Manufacturing Consent is a documentary about Noam Chomsky’s ideas and activism. However, it is his ideas regarding the media that take centre stage in the film. Namely, that the mass media operates as a form of thought control in a democratic society, with major news organizations systematically bending the truth to support the status quo.

Governments have used both ‘big lies’ and ‘big sticks’ to captivate the responsiveness of ther people and attire their endorsements. Propoaganda is to democracy what explicit violence is to dictatorships, and in both cases these two instruments are so intertwined with basic functioning of society yhat people think they are an inherent, unavoidable  part of the system.

This is the reason why Chomsky is very skeptical when it comes to valuing common sense; we live in a highly indoctrinated society and our free will and self-determination are influenced by propaganda, no matter the efforts that we make to be free and self-standing thinkers.

This documentary exposes the modern condition of the citizen of modern societies and warns against the apparent feeling of being in control of our choices and decisions: we are provided with this false sense of self-confidence but we are not really in control of mant of our choices.