Chomsky on the role of the press in a democracy

"Chomsky is quick to explain that none of this is to be taken as a conspiracy: no one meets with editors behind closed doors to tell journalists what to report. No one has to, for reporters know that they can become rich and famous if they just remain "normal". The best example: Bob Woodward. As an unknown journalist with nothing to lose, he broke the Watergate story right under the noses of the established reporters. And he became famous. But today, no one is afraid of the investigative journalist of yore. On the contrary, Woodward is the only journalist who has been able to spend hours with the otherwise so secretive Bush, and in his book "Bush at War" critical questions are few and far between:
After my interview with President Bush the morning of Aug. 20, the president offered a tour of his ranch. We walked outside, and he climbed behind the wheel of his pickup truck and motioned me toward the passenger side. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice and a female Secret Service agent squeezed into the cramped passenger back seat. Barney, his Scottie dog, parked himself between us in the front and was soon in his master's lap.
Woodward does not give us the information that voters need. Rather, he entertains us. As Chomsky puts it, the US media see their audience as consumers, not citizens."

An excerpt from an article I read on Noam Chomsky. I can't find the exact link, but it's somewhere on his website.

A Question for Arundhati Roy

Dear Arundhati-didi :

I have read your books and your essays. Come September, and The Road to Harsud have moved me the most. Angered me the most. And woken me the most sharply, to the "...absolute, relentless, endless, habitual, unfairness of the world." While I do not presume that you will ever read this, I would still like to put a question to you.

What can I do, and how should I be feeling?

We live, as you say, in the world of "spurious choice". I can choose to buy Big Business out of business, but is what I buy instead organic, or local, or fair trade? Which one is to be traded off against the other one? And in the millions of choices I make everyday, this bottle of water vs. that drink vs. thirst, I am then exhausted. This exhaustion, I realize, is the ultimate weapon of Big Business. (I object to the use of that phrase, it doesn't seem fair to be sizeist. But I do acknowledge that Big = Powerful, most of the time, in economic terms.) This exhaustion, this feeling, at age 25, that I would like to curl up under a tree and look at the sky, or be with a lover, or damn-it-all, drink the Coke that my uneducated childhood has addicted me to. To remember what it is like to Not Know.

But of course, I can never go back. And if I did, I would regret it. Therefore, the question is - can I meaningfully go forward? Can I make any difference by leading a different life? (I don't require an answer to know that I must lead a different life anyway.)

And in the background of all of this, there is the unrelenting, absurd and nameless terror, anger and frustration that the world wrenches out of me. Terror, anger and frustration were further than the edges of the universe when I was growing up. Now, they are constant, darkly glittering, burning cold companions. Ruthlessly invasive and unforgiving. I say they are nameless because they are directed at everything - and therefore at nothing, meaningfully. Who should I be angry at? George W. Bush and Shell? Or the endlessly recursive set of circumstances that make George Bush and Shell possible? And the terror and shock, when I realise that time and space are illusions even in this purely mental exercise - at the heart of the circumstances making George W. Bush and Shell possible, is the individual. Me. Where I spend my money and how, where I laugh with my friends over coffee and whether or not I smoke and where I buy my clothes.

So: Caught as we all are in this endless circle, this going-nowhere-fast spiral, I can only Scream.
What can I do, and what should I feel?