38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Terrific & Penetrating Look At How The Media Fails Us!, September 5, 2000
This review is from: Breaking The News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (Paperback)
Few authors are as capable of approaching the unenviable task of explaining the otherwise baffling devolution in both the content and context of the mass media's coverage of the news as brilliantly as is noted journalist James Fallows in this literate, scathing, and thought-provoking broadside against his fellow journalists and the organizations they work for. By illuminating the specific circumstances attending the startling transformation in terms of the way news is viewed and covered by the media, he consistently gives readers reason for concern, and often for alarm. For example, Fallows contends that the viewing public increasingly distrusts the media because the public recognizes they can no longer depend on the media to provide the essential information citizens need to make sense out of current events and the world at large.
In a carefully constructed look at how this has happened, Fallows masterfully describes how several aspects of media's coverage of the news has had the net effect of its become more of an effort to entertain and less an exercise in edifying and informing the public in an objective and disinterested fashion. As a result, the media increasingly presents public life in terms of a "depressing spectacle" rather than in its proper context as one of several vital aspects of a vibrant democratic experiment in progress. By concentrating almost exclusively on those more entertaining elements of the news involves conflict or controversy, the media offers us a glossy, superficial and profoundly inaccurate perspective of the often intricately complicated world outside our doors, and in the process makes the world even less comprehensible to those of us attempting to make sense of it all.
Fallows argues that at least part of this process is propelled by the phenomenon of corporate acquisition of news agencies by large conglomerates whose concern for "the bottom line" has corrupted the news organization's fabled ability to maintain objectivity and disinterest. This results in concerns for competitive ratings, and a desperate attempt to compete with more traditional entertainment programs for audience share. As a result, news programs go for what is shocking, flashy, and provocative, so that "what bleeds, leads" the evening's news coverage. In a similar financial concern for confining costs, a plethora of quasi-news programs featuring "talking heads" featuring well known journalists like Robert Novak who ostensibly discuss the news but are actually offering their contrived punditry for our entertainment. In such a world dominated by a script requiring conflict and controversy, politicians are covered like sports stars, and all political actions, from attempts to pass healthcare legislation to decisions to bomb Iraq, are viewed strictly in terms of their consequence for the politicians involved and seldom discussed or debated in terms of their specifics or substantive elements.
Yet clever parlor talk by pontificating pundits does little to help us comprehend or interpret current events or important social, economic, or political issues; in this way our overflowing servings of political entertainment disguised as public service are actually obstacles to public awareness. It is this unintended consequence of the change in the news that Fallows is most concerned with, for to the extent the media becomes an element in managing the news rather than a disinterested purveyor of it, it becomes a potentially anti-democratic vehicle for anyone clever enough and cynical enough to manipulate it. In this sense this book is a call to arms, and a compassionate plea to his colleagues to correct the serious dysfunctions now visiting professional journalism. This is an important book, and one I heartily recommend to all citizens concerned with how the media is increasingly abrogating their civic responsibilities in favor of serving their own parochial secular interests.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb book on our most important national issue!, January 14, 2004
This review is from: Breaking The News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (Paperback)
Appalled at the biases, distortions and omissions in the media, which have been worsening since 9-11, I recently launched on a campaign of study in regard to learning about the deterioration of the media and the influence of corporate control - and what we can do to counter it. This is one of the best, most informative and most readable of the six books on the subject I've read. I can't emphasize enough how important it is, how much our corporate-run media influence political thinking, decisionmaking and voting and influence not only the outcome of elections but the agenda and actions of politicians - and how motivated we need to become in order to counter it, to become informed about political realities rather than propaganda and myth, and as a country, to become more of a democracy and less of a plutocracy. The biggest difficult we face is that the media itself is not likely to publicize its own corruption, and is actively blocking attempts of people concerned with these issues inform the public. I also highly recommend the books on media disinformation and reform by Robert McChesney, including his mini-books Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy and Our Media, Not Theirs.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Informative and Accurate Account of Politcal Journalism, August 14, 2000
This review is from: Breaking The News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (Paperback)
Fallows does a great job of using simple language to convey the complex issues that introduce themself in political journalism. He is surely looking out for the best interests of the public and the values of American democracy in this text. Reading this book will make you a more conscientious citizen, voter, and newspaper reader. The facts that he reveals about journalism should be known by all, and he writes with genuine concern for the state of a fragile American democracy and tainted political journalism. I would reccomend it for both academic and entertainment purposes.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
