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Media Matters with Bob McChesney

Sundays at 1 pm Central on AM580

Media Matters features host Bob McChesney in conversation with a variety of guests. Listeners may call with comments or questions.

Bob McChesney is a research professor in the Institute of Communications Research and the Graduate School of Information and Library Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The media are central to all our lives," he says. "Yet the media are the most frequently misunderstood parts of our lives. We want to help people understand the role of media in society."

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Sunday, December 18, 2011

Noam Chomsky Definitely Joining Media Matters this Sunday

Noam Chomsky is a US political theorist and activist, and institute professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Besides his work in linguistics, Chomsky is internationally recognized as one of the most critically engaged public intellectuals alive today. Chomsky continues to be an unapologetic critic of both American foreign policy and its ambitions for geopolitical hegemony and the neoliberal turn of global capitalism, which he identifies in terms of class warfare waged from above against the needs and interests of the great majority.

Chomsky is also an incisive critic of the ideological role of the mainstream corporate mass media, which, he maintains, "manufactures consent" toward the desirability of capitalism and the political powers supportive of it. On the role of the mass media, Chomsky argues that the vested corporate interests controlling newspapers, television, and radio, no less than the content of what these outlets offer, form what he and Edward Hermann in their seminal study Manufacturing Consent call a "propaganda model" supine in the service of power.

Chomsky's bibliography consists of over one hundred titles, spanning over sixty year's worth of work and research, vastly contributing to the public dialogue of both linguistics and politics. His most recent publication is a second edition of a collection of essays and interviews entitled, 9-11: Was There an Alternative?, available now.

Call (217) 222-9455 or (800) 222-9455 Sunday from 1-2pm during our live show to ask a question.

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Kudos to the caller from Hawaii who wished to plumb Dr. Chomsky's thoughts about American higher education, eliciting a response of uncustomary vitality. The sudden shift in tempo was unmistakable compared to his earlier over-drawn and over-generalized beating around the bush regarding the "unlikely to be" historicized legacies of the US involvements in Iraq and Libya (with the take-away nugget that Chomsky believes Iran is moving toward obtaining a nuclear "deterrent"). It is too bad more elucidating callers and questions were not included, and that this program (which had been rescheduled on short notice), might have trimmed opportunities for more interested listeners to participate.

Posted by Robert B. Livingston on 12/20 at 03:13 PM

That's a question I've been hoping to ask someone both knowledgeable as Chomsky, and yet who is transcendent of that side-stepping that other academicians seem to do when speaking of societal inequities. It really seems a combination of sensibly wanting to avoid self-inflicted foot wounds, and an inculcation of value systems that happens in a sort of Faustian bargain, as Prof. Chomsky so eloquently observed. Still, a big 'mahalo' to the folks as Media Mattters for giving me the opportunity, and for providing such a fine program.

Posted by Darren on 12/22 at 08:08 PM

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