address the class dynamics of post-internet journalism. From 2000 onward, access is not that relevant. What is relevant is that journalism stopped being a working class job. People don't do the gauntlet of covering local news such as local baseball league in smalltown USA to be an Editor of national newspaper anymore. Local news is mostly dead. Instead, all major journalists are coastal nepo-babies, they now come from the same class, i.e., bourgeoisie as the people they cover. They go to the same Ivy League schools as congressional staffers. Even without trading access, the journalists themselves already grew up and believe the propaganda of the ruling class and US hegemony.
Next time you read some NYT or Washington reporting piece from a no name journalist, not even opinion piece writers like Ezra Klein or Tom Friedman - just try to google their names and see if they come from working class background, very likely they're not. For example Sydney Ember was a lowly campaign reporter for NYT (she famously covered Bernie 2020) - her dad is a Hollywood producer and screenwriter. Alexander Aciman does a lowly job of being Wirecutter reviewer for NYT, completely apolitical, he's reviewing shit like T-shirts, socks, alarm clocks etc. and he's a son of NYU professor.
What are you saying? Access is still extremely important. Check out that NBC interview just a few days ago with Trump ("okay, yeah, yeah, okay" says the journo as Trump says the most ridiculous debunked lies, like "every boat I sink is 25,000 American lives saved"). You can say that some of its specific nature changed, but network news still heavily emphasizes, for example, interview practices oriented around avoiding offending big names so that they'll come back for more interviews so that people watch your show (though this is not evenly applied, of course).
I would argue that network news (NBC, CBS, ABC) are not as relevant as they are in shaping public opinion, their viewership have been tanking compared to the 80/90s. People don't watch network news for news, except for really old boomers in retirement homes. A one-on-one interview with the sitting President back in the 80s or 90s would give the network news show big scoop and translate to big ratings, these days not so much. Most working people these days get their news online from social media, from a very fragmented media landscape. People want to watch a short "take" on interview with the President from someone they trust, not the whole interview itself.
The "manufacturing consent" in fragmented media landscapes these days in my opinion are largely done via class-based exclusion, mainly in primary (written) news, e.g., NYT, AP, Reuters, Politico, WaPo. The clearest example here is that a famous White House Correspondent in the past was maybe Dan Rather. He was a son of manual laborer and both of his parents were highschool dropouts. Now the NYT White House Correspondent is Maggie Haberman, her dad Clyde Haberman was already a big shot NYT writer, and her father-in-law ran Carnegie Corporation. These days journalism is a white collar job and there's barely any class representation in mainstream news media.
??? Book was published in 1988 though.
I mean you're not wrong but the book was written before the Internet became relevant
My point was that the book is relevant as a piece of history if you want to understand US media landscape at the time, but now it is outdated.