Noam Chomsky.
Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Second Edition.
New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002.
(This book appears in the publisher's Open Media Pamphlets series.)

Book information: publisher, Amazon.com.

If you have never encountered Chomsky before, this very short book is a good introduction. It covers many of the same themes as the film Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992), which I recommend. In addition to Chomsky's interpretation of the media, this book includes a brief analysis of the 1990-1991 Gulf War and his analysis of America's "war on terror" as of January 2002. For Chomsky's full analysis of the media etc. one should turn to Herman & Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988).

At the very least, I believe one must seek to understand and resist the inundation of propaganda we experience in the United States. Resistance to propaganda seems to me a fundamental responsibility of the rational, skeptical citizen. This small book and the Manufacturing Consent film are useful tools in that resistance.

I provided some Links to information about Chomsky in an earlier entry (here).