Thursday, June 07, 2007

Chomsky

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Sonali Kolhatkar:

We cannot expect the media to try to destroy themselves. They'll allow a little bit of dissent and criticism. (...)
They do not want op-eds that will point out that everything, all discussion that is going on in the United States, virtually all the media, the journals, everywhere, is based on assumptions so outlandish that if any other country produced them, we'd collapse and ridicule or maybe nuke them or something. Namely, the idea that we own the world. It's extremely hard to find any discussion or commentary that does not tacitly accept that it isn't ridiculous unless you accept that, as in the examples we mentioned. There's no interest in having that pointed out and hammered home day
after day. The media are not monolithic. It's not a totalitarian system and you can learn a lot from them. But you can't disregard the institutional structure that shapes their character, and it's not just the media. The same is true with journals, with opinion, with most academic scholarship....

-- via wood s lot

No comments:

Post a Comment