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good morning welcome good morning once there milk cow three two one take two good morning welcome dear Nils town center the home of the world's largest
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permanent point-of-purchase the video wall installation my name is Kelvin look and I'm your video host all day here at am TV I want to take this opportunity to extend a very special and warm welcome to the film crew from
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necessary illusions we've got an excellent lineup of television programming for you today so let's get on it so how long have they been working on this documentary [Music]
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however in every country I show up there always there Japan instead 500 hours ready to date by me so they put together
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real doozie when I'm down here somebody talked for an hour guess they got to do no chumps does anybody know who Noam Chomsky is [Music]
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[Music] [Music] good afternoon and welcome to Wyoming talks my guest today is not an intellectual no I'm Tom scape thank you
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for being on our program today glad to be here well I know probably the main purpose for your trip to Wyoming is to discuss thought control in a democratic
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society now I'd say I'm just Jane USA and I say well gee this is a Democratic Society and what do you mean thought-control I make up my own mind I create my own destiny
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what would you say to her well I was suggest that Jane take a close look at the way the media operate the way the public relations industry operates the
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extensive thinking that's been going on for a long long period about the necessity for finding ways to marginalize and control the public and accredit society
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I think you're going to look at the evidence antennae calculated about the way the major meeting agendas any media international press television is or the
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way that they shape and control the kinds of opinions that appear the kinds of information that comes through the sources to which they go and so on and I think that Jane will find some very surprising things about the democratic
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system like to welcome all of you to this lecture today several years ago Fresa Chomsky was described in the New
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York Times Book Review as follows just in terms of the power range novelty and influence of his thought Noam Chomsky is arguably most important intellectual
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alive professor Noam Chomsky gather there are some people out behind that blackness there but if I don't look you in the eye it's because I don't see you all I see is the blackness perhaps I
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ought to begin by reporting something that's never read the line about the arguably the most important intellectual in the world and so on comes from a publisher's blurb and you also always got to watch those things because if you
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go back to the original you'll find that that sentence is actually there this is in the New York Times but the next sentence is since that's the case how can he write such terrible things about
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American foreign policy and they never quote that book but in fact if it wasn't for that second sentence I would begin to think that I'm doing something wrong and I'm not joking about that it's true that the Emperor doesn't have
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any clothes but the Emperor doesn't like to be told it and the Emperor's lapdogs like the New York Times are not going to enjoy the experience if you do good evening I'm Bill Moyers what's more
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dangerous the big stick are the big lie governments have used both against their own people tonight I'll be talking with a man who has been thinking about how we can see the developing lie he says that propaganda is to democracy what violence
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is to a dictatorship but he hasn't lost faith in the power of common people to speak up for the truth you have said that we live entangled in webs of in
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this deceit that we live in a highly indoctrinated society where elementary truths are easily buried elementary truths such as such as the fact that we invaded South Vietnam or the fact that
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we're standing in the way of significant and have four years of significant moves towards arms negotiation or the fact that the military system is to a substantial extent not totally but to a
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substantial extent a mechanism by which the general population is compelled to provide a subsidy to high technology industry since they're not going to do it if you ask them to you have to deceive them into doing it there are
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many truths like that and we don't face them do you believe in common sense I mean yours we do believe in Cartesian common sense I think people have the capacities to see through the deceit in which they're
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snared but they got to make the effort in Jahlil in Congress to hear a man from the ivory tower of Massachusetts Institute of Technology a scholar distinguished linguistics scholar talk
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about common people with such appreciation I think that the scholarship at least the field that I work in has the opposite consequences by my own studies in language and human
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cognition demonstrate to me at least what remarkable creativity ordinary people have the very fact that people talk to one another is a reflection just in the normal way I mean any
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particularly fancy reflects deep-seated features of human creativity which in fact separate human beings from any other biological system we know tonight scientists talk to the animals but are
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they talking back [Music] the journal with barber from and Marylou Finley communicating with animals is a serious scientific pursuit this is nim
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chimpsky NIM jokingly named after the great linguist noam chomsky was a great hope of animal communication in the 1970s for four years Patito and others coached him in sign language but in the end they decided it
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was a lost cause NIM could ask for things but not much more I would have loved to have a conversation with him and understand how he looked at the universe he failed to
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communicate that information to me in a week and we gave him every opportunity [Music] no I'm Chomsky theorist of language and political activists has had an extraordinary career I can think of none
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like in recent American history and few anywhere at any time he has literally transformed the subject of linguistics at the same time he's become one of the most consistent critics of power politics and all its protein guises
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scholar and propagandist his two careers apparently reinforce each other in 1957 he published his syntactic structures which began what has frequently been called the chomskyan
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revolution in linguistics like a latter-day Copernicus Chomsky proposed a radically new way of looking at the theory of grammar Chomsky worked out formal rules of the universal grammar
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which generated the specific rules of actual or natural languages the general presentation seems to me rather simple-minded and unsophisticated but
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nevertheless correct later he came to argue that such systems are innate features of human beings they belong to the characteristics of the species and
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have been in effect programmed into the genetic equipment of the mind like the machine language in a computer one need be interested in this question of course I am interested in and the interesting
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question from this point of view would be what is the nature of initial State that is what is human nature in this
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respect Ana she decided at next facility that in turn explains the astonishing facility the children have been learning the rules of natural
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language no matter how complicated incredibly quickly from what our imperfect and often degenerate samples translocated so confiscated mirror genetic amputated which means it's
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complicated if in fact our minds were a blank slate and experience wrote on them we would be very impoverished creatures indeed so the obvious hypothesis is that
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our language is the result of the unfolding of a genetically determined program well plainly there are different languages in fact the apparent variation of languages is quite superficial it's certain as if that's as certain
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veining it is that humans are not genetically programmed to learn one or another language so you bring up a Japanese baby and Boston will speak Boston English and you bring up my child in Japan it'll speak Japanese and that
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means that the base that from that it fought from from that it simply follows by logic that the basic structure of the languages must be essentially the same our task as scientists is to try to
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determine exactly what those fundamental principles are that cause the knowledge of language to unfold in the manner in which it does under particular circumstances and incidentally I think there is no doubt the same must be true
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of other aspects of human intelligence and systems of understanding and interpretation and moral and aesthetic judgment and so on the implications of these views have washed over the fields
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of psychology education sociology philosophy literary criticism and logic in the fifties and sixties the bridge between your theoretical work and your political work seems to being the attack
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on behaviorism but now behaviorism is no longer an issue or so it seems so how does this leave the link between your linguistics and your politics well I've always regarded the link I've never
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really perceived much of a link to tell you the truth again I would be very pleased to be able to discover intellectually convincing connections between my own anarchist convictions on
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the one hand and what I think I could demonstrate or at least begin to see about the nature of human intelligence on the other but I simply can't find intellectually satisfying connections
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between those two domains I can discover some tenuous points of contact yeah do play a DVD or CD chapatti the system right no problem
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a la la cosa may pose a vision sympathetic to define a co-educational school in plus C regular ET à l'intérieur uncle curse off daily spree with a la
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natural Eamon from the Mount Scylla system regularity the quickened kihon possible concerns on the Papa little bit are you a bird mental
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experiment no default social and a hoppity bollocks you don't lead the class it's a damned if it is correct as I believe it is that a fundamental element of human nature is the need for
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a creative work for a creative inquiry for for free creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of course of
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institutions then of course it will follow that a decent society should maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to be
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realized now a federated decentralized system of free associations incorporating economic as well as social institutions would be
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what I refer to as anarcho-syndicalism and it seems to me that it is the appropriate form of social organization for an advanced technological society in which human beings do not have to be
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forced into position of tools of cogs in the machine since the 1960s Noam Chomsky has been the voice of a very characteristic brand of rationalist libertarian socialism he's attacked the
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abuses of power wherever he saw them he's made himself deeply unpopular by his criticism of American policy the subservience of intelligentsia the degradation of Zionism distortions of
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media and self-delusions of prevailing ideologies under the liberal administration of the 1960's the love of academic intellectuals designed and implemented
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the Vietnam War and the other similar though smaller actions this particular community is a very relevant one to consider it a place like MIT because of course you're all free to enter enter
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this community in fact you're invited and encouraged in the community of technical intelligentsia and weapons designers and counterinsurgency experts and magmatic planners of American Empire
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is one that you have a great deal of inducement become associated with in this sense in fact our very real report Jaime this came with the mail we within
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a second Oh God they still get their cameras okay let me start in your essay hate language and freedom you write social action must
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be animated by a vision of a future Society I was wondering what vision of a future society and animates you well I have my own ideas to what a future
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society should look like I've written about them I mean I think that we should the most general level we should be seeking out forms of authority and
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domination and challenging their legitimacy sometimes they are legitimate that is let's say they needed for survival so for example I wouldn't suggest that during the Second World War
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the forms of authority we had a totalitarian Society basically and I thought there was some justification for that under the wartime conditions and there are other forms of so so for relations between parents and children
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for example involved forms of coercion which are sometimes justifiable but any such any any form of coercion and the control requires justification and most
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of them are completely unjustifiable now at various stages of human civilization it's been possible to challenge some of them but not others others are too deep-seated or you don't see them or whatever and so at any particular point
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you try to detect those forms of authority and domination which which are subject to change and which do not have any legitimacy in fact which often
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strike at the fundamental human rights and your understanding of fundamental human nature and right well what are the major things say today there are some that are being addressed in a way
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the feminist movement is addressing some the civil rights movement is dressing others the one major one that's not being seriously addressed is the one that's really the core of the system of domination that's private control over
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our resources and that means an attack on the fundamental structure of state capitalism I think that's an order that's not something far off in the future your line work
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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
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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
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newspaper reading it comes to us pretty casually the daily paper but behind its arrival on your doorstep is one of journalism's major stories how it got
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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
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when he spoke of the crucial role of the media in affecting the societal purpose of the First Amendment namely enabling the public to assert meaningful control
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over the political process that kind of formulation expresses the understanding that democracy requires free access to information and ideas and opinion and
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the same conceptions hold not only with regard to media but with regard to educational institutions publishing the electoral community generally
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it is basic to the health of a democracy that no phase of government activity escaped the scrutiny of the press here reporters are assigned to stories faithful not only to our nation but to
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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
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political opinion but it 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 civilization it
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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
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representing largely elements of the gentry and the merchants and the Royalists representing other elite groups and they fought it out but like many popular revolutions there was also a lot of popular permanent going
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I was opposed to all of them there were popular movements that were questioning on everything the relation between master and servant the right of authority all together all kinds of things were being questioned there was a
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lot of radical publishing printing presence just coming to existence this disturbed all the elites on both sides of the Civil War so as one historian pointed out at the time in 1660 he
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criticized the Radical Democrats the ones we're calling for what we would call democracy because they are making the people so curious and so arrogant that they will never find humility
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enough to submit to a civil rule now underlying these doctrines which were very widely held is a certain conception of democracy it's a game for elites it's
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not for the ignorant masses who have to be marginalized diverted and controlled of course for their own good the same principles were upheld in the
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American colonies the dictum of the founding fathers of American democracy that uncoding the people who own the country ought to govern it
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14 John J now in modern times for elites this contrary view about the intellectual life of the media and so on
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this country review in fact is the standard one I think apart from rhetorical flourishes [Music] from Washington DC he's intellectual
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author and linguist professor Noam Chomsky manufacturing consent what does that title meant to describe well the title is actually borrowed from a book
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by walter Lippmann written back around 1921 in which he described what he called the manufacture of consent as a revolution in the practice of democracy
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what it amounts to is a technique of control and he said this was useful and necessary because the common interests the general concerns of all people he lewd the public public just isn't up to
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dealing with them and they have to be the domain of what he called a specialized class notice that that's the opposite of the standard view about democracy there's a version of this
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expressed by the highly respected moralist and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr who was very influential on contemporary policy makers his view was that
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rationality belongs to the cool observer but because of the stupidity of the average man he follows not reason but faith and this naive faith requires
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necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth maker to keep the ordinary person on course it's not the cases the naive might think
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that indoctrination is inconsistent with democracy rather as this whole line of thinkers observes it's the essence of democracy the point is that in a military state or a feudal state or what
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you get nowadays both totalitarian state it doesn't much matter what people think because you've got a bludgeon over their head then you can control with a duty but when the state loses the bludgeon
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when you can't control people that force and when the voice of the people can be heard you have this problem it may make people so curious and so arrogant that they don't have the humility to submit
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to a civil rule and therefore you have to control what people think and the standard way to do this is the resort through what in more honest days used to be called propaganda manufacture of
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consent creation of necessary illusions various ways of either marginalizing the general public or reducing them to apathy some fashion [Music]
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[Music] a barometer maaske Kojima Thank You hakuna to Hatton the oldest of two boys are Amnon Chomsky was born in
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Philadelphia Pennsylvania in 1928 as a Jewish child the anti-semitism of the time affected him both parents taught Hebrew and he became fascinated by literature reading translations of
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French and Russian classics he also took an interest in a grammar book written by his father on Hebrew of the Middle Ages he will close a childhood absorbed in reading curled up
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in a sofa often boring up to 12 books at once from the library he is married to Carol and they have three children I don't like to impose on my wife and children a form of life that they
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certainly haven't selected for themselves namely one of public exposure or exposure to the public media that's their choice and I don't believe that they haven't self selected this I won't oppose it on them I don't like that
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confronted frankly a second dose or perhaps principle point is that I'm rather against the idea the whole notion of developing public personalities who
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are treated as stars of one kind or another where aspects of their personal life are supposed have some significance and so on I'll take one reception he said that you're just like us he went to school got good grades and what made
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you start being critical you know one seemed indifferent let's start up a change well you know there all kinds of personal factors in anybody's life first we don't forget I grew up in a
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depression [Music] [Music] my parents actually happened to have
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jobs which was kind of unusual they were Hebrew school teachers as a lower middle class for them everything revolved around being Jewish Hebrew Palestine in those days so on
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and I grew up in that video so you hard learned Hebrew in my theater school be he was school teacher went to college led youth groups summer can't Hebrew camps old business the branch of designs
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movement that I was part of was all involved in socialist by nationalism and arab-jewish cooperation nice stuff [Music] [Music]
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whether they think of your hopping on a train going up to New York and hanging out of Anika's bookstores on 4th Avenue and talking to good in mind because relatives there I mean I don't totally
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trust my childhood memories about viously but the family split up like a lot of Jewish families that went in all sorts of directions there were sectors that were super Orthodox there were other sectors that were very radical and
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very assimilated and working-class intellectuals and that's the sector that I naturally gravitated toward it was a very lively intellectual culture for anything it was a working class culture
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had working-class lad values of solidarity social status and so on there was a sense somehow things were gonna get better but an institutional structure was around the method of fighting of
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organizing and doing things which had some hope and I also had the advantage of having gone through a experimental progressive school to a do a school which was quite good run by a university
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there and you know there was no such thing as competition there was no such thing as being a good student I mean literally the concept of being good student didn't arise until I got to high school I went to the academic high
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school and suddenly discovered I'm a good student and I hated high school because I had to do all the things you have to to get into college but until they notice kind of a free pretty open system and I don't
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know their wants of other things well maybe I was just can't angered as a you start I have read with interest in amazement your long review article Gabriel Jackson Spanish Civil War and that's a very respectable piece of
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history and I can appreciate how much work goes into that winner when I did that work when did you then I did that work in the early 1940s when I was about 12 years old [Music] the first article I wrote was right
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after the fall of Barcelona and the school newspaper was a lament about the rise of fascism 1939 actually I guess
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one of the people whose biggest influence in my life was an uncle who had never gone past fourth grade he was you know I had a background in crime then left-wing politics and all sorts of
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things but he was a hunchback and as a result he could get a newsstand in New York through they had some program for people with physical disabilities and some of you from New York yeah well you
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know the 72nd Street castle that's right that's why I got my political education at 72nd Street there's a place where you come out of the subway and there's everybody goes towards 72nd Street and there were two newsstands on that side
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which we're doing fine and there's a tuner stands on the back and nobody comes out the back and that's where his news it was a very lively place he was a very bright guy it was the 30s there were a
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lot of Emma graves so a lot people were hanging around here and in the evening especially it was sort of a literary political salon kind of guys hanging around arguing talking and as a kid like
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11 12 years old the biggest excitement was to work the newsstand you write in manufacturing consent that it's the primary function of the mass media in
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the United States to mobilize public support for the special interests that dominate the government and the private sector what are those interests well if you want to understand the way any society works ours or any other the
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first place to look is who makes who is in a position to make the decisions that determine the way the society functions societies differ but in ours the major decisions over what happens in the
00:33:16
society decisions over investment and production and distribution and so on are in the hands of a relatively concentrated network of major corporations and conglomerates and investment firms and so on they are also
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the ones who staff the major executive positions in the government and they're the ones who immediately and they're the ones who have to be in a position to make the decisions have an overwhelmingly dominant role in
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the way life happens not what's done in the society within the economic system by law and principle they dominate the control of our resources and the need to satisfy their
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interests imposes very sharp constraints on the political system and the ideological system [Music] when we talk about manufacturing of consent whose consent is being
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manufactured we can start with their two different groups we can get more into more detail but at the first level of approximation there's two targets for propaganda one is what's sometimes
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called the political class there's maybe 20% of the population which is relatively educated more or less articulate that plays some kind of role in decision-making they're supposed to
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sort of participate in social life either as managers or cultural managers like say teachers writers and so on they're supposed to vote they're supposed to play some role in the way
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economic and political and cultural life goes on now their consent is crucial one Bert that has to be deeply indoctrinated then there's maybe 80% of the population
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whose main function is to follow orders and not to think you know and not to pay attention anything and they're the ones that usually pay the cost all right
00:35:13
professor Chomsky Noam you outlined a model with filters propaganda is sent through that's way to the public you have briefly outlined those it's basically an institutional analysis of
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the major media what we call a propaganda model we're talking primarily about the national media those media that sort of set a general agenda that others more or less adhere to to the
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extent that they even pay much attention to national or international affairs now the elite media are the sort of the agenda-setting media that means the New York Times The Washington Post the major
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television channels and so on they set the general framework a local media more or less adapt to their structure [Applause] well there's Karen
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in sunlight assessment there's a beachhead I think I think this was the offered of soundbite rumbling $2 and here lino sometimes got a minute all the
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time so that's some of the summer prepare week and they do this in all sorts of ways by selection topics by distribution of concerns by emphasis in framing issues by filtering of
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information by founding of debate within certain limits 25 seconds determined they select they shade they control the restraint in order to serve the interests of dominant
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elite groups in society there is an unusual amount of attention focus today on the five nations of Central America this is democracy's diary here for our instruction our triumphs and disasters
00:37:01
the pattern of life's changing fabric here is great journalism a revelation of the past a guide to the present and a
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clue to the future New York Times is certainly the most important newspaper
00:37:32
in the United States and one could argue the most important newspaper in the world the New York Times plays an enormous role in shaping the perception of the current world on the
00:37:44
part of the politically active educated classes also the New York Times has a special rule and I believe its editors probably feel that they bear a heavy burden in the sense that the New York Times creates history
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what happened years ago may have a bearing on what happens tomorrow millions of clippings are preserved in The Times library all indexed for instant use a priceless archive of
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events and the men who make them but his history is what appears in the New York Times archive a place where people will go to find out what happened is New York Times therefore it's extremely important if history is going to be shaped in an
00:38:23
appropriate way that certain things appear certain things not appear certain questions be asked other questions be ignored and that issues be framed in a particular fashion now in whose interests is that history being so
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shaped well I think that's not very difficult to answer the process by which people make up their minds on this is a much more mysterious process than you would ever guess from reading
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manufacturing consent there is a saying about legislation that legislation is like making sausage the less you know about how it's done the better for your appetite the same is
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true of this business if you are in a conference in which decisions are being made on what to put on page one or what not you would get I think impression that important decisions were being made
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in a flippant and frivolous way but in fact given the pressures of time to try to get things out you resort to a kind of a shorthand and you have to fill that paper up every day it's curious in a
00:39:30
kind of a mirror-image way professor Chomsky is in total accord with Reed Irvine who at the right-wing end of the spectrum says exactly what Chomsky does
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about the insinuating influence of the press of the big media as quote agenda setters to use one of the great buzz words of the time and of course reader
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Irvine sees this as a left-wing conspiracy of foisting liberal ideas in both domestic and foreign affairs on the American people but in both cases I think the premise really is an insult to the intelligence of the people consume
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news now to eliminate confusion all of this has nothing to do with liberal or conservative bias according to the propaganda model both liberal and conservative wings of the media whatever
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those terms are supposed to mean fall within the same framework of assumptions in fact if the system functions well it ought to have a liberal bias or at least they appear to because if it appears to
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have a liberal bias that will serve to bound flow it even more effectively in other words if the press is indeed adversarial and liberal always bad things then how can I go beyond it
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they're already so extreme in their opposition to power that they go beyond it would be to take off from a planet so therefore it must be that the presuppositions that are accepted in the
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liberal media are sacrosanct can't go beyond them and a well-functioning system would in fact have by us of that kind the media would then serve to say in effect thus far and no
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further we ask what would you expect of those media on just relatively uncontroversial guided free market assumptions and when you look at them you find a number of major factors
00:41:24
entering it to determining what their products are these are what we call the filters so one of them for example is ownership who owns the major agenda-setting media after or what are
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they as institutions in the society what are they well in the first place they are major corporations in fact huge corporations furthermore they're integrated with and sometimes owned by even larger corporations conglomerates
00:41:51
so for example by Westinghouse GE and so on what I wanted to know was how specifically they needs control the media what I mean is like asking how do
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they lead control General Motors what why isn't that a question I mean General Motors is an institution of the elite they don't have to control it they own it except I guess at a
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certain level I think like I I guess I work with student press and I so I know it's like reporters decide that elites don't control the student press but I'll tell you something you try and student press to do anything that breaks out of
00:42:33
conventions and you're going to have the whole business community around here down on your neck and the university is going to get threatened and you know I mean maybe no bill paying attention to you that's possible but if you get to the point where they don't stop paying
00:42:46
attention to you the pressures will start coming because there are people with power there are people who own the country and they're not going to let the country get out of control what do you think about that this is the the old
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cabal theory that it's somewhere there's a there's a room with the bays covered desk and they're a bunch of capitalists sitting around and they're pulling strength these rooms don't exist I mean I hate to tell noam chomsky this you
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don't you don't put it'll share that I think is the most absolute rubbish I've ever heard this is a current fashion in the universities you know it's patent nonsense and I think it's it's nothing but a fashion it's a way that
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intellectuals have of a feeling like a clergy I mean there has to be something wrong [Music] [Music]
00:44:23
so what we have in first place is major corporations which are parts of even bigger conglomerate now like any other corporation they they have a product which they sell to a market the market
00:44:36
is advertisers that is other businesses what keeps the media functioning is not the audience they make money from their advertisers and remember we're talking about the elite media so they're trying
00:44:48
to sell a good product a product which raises advertising rates and ask your friends in the advertising industry that means that they want to adjust their audience to the more elite and affluent
00:45:01
audience that raises advertising rates so what you have is institutions corporations big corporations that are selling relatively privileged audiences to other businesses well what point of view would you expect
00:45:14
to come out of this and without any further assumptions what you'd predict is that what comes out is a picture of the world a perception of the world that satisfies the needs and the interests
00:45:25
and the perceptions of the sellers the buyers and the product now there many other factors that press in the same direction if people try to enter the system who don't have that
00:45:39
point of view they're likely to be excluded somewhere along the way after all no institution is going to happily design a mechanism to self-destruct it's not the way institutions function so they all work to exclude or marginalize
00:45:52
or eliminate dissenting voices or alternative perspectives and so on because they're dysfunctional the dysfunctional of the institution itself and do you think you've escaped the ideological indoctrination of the media
00:46:05
and society that you grew up in hell I often not I mean I when I look back and think of the things that I haven't done that I should have done it's a submits
00:46:16
very it's a not a pleasant experience so what's the story of young know in the schoolyard yeah mother I mean that was a personal thing for me and quite an interesting one else but I do remember
00:46:31
you just said in conclusions well yeah I mean I did had a big influence on me I mean I remember when I spent six I guess first grade there was there was the standard fat kid who everybody made fun
00:46:42
of and I remember in the schoolyard he was on a you know I'm standing on a right outside the school classroom and a bunch of kids outside so taunting him so
00:46:56
on and one of the kids actually brought over his older brother so like in third grade instead of first grade big kid he was going to you know beat him up or something and I remember going up to stand next to him feeling somebody who
00:47:09
helped him them I did for a while and then I got scared and went away and I was very much ashamed of it afterwards and sort of felt no I'm gonna do that again
00:47:23
that's a feeling that's stuck with me you should stick with the underdog and the shame remain should have stayed [Music]
00:47:34
lauralee established your professor at MIT you've made a reputation you had a terrific career ahead of you you decided to become a political activist now here is a classic case of somebody whom the
00:47:46
institution does not seem to have filter it out I mean we were good boy up until then were you or you'd always been a sly some from your rebel yeah pretty much I had been pretty much outside you thought isolated you felt out of sympathy with
00:47:58
the prevailing currents of American life but a lot of people do that suddenly in 19 second four you decide I have to do something about this what made you do that well that was a very conscious decision and a very uncomfortable decision because I knew
00:48:10
what the consequences would be I was in a very favorable position I had the kind of work I like we had a lively exciting department field was going well personal life was fine I was living in a nice place children growing up everything
00:48:24
looked perfect and I knew I was giving it up and at that time remember was not just giving talks I began involved right away in resistance and expected to spend years in jail came because to it in fact
00:48:36
my wife went back to graduate school in part because we assumed just went out to support the children these were the expectations [Music] and I recognized that I returned to
00:48:51
these interests which were the dominant interests of now and youth life will become very uncomfortable as I know that the United States you don't get to go psychiatric prison and they don't send a death squad after you it's on but there
00:49:04
are there are definite penalties for breaking rules so there's a real decision and that simply seemed at that point that it was just hopelessly
00:49:13
immoral not to do on Chomsky MA on the faculty at MIT and I've been getting more and more heavily involved in anti-war activities for the last few years
00:49:33
[Music] something happen and you are beginning with writing articles and making speeches and speaking to congressmen and that sort of thing and gradually getting involved more and more directly and
00:49:50
resistance activities of various sorts I've come to the feeling myself but the most effective form of political action that is open through a responsible and concerning citizen at the moment is
00:50:04
action that really involves direct resistance refusal to take part in what I think are were crimes we raise the domestic cost of American aggression
00:50:15
overseas through non-participation Network for those who are refusing to that take parts particular draft resistance throughout the country I was out
00:50:32
I think that we can see quite clearly some very very serious defects and flaws in our society our level of culture our institutions which are going to have to be corrected by operating outside of the
00:50:46
framework that is commonly accepted I think we're going to have to find new ways in political action singing songs
00:50:55
and to carry inside mostly say hey what's that sound what's born I rejoice in your disposition to
00:51:21
arguably get none question especially when I recognize what Mac of self control this must involve it does sure it really does I mean I think it did a big issue really very well sometimes I lose my temper maybe not they got right
00:51:34
because I do without smashing the goddamn thing you say you say and give a reason for not losing battle you say the war is simply an obscenity a depraved act by
00:51:47
weak and miserable men including all of us including myself including every that's the next sentence seems so short because you count everybody in the company of the guilty I think that's
00:52:00
true in the college yeah but this is one of the points out its intensity logical observation isn't it that no I don't think because the selling points out if everybody's guilty of everything that nobody's guilty of anything no well no I don't I don't believe that see I think that I think the point that I'm trying
00:52:12
to make and I think ought to be made is that the real at least to me I say this also in the book the what seems to me a very innocent terrifying aspect of our
00:52:24
society and other societies is the equanimity and the detachment with which sane reasonable sensible people can observe such events I think that's more terrifying than the occasional Hitler
00:52:37
LeMay or other that crops up these people would not be able to operate were it not for the this apathy and equanimity and therefore I think that it's in some sense the sane and reasonable and tolerant people who
00:52:49
should who share a very serious burden of guilt that they very easily throw on the shoulders of others who seem more extreme and revile [Music]
00:53:02
twelve million pounds of confetti dropped into New York City's so-called Canyon of Heroes Americans were officially welcoming the troops home from the Persian Gulf War that worked
00:53:14
out really great for us I mean it just goes to show that we're a mighty nation and we'll be there or no matter what comes along I mean it's the strongest country in the world and you got to be
00:53:26
glad to live good got to be a month that much after a while but I guess it's good to know everything you know it's guessing Vietnam you didn't really know I was going on but here you pretty much
00:53:41
up over the moment on everything so this was good to be informed the first time because of technology we have the ability to be live from many locations
00:53:54
around the globe and because of the format in all news network we can spend whatever time is necessary to bring the viewer the complete context of that
00:54:07
day's portion of the story and by context I mean the institutional memory that is critical to understand why and how and that's those who are analysts
00:54:22
and do commentary and those who can explain select that last piece ITN Israel
00:54:35
post-war David Brinkley once said that you step in front of the camera and you get out of news business and in show business but nonetheless that should not in any way subtract or obscure the need
00:54:49
for the basic standards of good journalism fat hen type let me give you a lead for Salinger right now yes President Bush and Prime Minister major closed or have almost rejected the
00:55:06
Soviet peace talk a separate okay in Saudi Arabia the door is being left open Rick Sallinger is standing by live and lay out with police the whole planet loves ya all [ __ ] close all right
00:55:20
accuracy speed a fair approach on honesty and integrity within the reporter to try and bring the truth whatever the truth may be by going to war is a serious business and a
00:55:32
totalitarian society the dictator just says we're going to war everybody marches and with this weapon of human Brotherhood in our hand we are seeing the war for men's mind not as a battle
00:55:44
of truth against lies but as a lasting Alliance pledge and faith with all those millions driving forward to create the true new order the world order of the people first the people
00:55:56
all of all from the Craddock society the theory is that if the political leadership is committed at war they present reasons and they got a very heavy burden of proof - because the war is a very catastrophic affair as this
00:56:09
month group to be the role of the media at that point is to allow us to present the relevant background for example the possibilities of peaceful settlement such as what they may be have to be
00:56:22
presented and then to present to offer a forum in fact encourage a forum of debate over this very dread decision to go to war and in this case kill hundreds of thousands of people and leave two
00:56:34
countries wrecked and so on that never happened the there was never of well you know when I say never I mean 99.9% of the discussion excluded the option of a
00:56:46
peaceful settlement that Washington's office award information Falls one of the most vital and constructive tasks of this war this is a People's War and when it the people ought to know as much
00:56:58
about it as they can this office will do its best to tell the truth and nothing but the truth or the home and the boys first weapon in this worldwide strategy of group is the great machine of
00:57:11
information represented by the three threads with its powers of molding public thought and leading public action with all its lifeline for the exchange of new ideas it's lean piping mason
00:57:22
spread across the earth every time George Bush would appear and say there will be no negotiations there would be in a hundred editorial to the next day lauding him for going the last mile for
00:57:35
diplomacy if he said you can't reward an aggressor instead of cracking up and ridicule the way people did in civilized sectors of the world like whole third world the media is so mad a fantastic
00:57:47
principle you know the invader of Panama the only head of state stands condemned for aggression in the world the guy was head of the CIA during the Timor aggression you know he says oppressors can't be rewarded the media just
00:58:00
applauded the motion picture industry with its worldwide organization of newsreel camera crews invaluable for bringing into vivid focus the background drama and perspective of the world
00:58:13
mobilize who in this all-out struggle for men minds are the radio networks with all their experience in the Swift reporting of great occasion and event from every strategic centre and
00:58:26
frontline stronghold their reporters are sending back the lessons of new tactics new ways of war the result was it to be war on his tremendous fakery all along the line the UN is finally living up to
00:58:39
its mission you know wondrous sea change New York Times told us the only wondrous sea change was that for once the United States didn't veto a Security Council resolution against aggression
00:58:51
people don't want to work unless you have to have one and they would have known that you don't have to have one well the media kept people from knowing it and that means we went to were very much in the night at the healthy reinstate and thanks to the media
00:59:03
subservience that's the big story [Music] remember I'm not talking about a small radio station in Laramie I'm talking
00:59:16
about the national agenda setting media if you're on a radio news show in Laramie chances are very strong but you pick up what was in The Times that morning and you decide that's the news in fact if you follow the AP wires you
00:59:30
find it in afternoon they send across tomorrow's front page of the New York Times that's what everybody knows what the news is and the perceptions and the perspectives and so on are so transmitted down and
00:59:42
not to the precise detail but the general picture is through not transmitted elsewhere the foreign news comes here to the foreign news desk the editor is Bob Henley Bob I suppose you
00:59:56
get far more foreign news than you can possibly use in the paper yes we do we get a great deal more than we can accommodate in a day your job is to weed it out us this is the selection center
01:00:08
as it were and when I have selected it I pass it across the desk to one or the other of these sub editors it comes back to me and on this chart I design the
01:00:21
page that if age 1 and page 2 fine Bob thank you very much one even they can film about me well since a nice quiet town it's a beautiful town while we're making a film about the
01:00:39
mass media so we thought what a good place where they got the name so maybe you could start by introducing yourself yes I'm Boden senko I'm the main street manager and the executive director of the media business authority and we are
01:00:52
in media Delaware County in the southeastern part of Pennsylvania media is called everybody's hometown the motto was developed as a way to promote the community we're a very high promotion
01:01:06
conscious community when you walk through media you'll be treated very well and you find that people have taken the idea of being everybody's hometown the heart the local paper the talk of
01:01:19
the town the town talk here we go yes I read the tale Chester what do you think the differences between the Wall Street Journal in the tablet talk when the town talk is completely local news it's fun it's nice 3 it's interesting
01:01:33
everybody neighbors and see what's going on the school district where business make bucks just like the big daily newspapers just like the big radio stations and we do quite well and rightfully circles we work very hard at
01:01:46
it I just want to show you a copy of the paper here the way it is this week it's a plastic wrapped on all four sides weatherproof and hung on everybody's front door and many many times you'll
01:01:59
find that this paper runs well over a hundred pages a week this particular edition you have to remember there are five editions this happens to be the central Delaware County Edition which is the Edition that covers media Pennsylvania what you see here now is
01:02:11
say advertising and Composition Department say hello guys we're hi and what we're doing now as we're putting red dots green dots and yellow dots up on the map wherever there is a store now
01:02:25
the red dots are the stores that don't advertise with us at all the green dots are the ones that advertise with us every week and the yellow dots are the ones that were run sporadic if you have any special now we have computer printouts of every one of these stores
01:02:37
and what we do is we take the printouts of all the red dots which are the bad lies and when our idea is to turn these red dots into yellow dots and turn the yellow dots into green dots and eventually make them all green dots so a hundred percent of the stores and a
01:02:49
hundred percent of the merchants and service people advertise in our newspaper every week that way we won't have any more red dots I guess will always be a few red dots but I have high hopes that there'll be a lot more green ones the red ones more finished hi I'm
01:03:02
Jim Morgan I'm with the corporate relations department of the New York Times and I'm here to take you on a tour of the New York Times so let's begin so [Music] they just take an audio in here yeah
01:03:15
they're taking audio in here audio no cameras no still open we went over this quite thoroughly they don't even take a skill camera in here we're in the composing room this is where the pages
01:03:28
are composed this is the type of graphical area that's the ratio of news to advertising sixty percent is this
01:03:38
might seem big but it is average in fact below average are sixty percent might include and some days maybe twenty pages of classified advertising or for itself
01:03:53
the rest of the newspaper is weighted much heavier news to advertising but the paper in its entirety every day larger small is six years four degrees well
01:04:06
that completes our tour of the New York Times and I hope you found it informative and I hope that you read the New York Times of every day of your life from now on
01:04:21
now there are other media to this basic social war is quite different it's diversion there's the the real mass media the kinds that are aimed at you know the guys who Joe Sixpack
01:04:34
that time the purpose of those media is just the dull people range this is an oversimplification but for the 80% or whatever they are the main thing for them is to divert to get them to watch
01:04:47
National Football League and to worry about you know another with child with six heads or whatever you pick up in the you know and the thing that you pick up on the supermarket
01:04:59
stands and so on or you know look at astrology or getting you know fundamentalist stuff or something real just get them away you know get them away from things that matter and for that it's important to
01:05:13
reduce their capacity to think the sports section is handled in another special department the sports reporter must be a specialist in his knowledge of sports he gets his story right at the sporting event and often sends it into his paper
01:05:27
play-by-play takes a sport that's another crucial example of the indoctrination system in my view for one thing because it you know it offers people something to pay attention to
01:05:39
that's of no importance that keeps them from worrying about keep them keep them from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some idea about doing something of them and
01:05:52
in fact it's striking to see the intelligence that's that's used by ordinary people in sports I mean you listen to radio stations where people call in they have the most exotic
01:06:03
information understanding that you know all kind of our Kane issues and the press undoubtedly does a lot with this I remember in high school for radios pretty old I suddenly asked myself at one point why do I care if my high
01:06:17
school team wins the football game I mean I don't know anybody on the team you know have nothing to do with me I mean why am i cheering for my penis doesn't mean it make any sense no and
01:06:30
but the point is it does make sense it's a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to Authority and you know group cohesion behind you know leadership elements in fact it's
01:06:42
training and irrational jingoism that's also a feature of competitive sports I think if you look closely at these things I think they have typically they do have function and that's why energy
01:06:55
is devoted to supporting them and creating a basis for them and willing to pay for them someone I'd like to ask you a question essentially about
01:07:07
the methodology and studying the propaganda model how would one go about doing that well there are number of ways to proceed one obvious way is to try to
01:07:18
find more or less parrot examples history doesn't offer true controlled experiments but it often comes pretty close so one can find atrocities or
01:07:31
abuses of one sort that on the one hand are committed by official enemies and on the other hand are committed by friends and allies or by the favored state itself by the United States in the US
01:07:43
case and the question is whether the media accept the government framework or whether they use the same agenda the same set of questions the same criteria for dealing with the two cases as any honest outside observer would do if you
01:07:56
think America's involvement in the war in Southeast Asia is over think again Khmer Rouge almost genocidal people on the face of the earth Peter Jennings reporting from The Killing Fields Thursday
01:08:09
I mean the great act of genocide in the modern period is Papa 1975 to through 1978 that atrocity I think it would be hard to find any example of a comparable
01:08:23
outrage and outpouring of fury and so on and so forth so that's one atrocity well it just happens but in that case history did set up a controlled experiment I
01:08:37
can't say that I never nope Yola well happens that right at that time is another atrocity very similar in character but differing in one respect we were responsible for it not Paul Pott
01:08:50
hello I'm Louise penny and this is radio noon if you've been listening to the program fairly regularly over the last few months you'll know East Timor has come into the conversation more than once particularly when we were talking about
01:09:03
foreign aid and also the war and a new world order people wondered why if the UN was serious about a new world order no one was doing anything to help East Timor the area was invaded by Indonesia
01:09:14
in 1975 there are reports of atrocities against et Maurice people and yet Canada and other nations have consistently voted against UN resolutions to end the occupation today we're going to take a
01:09:27
closer look at East Timor what's happened to it and why the international community is doing nothing to help one of the people who would be most active is Alain Pierre a photojournalist from British Columbia she's the founder of
01:09:40
the East Timor alert Network and she joins me in studio now hello hi one a tragedy compounding a tragedy is that a lot of people don't know much about East Timor where is it
01:09:53
East Timor is just north of Australia about 420 kilometres and it's right between the Indian and Pacific Oceans just south of these Timor is a deep water sea Lane perfect for us submarines
01:10:05
to pass through there's also huge oil reserves there one of the unique things about his team where I said it's truly one of the last surviving ancient civilizations in that
01:10:18
part of the world the tamron spokes 30 different languages and dialects amongst a group about 700 thousand people today less than 5% of the world's people live
01:10:33
like the East he marries basically self-reliant they live really outside of the global economic system small
01:10:45
societies like the East to Marie's are much more democratic and much more egalitarian and there's much more sharing of power and well before the
01:10:57
Indonesia is invaded most people lived in small rural villages the old people in the village were like the university
01:11:09
they passed on tribal wisdom from generation to generation children grew up in a safe stimulating nurturing environment [Music]
01:11:22
a year after I left his tumor I was appalled when I heard that Indonesia had invaded it didn't want a small
01:11:39
independent country setting an example for the region East Timor was a Portuguese colony and Venetia had no claim to it and in fact stated that they
01:11:51
had no claim to it during a period of colonization there was a good deal of participation the different groups developed a civil war broke out in
01:12:04
August 75 it ended up in a victory for Fretilin which was one of the groupings described as populous Catholic and the character with some typical leftist rhetoric
01:12:32
[Music] Indonesia at once started intervening what's the situation when the bishops come in they start arriving scenes to Monday 6 7 both together a very close to
01:12:45
our border yet not they're up there just for fun in there preparing a massive operation something happened here last night that moved us very deeply it was so far outside our experience as
01:12:58
Australians that will find it very difficult to convey to you but we'll try sitting on woven mats under a thatched roof in a hut with no walls we were the target of a barrage of
01:13:10
questioning from men who know they've made I tomorrow and cannot understand why the rest of the world is not care that's all they want for the United Nations to care about
01:13:22
what is happening here the emotion here last night was so strong that we all three of us so we should be able to reach out into the warm night here and touch it Greg Shackleton did an unnamed village
01:13:35
which will remember forever in Portuguese Timor Ford and Kissinger visited Jakarta it was December 5th we know that they had requested that Indonesia delay the invasion until after they left because
01:14:02
of embarrassing and within hours I think after they left the invasion took place in December 7th what happened on December 7th in 1975 it's just one of the great gray evil deeds of history
01:14:17
early in the morning bombs began dropping on Dilli the number of troops that invaded daily that day almost don't remember the entire population of the town and for two or three weeks there
01:14:29
was just they just killed people yo no Visia Fogo de stay mellow [ __ ] malanga shampoos Mushin ESO sin Tio's todos cosmos Aquarian [ __ ] my
01:14:42
remittances presion Poizner Haden [ __ ] marry me he accompanied agree to greet so Jamar implements disposal here a clear vision terrible
01:14:54
this council must consider into that regression against T mood as the main issue of the discussion when the Indonesian evaded the UN reacted as it always does calling for sanctions
01:15:09
condemnation and so on various watered-down resolutions were passed but the u.s. was very clearly not going to right so the timreis were fleeing into the
01:15:31
jungles by the thousands by late 1977-78 indonesia set up receiving centers for those timorous who came out of the jungle waving white flags those the Indonesians that were more educated or
01:15:44
who were suspected of belonging to Fretilin or other opposition parties were immediately killed they took women aside and flew them off to Delhi in helicopters for use by the Indonesian soldiers they killed children and babies
01:15:59
but in those days their main strategy and their main weapon was starvation by 1978 it was approaching really genocidal levels the church and other sources
01:16:13
estimated about 200,000 people killed the US backed it all the way the u.s. provided 90 percent of the alarms right after the invasion arms shipments were stepped up when the Indonesians actually
01:16:26
began to run out of arms in 1978 the Carter Administration moved in and increased arms sales and other Western countries did the same Canada England Holland and everybody can make a buck was in
01:16:39
there trying to make sure they get you more tea more read there is no Western concern for issues of aggression atrocities human rights abuses and so on if there's a profit to be made from nothing could show more bit more clearly
01:16:53
than this case [Music] it wasn't that nobody ever heard of each team crucial to remember that there was plenty of coverage in the New York Times and elsewhere before the invasion the
01:17:04
reason was that there was concern at the time over the breakup of the Portuguese Empire and what that would mean it was fear that do believe independence or Russian influence or whatever after the Indonesians invaded the coverage dropped
01:17:17
there was some but it was strictly from the point of view of the State Department and Indonesian generals never a theme where's refugee [Applause] as the atrocities reached their maximum
01:17:31
peak in 1978 when it really was becoming genocidal coverage dropped to zero in the United States and Canada the two countries have looked at closely literally drop to zero all this was
01:17:44
going on at exactly the same time as the create protests of outrage over Cambodia the level of atrocities was comparable in relative terms was probably
01:17:55
considerably higher and Timor it turns out right in Cambodia in the preceding years 1970 through 1975 there was also a comparable atrocity for which we were
01:18:08
responsible the major US attack against Cambodia I started with the bombings of the early 1970s they reached a peak in 1973 and they continued up till 1975
01:18:24
they were directed against inner Cambodia very little is known about because the media wanted it to be secret they knew it was going on they just didn't want to know what was happening the CIA estimates about 600,000 killed
01:18:39
during that five-year period which is mostly either us bombing or a u.s. sponsored war so that's pretty significant killing but also the conditions in which it left Cambodia were such that high US officials
01:18:53
predicted that about a million people would die in the aftermath just from hunger and disease because of the wreckage of the country pretty good evidence from US government sources and
01:19:04
scholarly sources that the intense bombardment was a significant force maybe a critical force in building out peasant support for the Khmer Rouge before that pretty marginal element well that's just
01:19:16
the wrong story after 1975 atrocities continued and that became the right story because now they're being carried out by the bad guys well I was bad enough in fact current estimates are that well
01:19:30
you know there Barry I'm in the CIA claim fifty two hundred thousand people killed and maybe another million or so died one way or another Michael Vickery is the one person is
01:19:42
getting a really close detailed analysis his figure is maybe 750 thousand deaths above the normal others like Ben Kiernan suggests higher figures but detailed analysis anyway it
01:19:54
was terrible no doubt about although the atrocities the real atrocities were bad enough they weren't quite good enough for the purposes needed within a few weeks after the Khmer Rouge takeover the
01:20:07
New York Times was already accusing in the genocide at that point maybe a couple hundred or maybe a few thousand people have been killed and from then on it was a drumbeat a chorus of genocide
01:20:27
the big bestseller on Cambodia Pol Pot is called murder in a gentle land up until April 17th 1975 was a gentle and peaceful smiling people and after that
01:20:39
some horrible holocaust took place very quickly a figure of two million killed was hit upon in fact what was claimed was that Khmer Rouge boast of having
01:20:52
murdered two million people facts are very dramatic in the case of atrocities committed by the official enemy extraordinary show of outrage exaggeration no evidence required faked
01:21:06
photographs are fine anything goes also vast an online I mean an amount of lying that would have made Stalin cringe it was fraudulent we know that it was
01:21:19
fraudulent by looking at the response to comparable atrocities for which the United States was responsible early 70s Cambodia Timor two very closely paired
01:21:32
examples well the media response was quite dramatic [Music] [Music] back in 1980 I taught a course at Tufts University
01:22:18
well Chomsky came around to this class he made a very powerful case that the press underplay the fact that the Indonesian government and next this former Portuguese colony in 1975 and
01:22:32
that if you compare it for example with Cambodia where there was a courage of things that this was a communist atrocity whereas the other was not a communist atrocity well I got quite interested in this and I went to talk to the then Deputy Foreign editor at The
01:22:45
Times and I said you know we've had very poor coverage on this and he said you're absolutely right there are a dozen atrocities around the world that we don't cover this is one for various reasons so I took it up I was working as a reporter and writer for a small
01:22:59
alternative radio program in upstate New York and we received audio tapes of interviews with Huey's leaders and we were quite surprised at giving the level of American involvement that there was
01:23:12
not more coverage indeed practically any coverage of the large-scale Indonesian killing in the mainstream American media we formed a small group of people to try to monitor the situation and see what we
01:23:25
could do over time to alert public opinion to what was actually happening in East Timor there were literally about half a dozen people who simply dedicated themselves with great commitment to
01:23:38
getting the story to break through and I reached a couple of people in Congress they got to me for example I was able to testify of UN and write three things they kept at it get that a kicked at it
01:23:50
whatever is known about the subject is mainly comes from essentially comes from their work was not much else I wrote first an editorial called an unjust war in East Timor it had a map and it said
01:24:03
exactly what had happened we then ran a dozen other editorials on they were read they were entered in the Congressional Record and several congressmen then took up the cause and then something was done in Congress as a
01:24:14
result of this in fact that the editorial page in The New York Times on Christmas Eve published that editorial put our work on a very different level and it gave a great deal legitimacy to
01:24:27
something that we were trying to advance for a long time and that was the idea and the reality that a major tragedy was unfolding in East Timor if one takes
01:24:40
literally various theories that Professor Chomsky puts out one would feel that there is a tacit conspiracy between the establishment press and the
01:24:52
government in Washington to focus on certain things and ignore certain things so that if we broke the rules that we would instantly get a reaction a sharp reaction from the overlords in
01:25:05
Washington would say hey what are you doing speaking up on East Timor we're trying to keep that quite near thing what we did here this was quite interesting is that there was a guy named Arnold Cohn and he became a
01:25:18
one-person Lobby I appreciate the nice things that call Meyer said about me in his interview but I object to the notion that a one-man Lobby was formed or anything like that I think that if there weren't a large
01:25:30
network composed of the American Catholic Bishops Conference composed of other church group composed of human rights groups composed of simply concerned citizens and others and a network of concern within the news media
01:25:42
I think that would have been impossible to do anything at all at any time and it certainly would have been impossible to stain things for as long as they've been sustained that's what Chomsky and a lot of people who engage in this kind of press
01:25:55
analysis have one thing in common most of them have never worked for a newspaper many of them know very little about how newspapers work when Chomsky came around he
01:26:07
a file of all the coverage in New York Times The Washington Post and other papers of East Timor and he would go to the meticulous degree that if for example the London Times had a piece on East Timor and then it appeared in the
01:26:20
New York Times that if a tip of paragraph was cut out he compared and he said look this key paragraph right near the end which is really what tells the whole story was left out of the New York Times version of the London Times thing
01:26:33
[Music] there was a story in the London Times which is pretty accurate the New York Times revised it radically and as we've heard they revised it and get a totally different cast
01:26:49
[Music] it was then picked up by Newsweek giving it the New York Times cast it ended up
01:27:10
being a whitewash whereas the original was an atrocity story so I said to to to Chomsky at the time I said well it may be that you're misinterpreting ignorance
01:27:21
haste deadline pressure etc for some kind of determined effort to suppress an element of the story he said well if it happened once or twice or three times I might agree with you but if it happens a dozen times
01:27:35
mr. Meyer I think there's something else at work and it's not a matter of happening one time two times five times 100 times it happened all the time I said professor Chomsky having been in this business it happens a thousand
01:27:47
times that these are very imperfect institutions when they did give coverage it was from the point of view of it was it was a whitewash of the United State now you know that's not an error that's
01:27:59
systematic consistent behavior in this case without even any exception this is a much more subtle process then then you
01:28:12
get in the in the kind of the sledgehammer rhetoric of the people that make a a to B equation between what the government does what people think and
01:28:25
what newspapers say that that sometimes what the times does can make an enormous difference at other times it has no influence
01:28:38
whatsoever so when one of the greatest tragedies of our age is still happening in East Timor the Indonesians have killed up to a third of the population they're in concentration camps they
01:28:50
conduct large-scale military campaigns against the people who are resisting campaigns with names like operation eradicate Operation Clean Sweep temari's women are
01:29:02
subjected to a forced birth control program in addition to bringing in a constant stream of Indonesian settlers to take over the land whenever people are brave enough to take to the streets
01:29:15
and demonstrations or show the least sign of resistance they just Massacre them as sort of like Indonesia if we allow them to continue to stay in East Timor the international community they
01:29:26
were simply digests East Timor and turned it into the attorney trying to turn it into cash crop I mean this is way beyond just demonstrating the subservience of the media to power I mean they are actual there they have
01:29:40
real complicity and genocide in this case the reason that the atrocities can go on is because nobody knows about if anyone knew about them there'd be protests and pressure to stop them so
01:29:52
therefore by suppressing the facts the media are making a major contribution to some of the probably the worst act of genocide since the Holocaust you say
01:30:03
that what media do is to ignore certain kinds of atrocities that are committed by us and our friends and to play off enormously atrocities that are committed by them and our enemies and U+ it
01:30:17
there's a test of integrity and moral honesty which is to have a kind of equality of treatment of corpses qualitative principles I mean that every dead person should be in principle equals ever every other dead process know what I said well I'm glad that's
01:30:29
not what you say because that's not what you do of course it's not nor would I say it in fact I say the opposite what I say is that we should be responsible for our own actions primarily because your method is not only to ignore a court the corpses created by
01:30:42
them but also to ignore the corpses that are created by neither side but which are irrelevant to your ideological shadow they I'm sure but let me give you an example um that that one of your one
01:30:54
of your own causes that you say very seriously is the cause of the Palestinians and and a Palestinian corpse where is weighs very heavily on your conscience and yet a Kurdish corpse does not at all and involved in Kurdish
01:31:05
support groups for years a that's absolutely true except lay folks let me just ask the curve ask the people who are involved in I mean you know they come to me I sign their petitions and so on and so forth and if you look at the stuff that the
01:31:18
things we've written and it takes a cappella take a look I mean I'm not Amnesty International I can't do everything I'm a single universe person but if you read say fate take a look say at the book that Edward Herrmann and I wrote on this
01:31:31
topic in it we discuss three kinds of atrocities what we called benign blood baths which nobody cares about constructive blood baths which are the ones we like and nefarious blood baths
01:31:45
which are the ones of the bad guys to the principle that I think we ought to follow is not the one that you stated you know it's a very simple ethical point you're responsible for the
01:31:56
predictable consequences of your actions you're not responsible for the predictable consequences of somebody else's actions the most important thing for me and for you is to think about the consequences of your actions
01:32:09
what can you affect these are the things to keep in mind these are not just academic exercises we're not analyzing the media on Mars or in the 18th century or something like that we're dealing
01:32:22
with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving because of policies that we are involved in we as citizens of democratic societies are directly involved in and
01:32:34
are responsible for and what the media are doing is ensuring that we do not act on our responsibilities and that the interests of power are served not the needs of the suffering people and not
01:32:48
even the needs of the American people who would be horrified if they realize the blood that's dripping from their hands because of the way they're allowing themselves to be deluded and manipulated by the system
01:33:01
[Music] what about the third world well despite
01:33:20
everything and it's pretty ugly and awful these struggles are not over the struggle for freedom and independence never is completely over
01:33:30
[Music] their courage in fact is really remarkable and amazing I've personally had the privilege and it is a privilege
01:33:43
of witnessing it a few times in villages in Southeast Asia and Central America and recently in the occupied West Bank and it is astonishing to see [Music]
01:33:56
it's always amazing which to me it's amazing I can't understand it it's also very moving and very inspiring in fact it's kind of all inspiring now they rely very crucially on a very slim margin for
01:34:10
survival that's provided by dissidents and turbulence within the Imperial societies and how large that margin is is for us to determine [Music]
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[Music] [Music]
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