CMCstudent, Herman and Chomsky

“The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse us, entertain, and inform, and inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into institutional structures of the larger society.” This is the opening quote from the Herman and Chomsky reading. It is true that if it were not for the media constantly providing a stream of information our society would not be functioning as it is today. The mass media institutes the values and beliefs of the dominant/ elite. These dominant/ elite values and beliefs are then followed by everyone else. As Karl Marx said, “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch of the ruling ideas.” Soon the “larger society” becomes those of the non-dominant unconsciously following the belief systems of the dominant. This happens because as Luis Althusser says ideology works on an unconscious level. Therefore no one realizes they are just following what is being presented to them, and instead of questioning what is going on around them, they take it all in. This pertains to when Benjamin says that “the public is a viewer, but absent minded ones.” This is because we do not question enough of what is really going on, instead we just take things for what they are shown to us to be. In Benjamin’s case this was when Nazism and Fascism were rising. The public was not thinking for themselves and Hitler was able to use the media to go in and manipulate everyone into doing what he wanted. Media is a powerful tool one can use to control people and although it may not be seen being used to the same degree as it was during the rise of Fascism, it is still one that is being operated every single day to influence ideas, beliefs, and values.