A lot of the people involved in the media are very serious, honest people, and they will tell you, and I think they are right, that they are not being forced to write anything... What they don't tell you, and are maybe unaware of, is that they are allowed to write freely because their beliefs conform to the... standard doctrinal system, and then, yes, they are allowed to write freely and are not coerced.

The book [Manufacturing Consent] itself is then devoted to a series of case studies, selected, we hope [with Edward Herman], to offer a fair and in fact rather severe test of those conclusions.

It's fine to criticize somebody else's crimes and misdeeds, but you don't talk about your own. The only exception is a country that is defeated. And even that is rather nuanced.

Academics are mostly professionals, involved in their work and other concerns of their own, with no particular interest in the workings of the ideological system.

The Iranian government is undoubtedly a severe danger to its own population, but not beyond that.

In many respects, the United States is the freest country in the world. I don't just mean in terms of limits on state coercion, though that's true too, but also in terms of individual relations. The United States comes closer to classlessness in terms of interpersonal relations than virtually any society.

In the United States, the day when you pay your taxes is a day of mourning because this alien force - the government - is coming to rob you of your hard-earned money. That's the general attitude, and it's a tremendous victory for the opponents of democracy, and, of course, any privileged sector is going to hate democracy. You can see it in the healthcare debate.