{"id":335057,"date":"2017-11-15T03:19:32","date_gmt":"2017-11-15T02:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/edward-s-herman-master-of-dissent-1925-2017\/"},"modified":"2017-11-15T03:19:32","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T02:19:32","slug":"edward-s-herman-master-of-dissent-1925-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/edward-s-herman-master-of-dissent-1925-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Edward S. Herman: Master of Dissent (1925\u20132017)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5593431\" style=\"width: 360px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-5593431\" src=\"http:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Ed-Herman-Portrait.png\" alt=\"Edward S. Herman (image: Real News)\" width=\"350\" height=\"280\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Edward S. Herman (image: <strong>Real News<\/strong>)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>One of the greatest and sweetest media critics ever, Edward S. Herman, has passed away. Ed was the main author of <i>Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media<\/i>, written with Noam Chomsky\u2014the 1980s masterwork that exposed how elite US media typically function as propaganda organs for US empire and militarism.<\/p>\n<p>In 1984, when I was part of a lawyers\u2019 delegation monitoring an \u201celection\u201d in death squad-run El Salvador, I remember a gaggle of progressive attorneys at the Salvador Sheraton tussling with each other to get their hands on a shipment of hot-off-the-press copies of <i>Demonstration Elections<\/i>, Ed\u2019s devastating book (with Frank Brodhead) on the US \u201cstaging\u201d elections as PR shows to prop up repressive puppet regimes, from the Dominican Republic to Vietnam to Salvador.<\/p>\n<p>He also wrote or co-wrote such classic works of political and media criticism as <i>The Political Economy of Human Rights<\/i> (with Chomsky); <i>The Real Terror Network; Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the News in an Age of Propaganda; <\/i>and<i> The Global Media<\/i> (with Robert McChesney)<i>.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>A longtime friend and supporter of FAIR, he wrote \u00a0\u201cBy Any Means Necessary: The Ultra-Relativism of the <b>Wall Street Journal<\/b> Editorial Page\u201d \u00a0(<a href=\"http:\/\/fair.org\/extra\/by-any-means-necessary\/\">9\u201310\/95<\/a>) and &#8220;Good and Bad Genocide: Double Standards in Coverage of Suharto and Pol Pot\u201d (<a href=\"http:\/\/fair.org\/extra\/good-and-bad-genocide\/\">9\u201310\/98<\/a>) for FAIR&#8217;s magazine <b>Extra!<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>A highpoint of my life was flying with Ed across the Atlantic to Brussels to speak alongside him before the European Parliament on the problem of media conglomeration, a hearing organized by the European Greens.<\/p>\n<p>As happened too often, Ed\u2019s name went unmentioned in the 1997 movie <i>Good Will Hunting<\/i>; when Will (Matt Damon) says to his therapist (Robin Williams) that <a href=\"http:\/\/fair.org\/extra\/npr-puts-right-wing-hate-in-howard-zinns-obit\/\">Howard Zinn<\/a>\u2019s <i>People\u2019s History<\/i> is a book that will \u201cfuckin\u2019 knock you on your ass,\u201d the therapist responds: \u201cBetter than Chomsky\u2019s <i>Manufacturing Consent<\/i>?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I asked Ed if he felt left out. Not at all\u2014the movie \u201cwill bring our book more attention, more readers.\u201d Pure Ed.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"et_bloom_bottom_trigger\"><\/span><br \/>\nThis piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission from <a href=\"http:\/\/fair.org\/home\/edward-s-herman-master-of-dissent-1925-2017\/\">FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Edward S. Herman (image: Real News) One of the greatest and sweetest media critics ever, Edward S. Herman, has passed away. Ed was the main author of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, written with Noam Chomsky\u2014the 1980s masterwork that exposed how elite US media typically function as propaganda organs for US [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2521,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-335057","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}