The classic political study of how elite forces shape mass media. Edward S Herman and Noam
Chomsky investigate how an underlying elite consensus structures mainstream media. Here they
skilfully dissect the way in which the marketplace and the economics of publishing
significantly shape the news. This book reveals how issues are framed and topics chosen and
the double standards underlying accounts of free elections a free press and governmental
repression between Nicaragua and El Salvador between the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and
the American invasion of Vietnam between the genocide in Cambodia under a pro-American
government and genocide under Pol Pot. What emerges from this ground-breaking work is an
account of just how propagandistic our mass media can be and how we can learn to read them and
see their function in a radically new way.
