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Noam Chomsky to BBC-journalist: "If you believed different you wouldn't been sitting here."

Verantwoordelijke Pers · 25.1K views · 2017-07-20 · 0:12

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Overview

A short excerpt of Noam Chomsky telling a BBC journalist that he does not accuse him of self-censorship. He argues that people who believed differently would not have been hired into that position.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as a well-known clip on how structural incentives and hiring shape media bias without conspiracy.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2019–2023

Topics

Media, journalism & propagandaFree speech, censorship & civil liberties
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noam chomskyjournalismmedia biasmanufacturing consenthiring filters

What people said

conception · 2023-11 · Reference

I think there is a theme in this thread that misses a key aspect that I think Noam put well here - [VIDEO] I think the idea that if an opposing idea went to an NRA friend and offered more money, in almost all cases they would refuse because the lobbying dollars aren’t to convince but to support someone who asked believes what you do. In some cases, probably like crypto laws, a politician might think “sure I don’t care or have an opinion, you bought some donations and I don’t hate your opinion so I’ll help out”, but that is a lot different than “you pay me x and I vote y.” I think taking the agency out of the politicians hands, in most cases, is the wrong perspective.

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pannSun · 2022-11 · Reference

By hiring only the like-minded, top-down decisions can appear organic. In the words of Chomsky: I don't say you're self-censoring. I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. But what I'm saying is if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting. - [VIDEO]

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ahelwer · 2022-07 · Reference

The point of analyzing structural incentives is that you don't need a conspiracy. Everyone involved actually believes they are fully and truthfully discharging their duties and fighting the good fight. None of them are walking around plotting how to pull the wool over the public's eyes. They wouldn't be hired if they believed otherwise; there's a famous clip of Chomsky making this point here: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Verantwoordelijke Pers, played through YouTube.

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