Bad News: Noam Chomsky in a roomful of journalists, part 1 February 4, 1984 Originally appeared as "1984: Orwell's and Ours" in The Thoreau Quarterly, Winter-Spring 1984, pp. 13-49, Excerpts from the transcript of a session on media ethics at the annual convention of the Northwest Broadcast News Association in Minneapolis, MN. Transcribed by Pat Schneider http://monkeyfist.com:8080/ChomskyArchive/talks/badnews_html
Noam Chomsky:-
"...To call this a devil theory is just like calling it a conspiracy theory. It's just one of the devices that's used in the American indoctrination system to prevent scrutiny of power. If somebody does try to provide a critical analysis of American institutions, one of the ways in which you try to suppress this is to say, well, it's a devil theory or a conspiracy theory or so on. On the contrary, this is just normal institutional analysis. For example, nobody asked me, here, to explain why it is that the Russian press works the way it does. Well, if you had asked me -- of course you didn't ask because you know -- if you had asked me, I would have described the centralized military-bureaucratic system, the elite that benefits from it, their interests, the way that functions, and so on. That wouldn't have been a devil theory, nor would it have been a conspiracy theory. It would have been a descriptive account of the use of power in a totalitarian state. Now the way it works in a democratic state is much more interesting, far more interesting, and more complex and almost never studied. I gave a few examples of the way it works and now you ask for some of the reasons. I mentioned some of the reasons. But they have nothing to do with "devils." These are institutional structures that exist. We expect them to function that way..." ________________________________
(Elsewhere) (Brian Salter http://www.questionsquestions.net/) has "written in utter frustration about the dysfunctional, petulantly closed-minded rejection by some on the Left of any information or ideas concerning 9/11 and the "War on Terror" which can be seen from certain hard-wired ideological viewpoints as "conspiracy theory." For a long time I have sensed, at gut level, the presence of a smug and defensive reaction formation on the part of many old-school Leftists and political activists which leads them to disparage any controversial allegations or theories about government corruption which are either outside their safe comfort zone or do not fit neatly within their favored ideological narrative. In addition, I am both amused and appalled to see those types often borrow a tactic which was originally invented by establishment pundits and the corporate media: arbitrarily labeling outspoken whistleblowers against deep, systemic government criminality and conspiracy as "right wing extremists.""
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