ix. Herman and Chomsky

Really good article on the marriage of convenience and profits between the media and the government and the many ménage a trios they have with multinational corporations (MNCs) such as GE and ITT.

One of the things that struck me was in the Third Filter section dealing with how the media finds news and backs it up with its sources of “experts.” In the article “Secrets of the Expert Mind” in the August issue of Scientific American, they discuss how often those dubbed experts are “only laypeople with imposing credentials.” The author goes on to explain how “rigorous studies in the past two decades have shown that professional stock pickers invest no more successfully than amateurs, that noted connoisseurs distinguish wines hardly better than yokels, and that highly credentialed psychiatric therapists help patients no more than colleagues with less advanced degrees” (66). Something to think about.

Also, just because a little graphic and text at the bottom of the screen displays “expert,” doesn’t always make it true, be skeptical. The interesting thing about this “expert” talk is that now the media has taken the opposite route and has begun asking “laypeople,” who may have no qualifications to any degree nor possibly any valid/concrete knowledge of the topic questions being asked. In these recent “expertization” of the common person, the media (not just limited to them, but also inclusive of the government and corporations) is still doing the same thing it was before, just utilizing different subjects: The media/government/MNC is doing the naming. And as we should all know, “There is a will to power in nomenclature”—Hassan.