107.(LV3-7)Media 1 Commentary

Publish Date: March 28, 2007
by Noam Chomsky
The role of the media in contemporary politics forces us to ask what kind of
a society we want to live in, and in particular in what sense of democracy
do we want this to be a democratic society? Let me begin by counter-pos-
ing two different conceptions of democracy.
One conception of democracy has it that a democratic society is one in
which the public has the means to participate in some meaningful way in the
management of their own affairs and the means of information are open and
free. If you look up “democracy” in the dictionary you'll get a definition
something like that.
An alternative conception of democracy is that the public must be barred
from managing their own affairs and the means of information must be kept
narrowly and rigidly controlled. That may sound like an odd conception of
democracy, but it's important to understand that it is the prevailing concep-
tion.
In fact, it has long been, not just in operation, but even in theory. There's a
long history that goes back to the earliest modern democratic revolutions in
seventeenth century England which largely expresses this point of view.
I'm just going to keep to the modern period and say a few words about how
that notion of democracy develops, and why and how the problem of media
and disinformation enters within that context.