I’m not normally a devotee of Noam Chomsky, but his commentary on media control can be pretty sharp:
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. [The Common Good, 1998]
Here’s a striking quote from a Russian cab driver interviewed in a 2007 dispatch aired by NPR’s On the Media:
ALEXEI: [Putin] is a good president. He has done a lot in Russia. Ever since the program when Putin answered the people’s questions on television, he immediately made a decision, and with a single call, he fixed everything.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And it’s not a problem that he doesn’t really want a free press?
ALEXEI: Why? We do have a free press. Everybody says whatever. Here there is no such thing as not being able to say something.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: He doesn’t want the opposition on the radio or television. Do you think that that’s a good thing?
ALEXEI: What do you mean by saying not letting the opposition on? You have everything on TV, everything that’s possible. And what’s forbidden is forbidden.
