Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent

Noam Chomsky makes some valid points in his book, Manufacturing Consent. The media as we know it is compromised and tainted with the footmarks of the people with power and money. This idea should be obvious for any skeptics of media, and yet is regarded by some as nothing but a conspiracy theory rambled by a sour cynic. These critics can be said to be indoctrinated to belief whatever they are presented with by the media, or they have no choice but to do so less they devolve into the paranoia of trusting no one, a fate some would regard to be worse than living an illusion created by propaganda. Admittedly, the situation above may be an extreme representation of the reality, but we the truth is that we have no means to determine the extent to which the media is controlled. So the question remains, what can we do? We can ignore the whole picture and focus on living our lives, knowingly but uncaringly influenced by the people behind the scenes. Or we can try to be as critical as possible about all source of news, examining the probability of a news being legit and putting all sources under scrutiny, while looking for the opposing view and conduct the same check. Granted this can

Some say that our identity is only established in the presence of others, that we all seek acceptance and empowerment in one way or another. The confirmation bias is a manifestation of those desires, causing us to unconsciously seek confirmation through evidence or news that voice our concerns. So people might unknowingly find news that validify their pre-existing beliefs, thereby helping the media, or those standing behind them, ease the process of manufacturing consent. If you do not believe this applies to you, are you aware of the bias blind spot, a cognitive bias exhibited by most people in which they recognize the biased way of thinking in other people but fail to recognize it in their