this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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I've read the whole thing, but all the interesting bits were definitely in the first chapter. I didn't know anything about the political situation in Nicaragua in the 80s, so it didn't make much sense to me as an example. Was reading more Wikipedia than Chomsky at one point.
All his examples also seemed like very local problems? Like, the New York Times' reporting on the Nicaraguan situation may have been biased, but international NGOs were reporting the truth (which is how Chomsky himself got his information) and newspapers all over the world were reporting that information. I checked the newspaper archives from my own country and when they reported on the cases from the book (which wasn't that often, because South America is pretty far away), they had the same narrative as Chomsky.
So the interesting mechanical bits were definitely in the first chapter and the rest of it was only relevant to 1980s Americans who got all their information from national media.