Manufacturing Consent

One visual technique that was employed in the film was symbolism. During the segment about East Timor, there was a visual representation of the doctoring of an article. The scene consisted of a group of people impersonating doctors and performing surgery on a London Times article to make it more acceptable to the American people. This article was then given another face in that it appeared in Newsweek, atrocity-free. This part of the documentary showed how much the media has altered stories in order to push an agenda. This is the propaganda model. We give up the true news stories to serve private interests.

3_Week 2 Critical Thinking

Rachel Maddow and John Stewart can be considered critical thinkers because of the way they approach critical thinking itself. Both approach it in a sarcastic yet funny way. In Quart's "Sarcastic Times" Maddow is described as in her element when it came to her show. In her show she finds a clever way to mock sarcastically the news. John Stewart also takes this approach when tackling serious issues going on. They are being critical thinkers in their own ways. They are taking a different approach and stepping away from talking about important issues seriously. Although comical and sarcastic they are truly critically thinking about these issues and appealing to different people who learn in this sense. In the article "The Rage is not about Healthcare" Barney Frank and John Lewis are outraged by the healthcare bill. Everything they say is negative toward it, but the article talks about how in reality their anger is truly not about healthcare. It is actually about their rage toward Obama's presidency and certain people who are in office. They are not pleased with not only they way America is being run, but by who is runnig and making decions in the US. Frank and Lewis are simply using healthcare as an excuse to be angry and bring Obama down. They however are crtical thinkers in a different way than Maddow and Stewart. They take a more serious approach while reaching a different type of audience. As described by Fisher, crticial thinking could be they way you improve your quality of thinking by taking into account other things. He also describes many other ways to think crtically because everyone is different and not everyone thinks the same. Everyone uses different approaches and although they may not reach the same audiences of another crtical thinker, does not mean they are not crtically thinking. Crtical thinking is a very complex thing that everyone can achieve if practiced. Keep in mind that it will not be the same as others, but it will be critically thinking.

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Critical Thinking Assignment

The type of critical thinking employed by the comedy news anchors, as described by Alyssa Quart in her article “The Sarcastic Times”, such as John Stewart and Rachel Maddow is most closely aligned with the Dewey/Glaser model of critical thinking. As described by Fisher, this model of critical thinking focus on actively scrutinizing the evidence supporting an idea and the thought process behind any conclusions that are reached form the idea. Particularly in the case of Stewart and his compatriot Stephen Colbert, these comedic news shows focus heavily on the logic- or lack thereof- of the public figure or idea in question and use logical extension of the underlying thought of these ideas to draw comedic conclusions.

The epithets shouted at the politicians Lewis and Frank, as detailed in the New York Times article “The Rage is Not About Health Care” by Frank Rich, do not qualify as critical thinking under any of the modes presented by Fisher. They fail to pass in many ways, but most importantly they lack the criteria of active thought that Fisher lays out as a crucial underlying theme to all of the various ways to view critical thinking. The comments are made without particular regard to how they tie into the overall event of the health care bill, and they also fail to consider the particular congressmen that they target. Instead, these are reflexive comments made on the fly, so to speak, which Fisher points out as decidedly not critical thinking.

Manufacturing Consent Response

Filmmakers Achbar and Wintonick employ many cinematic techniques in their film Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media in order to emphasize both aspects of Dr. Chomsky’s propaganda model and their own views of how this theory fits into modern culture. Perhaps the most striking technique used in the film is the frequent framing of items related to Chomsky and his theories, such as books either about or by Chomsky and pictures from his life, and Chomsky himself in an entirely empty black background. Such a technique is generally used to imply two things- focus and isolation. Given the title of the film and its content, using the technique to show a focus on Chomsky’s life and ideals is redundant and pointless, thus it’s the second theme- isolation- where meaning can be found.

By using the empty backgrounds when showing Chomsky and the books that detail his propaganda model, the film makers help the viewer to understand the model better; this is not accomplished by explaining the model itself, but rather by explaining where this idea fits into the current media culture- namely that it doesn’t. Achbar and Wintonick attempt to portray Chomsky as a lone soul fighting against the mainstream. The frequent use of black backgrounds offers a stark comparison to the bustling clips from mainstream media, emphasizing just how different Chomsky’s thoughts on how the mass media works are from the media’s view of itself. It’s is also used to garner sympathy for Chomsky’s cause, as the filmmakers see it, by comparison to the romantic notions of an individual fighting the accepted world- this is seen again during their exploration of Chomsky’s media exposure in America.

Week 2 - Blog 2: Manufacturing Consent

In the film “Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media,” Professor Chomsky criticizes private media corporations. To emphasize this critique, the directors use many visual techniques to drive home the point. One of the visual techniques used in the documentary was highlighting passages in books. This is something the directors use a lot in the documentary and shows that small pieces of the page are much more important that everything else there (that it is all "fluff"). The director uses this to connect with Noam Chompsky's idea that most of news from private media companies is fluff because they hide or under-emphasize important news.

Another technique used is showing a large dump of newspapers and magazines being moved with a tractor is symbolic of how much garbage is in the news when major world issues, in this example the people of Timor, are often under-represented. It doesn't put a face on the real, intense poverty and violence that was present there.

Focuses in on a quote in a newspaper "All the News That's Fit to Print," which is clearly wrong. After this quote, the directors show several New York Times newspapers and other newspapers that extensively cover the Cambodian conflicts and genocide.

The directors there collect all the newspaper column inches that cover both Timor and Cambodia. They do this by rolling out each collection. Timor has 70 inches and stops fair short of Cambodia's 1175 inches. This demonstration highlights the difference in coverage due to the US having an interest in Timor through Indonesia.

The directors go further, portraying the editing room as an operating room, and the 'surgeons' systematically delete parts of the newspaper as "not fit to print", and the deleted pieces are news that corporate America or the Government does not want emphasized by the media industry. This portrays the media exectutives as immoral or as spin doctors controlling what news is shown in news papers.

All of these visual techniques underpin Chompsky's point that private media companies control news that they release to the public.

Response to "Intro to Critical Thinking".

The article concerning comedy news telecasting, along with my own personal experience with the genre, leaves me predisposed to deem commentators like Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, and others as highly critical thinkers, far more so than the typical TV news anchor. As Alyssa Quart hints at in “The Sarcastic Times,” it takes real understanding and synthesis of ideas and information in order to work with them in such a way as to elicit humor from a situation, political or otherwise. While traditional anchors are simply tasked with redistributing particular bits of information they witness, either firsthand or secondhand, comedy news personalities are forced to question situations presented by the media, conduct research beyond what the national media is willing to divulge, and then produce their own take on these situations based on their findings and critique. When compared to the critical thinking models proposed by Fisher in his introduction, the Maddow/Olbermann approach most accurately reflects the Edward Glaser model because of its emphasis on knowledge of tools used to think critically, and the further emphasis on skillfully applying these tools to a problem.

Frank Rich’s article “The Rage is Not About Health Care” is also a prime example of critical thinking because it poses an alternative reason for a problem that is currently being accepted commonly as being attributed to the healthcare bill. In this article, Rich posits that the issue isn’t Republican opposition to healthcare, but rather extremist opposition to the drastic change that is currently sweeping the political and social climate of the US. In order to come to such a conclusion, based on incidents such as the map on Palin’s facebook page or the epithets to congressional Democrats, general knowledge about anger attributed to the healthcare reform must be combined with knowledge concerning these other topics, and this must all be collectively considered at once as one broad issue based on questions asked about who provides insight into the origins of the healthcare protests, what is actually being said/done in anger, etc. This example most accurately reflects the Ennis model of critical thinking, in that this kind of analysis requires an extremely high level of reflection on multiple topics, and coalesces in a way that ends in Rich, and readers, altering their opinions on a topic.