In presenting their "propaganda model" of the mainstream press, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent, NY: Pantheon, 1989) say as clearly as anyone could that it is not a conspiracy theory. For them, the mainstream press is not conspiratorial, but conformist:
Institutional critiques such as we present in this book are commonly dismissed by establishment commentators as "conspiracy theories," but this is just an evasion. We do not use any kind of "conspiracy" hypothesis to explain mass-media performance. In fact, our treatment is much closer to a "free market" analysis, with the results largely an outcome of the workings of market forces. Most biased choices in the media arise from the preselection of right-thinking people, internalized preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the constraints of ownership, organization, market, and political power. Censorship is largely self-censorship, by reporters and commentators who adjust to the realities of source and media organizational requirements and by people at higher levels within media organizations who are chosen to implement, and have usually internalized, the constraints imposed by proprietary and other market and governmental centers of power (xii, my emphasis).
As if determined to prove the accuracy of the authors' prediction, Nicholas Lemann responds in the New Republic (Jan. 1/16, 1989):
This sounds reassuring, but it's misleading: Manufacturing Consent really is a conspiracy theory.
Lemann doesn't bother to say what he thinks Chomsky and Herman's conspiracy theory might be, but hopes we will infer that they share the communist fear of a capitalist conspiracy. It takes several Orwellian flips to follow this. Lemann does not even try to be rational. He is evasive, exactly as Chomsky and Herman predict.
"Evasion" is a polite way to describe this tactic. Deliberate misrepresentation is more accurate. For example, when Herman and Chomsky say that the press fairly openly serves the interests of government and corporate centers of power, Lemann reports them as saying "the press fairly openly serves the interests of its capitalist masters." When they give examples of the press printing falsehoods and suppressing inconvenient truths, the better to maintain the government propaganda line, Lemann transforms this into "the better to maintain the party line."
Thus we have Chomsky and Herman transformed by innuendo into communists, who use terminology referring to capitalists which is in fact the terminology that capitalists use to refer to communists. It is we capitalists who refer to the communist masters and their party line. Here is our old friend, the Red Peril, the International Communist Conspiracy, represented by the dastardly Chomsky and Herman, in reverse. Manufacturing Consent, we are to understand, is a theory of the International Capitalist Conspiracy.
Lemann cannot spell this out, of course, because clarifying the innuendoes would require him to describe this chimera he has invented: the International Capitalist Conspiracy Theory. It would then become clear that this is not what Chomsky and Herman are advocating, that they are in fact saying exactly what they say they are saying. Instead, Lemann raises the specter of Chomsky and Herman as both communist conspirators and conspiracy theorists (of the capitalist conspiracy).
This is a subtle, if confusing, job of demonization. There is no subtlety at all, however, in dismissing everything the authors say without any argumentation whatsoever. For example, Lemann summarizes two chapters of the book (105 pages, 229 footnotes) as follows:
When Nicaragua abrogates civil liberties, it's big news, but the much more serious abuses in Guatemala and El Salvador get much less attention here [i.e. in the U.S.]. Genocide in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge [from April 1975 through 1978] is covered more than genocide in Cambodia by the United States and its allies [bombing from 1969 through April 1975]. Guess why?
The summary is correct, and there is no attempt to refute Herman and Chomsky's argument. Instead we have a sardonic "Guess why?" at the end, which might as well be "So what?" What are we supposed to guess? The substance of what Herman and Chomsky are saying–that 1) the US government is guilty of genocide, and 2) the press is guilty of failing to report it adequately–elicit neither confirmation nor denial from Lemann. This is what Chomsky and Herman mean by an evasive tactic.
If evasion becomes tiresome, one can simply lie. You just change what people actually say into what you would like them to have said. If they say they don't have a conspiracy theory, you say they do. If they advocate more public control of the press, you say they want "more state control." If they say that a democratic political order requires public access to the media, you say they want "a press controlled by a left-wing political order." Obviously, Lemann is counting on no one reading the book. Here is what Chomsky and Herman actually say:
Grass-roots and public-interest organizations need to recognize and try to avail themselves of these media (and organizational) opportunities [cable and satellite communications]. Local nonprofit radio and television stations also provide an opportunity for direct media access that has been underutilized in the United States...Public radio and television, despite having suffered serious damage during the Reagan years, also represent an alternative media channel whose resuscitation and improvement should be of serious concern to those interested in contesting the propaganda system. The steady commercialization of the publicly owned air waves should be vigorously opposed. In the long run, a democratic political order requires far wider control of and access to the media. Serious discussion of how this can be done, and the incorporation of fundamental media reform into political programs, should be high on progressive agendas.
Here is Lemann's comment::
This assumes that the political order that controls the press won't be a conservative one, which is a stretch, but there are certainly plenty of examples around the world of a press controlled by a left-wing political order...But the temptation to view the mainstream press as a potential locus for liberalism outside the electoral system should be stoutly resisted. Not only is the prospect of a politicized press a little frightening, because the press is so powerful, and so much less accountable than government; it's also probably unattainable. For a variety of reasons, the mainstream press almost always responds to, rather than creates, the political mood.
It is hard to believe that a speaker of the English language, much less the national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, is capable of such gross misunderstanding. If Lemann had been paid by the CIA to write this piece, he could not have done a better job of disinformation.