Rogue States by Noam Chomsky

Author:Noam Chomsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Politics
ISBN: 978-1-60846-446-3
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2015-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

The Right to Information

The immortal collectivist persons are easily able to dominate information and doctrinal systems. Their wealth and power allow them to set the framework within which the political system functions, but these controls have become still more direct under recent Supreme Court rulings defining money as a form of speech. The 1998 election is an illustration. About 95 percent of winning candidates outspent their competitors. Business contributions exceeded those of labor by 12 to 1; individual contributions are sharply skewed.27 By such means, a tiny fraction of the population effectively selects candidates. These developments are surely not unrelated to the increasing cynicism about government and unwillingness even to vote. It should be noted that these consequences are fostered and welcomed by the immortal persons, their media, and their other agents, who have dedicated enormous efforts to instill the belief that the government is an enemy to be hated and feared, not a potential instrument of popular sovereignty.

The realization of the UD depends crucially on the rights articulated in Articles 19 and 21: to “receive and impart information and ideas through any media” and to take part in “genuine elections” that ensure that “the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.” The importance of restricting the rights of free speech and democratic participation has been well understood by the powerful. There is a rich history, but the problems gained heightened significance in this century as “the masses promised to become king,” a dangerous tendency that could be reversed, it was argued, by new methods of propaganda that enable the “intelligent minorities . . . to mold the mind of the masses, . . . regimenting the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers.” I happen to be quoting a founder of the modern public relations industry, the respected New Deal liberal Edward Bernays, but the perception is standard, and clearly articulated by leading progressive public intellectuals and academics, along with business leaders.28

For such reasons, the media and educational systems are a constant terrain of struggle. It has long been recognized that state power is not the only form of interference with the fundamental right to “receive and impart information and ideas,” and in the industrial democracies, it is far from the most important one—matters discussed by John Dewey and George Orwell, to mention two notable examples. In 1946, the prestigious Hutchins Commission on Freedom of the Press warned that “private agencies controlling the great mass media” constitute a fundamental threat to freedom of the press with their ability to impose “an environment of vested beliefs” and “bias as a commercial enterprise” under the influence of advertisers and owners. The European Commission of Human Rights has recognized “excessive concentration of the press” as an infringement of the rights guaranteed by Article 19, calling on states to prevent these abuses, a position recently endorsed by Human Rights Watch.29

For the same reasons, the business world has sought to

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