Can Latent Function be Manifest?

To add on to this for another direction, the idea of understanding HOW latent and manifest functions are conceived and re-ified as either manifest or latent is interesting to me. For example, I have not read Chomsky's work on "Manufacturing Consent" with mainstream media, but I know that in it, he makes the argument that mainstream media's function of manufacturing consent was not latent, but absolutely manifest from its conception. It's interesting that the subject of such a prominent work is not entirely focussed on the function itself (although it is somewhat, I imagine), but much moreso on the distinction of how a the nature of a function (either manifest or latent) really has an effect on function itself, and how there is such a need, scholarly, to uncover whether or not institutions like mainstream media are indeed manufacturing consent either manifestly or latently.