Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992) is a documentary film  with a point of view corporate media is a profit-driven institution which tends to serve and further the agendas of the interests of dominant, elite groups in the society.

And yet, Chomsky  wasn't too impressed with the documentary.  He said the film simply didn't communicate his message which lead people to assume he was a leader of some movement that they should join. He was also critical of reviews which he believed mistaken his message for being a call for voter organizing rather than media critique.

I found the documentary to be quite tedious the view simply because it gave the impression Chomsky's personal biases were melded with his critique which muddled the message.
However, in the early stage of the documentary development, a quote from Walter Lippman was introduced that was the basis for the title. The quote being  ... " manufacture of consent". So a little Wiki review of Lippman revealed quite a wealth of information.

Lippmann viewed the public as people who make up their minds before they define the facts, instead of gathering and analyzing the facts before reaching conclusions. By seeing first, he argued, it is possible to sanitize polluted information. Lippmann argued that seeing through stereotypes (which he coined in this specific meaning) subjected us to partial truths. Lippmann called the notion of a public competent to direct public affairs a "false ideal." He compared the political savvy of an average man to a theater-goer walking into a play in the middle of the third act and leaving before the last curtain.

He also called the masses the "bewildered herd," who must be governed by "a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality." This class is composed of experts, specialists and bureaucrats. The experts, who often are referred to as "elites," were to be a machinery of knowledge that circumvents the primary defect of democracy, the impossible ideal of the "omnicompetent citizen". Later,  he recognized that the class of experts were also, in most respects, outsiders to any particular problem, and hence, not capable of effective action. 

As Chomsky points out ... media is a profit-driven institution ... so it should be obvious to the most casual observer the media relies upon advertising revenues to meet Wall Street expectations, so it is very important they create a narrative that draws in enough people to satisfy their advertisers. And that narrative is based on the Lippmann's partial truths stereotypes that many people still hold dearly, one being ... Russians are anti-religious communists ... which still is deeply embedded with the republican base for close to a century.

Lippmann's use of the word stereotype is a key point ... " The systems of stereotypes may be the core of our personal tradition, the defenses of our position in society. They are an ordered more or less consistent picture of the world, to which our habits, our tastes, our capacities, our comforts and our hopes have adjusted themselves. They may not be a complete picture of the world, but they are a picture of a possible world to which we are adapted. In that world, people and things have their well-known places, and do certain expected things. We feel at home there. We fit in. We are members " 

There are some "other sources" that isn't making the main.lame-stream-media (M/LSM) news simply because they're not framing their point of view with respect with the direction the M/LSM has already decided to traverse.

The Truth About Ukraine ... http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Truth-About-Ukraine-by-Timothy-Gatt...

Guilt By Insinuation -- How American propaganda works ... http://www.opednews.com/articles/Guilt-By-Insinuation--Ho-by-Paul-Craig-...

What I find interesting is how public opinion is being formed and shaped without the necessary facts upon which to lay the foundation so the it doesn't crack and fall apart at a later date when the truth is finally discovered and made public. The damage of false accusations is of no concern to the goals of others who need the public's support. Think back to the  WMD's frenzy the Bu$h Administration created to convince the public why it was necessary to invade Iraq to catch my drift.

And there's also a cat-and-mouse game being played too. First there was this ...

The Russian Military Finally Speaks! - The Saker with Comment ... http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/The-Russian-Military-Final-by-Michael...

Followed by a  WaPo article out today  ... " U.S. discloses intelligence on downing of Malaysian jet " ... which I found to be an extremely weak response. The cat-and-mouse issue that's not discussed is the Russians are only letting out enough info to provoke a response from the US hoping they will inadvertently disclose information that gives Russia an idea just how much the US really knows. In other words, they're baiting the US to see how well Russia is at keeping their stuff undercover and how well the US is able to see thru.

Sad that a civilian air tragedy that cost close to 300 innocent lives to be lost is being used to manufacture public opinion on partial truths that stimulate and satisfy the public's stereotypical biases to support political agendas.

Lippmann says it best with this quote from A Preface to Politics  ... 

“Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character. We extend this into all our thinking. Between us and the realities of social life we build up a mass of generalizations, abstract ideas, ancient glories, and personal wishes. They simplify and soften experience. It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor, to argue the rights of capital than to see its results. Pretty soon we come to think of the theories and abstract ideas as things in themselves. We worry about their fate and forget their original content.”