Democracy and the News [Hardcover]

Herbert J. Gans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 6, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0195151321 | ISBN-13: 978-0195151329

American democracy was founded on the belief that ultimate power rests in an informed citizenry. But that belief appears naive in an era when private corporations manipulate public policy and the individual citizen is dwarfed by agencies, special interest groups, and other organizations that have a firm grasp on real political and economic power.
In Democracy and the News, one of America's most astute social critics explores the crucial link between a weakened news media and weakened democracy. Building on his 1979 classic media critique Deciding What's News, Herbert Gans shows how, with the advent of cable news networks, the internet, and a proliferation of other sources, the role of contemporary journalists has shrunk, as the audience for news moves away from major print and electronic media to smaller and smaller outlets. Gans argues that journalism also suffers from assembly-line modes of production, with the major product being publicity for the president and other top political officials, the very people citizens most distrust. In such an environment, investigative journalism--which could offer citizens the information they need to make intelligent critical choices on a range of difficult issues--cannot flourish. But Gans makes several incisive suggestions about what the news media can do to recapture its role in American society and what political and economic changes might move us closer to a true citizen's democracy.
Touching on questions of critical national importance, Democracy and the News sheds new light on the vital importance of a healthy news media for a healthy democracy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Journalism has plenty of failings, and while Columbia University sociology professor Gans is sure to point out many of them in this book, he also holds out hope for the profession's redemption. The esteemed social critic laments that disempowerment-both economic and political-has become "the normal state of the citizenry," with people thinking they have little control over much of anything these days. Journalism, says Gans, does little to help. Obsessed with profits and entertainment over the public-minded debate of issues, media outlets have sunk in Gans's esteem to where their reporters and anchors are seen as the moral equivalents of politicians and lawyers. Of course, these problems have been debated for decades; but Gans puts forward various suggestions for how both journalism and democracy in America may be improved, including increasing the diversity of newsrooms and strengthening the voice of citizen lobbies. It's a high-minded treatise and a welcome counterbalance to the constant cries of liberal bias in the media. It might be wishful thinking, though, to hope that Gans's prescriptions will have any effect on the behavior of today's media monoliths.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"This season's best book on the media"--Ellen Hetzel, Poynteronline

"Gans radiates decency and common sense. Like Tocqueville, he also brings something of the neutral tone of a foreign observer (he arrived in his teens as a refugee), and he is refreshingly free of partisan bias."--Ted Widmer, New York Times Book Review

"Gans ends with suggestions on how to improve both the news and American democracy that range from the practical (more expertise for beat reporters) to the bold (less objectivity, more voice) to the hopelessly idealistic (rethinking democratic theory)."--John Giuffo, Village Voice

"No book on news and government offers more good sense in more compact fashion. Anyone tired of bombast about 'liberal bias'--or for that matter, about a nation mired in conservatism by the opposite bias--should consult Gans' well-organized state-of-the-art compendium of evidence and argument. Democracy and the News is crisp, seasoned, clarifying, realistic, and impressively hopeful. It will settle a lot of arguments."--Todd Gitlin

"Herbert Gans has written a wise and lucid book that draws on his profound and nuanced understanding of the media, and his deep commitment to democratic ideals. Most admirably, Gans not only gives us a crisp catalog of the impediments to a media that serves democracy, but actually dares to consider steps toward overcoming them."--Frances Fox Piven

"The biggest surprise in Herbert Gans' new book isn't his blunt diagnosis of what ails journalism or his fresh, often funky suggestions for reform. The biggest surprise is his challenge to basic assumptions about news and democracy.... Gans is most provocative when challenging our articles of faith, particularly the view that if the press just better informs citizens, then they will become more involved in civic life and democracy will benefit. Gans argues that lack of power is more debilitating to citizens than lack of information.... Gans' assessment of why audiences and journalists seem estranged is perceptive and pertinent, and at least one of his conclusions seems indisputable: 'Journalists cannot function as messengers,' he reasons, unless the recipients want and need them.'"--American Journalism Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 184 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 6, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195151321
• ISBN-13: 978-0195151329
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,839,891 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Book with Nothing to Say, and It Achieves That End, November 17, 2004

By 

Steve Koss (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Democracy and the News (Hardcover)

Here are some of the "features" of Herbert Gans's DEMOCRACY AND THE NEWS:

-- Dozens if not hundreds of sentences with such subject phrases as many people, some organizations, most editors, a significant number of elected officials, much of the audience, and some observers.

-- Dozens if not hundreds of sentences containing such qualifiers as perhaps, sometimes, many times, often, may be, could be, might be, probably, may yet be, could in theory be, is difficult to say, and virtually any other squishy generalizer the author could conjure.

-- Repeated assertions that questions deserve to be asked, no one has charted the processes, has not received sufficient consideration, deserves more legwork than it receives, needs discussion, and no one has ever tried to measure.

-- A plethora of vague generalities, occasionally interrupted by such revealing specifics as the fact that "60 Minutes" focuses on watchdog news, that the Florida voting count investigations did not reverse the 2000 Presidential election, that government officials use press leaks as trial balloons, that young people "apparently" obtain their news from "Comedy Central," and that Rush Limbaugh is currently the most famous of radio hosts who draw audiences by being as argumentative as possible.

-- A set of recommendations that would have big city newspapers reporting on which DMV office had the shortest lines, how rising oil prices are affecting Mr. Johnson's body shop, society news written by journalists from "low income backgrounds," reports written in non-standard English, and stories written by teen reporters aabout how new legislation will affect their peers (Beavis and Butthead do Washington). As if American mass culture doesn't already bottom feed enough, Gans would have the mass media dumbing down even further in the name of "localization."

-- An astounding 380 footnotes for 125 pages of text, occupying nearly 20% of the page count and frequently adding further generalizations and loose conjecture on top of the already vague sentences from which they were generated.

-- Possibly the Hope Diamond of meaningless academic writing (referring to a Pew Center study that half the respondents only follow the news wnen something important or interesting is happening): "Whether yet more members of the news audience will adopt this pattern remains to be seen, for it depends on what happens in and to the country." And the stock market will fluctuate and the seasons will change. So sayeth Chauncey Gardener.

Professor Gans manages to insult his readers' intelligence with the astoundingly obvious. At the same time, he barely mentions independent Internet websites and weblogs (Slate, Matt Drudge, Wonkette, etc.), word-of-mouth via multiply-forwarded email, Fox News and MSNBC, talking head programs like Crossfire, current events books focusing on politics, Bill Maher and Jon Stewart, MTV, and almost any other new technology or non-traditional news source. He also completely ignores European news institutions such as BBC News, despite the fact that Europeans frequently know and understand American economic and foreign policy better than most Americans.

If you are looking for a book that deals in critical and specific detail with the roles and issues of the news media in the American democratic system, please look elsewhere. DEMOCRACY AND THE NEWS provides strong evidence that even full professors at Columbia University are not immune from writing 125 pages of heavily footnoted drivel. If this is what "publish or perish" is all about, then please, by all means, perish.