Visual Techniques in Manufacturing Consent

What I noticed above all in Manufacturing Consent was the alternations between Chomsky's assertions and the old clips from times past to support them. First in the introduction, and Chomsky describes the evolution of the media, we are shown first a chaotic scurry of various paper boys trying to distribute newspaper. Following this were clips of the invention of radio, and next an image of an archaic video-recorder. This sequence is concluded with an inside peek of the complexity of a modern-day news station. This chain of images served to back up Chomsky's assertions of how much media involvement in society has grown. Later in the film we are shown alternating images of Hitler's reign and glimpses of our country's own seemingly oppressive practices. I'm not sure what part of history what the later came from, but it was in black and white, and thus somewhat old. The two images served to demonstrate what Chomsky was saying at that moment, that propaganda to democracy is like violence to a dictatorship, and that these two occurrences were more similar than we'd like to think. Yet another example of this came when Chomsky explained that rather than recording history, the New York Times is creating history, by selectively choosing what to print and what not to. First we are shown the archives of the paper, along with Chomsky's explanation of his assertion. A bit later we are shown a blank screen, with just audio of a tour of the archives, to demonstrate how the newspaper is keeping things from the public. They could have chosen to show something else at this moment, but the choice to show a blank screen demonstrated the idea that there is a lot we, as an audience, are being kept from. This comes up later with the visual demonstration of the New York Times' "surgery" on an article taking from an England-based paper. These alternating visual aids all effectively supported what Chomsky was trying to say at each given moment, in the aforementioned ways.