Regina Coyula, Translator: Unstated
A friend has brought me the Ten Strategies of Media Manipulation, by
Noam Chomsky, and in conjunction ?astral? has loaned me "The Guardians
of Freedom," by Chomsky-Herman. I confess that I have read then with the
intensity needed for The Way to Paradise by Vargas Llosa, a forced
reading of a text that appears to have been written by force. But this
is only a comment, not a comparative reading.
I regret not having been more curious about the appearance of Chomsky on
Cuban television a few years ago. As much as I try, I can't visualize
this libertarian intellectual in the trench of dogmatism that is the
Roundtable television show.
And while the principles of The Guardians of Freedom are designed and
written for the mass media and propaganda in the United States, it could
be the masthead of the ideologues of my government. With the simple
substitution of some proper names and huge mass media corporations;
substituting the words communism and rights for their antonyms, we find
an outline of the modus operandi of the Cuban media, the form of
disinformation and censorship in the daily news of these parts.
This mechanism allows sending a message to great effect and with no
chance of being refuted or discussed on equal terms, even to the point
of the Orwellian aberration Orwellian of instilling beliefs through
arguments that are seemingly solid and widespread, but which are
unfounded or contradictory to the truth. Success lies in there being
little or no chance of those receiving the message having access
alternative information.
In the case of Cuba, this premise, though battered, still stands;
because they report what they want and the majority "isn't for that,"
but those who are can inform themselves more and better. And, we must
add, more quickly.
I see, moreover, that Noam Chomsky is a valued and highly respected
member of the American intelligentsia. Had he been Cuban, he'd be
nothing but a "crazy" academic for writing The Guardians of Freedom, a
text undoubtedly dictated from an obscure office in Langley.
March 9 2012
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