alt Hacker NewsAre you saying the opposite of manufacturing consent would result in a media that isn’t challenging and conforms to people’s biases?
The way I see it you can do both at once. Exaggerating/downplaying stories in a way that confirms biases is something the media does today (see MSNBC/Fox News), and I’d argue it’s absolutely a form of manufactured consent.
I'm saying that it's wrong to understand "manufacturing consent" as some specific action a news outlet might or might not be performing. Most nontrivial reporting involves shaping the public's perspective of events, and that shaping is always going to be subject to the biases and incentives of the people reporting it. The thesis of the original book (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent) was that modern mass media is structurally biased towards advertisers and government sources, not that specific people are making bad or corrupt editorial decisions and mass media could become unbiased if we found a way to make them stop.