Chomsky and Herman test their model empirically by picking "paired examples" — pairs of events that were objectively similar except for the alignment of domestic elite interests. They use a number of such examples to show that in cases where an "official enemy" does something (like murder of a religious official), the press investigates thoroughly and devotes a great amount of coverage to the matter. But when the domestic government or an ally does the same thing (or worse), the press downplays the story.


Crucially, also they test their model against the case that is often held up as the best example of a free and aggressively independent press, the media coverage of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. Even in this case, they again find that the press was behaving subserviently to elite interests.


Critics of Chomsky and Herman's mass media analysis, including author and historian Victor Davis Hanson severely disagree with Chomsky and Herman's theories. They see the idea of "Manufacturing Consent" as nothing more than a recycling of the Marxist idea of "false consciousness" in where the masses have been so manipulated that they have neither the perspective or intellect to see beyond the propaganda and require superior intellects like Chomsky's to point out to them the real truth. Arch Puddington of the Hoover Institution also points out what he sees as virtually no empirical evidence in media coverage, specifically with Chomsky and Herman's analysis of the mass media's treatment of Cambodia and East Timor, to back the claims made in "Manufacturing Consent".

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That'll fix them rabygata sucking legal fleagles!!

A