Two new titles stand out as key works for helping readers think critically about the news media and its role in our democracy: “The Problem of the Media: US Communication Politics in the 21st Century” by media scholar Robert McChesney, and “Democracy Now!” co-host Amy Goodman’s “The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media That Love Them.”
Goodman and McChesney share a broad critique of today’s corporate-dominated media landscape while emphasizing different vectors for change. Professor McChesney’s work is a sustained argument for radical governmental reform of the media’s regulatory environment. Independent journalist Goodman slams the professional laziness that suffuses national political reporting and punditry and calls for a “trickle-up media” representing the perspectives of ordinary Americans.
“The Problem of the Media” (Monthly Review, 2004) provides a cogent account of the rise of a national media democracy movement in 2003 and neatly lays out some problems and distinctions which should help engaged readers already critical of our media to sharpen their critique and select battlegrounds for civic activism. The somewhat academic book assumes a critical audience, announcing at the outset that “the corporate domination of both the media system and the policy-making process ... causes serious problems for a functioning democracy and a healthy culture.” McChesney spends more time making the argument that the media’s problems—hypercommercialism, lack of diversity, lack of detailed political news—substantially result from governmental policy decisions rather than commercial concerns or the way things naturally occur.
Much of “The Problem” is dedicated to contextualizing and exploring one key distinction: between the news media as “fourth estate,” the indispensable enabler of an educated, participatory society; and the media as a great marketplace, best governed only by the simple rules of competition. The two sides of the 2003 fight over media ownership deregulation at the FCC split over this distinction, with free-market ideologue Michael Powell on one side and Democratic FCC commissioner Michael Copps on the other.
In his chapter-length discussion of the 2003 fight, McChesney does a disservice by framing the debate primarily as a struggle between Powell and Copps, glossing over the contributions of dozens of local activist groups who mobilized opposition to the proposed deregulation months before larger groups like MoveOn and Common Cause took up the battle. The loosely coordinated, widespread grassroots mobilization beginning in 2002 was arguably the campaign’s most inspiring substory—precisely because it didn’t originate with the D.C. policymakers. His account also sidelines the critique within the movement which activists of color have brought forth under the name Media Justice, charging that structural media reform cannot address concerns of media racism, sexism and class bias.
These criticisms aside, “The Problem of the Media” will be a tool of great value to those seeking a pithy summary of the current accomplishments and challenges of the media reform movement.
Amy Goodman’s “The Exception to the Rulers” (Hyperion, 2004) is not a book about the media per se, though her uncompromisingly ethical vision of the journalist’s profession is the primary subtext running throughout the book. Goodman writes that the role of the journalist should be to “go to where the silences are.” As an investigative journalist and interviewer, she has consistently sought out the perspective of those threatened by political and economic coercion, and consistently challenged those who wield power.
In “Exception,” she and co-author David Goodman include chapters decrying the Bush administration’s hypocritical war on terror, its deep relationships with human rights-abusing oil corporations and its attacks on civil liberties in the US. Little here will surprise or challenge regular “Democracy Now!” listeners. More interesting is the book’s catalog of examples of mainstream US journalists—including many prominent voices from “liberal” PBS and NPR—expressing blatant hostility to perspectives contradicting the Bush administration’s official versions of Iraq war events.
One entire chapter is devoted to Iraq stories run by the “New York Times,” many by overly credulous (or ambitiously propagandistic) correspondent Judith Miller. She and her editors allowed story after story to appear based on the deceptive claims of ambitious politicker Ahmed Chalabi, often as an unnamed source. Goodman rightly points out the irony of the “Times’” celebrated hand-wringing over the Jayson Blair fiasco, while the far more significant lies of Judith Miller have largely passed into history without apology or meaningful admonishment.
The most inspiring sections of Goodman’s book are likely her narratives of her own experiences challenging powerful people and institutions as a journalist. She writes with curt passion about surviving a massacre of East Timorese villagers at the hands of US-armed Indonesian soldiers, and of spending days after September 11th holed up in “Democracy Now!”’s lower Manhattan studios with a skeleton staff, in order to stay on the air.
For Goodman, the journalist’s responsibility to pose challenging questions extends to non-reporting roles such as on-air guest spots with Charlie Rose or Sally Jesse Raphael (!), or speaking at staid awards presentations—situations that normally find tuxedoed journalists dropping the pretense of critical challenge to hobnob with CEOs and government officials as members of a common class. “We shouldn’t be sipping champagne with Henry Kissinger,” Goodman writes simply. “We should be holding those in power accountable.”
When corporate media professionals accuse her of being an “advocacy journalist,” Goodman writes, “I answer by saying that they are my model.” For Goodman, the ethical choice for a journalist is not between advocacy and mythical objectivity; it’s a question of whether one chooses to join the chorus of advocates for a powerful elite, or to go to where the silences are—locating one’s journalistic voice among the voiceless victims of power and privilege, at home and abroad.
Robert McChesney will read from “The Problem of the Media” on Thursday, May 6 at the University of Washington’s Kane Hall in Seattle. Amy Goodman will read from “The Exception to the Rulers” on Friday, May 7 at Seattle’s Town Hall (KBCS benefit also featuring Bill Frisell), and on Saturday, May 8 at Portland’s Baghdad Theater. See democracynow.org/book for details.
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